I was born in the Soviet Union in '58.
It was 13 years after World War II was over.
The whole country was ruined.
We lost 20 million people.
It's a lot.
We was living in Stalin's buildings.
Probably a 400 square foot apartment.
No running water, no toilets, three families.
It was a pretty rough lifestyle.
I was a happy kid.
I play a game. I play hockey.
Pucks was empty cans and stuff like that.
But, we had fun.
Our heroes played for the Red Army Club, for the national team.
Vladimir Pozner Journalist
TRYOUTS!
JOIN THE RED ARMY HOCKEY TEAM AND SERVE YOUR COUNTRY.
My mom and dad, they probably collected for two years.
They bought for me gloves, helmet, and the skates.
On the black market, it probably cost 250 rubles.
It was big money for a Soviet family.
There was a huge line of the boys
With the sticks. With the skates.
With the parents. With the grandparents.
It's unbelievable. It's probably 3-4 miles long.
I was 9 years old.
I stayed in line probably 7 or 8 hours.
I was exhausted.
I got no chance.
They said, "Thank you very much. Come again next year."
So I practiced 3 or 4 times a day.
Finally, they said I was good enough to make the team.
I was so proud to play for Red Army.
Skate with no fear.
We'll give you exercises no one has ever seen.
You'll be juggling your sticks,
twisting them around your head.
Where's the smile? You're playing hockey!
Jump! Quick!
Tarasov was the father of the Soviet system.
Great!
And the head coach of the Red Army.
You'll become great hockey players!
And great men!
This man played a big role in my life.
I was Red Army in my heart.
I came there. I was 10 years old.
Tarasov, he developed the program.
He wrote a few books about hockey.
These books laid next to my bed since I was a little kid.
He described the game in a very simple way.
Our training camps were together.
My chess team and the national hockey team.
They would often come to me
if they had questions on psychological training.
He studied the training of the Bolshoi,
and he applied it to hockey.
Look at these dances, eh?
It's like the boogie woogie!
Sport is an art form.
That's what Tarasov thought.
Creativity, a vivid mind, and constant
thinking are needed for greatness.
My father was not just a hockey coach...
he was a great mentor.
He could see the potential in a young person.
He developed my patriotism.
For us, it's very important.
For me since I was ten, it was very important what was in front.
The name of my team, my country.
I belong to the great nation.
If you wear the national team uniform,
that's your duty. To do your best.
To represent your country.
Have you ever watched hockey?
I like playing with dolls.
Do you know what these letters mean:
K-G-B?
No.
Yeah, you were born much later.
You didn't have to deal with this organization.
When we crossed the Atlantic to play against
the best Ontario clubs at 16 years old, I was happy.
There was one flight per week.
Empty because nobody was flying.
Of course, regular people cannot leave
the country because that's the system.
I used to go with them to provide security,
and to prevent any "escapes" to the West.
The "special people" who traveled with us,
they give your passport before you get to passport control,
and they collect the passport when you cross the border.
The Canadians put us in a five-star hotel.
Chandeliers. Marble.
One room per player,
and a hundred TV channels.
Fruits, vegetables in the wintertime.
I've never seen it before for us.
In the Soviet Union, we got fish only one day a week.
It was "Fish Thursday."
When people went abroad, especially for the first time,
they were so surprised by the differences.
We got $48.
They gave us pocket money.
I bought 2 jeans, 3 pair of shorts.
Lots of stuff which just didn't exist in Moscow.
However, they never saw
the negative side of the other countries.
Control was intense.
Without such intense control, there was no point in the work at all.
I was never even thinking about to defect.
Never. What's that mean?
I'm happy.
The building was 12,000 people. Packed.
I was so nervous, y'know?
We got shitty gear.
We beat them in all 5 games.
Which players do you like the best?
Okay, Gabe. Let's go. Let's go. Work!
You guys are used to doing nothing over there in America.
Tarasov disagreed and stopped the game.
We didn't play for 40 minutes.
And there sat Brezhnev.
And Brezhnev was saying, "What the hell is this?"
They removed him from the national team.
They punished him for this.
The KGB Chief was a fan of the Red Army Club.
