SKATING THE RED LINE

STORIES FROM THE FIRST 60 YEARS

All of the stories in this series have been written at this stage of my life, looking back on events long ago. Until now. I was rummaging through some papers the other day and came upon this piece of writing from 1980. I had just returned to the University of Pennsylvania after a semester studying in Moscow. I had spent four months in the former Soviet (the former Soyuz, as some of us so cleverly occasionally put it). It was a semester filled with memories and lessons learned. They will be the subject of future pieces. But this is the piece that I wrote for myself upon my return. You will notice that some of the references are very late 70s/early 80s. Marcel Dionne? And not a mention of cell phones or the internet, not yet a gleam in their creators’ eyes. This piece features two of my interests. Hockey. And Russia. And so, if you are yearning to read a piece about hockey in Russia in 1979 and the lessons it taught me, you've come to the right place. Enjoy.

SKATING THE RED LINE 1980

By Budd Mishkin

I was six years old when I saw my first hockey game. All I remember is that Bobby Hull scored a couple of goals to beat the New York Rangers (hardly a unique event in 1965) and my brother and I went home and watched the game on something called “taped delay.” These were Ranger home games shown on commercial TV, albeit on a delayed basis. It wasn’t enough to watch them lose in person. We had to go home and watch it again.

My passion for the sport soon reached a point where I would walk around the house listening to Marv Albert’s radio broadcasts on WHN in New York, then scramble over the dial to hear the Boston Bruins on WBZ, the St. Louis Blues on KMOX and the Chicago Black Hawks and Montreal Canadiens on radio stations far away. I lived with the comfortable and secure knowledge that these were the finest hockey players in the world.

That aura of invincibility surrounding the National Hockey League came tumbling down in 1972. The Soviet hockey team invaded Canada and won the first of an eight game series in convincing style. The names were unknown at that point: Kharlamov, Mikhailov, Tretiak. But NHL fans learned quickly that these guys skated and shot as well as Richard, Esposito and Mahavolich (and passed much better). The eventual Canadian victory in the final game of the series could not erase that fact.

The Soviet Union was not a country totally foreign to me, specifically my ancestry. My mother’s parents, both of whom died before I was born, were from Minsk. My paternal grandfather emigrated as a teenager from the Polish town of Suvalki near the Byelorussian border in 1912. He would say he was from Poland and then in the next sentence say that he was from Russia. This made no sense to me as a ten year old growing up in upstate New York. When I asked him, he replied, “sometimes it was Poland. Sometimes it was Russia. It didn’t matter. They all hated us.” Long after he settled in New York, he still talked about returning to the old country to see the effects of a revolution on the land of his childhood.

He never did make that trip. But his dream was partially realized when I visited Poland and the Soviet Union as a high school student during the summer of 1976 and then again for a semester in college in 1979. I was returning to the motherland. My grandfather regaled me with stories of his youth and theories about Russia’s history and place in the world. Suffice it to say that my grandfather never concerned himself with anything as mundane as sport. There was politics and revolution and classical music to discuss. Valery Kharlamov and Boris Mikhailov? Never heard of them.

I would eventually come to understand that Moscow is not always a cold grey place where people walk solemnly on the streets. Eventually. But as I arrived on a cold September morning in 1979, the stereotype fit perfectly. I remember thinking that Rod Serling’s “The Twilight Zone” was nothing compared to my first impressions of the Soviet capital, as I arrived for four months at the Pushkin Institute of Language and Literature for Foreigners. I was cold, scared, unsure of the language and thousands of miles from home. Little did I know that I would soon be discussing Watergate, Soviet dissidents and the Philadelphia Flyers with the greatest of ease, albeit with the ever present shot of vodka nearby.

I quickly realized that my Russian language proficiency did not match up to other members of my American group, so I would have to make an extra effort to meet Russians to develop my language skills. Having a guitar didn’t hurt, along with the ability to sing songs in Russian, Hebrew and English. It opened many doors and got me fed. My guitar was fluent. I was not. While out on such a mission during my first week, an American friend suggested that tickets to hockey games in Moscow were cheap and plentiful. I was looking for an area of Russian “culture” to study in depth. An idea clicked with my friend’s suggestion. Some would study Tolstoy, others the Bolshoi. My expertise would be found on the ice.

