July 5 marks the 95th anniversary of the birth of Mark Abramovich Barsky — Honoured Coach of the USSR and Ukrainian SSR in volleyball, Honoured Master of Sport of the USSR, and member of the national teams of the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR.
In 1946, together with other boys who would later become distinguished athletes (Zhorik Mondzolevskyi, Kolia Mandryka, Tolia Pivnevy, Arkadii Grossman, Zhenia Horbachov, and others), he was accepted into the first volleyball group established by Oleksandr Diuzhev.
From 1952 to 1961, Mark Barsky was a player in the starting lineup of the “Nauka” volleyball team (from 1955, the team competed under the auspices of the “Burevestnik” Voluntary Sports Society). He was a bronze medallist at the USSR Championships in 1954, 1955, and 1957, champion of the First Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR (1956), silver medallist at the 1961 USSR Championship, and a multiple champion and medallist of the Ukrainian SSR. As a member of the Soviet national team, he won the Third World Youth Games in Moscow in 1957.
His exceptional talent also manifested itself in coaching. M. Barsky coached the USSR men’s national volleyball team, which won bronze at the 1966 World Championship and became European champions in 1967. At the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico City, amid fierce competition, the USSR men’s national team won gold medals under his leadership. The team included Odesa athletes Y. Lapinskyi and V. Mykhalchuk, as well as graduates of Odesa’s volleyball programme G. Mondzolevskyi and E. Sibiriakov. In 1967, at the Fourth Spartakiad of the Peoples of the USSR, he led the Ukrainian SSR national team — which included Odesa athletes Y. Lapinskyi, V. Mykhalchuk, V. Shniukov, and A. Tyshchenko — to gold medals. In 1976, Odesa’s men’s masters team “CHGS” won the USSR Cup.
Read more about Mark Abramovich Barsky on our website “They Left Their Mark on the History of Odesa”:
https://odesa-memory.info/ua/index.php?id=173
Article prepared for the project by Nina Oleksandrivna Romanova (Zadorozhna), Honoured Master of Sport of the USSR, USSR champion, winner of the European Champions’ Cup, and silver medallist at the World Championship.
