Which makes my find earlier this year all that more amazing, to me anyways. It is a set of hockey postcards distributed in Russia back in 1984. It gives us a glimpse at the human side of these hockey robots/disciples of communism that we were expected to dislike.
Take a look at these great and much younger images of some of hockey's all time greats:
Vladimir Myshkin and Vladislav Tretiak
Alexander Maltsev and Sergei Makarov
Sergei Shepelev and Igor Larionov
Vyacheslav Bykov and Helmut Balderis
Andrei Khomutov and Sergei Skvortsov
Vladimir Krutov and Sergei Kapustin
Sergei Starikov and Viacheslav Fetisov
Vasily Pervukhin and Alexei Kasatonov
Vladimir Zubkov and Irek Gimaev
Zinetula Bilyaletdinov and Sergei Babinov
Vasily Pervukhin and Alexei Kasatonov
Vladimir Zubkov and Irek Gimaev
Zinetula Bilyaletdinov and Sergei Babinov
Mikhail Vasiliev and Sergei Zhluktov
Nowadays we know the Russians quite well, and even like them better than many Canadian players. I hear of more kids wanting to be Alexander Ovechkin than Sidney Crosby nowadays. It's not like back in the 1970s and 1980s, when politics and society would never allow you to admire a Russian hockey player, even though we all secretly did anyways.
Hockey's Cold War may be back, but it will never be the same as the good ol' days.
3 comments:
Hey! About those pictures. I'm 18-years old hockeyfan from finland and I have those same pictures in very good form. My neighbour was a famous finish coach Reino Ruotsalainen and he gave them for me. His son Reijo Ruotsalainen has played in NHL and won two stanley cups. But anyway these postcards were given to him in -84 world championship, when cccp has win the championship, once again. Reino past away some years ago and these pictures are memory of him. So it was very surpraising to find those same pictures from here. They are very uncommon i think. :)
Kapustin died very young. He was 42 years old when he had a fatal heart attack. Does anyone know any background/info about his early death?
Hey! I bought the same set of postcrads in 1983 when the USSR won the championship. The album was called "Hockey squad. Champions 83". On the cover was a group photo of the whole team. On the other side of every card there was a brief biography of the player and 3 small photos of different episodes from different games. I still keep the album. I was a big fan of Spartak Moscow and there were a few players from Spartak -- Shelepev, Kapustin, Zubkov.
Both choaches (V.Tikhonov and V.Yourzinov) were also presented on photos.
Anyway, it's big astonishment for me to find the same photos here.
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