The Moscow hockey arena is like many other buildings in the Russian capital: grey, undistinguished, Stalinesque. The first impression that hit me was the order with which people entered the arena. There was no jostling, no hubbub, no hot pretzels on the street, no one muttering “who needs tickets, who needs tickets.” My American cohorts went along simply for the sociological experience; they wouldn’t know Marcel Dionne from Marcel Marceau. Still, you didn’t have to be a hockey fan to realize that the arena was a bit on the chilly side, quite a shock for someone accustomed to the heat of Madison Square Garden. “They make tanks with the best of them but they apparently haven’t learned the art of heating a building while preserving an ice surface,” I remarked in a New York way and a bit too loudly to the other Americans. A Soviet couple in front of us shot me a look and I quickly returned to my quiet analysis of the game.

But not as quiet as the rest of the crowd. As the two teams warmed up, I quickly realized that I could hear the instructions to players on the ice. Never mind that I couldn’t understand a word that they were saying. The crowd was silent. The building was almost as quiet as Toronto’s Maple Leaf Gardens, the morgue of hockey arenas. As play got underway, I realized that many of my favorite hockey customs were missing: no organ, no rhythmic clapping, not even a derisive chant about the Islanders (that probably wouldn’t have made much sense in Moscow anyway). Imagine my surprise when I stood and cheered for the game’s first hard check, only to be stared down by others in my section. Not that all of the fans in attendance were total automatons; goals by the Moscow club were met with a lot of cheering and there were 12 goals to cheer that night against a sad Leningrad team. But the constant din, the ebbs and flows, the fans talking about players on a first name basis seemed to be missing. The subdued atmosphere did allow for one interesting aspect; when a fan made a clever comment about a player or a ref, an entire section could hear it and would applaud appreciatively. Try that at the Garden sometime.

After that first game, I began reading the weekly Moscow hockey magazine, the Russian version of “The Hockey News.” I soon learned from Russian friends that two leagues existed in reality: the four Moscow teams and everyone else. It just so happened that all of the best players were placed on the Moscow clubs, especially the Red Army team. As in every other aspect of Soviet society, the government’s policy of centralization of power in Moscow also applied to hockey. Since the four Moscow teams were the most competitive, tickets to games between them were more difficult to buy. Tickets for these games had to be bought on the black market (just like anything else of value in Moscow) or through the occasional unofficial ticket agent outside the arena. These games produced more of the arena buzz that rang familiar from Ranger-Islander and Ranger-Flyer games at the Garden. I soon learned that each Moscow team had its own following from different parts of society. The Red Army team with Tretiak and Kharlamov was supposedly the darling of “official” Moscow: Communist Party members, apparatchiks, bureaucrats, Army personnel, etc. Spartak, widely regarded as the most popular team, belonged to the hearts of kids and was preferred by the workers. Dynamo reportedly courted police types, both official and secret. The fourth team, the Soviet Wings, allegedly had fans though I never met one (update from 2021....years later, I purchased a Soviet Wings jersey in that hotbed of Soviet hockey, Southern California). The Soviet Wings did have one thing going for it, a player for whom I rooted. Their goalie Vladimir Myshkin. No relation.

Red Army-Spartak games highlighted the Moscow hockey season and a ticket to one of these games was a real find. One section was always full for these games, the section designed specifically for Communist Party members and other higher ups. The seats were in a prime location, the first twenty rows between the blue lines on one side of the ice. The special section for the haves at hockey games was only the first of many examples I saw of how certain Russians have it made in the Communist system. The area was guarded by police, just to ensure that no one might idle by and try to get a seat closer to the ice, not to mention next to a member of the Politburo.

At the top of this section, there was an enclosed area designed specifically for the top boys of the Kremlin. It was rumored that Brezhnev was a huge Spartak fan, despite his very official status, and in fact his visage was pointed out to me at a number of games. Spartak-Red Army games often brought out the who’s who of the Kremlin: Brezhnev, Kosygin, Chernenko and others. I searched for an American equivalent but couldn’t remember seeing the President and the entire cabinet in attendance at a football or hockey game in Washington.