Tikhonov was his protégé.
What do you mean powerful?
He's a part of the system.
The Chief of the KGB put him in the position.
If we didn't obey, he would punish us severely.
He would take your salary or bar you from playing.
I'm very volatile.
That's how I am.
And the guys know that.
They know when to approach me.
Tikhonov was in a very advanced position from the beginning.
He got the best team in the world.
He got all kinds of support from the government.
In the Soviet Union, you can get any player.
You draft him into the army and he becomes a Red Army player.
Can Tikhonov be successful without us?
I don't know.
We being successful without him?
I think so.
Destiny.
It was tough.
After the Olympic games,
Tikhonov fired the veterans.
It's wrong.
All these guys, all these supporting staff,
this is the successful team.
Not him.
After that game, the workload became tremendous.
There were players who pissed blood.
We practiced four times a day in the summertime.
Four times.
We're working at a heart rate of 220.
Can you imagine? 220.
You win by being merciless in training.
The coach must perpetuate this tradition.
A coach must find a player's pressure
points to achieve maximum results.
It's the carrot and the stick, like an animal trainer.
To get masterpieces from the beasts,
you have to force them a little bit.
Did I respect him?
As my coach? Yes.
As a person? No.
You have to be born a goalie.
I am a destroyer.
I destroy the plans of the adversary.
Vladislav Tretiak in the net.
The best goalie in the world.
Tretiak is almost unbeatable.
The greatest goaltender the game has ever seen.
Tikhonov was given ready-to-use material.
Tarasov had created stars.
It was to his credit that he created a five-man unit.
They were the best.
...are the strike force of the Soviet team.
When the five got together, no one knew how to play them.
He was the most dangerous player in the world.
He can make the goal from nowhere, anytime.
He scored more goals than anybody in our hockey history.
He was a Russian tank.
He was the soul of the five-man unit.
Igor was the professor.
Because he was skinny like that.
Not a professor, maybe nerd.
Skinny but tough.
It kind of misleads lots of guys.
He was my best friend.
He was teammate. He was roommate.
Alex became my younger brother.
My mom cooked for him,
and my grandpa was like his grandpa.
It's tough to find any closer relationship between two men.
Alex is probably the best all-around defenseman ever to play the game.
I believe he (Slava) was the best defenseman in the history of world hockey.
Slava was our leader, of course.
In the way he skated, his character.
Tikhonov came from the Politburo and said:
"Slava, I got good news.
"You're going to be captain of the Soviet National Team."
I said, "Thank you, but I'm not."
He said, "You stupid?"
I said, "I'm not."
But when I talked to the guys,
they said, "We want you to be our captain."
I said, "Okay."
Why they choose me, I don't know.
But I become the youngest ever captain of the national team.
We were great friends in real life.
I tell you, they were good people, kind and always ready to help.
We never let each other down.
We were all practically the same, you know?
We'd celebrate the birthdays, the family things.
We went to restaurants together. We would spend vacation time.
We were all the same.
We were the same.
Why are you asking me the same thing?
Sometimes you feel without a look.
Your partner must be there.
Fetisov was number two in scoring,
even though he was a defender.
He would go forward and Makarov would draw back.
Everything was like this.
The opponents did not know who to cover.
No one could hold them back.
What they did on the ice...
Yes, they were the best.
It was the greatest moment in my life.
My childhood dream come true.
I got this gold medal.
I was the happiest man in the world.
My brother, his name was Anatoly.
I think he would be one of the best forwards ever to play the game.
He was like a son to me.
We got almost 10 years apart.
He was killed in a car accident in 1985.
I was driving the car.
To be in a situation like that,
I didn't want to live.
I share everything they go through.
All the training, all happiness and sadness.
Losses and victories, all the positive,
and the negative, too.
Andrei Khomutov found out his father was going to die soon.
He came to him and said,
"Viktor, can you let me go to see my father?"
He said, "No.
"You have to get ready for the next game."
Andrei never saw his father again.
This was tough to imagine for me,
that Tikhonov can do something like that.
The players often ask, "What is this all for?
"Why get maximum scores?
