To some extent, though, it is a modern process, too. As researchers and historians have been able to uncover more about the lives the characters lived, they have shed more light on exactly who they were. In some cases, though, that has served only to showcase the differences between shades of gray.

That can work both ways. In the case of Eduard Streltsov, a player in the 1950s and 1960s known as the Russian Pelé — he is famed as the inventor of the back heel — the chimera of Soviet history has helped to burnish his reputation. Streltsov, a teenage superstar for Torpedo Moscow and the U.S.S.R. with a hard-drinking, womanizing lifestyle, was arrested in 1957 after an incident at a party and, eventually, convicted of rape.

He spent five years in the gulags before being released in 1963. Two years later, he returned to his club, helping Torpedo win the Russian championship and, in 1967, he was voted Soviet player of the year.

Image Streltsov is famed as the inventor of the back heel. Credit... Hulton Archive, via Getty Images

The stain of his rape conviction did not seem to affect his popularity. As the years have passed, it certainly has not diminished his status. That can be attributed, most likely, to the doubt — both contemporaneously and in hindsight — most had about the validity of Soviet justice.

Either way, it is hard to tell if Streltsov was a hero or a villain, or both. The truth is what you want it to be. Though the circumstances are very different — and the process almost the polar opposite — Nikolai Starostin’s place in history is just as elusive.

Spartak and Symbolism

Spartak Moscow, the team Starostin and his brothers founded, was not just the Soviet Union’s most popular team, one capable of packing stadiums wherever it traveled. For many years, it was also — in the eyes of some of its fans, though by no means all — a social signifier.