Anyone with even a passing interest in ice hockey knows the story of the U.S. team’s stunning upset victory over the U.S.S.R. during the 1980 Olympics at Lake Placid. Our side of the story has been told umpteen times (not least of which is the melodramatic Miracle, starring Kurt Russell), but Polsky’s documentary gives us the Russians’ point of view, which turns out to be even more fascinating, dryly humorous, and ultimately epic than even the U.S.’ fabled “miracle on ice.” Placed squarely within the context of the Reagan-era Cold War, when the Soviets were derided as an “evil empire,” Red Army makes a convincing case that the Russkies had it far worse than the Americans in terms of living and training conditions, which made their previously unstoppable team’s ignominious defeat all the more crushing.
And yet Polsky’s documentary is not without its share of humor and pathos. Team leader “Slava” Fetisov recounts the grueling militaristic training, how ice hockey was very nearly the national religion in post-war Russia (and a way out of the depressing Soviet tower blocks for any kid who could put the puck in the goal nine times out of 10), and how members of the KGB kept the players in check while visiting Canada in 1978. Their original coach, Anatoli Tarasov, an inspirational figure who proved the power of the Soviet collective on ice, was eventually replaced by a more robotic, vaguely sinister ex-KGB agent named Tikhonov, who threw the team into internal emotional chaos.
Filled with a wealth of charismatic personalities and previously unseen Soviet news footage of the team training, Red Army reveals a moving and endlessly interesting portrait of the Soviet team and its many travails. The U.S. won the Olympic gold, but as seen here, the Russians’ story is by far the more genuinely Olympian, making this a handy victory over all previously told accounts of that so-called miracle.
This article appears in March 20 • 2015.