My interest in the Moscow hockey scene soon played an important role in my daily life in the city. No matter how outlandish or uncomfortable a situation, I could always bring up hockey to start a discussion. When I discussed my hockey ventures, the positive response from Russians was immediate. Here I was, an American, attempting to speak their language, becoming immersed in a part of Russian society, learning about daily life in Moscow. I found that hockey cut across all boundaries and classes. I discussed my experiences in official talks with Russian faculty members at my Institute, on the street with black marketeers and in apartments with dissidents and Jewish refuseniks (Jews who had applied to emigrate, been refused, and lost work and scholarships and everything). My knowledge of the hockey scene also probably saved me some rubles. Moscow cab drivers have a reputation for taking foreigners for a ride if they sense an ignorance of the city’s terrain. So a late night cab ride back to my dorm was almost always accompanied by a discussion about hockey. “Were the Canadiens better than Red Army?” “Was Kharlamov the best left wing in the world?” The cab drivers loved to talk hockey and envied the opportunities I had to see Bobby Orr, Bobby Hull, Gordie Howe and Phil Esposito play in person. Since most Russians hold virtually no hope of traveling to the West, my comments about these hockey icons were devoured by the cabbies. They in turn enjoyed my opinions of the four Moscow clubs, especially my determination that “Dynamo was the East’s version of the Rangers.”

I had two last aces up my sleeve to ensure a direct ride home. I would gift them with a pack of Marlboros (I don’t smoke but I understand that American cigarettes are infinitely better than Russian cigarettes and the Russians treat them like gold). And I called on my visceral hatred of the Philadelphia Flyer, a team I despised for beating and beating up my Rangers team in the early 70s. I proudly rooted for the Russians when they played the Flyers in 1976 (root for the Flyers? No.) The Russians hated the Flyers as well because of that game. And they hated the Flyers captain Bobby Clarke for intentionally breaking Kharlamov’s ankle during the 1972 series. So I would save my best for last. In Russian, I would say “don’t you think Bobby Clarke is the dirtiest hockey player in the world? I got direct rides to my dorm, and often, for free.

My love for the game led me to make a bad decision or two that put me in an embarrassing position. I was studying at an institute of language and literature. Russian literature is a pretty serious thing in the old country and writers like Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Gogol are revered like Orr, Hull and Howe. So when one of our professors early on in the semester asked what we had learned about Russian culture, I’m sure that she was expecting a rather serious answer. Instead, I stood up and said:

“Vo v soyuze net mwe skazhem pree amo, commanda loochuh chem Dynamo.”

Roughly translated…We say directly that in all of the Soviet Union there is not a team better than Dynamo.

It is a hockey cheer. Spoken by seven year olds. And here, I was presenting it in my Russian language and literature class. Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gogol and a hockey cheer. I quietly took my seat.

Hockey games and late night cab rides back to my dorm were a small part of my four month stay in Moscow. Most American tourists in Moscow see Red Square, the Bolshoi Ballet, Lenin’s Tomb and simplistically proclaim that they have visited and understand the Soviet Union, a country that covers an inconceivable eleven time zones. My experience included interaction with students from around the globe, waiting on line to buy food, shopping in Soviet department stores, discussing the fate of the world with Jewish refuseniks and building strong friendships with people whom I may never see again.

In the grand scheme of international relations between the United States and the Soviet Union, there are issues of greater importance than Valery Kharlamov’s slap shot or Bobby Clarke’s stick work. I know. Shocking. But my late night cab rides taught me something about the existence of common bonds in the most improbable of settings. A young New Yorker and an old Russian cab driver, with backgrounds as different as Jari Kurri and Nick Fotiu, could laugh and joke together thanks to the world of hockey. It didn’t shift my opinion of the Soviet government or its human rights policies and treatment of dissidents and refuseniks. But it did make this Rangers fan, thousands of miles away from the Garden, feel a little less far away from home.