 | |
| Nickname | The Red Machine (Russian:Красная машина) |
|---|---|
| Most games | Alexander Maltsev (321) |
| Top scorer | Alexander Maltsev (213) |
| Most points | Sergei Makarov (248) |
| IIHF code | URS |
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| First international | |
 Soviet Union 23–2East Germany (East Berlin,East Germany; 22 April 1951) | |
| Biggest win | |
 Soviet Union 28–2Italy (Colorado Springs,United States; 26 December 1967) | |
| Biggest defeat | |
 Canada 8–2Soviet Union(Ottawa,Canada; 9 January 1968)  Czechoslovakia 9–3Soviet Union(Prague,Czechoslovakia; 21 March 1975) | |
| Olympics | |
| Appearances | 9 (first in1956) |
| Medals |  Gold:7 (1956,1964,1968,1972,1976,1984,1988) Silver1 (1980) Bronze1 (1960) |
| IIHF World Championships | |
| Appearances | 32 (first in1954) |
| Best result |  Gold:22 (1954,1956,1963,1964,1965,1966,1967,1968,1969,1970,1971,1973,1974,1975,1978,1979,1981,1982,1983,1986,1989,1990) |
| Canada Cup | |
| Appearances | 5 (first in1976) |
| Best result |  Winner: (1981) |
| International record (W–L–T) | |
| 738–110–65 | |
TheSoviet national ice hockey team[a] was the national men'sice hockey team of theSoviet Union. From 1954 to 1991, the team won at least one medal each year at either theIce Hockey World Championships or theOlympic hockey tournament.
Afterdissolution of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the Soviet team competed as theCIS team (part of theUnified Team) at the1992 Winter Olympics. After the Olympics, the CIS team ceased to exist and was replaced byRussia at the1992 World Championship. Otherformer Soviet republics (Belarus,Estonia,Kazakhstan,Latvia,Lithuania andUkraine) established their own national teams later that year. TheInternational Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) recognized theIce Hockey Federation of Russia as the successor to the Soviet Union hockey federation and passed its ranking on to Russia. The other national hockey teams were considered new and sent to compete in Pool C.
TheIIHF Centennial All-Star Team included four Soviet-Russian players out of a team of six: goalieVladislav Tretiak, defensemanVyacheslav Fetisov and forwardsValeri Kharlamov andSergei Makarov who played for the Soviet team in the 1970s and the 1980s.[1]
Ice hockey was not properly introduced into the Soviet Union until the 1940s, thoughbandy, a similar game played on a larger ice field, had long been popular in the country. It was during a tour ofFC Dynamo Moscow of theUnited Kingdom in 1945 that Soviet officials first got the idea of establishing an ice hockey program. They watched several exhibition matches in London, andNational Hockey League PresidentClarence Campbell would later say that "This was the time when the Russians got the idea for their hockey team. The Russian soccer players were more interested in watching Canadian players play hockey than in soccer."[2] TheSoviet Championship League was established in 1946, and the national team was formed shortly after, playing their first matches in a series of exhibitions againstLTC Praha in 1948.[3]
The Soviets planned to send a team to the1953 World Championships, but due to an injury toVsevolod Bobrov, one of their star players, officials decided against going.[4] They would make their debut at the1954 World Championships instead. Largely unknown to the larger hockey world, the team surprised many by winning the gold medal, defeatingCanada in the final game.[5] In 2013, the Soviet national team was awarded theIIHF Milestone Award for winning the gold medal[6] in their first appearance at the World Championships and the beginning of a rivalry against Canada.[7]
The Soviets played their first exhibition tour in Canada in 1957, which perpetuated a rivalry between the countries.[8] Throughout the rest of the 1950s the World Championships were largely contested between Canada and the Soviet Union. That changed in the early 1960s. Canada won the gold in1961, and after missing the1962 tournament due to political issues, the Soviets would win the gold medal every year until 1972.[9] They faced perhaps their greatest upset at the1976 World Championships; in their opening match against hostPoland, the Soviets were defeated 6–4.[10]
