Sorokin replaces Pelevin – it happened on the 61st minute of Spartak-2’s match against Chertanovo in the Leon Second League B. Ivan Sorokin came on for Pavel Pelevin.
It’s no surprise that this substitution, posted in Spartak-2’s Telegram text broadcast, sparked the most reactions and spread through hundreds of reposts, including from Alexander Simbirsky.
Sorokin arrived from Zenit for 2.5 million rubles, while Pelevin has been with Spartak since he was 11. Both are products of Tyumen football.
Sorokin and Pelevin are not relatives of the famous writers – they just share the same surnames.
**Ivan Sorokin** moved from Zenit to Spartak in 2024. The midfielder was part of Zenit’s 2008-born team that won the YuFL-2 league. According to insider Ivan Karpov, Spartak paid 2.5 million rubles for him, and the player had refused to extend his contract with Zenit three times. In that YuFL-2 season, he played 27 matches, scoring six goals and providing seven assists.
Zenit didn’t treat his departure as a disaster. Coach Dmitry Radchenko said the club had counted on Sorokin and was ready to extend his contract, but the player “chose another path.” Radchenko cautiously added that he had potential, but there were more talented players on that team.
By 2026, Sorokin had already appeared in Spartak’s first-team winter training camp. In February, he played in three friendlies and provided an assist to Manfred Ugalde.
**Pavel Pelevin** was born in Tyumen and got into football through his uncle and brother. He started with futsal at “Tura” before joining the FC Tyumen system. At age 11, he was spotted by a Spartak academy scout. After trials and a COVID pause, he eventually moved to the Moscow academy.
Both Sorokin and Pelevin are products of Tyumen football, both played for the Russian U-17 national team, and their first coach was Vladimir Kacherukov.
They already have joint football moments that look like ready-made memes for a literary audience. In April 2025, during Spartak’s youth team match against Baltika, Sorokin scored in the 86th minute, and in the 90th, Pelevin secured the win – with an assist from Ivan.
**What about the writers?** They respected each other and poked fun in their books.
For the footballers, it’s simple – one replaces the other or provides an assist. But the relationship between writers Vladimir Sorokin and Viktor Pelevin is more complex. They are often paired as the two main figures of modern Russian prose: both described post-Soviet reality, but in different ways.
There is no friendship between them, but no open hostility either. Rather, a distant respect with elements of literary polemic.
Pelevin called Sorokin a talented and unique author, while Sorokin called Pelevin a major writer. However, both have stepped onto each other’s territory in their texts.
The most striking exchange happened in 2013: Pelevin teased Sorokin in “Batman Apollo,” and Sorokin responded in “Telluria.” Viktor wrote a chapter titled “SRKN” – read as “Sorokin” without vowels – and mocked his signature aesthetic: physicality, shock, and the ability to turn filth into high literary gesture. In “Telluria,” Sorokin targeted the “Buddhist Viktor Olegovich.” Sorokin called it a “exchange of boomerangs.”
So it goes: for the writers, an exchange of allusions and parodies; for the footballers, assists and substitutions.