Communism may be a joke in the philosphical department, with Capitalism and Socialism regularly playing pranks on it, but at one time this was the ideology that powered the mighty Soviet juggernaut. A nation that was engaged with the USA in a stalemate game of nuclear chicken. Fortunately, those two never went to war, and we never had to resort to using bottlecaps as currency in a ravaged world in the aftermath of that hypothetical scenario. But that doesn’t mean that the USA and the USSR never fought one another. Because they used sports as an alternative battlefield.
That looks pretty damn interesting. There have been many tales told of the extreme lengths that the USSR went to in order to continually one-up their American sporting counterparts, creating communism-powered super athletes who lived, breathed and ate their respective sports. Ice hockey was a particular favourite, with the competition being absolutely dominated by the Marxists. In fact, the Soviet team won nearly every world championship and Olympic tournament between 1954 and 1991, and never failed to medal in any International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) tournament that they competed in.
Hell, out of the nine Olympic games that the Sovs took part in, they scored seven gold medals in total. There was a bronze and a silver medal scored in the 1960 and 1980 tournaments respectively, but those teams mysteriously disappeared I think.
Red Army is out in early 2015. Gabe Polsky directs.
Last Updated: September 18, 2014
