October 1988 — Moscow, Soviet Union

It was still some seven years before the birth of the internet, so the news traveled slowly. But when the translated story finally hit western sports media, it was a shocker of massive proportions. Igor Larionov, the versatile centre on the first unit of the Soviet Union’s national hockey team, had written an open letter to head coach Viktor Tikhonov in the mass circulation magazine, Ogonyok. The Russian word “Ogonyok” means “small fire”, but what Larionov had set off was more like a bomb.

In a 7,000-word letter which ran over three pages, Larionov harshly criticized coach Tikhonov and the Soviet system under which the players laboured, saying things no one had ever dared to say before. “I published the letter to the coach to open the society’s eyes to what really was being done in this system,” Larionov said several years later when asked about his motives. “I wasn’t doing it for myself - I was doing it for the whole team.”

In the spirit of a newly-open media under head of state Mikhail Gorbachev, criticizing a sports authority shouldn’t have been considered such a novelty, even in 1988. But while Gorbachev’s “Glasnost” (openness) had reached many fields of Soviet life after 1985, the national hockey team was still very much Viktor Tikhonov’s domain over which he maintained strict and overwhelming control. The players literally ate, slept, and trained on his orders. The national team, as well as the club team CSKA Moscow (both coached by Tikhonov) practiced ten or eleven months a year, and team members were required to stay at the training camp (“baza”) for most of the time. While Swedish, Finnish, or Canadian players went home after a game or practice, Larionov and his teammates went back to the “baza” alone, without family or friends or a familiar living room in which to relax.

Larionov, 28 at that time, was fed up with this treatment. He wanted the world to know that while Soviet society was loosening its restrictions, the nation’s hockey heroes were treated according to old-style methods. Among Larionov’s criticisms were the endless hours away from home. “It’s a wonder our wives manage to give birth”, he wrote plainly in the letter. Realizing that his best years would soon be past him, Larionov also wanted one last chance to prove himself in the NHL.