"Maybe we should rest a little."
It's absurd.
They was eleven months at camp.
Training camp.
And thirty-six nights, they was home.
They never get out of that camp.
We always fight against Tikhonov to let us live at home.
But he said, "This is the style of my team.
"And this is the style of Soviet sport in the Soviet Union."
I'm by myself in the apartment.
And when he talks on the phone with me,
it's like lines staying behind him,
and everybody listening.
Because it's one phone and it's like twenty-five guys.
We get together, the Russian 5,
and said, "Can we lose the World Championships next?
"Maybe they'll kick his ass out of the team.
"And we can live a better life."
I'm telling you, so many times we asked ourselves,
"Why are you suffering so much?
"Why play for a guy who doesn't respect us as a human being?"
So many competitions and you are never home.
At first, I'd get home and Dima wouldn't recognize me.
I'd ask him, "Where's your dad?"
And he would show me photographs.
Your youth is wasted.
New Year's Eve, holidays, birthdays...
You're always alone with the team,
without your wife and kids. It's a tough life.
At 32, I felt old and worn out.
I wanted freedom to train on my own, or to stop playing.
So I was forced to quit.
Dear comrades, delegates,
a new democratic era is upon us.
What's the Cold War?
The Cold War.
No, I know. What's the Cold War?
What's it about?
About the money?
About business?
I think so.
Nothing else?
Fear of what?
That's bullshit.
Tikhonov came from the Politburo to the training camp and said,
"Slava, if you do good in Calgary, in the Olympics, you win the gold medal,
"you're gonna be the first Soviet player who go play in National Hockey League."
I said, "Okay."
I was so happy.
When I landed in Moscow, they called me to the Ministry.
They give me in the Kremlin, the Lenin Award.
The biggest award in the country.
And then I was called for private talk between three men:
The Minister of Sport, Tikhonov and myself.
When the Minister said, "Slave, finally you deserve it.
"We'll let you go. Good luck and I wish you all the best."
And he said, "Am I right, Viktor?"
You know what Viktor said?
"Yeah, you're right. But I need him for another year.
"Because we can't replace him."
He said, "January 2nd, we got the Super Series against New Jersey.
"And we promise you after the game against New Jersey,
"you're going to finish the season in the NHL."
ls Slava Fetisov coming to the NHL?
It's possible for him to stay here.
Now?
See what happened? Publicly he said, "He can go."
But inside, not behind my back, in front of me he said, "No."
Lou Lamoriello showed me around New York.
He said, "Slava, I learned today they'll never let you go."
He said, "This is the life.
"You should stay here."
No.
I cannot run away from my country.
I cannot
do something illegal.
When I get back, I called a press conference.
And I said, "I'm never going to play for the Tikhonov team anymore.
"Because they cheated me."
The day his article went out,
our phone stopped ringing.
People who we know stopped talking to us.
The sports facilities in the country,
nobody let me in.
You come there, the people know you, they admire you.
They put their head down and said,
"No, Slava. You cannot come and skate here.
"No, if we let you skate, they are going to kill me."
Agents were placed in their social circle
so we could know the situation from within.
These people were just pawns on a chess board.
When you sit at home and you know
some car is sitting down near your entrance,
and they're going to follow you,
and they're going to try to listen. It you meet someone, what do you talk about?
Anything. Anything.
If they try to put Slava in prison, what do you think?
In Kiev. In Kiev.
They tried to put Slava in a car and take him to the police station.
They put the cuffs on him, and cuffed him to the battery.
And they just beat him up until four o'clock in the morning.
When they called Tikhonov, and Tikhonov came and picked him up.
That's when we heard when Tikhonov was screaming,
"Do anything, just put him in prison.
"Just don't let him out of the country."
If Slava will not be included on the team, what will be your next move?
Most likely, we'll all refuse to participate in the world championship.
You are three. Who else will join you?
There are others who will support us.
Krutov stood up for me,
with my teammates Makarov and Larionov.
Krutov has always been quiet.
When you see the situation get crucial,
he steps up.
And from him, when he said something,
it sounds different when you're not talking all the time. It's very powerful.
It was that.
