Facts Behind the Fiction

The True Stories Behind Season in the Red
Season in the Red is a fictional story, but that doesn't mean that the situations described in the book and the events referenced are completely made up. Many of the facts and dates are in fact real events. Many of the characters have back stories that were inspired by actual individuals.

Non-USSR citizens playing for Soviet Athletic Clubs
In Season in the Red, Martin Ostrowski-- a Polish born hockey player-- is sent to live in the USSR and ends up playing for a Russian hockey club. Although foreigners were not common in Soviet sport systems, there are a few cases of professional athletes from countries "friendly" to the USSR establishing careers there. Tenyo Minchev, a Bulgarian soccer player in the 1980s is probably the most famous and the Pamir soccer club of Dushanbe, Tajikistan had three Zambians on their roster at one point. On the hockey end, nationals from Soviet Republics like Latvia, the Ukraine, and Kazakhstan frequently played as USSR citizens for Russian teams. The Soviet satellites--Czechoslovakia, Poland, East Germany-- mainly looked to preserve at least the appearance of independence and tensions running high between Poland and Russia during the 1980s encouraged many Poles living in the USSR to repatriate back to Poland. Nevertheless an estimated 100,000+ Polish nationals were still living in Russia in 1991 and an extra 600,000+ living in the surrounding USSR republics.

Conditions in Russia for hockey players
Much has been written about this from several different sources, the best of which are probably the biographies of famous players themselves. Soviet era players practiced and trained as a team about three times a day, for up to 11 months a year, but they did so under poor conditions. Bad equipment, lack of supplies, bad facilities and little privacy. Under Communism players often had trouble securing permission for an apartment, even those who were married, forcing them to either live with their parents or (as with CSKA) in team dormitories separate from their families. Soviet coaches were rumored to be especially brutal on discipline as well, going well above and beyond the standard "punishment skate".

For more details than we can possibly go into here, check out the following books:
From Behind the Red Line, by Tod Hartje
When the Lights Went Out, by Gare Joyce
Serious Fun, by Robert Edelman

"Well, we first got there, the team was so downtrodden and so bankrupt that they couldn't even afford to buy jerseys for their teams. They had one set of uniforms for six different teams. So, one team would come off the ice, their jerseys ringing wet with sweat, and give it to the next guy, and he'd put it on. And I can't tell you how bad the locker room smelled, I mean you could smell that clear to Vladivastock from the East Coast of Russia. Very bad, and [North American hockey equipment manufacturer] CCM came to the rescue and provided all of our teams with jerseys. The youth teams, the big teams, and beautiful jerseys, and we bought them a washing machine, and they wanted their jerseys washed every game now. All of a sudden they were very concerned with hygiene after the washing machine and their new jerseys." -- Stephen Warshaw from pbs frontline interview

Deaths and Depressions of Former Hockey Stars
Because their names are not easily recognizable to North American fans unless they are have converted their talent to NHL careers, the fates of many talented Soviet players post-hockey career has gone largely unnoticed. Hockey stars were not paid a lot for their service, were granted few special privileges as a result of stardom, and found themselves living on tiny (like $10 a month tiny) pensions once they retired.

The numbers of notable Soviet players who have died either in automobile accidents or in suicides and violent crimes is staggering. Russian Hockey maintains a pretty comprehensive list, along with some backstory for many incidents.

The Fall of Polish Hockey
Much of what is discussed in Season in the Red concerning the strength of Polish hockey is true. Polish hockey development, like comparable systems in Czechoslovakia and Russia itself was funded by the state which in turn was funded by the mining economy. At points in the 1950s while the great Anatoli Tarasov-- grandfather of Soviet hockey-- was still putting together a strong hockey program in Russia the Polish team was actually considered stronger than the Russians.

But the economic meltdown of the 1980s hit Poland hard, while Czechoslovakia was in a slightly better position (perhaps because of the manufacturing industries on the Czech side), and the money completely dried up. "Teams drastically cut (or eliminated) funding to their junior programs in order to survive. Junior players had to hook on with lower division teams and then hope to be spotted and acquired by an interested team in the top league. Polish hockey went into a tailspin from which it has never fully recovered." (Bill Meltzer NHL.com article on Polish hockey)

HC Lada, victory and gang wars
With the return of their strongest player from the Swedish league, HC Lada really did defeat HC Dynamo Moscow to become the first non-Moscow team to win the Russian title in 1994. But by 1994, there was more going on the Togliatti (Tolyatti) than hockey. Unhappy with the recently elected mayor Sergei Zhilkin, the Post-Communist political establishment completely rewrote the constitution of Togliatti in order to keep him out of power. At the same time a bitter gang war was brewing between the Neverov gang and the Sirotenko gang over the black market on parts for Lada Auto factory (the primary sponsor of HC Lada). By the time the dust had settled Togliatti had become known as the "contract killing capital of the world", and the scene of the murders of numerous VAZ Auto employees, politicians and high profile journalists.

Nikolai being banned from hockey on a trumped up "fighting" penalty
True Story: In 1975, 20 year old Viktor Hatulev became the first Soviet born player to be drafted by an NHL team when he was taken 160th overall by the Flyers. Ironically, the Flyers would later go on to boycott Russian players presumably on moral grounds concerning Sovintersport's involvement (more on this later). In any case, although exactly what happened next remains unclear it is believed that the Soviets decided to make an example of Hatulev in order to stifle any ambitions of their ice hockey players about coming over to the NHL. Shortly after being drafted, Hatulev was banned from hockey for five years for fighting, although no specifics on "the fight" were ever released and there are no witness accounts of the incident. Perhaps because of this, the ban was lifted after only two years.

There is literally no information to confirm that the ban was punishment for being drafted, but later on the Soviet sports machine would use similar tactics in order to prevent possible defection: the most famous case being Igor Larionov's suspension from the national team. On the other hand, as Hatulev was later banned for life for "rough playing style" in 1981 it is possible that it actually did happen. After 1981, Hatulev became a taxi driver and was murdered in the street in 1994. He was 39.