In 1972 the Soviets played Canada in an exhibition series that saw the Soviet national team play a team composed ofNational Hockey League (NHL) players for the first time. Both the Olympics and World Championships did not allow professionals, so the best Canadian players were never able to compete against the Soviets, and in protest at this Canada had left international hockey in 1970. This series, known as theSummit Series, was a chance to see how the NHL players would fare. In eight games (four in Canada, four in the USSR), the teams were close, and it took until the final 34 seconds of the eighth game for Canada to win the series, four games to three, with one tie.[11]
At the1980 Winter Olympics, the Soviets also had one of their most notable losses. Playing theUnited States in the medal round, the Soviets lost 4–3. This match, later dubbed theMiracle on Ice, was notable because it had the Soviets, recognized as the top international team in the world, against an American team composed largely of university-level players. The Americans would go on to win the gold medal in thetournament, while the Soviets finished with the silver, only the second time they failed to win gold at the Olympics since their debut in 1956.[12]
The reforms of the 1980s in the Soviet Union had a detrimental effect on the national team. No longer afraid to speak out against their treatment, players likeViacheslav Fetisov andIgor Larionov openly critiqued the management style of their coach,Viktor Tikhonov, which included being secluded in a military-style barracks for eleven months of the year. They also sought the chance to move to North America and play in the NHL, though the authorities were reluctant to allow this. Negotiations with the NHL began in the late 1980s over this, and in 1989 several players, including both Fetisov and Larionov, were permitted to leave the Soviet Union and join NHL teams.[citation needed]
Yuri Korolev was head of the research group for the national men's team from 1964 to 1992, and contributed to the team winning seventeen Ice Hockey World Championships and seven Winter Olympic Games gold medals.[13][14]
JournalistVsevolod Kukushkin traveled with the national team as both a reporter and an English to Russiantranslator. He had access to the team's locker room and the opportunity to speak directly with the players and be part of their daily life.[15] In his 2016 bookThe Red Machine, Kukushkin reported that the nickname for the Soviet national team came into usage during the 1983Super Series, when a headline in aMinneapolis newspaper headline read "The Red Machine rolled down on us".[16]
Leading scorers (Olympics, World Championships,Canada Cups,1972 Summit Series)
| Games | GP | W | L | T | GF | GA | Coach | Captain | Finish |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1956Cortina d'Ampezzo | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 40 | 9 | Arkady Chernyshev | Vsevolod Bobrov |  Gold |
 1960Squaw Valley | 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 | 40 | 23 | Anatoli Tarasov | Nikolai Sologubov |  Bronze |
 1964Innsbruck | 8 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 73 | 11 | Arkady Chernyshev | Boris Mayorov | Gold |
 1968Grenoble | 7 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 48 | 10 | Arkady Chernyshev | Boris Mayorov | Gold |
 1972Sapporo | 5 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 33 | 13 | Arkady Chernyshev | Viktor Kuzkin | Gold |
| 1976Innsbruck | 6 | 6 | 0 | 0 | 56 | 14 | Boris Kulagin | Boris Mikhailov | Gold |
 1980Lake Placid | 7 | 6 | 1 | 0 | 63 | 17 | Viktor Tikhonov | Boris Mikhailov |  Silver |
