Soviet Union men's national ice hockey team

Vsevolod Bobrov during the 1956 Winter Olympics, the Soviet Union's first appearance at the Olympics.

Ice hockey was not properly introduced into the Soviet Union until the 1940s, though bandy, a similar game played on a larger ice field, had long been popular in the country. It was during a tour of FC Dynamo Moscow of the United Kingdom in 1945 that Soviet officials first got the idea of establishing an ice hockey program. They watched several exhibition matches in London, and National Hockey League President Clarence Campbell would later say that "This was the time when the Russians got the idea for their hockey team. The Russian soccer players were more interested in watching Canadian players play hockey than in soccer."[2] The Soviet Championship League was established in 1946, and the national team was formed shortly after, playing their first matches in a series of exhibitions against LTC Praha in 1948.[3]

The Soviets planned to send a team to the 1953 World Championships, but due to an injury to Vsevolod Bobrov, one of their star players, officials decided against going.[4] They would make their debut at the 1954 World Championships instead. Largely unknown to the larger hockey world, the team surprised many by winning the gold medal, defeating Canada in the final game.[5]

The Soviets played their first exhibition tour in Canada in 1957, which perpetuated a rivalry between the countries.[6] Throughout the rest of the 1950s the World Championships were largely contested between Canada and the Soviet Union. That changed in the early 1960s. Canada won the gold in 1961, and after missing the 1962 tournament due to political issues, the Soviets would win the gold medal every year until 1972.[7] They faced perhaps their greatest upset at the 1976 World Championships; in their opening match against host Poland, the Soviets were defeated 6–4.[8]

In 1972 the Soviets played Canada in an exhibition series that saw the Soviet national team play a team composed of National Hockey League (NHL) players for the first time. Both the Olympics and World Championships did not allow professionals, so the best Canadian players were never able to compete against the Soviets, and in protest at this Canada had left international hockey in 1970. This series, known as the Summit Series, was a chance to see how the NHL players would fare. In eight games (four in Canada, four in the USSR), the teams were close, and it took until the final 34 seconds of the eighth game for Canada to win the series, four games to three, with one tie.[9]

At the 1980 Winter Olympics, the Soviets also had one of their most notable losses. Playing the United States in the medal round, the Soviets lost 4–3. This match, later dubbed the Miracle on Ice, was notable because it had the Soviets, recognized as the top international team in the world, against an American team composed largely of university-level players. The Americans would go on to win the gold medal in the tournament, while the Soviets finished with the silver, only the second time they failed to win gold at the Olympics since their debut in 1956.[10]

The reforms of the 1980s in the Soviet Union had a detrimental effect on the national team. No longer afraid to speak out against their treatment, players like Viacheslav Fetisov and Igor Larionov openly critiqued the management style of their coach, Viktor Tikhonov, which included being secluded in a military-style barracks for eleven months of the year. They also sought the chance to move to North America and play in the NHL, though the authorities were reluctant to allow this. Negotiations with the NHL began in the late 1980s over this, and in 1989 several players, including both Fetisov and Larionov, were permitted to leave the Soviet Union and join NHL teams.

Yuri Korolev was head of the research group for the national men's team from 1964 to 1992, and contributed to the team winning seventeen Ice Hockey World Championships and seven Winter Olympic Games gold medals.[11][12]

Soviet journalist Vsevolod Kukushkin traveled with the national team as both a reporter and an English to Russian translator. He had access to the team's locker room and the opportunity to speak directly with the players and be part of their daily life.[13] In his 2016 book The Red Machine, Kukushkin reported that the nickname for the Soviet national team came into usage during the 1983 Super Series, when a headline in a Minneapolis newspaper headline read "The Red Machine rolled down on us".[14]

Leading scorers (Olympics, World Championships, Canada Cups, 1972 Summit Series)

1. Sergei Makarov – 248 points
2. Aleksandr Maltsev – 213+ points
3. Valeri Kharlamov – 199 points
4. Boris Mikhailov – 180 points
5. Vladimir Petrov – 176 points

• Russia national ice hockey team
• CIS national ice hockey team

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Soviet Union national ice hockey team.

• Hockey CCCP International
• Soviet Union national ice hockey team (in Russian)
• 1972 Summit Series.com
• Canada Versus the Soviet Union (1972–1987)
• The Hockey Almanac