Slava was leaving.
I stayed to play.
It was a big surprise for me that
Alex Kasatonov didn't go with the boys on TV.
You know, my best friend
said, "No, I'm not going."
So it was a big surprise.
It's a very long story.
It's the story of our country, I think.
He said publicly I wasn't right to leave the team.
He took the position of Coach Tikhonov in this situation.
That's the funniest part.
It's not the time.
To be continued.
A special department was created in the KGB.
Do you want to say anything?
Take your glasses off.
You can't even see me in dark glasses.
Come on, they are transparent.
I can see you well.
Look at the sun.
I just did. I looked.
I have sunglasses, too.
They are white.
Like this color white.
Continue.
'When did things start to go wrong?
Maybe it was
the incident with Mogilny.
Were you in Sweden to bring him out?
Mogilny was considered a traitor,
especially because he was in the Soviet Army.
He escaped, as they say.
But it was kind of...
How do you say... Illegal.
Here, people enjoy life.
Everyone has their own home, their own cars.
But that's not the point.
Here, people live for themselves.
And there, I lived like a homeless dog.
Well...
It's difficult to speak about hockey separately.
It wouldn't be like,
"Oh my God! Hockey players are leaving!"
The regime wouldn't put it like that.
One defection could lead to a wave.
This was a big threat to Soviet power.
Then they start to negotiate.
They said, "Okay, it looks like the high authority agreed to let you go.
“But you have to understand You'll make $1000 a month.
"Doesn't matter how much is your contract.
"You're gonna bring money back to the embassy."
I said, "No way. I'm not going.
"I mean, are you crazy?"
They said, "You crazy."
I said, "Okay."
They called me in a couple days and said, "Slava,
"you got special permission from the Politburo.
"Because you were so good for hockey, for the national team,
"and you were captain, we'll give you 10% of your salary.
"This is a special offer made especially for you.
"Nobody has to know about the 10%."
I said, "No."
Then it was 20%.
Then it was 25%.
They called my mom. They called my wife. They tried to scare them.
Momma said, "Son, the people called me. They explained you got no chance.
"They'll not let you go. They'll make something bad for you.
"You should not fight anymore."
And Igor Larionov signed a deal and left.
He was happy with a 50/50 split with the system.
Igor, and Sergei and Vladimir.
They was happy to split 50/50.
I said, "No."
And I was alone.
They said, "What do you want?"
I said, "I want my contract."
Yazov. Dmitry Yazov.
The Minister of Defense.
The second most powerful man in the country.
They called me to the Ministry of Defense.
Tried to straighten me out.
They put my uniform on me.
It was a huge, huge office.
He said, "America? This is my enemy.
"No way you're going to America."
He said, "You don't wanna play?
"You're not gonna play anymore, anywhere, anyhow."
Something clicked inside of me. I have to do something.
I have to provoke some result out of this visit.
Because I knew I'd never get back here.
Never.
Ever.
I said, "Mr. Minister,
"if you don't do what you promised to me, you're not a Minister. You're not an officer.
“Release me from the army.
"Thank you very much."
I turn and go.
He was screaming, yelling.
"You ----sucker. You try to play for our enemies?
"You know what I can do with you? I'll send you to Siberia. You'll never get out."
But I never turned back.
I left.
You know what?
In ten days, they give me a passport.
And I was free of the Army.
The first multiple working entrance visa to United States.
I'm not a historian.
My feeling was the country tried to change
something because it's Perestroika time.
But he doesn't want changes.
Everybody was afraid. It's understandable.
It's like in a dark room,
try to find a dark cat.
You know, it's not funny.
You'll go play our nation's hockey.
Skillful and effective hockey.
You'll be great.
Nobody like me in the United States.
Nobody knew what I went through.
They would think in clichés.
I'm a bad guy, a communist.
When I walk in the wives' lounge, it was like
I was staying in one corner,
and the rest were staying in the other corner.
And was looking at me, and talking in their own language.
I understand nothing they're talking about.
Looking at me again.
Laughing and looking and talking.
And I think, "What are they talking about?"
I have no idea.
There was no style.
They're so simple.