 1984Sarajevo | 7 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 48 | 5 | Viktor Tikhonov | Viacheslav Fetisov | Gold |
| 1988Calgary | 8 | 7 | 1 | 0 | 45 | 13 | Viktor Tikhonov | Viacheslav Fetisov | Gold |
| 1992Albertville | As Unified Team | ||||||||
| 1994 – present | Since 1994 Soviet Union and Unified Team have been succeeded by Russia | ||||||||
| Year | Location | Result |
|---|---|---|
| 1954 | Stockholm, Sweden | Gold |
| 1955 | Krefeld /Dortmund /Cologne,West Germany | Silver |
| 1957 | Moscow, Soviet Union | Silver |
| 1958 | Oslo, Norway | Silver |
| 1959 | Prague /Bratislava, Czechoslovakia | Silver |
| 1961 | Geneva /Lausanne, Switzerland | Bronze |
| 1963 | Stockholm, Sweden | Gold |
| 1965 | Tampere, Finland | Gold |
| 1966 | Ljubljana, Yugoslavia | Gold |
| 1967 | Vienna, Austria | Gold |
| 1968 | Grenoble, France | Gold |
| 1969 | Stockholm, Sweden | Gold |
| 1970 | Stockholm, Sweden | Gold |
| 1971 | Bern /Geneva, Switzerland | Gold |
| 1972 | Prague, Czechoslovakia | Silver |
| 1973 | Moscow, Soviet Union | Gold |
| 1974 | Helsinki, Finland | Gold |
| 1975 | Munich /Düsseldorf, West Germany | Gold |
| 1976 | Katowice, Poland | Silver |
| 1977 | Vienna, Austria | Bronze |
| 1978 | Prague, Czechoslovakia | Gold |
| 1979 | Moscow, Soviet Union | Gold |
| 1981 | Gothenburg /Stockholm, Sweden | Gold |
| 1982 | Helsinki /Tampere, Finland | Gold |
| 1983 | Düsseldorf /Dortmund /Munich,West Germany | Gold |
| 1985 | Prague, Czechoslovakia | Bronze |
| 1986 | Moscow, Soviet Union | Gold |
| 1987 | Vienna, Austria | Silver |
| 1989 | Stockholm /Södertälje, Sweden | Gold |
| 1990 | Bern /Fribourg, Switzerland | Gold |
| 1991 | Turku /Helsinki /Tampere, Finland | Bronze |
On the 40th anniversary of the 1972 Summit Series, theIIHF Milestone Award was given to the Canadian and Russian teams for the event which had a "decisive influence on the development of the game".[17]Reuters wrote that Canada was expected to win the series easily, but when they came from behind to win in the eighth and final game, it marked "the beginning of the modern hockey era".[17]
Gold medal (1988, 1991)Gold medal (1990)
Until 1977, professional players were not able to participate in the World Championship, and it was not until 1988 that they could play in the Winter Olympics. However, the Soviet team was populated with amateur players who were primarily full-time athletes hired as regular workers of a company (aircraft industry,food workers,tractor industry) or organization (KGB,Red Army,Soviet Air Force) that sponsored what would be presented as an after-hourssocial sports society hockey team for their workers in order to keep their amateur status.[18][19][20] By the 1970s, several national hockey federations, such as Canada, protested the use of the amateur status for players of Eastern Bloc teams and even withdrew from the 1972 and 1976 Winter Games in protest.[21]
| Years | Coach | Achievements |
|---|---|---|
| 1953 | Anatoli Tarasov | |
| 1953–1957 | Arkady Chernyshev | 1 Olympic gold medal, 2 World Championship gold medals, 2 World Championship silver medals |
| 1958–1960 | Anatoli Tarasov | 1 Olympic bronze medal, 2 World Championship silver medals |
| 1961–1972 | Arkady Chernyshev | 3 Olympic gold medals, 9 World Championship gold medals, 1 World Championship silver medal, 1 World Championship bronze medal |
| 1972–1974 | Vsevolod Bobrov | 2 World Championship gold medals |
| 1974–1977 | Boris Kulagin | 1 Olympic gold medal, 1 World Championship gold medal, 1 World Championship silver medal, 1 World Championship bronze medal |
| 1977–1991 | Viktor Tikhonov | 2 Olympic gold medals, 1 Olympic silver medal, 8 World Championship gold medals, 2 World Championship silver medals, 2 World Championship bronze medals |
There were some exceptions to jersey colors, where the Soviet team played in red away rather than white (such as the1981 Ice Hockey World Championships in Sweden).
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