They're not creative.
It was the worst team in the league.
Somebody gets open and they skate away from you.
And you end up on your ass.
They look at you like you never played before.
Life challenged me all the time.
All of a sudden, he was drafted by the New Jersey Devils.
Nobody gave a shit about our relationship.
They sign him. We have to play.
It wasn't friendship anymore. It wasn't team spirit.
It was kind of competition.
It was tough, trust me.
I came to the United States to play the hockey game.
Not to be involved in this bullshit.
It didn't work out for me, staying in the NHL.
But that's okay, I think.
All in all, my life worked out. I think everything's okay.
I was 36.
And they trade me from New Jersey to Detroit.
Of course..
We spent so many years playing and living together.
You miss the ones you're close to.
I think, "Oh my God. I did something wrong.
"You've been successful. You've always been on top.
"Now you're a loser?"
I get out of the dressing room and see my wife by herself.
Crying.
I said, "Why are you crying?"
She said, "Oh, we got probably our last chance."
I said, "No."
We've got two choices:
To pack the stuff, go back
or to fight through.
I hereby resign my post as President of the USSR.
An end has been put to the Cold War and the arms race,
and the mad militarization of this country.
The threat of nuclear war is over.
I wish everyone all the best.
Together again on the same team.
It was like a fish put back in the water.
You become younger right away, and enjoy the game.
Scotty comes to the dressing room and said,
"Guys, I don't know who teach you to play this way,
"but I wanna ask you one thing.
"Don't change anything."
I start looking for Igor right away.
And I said, "Igor, we'll go together."
It's true American dream, you know?
Afterwards, I went to Gary Bettman. I said, "Gary, I need the cup in Moscow."
He said, "You crazy? We'll never let the cup go to Moscow.
"It's mafia. It's a bad country."
I said, "Listen, I want the cup to be in Moscow."
He said, "Slava, it's impossible."
I said, "What do you mean impossible?"
it's great to be home.
For me, the Red Army Club is home, of course.
I started here when I was 8 years old,
and I left when I was 31.
It's very strange.
When you're born in the Soviet Union,
and you left one country and come back to another.
It does not feel comfortable, you know?
When I get back to Moscow,
it's totally different.
Different mentality.
Different culture.
Different... Everything's different.
Country's got no heroes. Got no system.
No structure. Nothing.
Everybody runs around trying to get something.
It's not the way I want to live.
Everything is about the material side of things: money, finance.
Our country's crisis is now reflected in hockey.
Teams have very little money to keep players from leaving.
We kinda forget about the patriotism.
We are ashamed of what we were before.
We lost something.
We lost our pride.
We lost...
Our soul.
Gabe...
It's not a proper question.
I'm a politician now.
I get my feeling twenty years ago, right?
I was sad.
I played for the country for many years.
I was proud to play and be captain of the national team.
When Putin invited me it was 2002.
It's 11 years it's no Soviet Union.
President Putin said, "Slava, it's enough.
"Get back home."
Vladimir Putin gave me the position of Minister of Sport.
Sport should be a way of life.
I'm a little guy in a big system, but I try to do my best.
It's a huge amount of work.
It's twenty hours working day. Every day.
Y'know, we got lots of problems.
I need to build infrastructure.
I need to find the money.
I need to think about my people now.
The kids, the veterans...
Try to build something good out of what's happened.
We built a junior league.
We built 300 new skating arenas.
We brought the Olympic Games to Sochi.
We are happy to be back in our country.
I think our country and people need us.
We went through a lot,
and I'm happy today we are again like brothers.
Very close friends.
We're friends.
It's very important to get the people you went through a lot with next to you.
It's better than finding somebody else.
We're still friends.
And when we played, we were even closer.
I dream about how we used to play together.
First, a round of applause for this great Soviet coach.
The word "great" hardly begins to describe this great coach!
Unfortunately, Viktor says he's unable to talk today.
The most important thing for me
is to stress to the kids how it's important to be teammates.
How important to do stuff collectively.
To be proud of what team you play on.
I played 23 professional years.
One thousand eight hundred plus games.
I never had fun more than playing with those five guys, together.