The Trials Of Russia's Ice Czar

By Joel Stein

Patriotism does not flow easily in Russia anymore. And if anyone has a right to shut his heart to Moscow, it is Slava Fetisov. The country's greatest hockey hero throughout the 1980s, Fetisov, 43, won two gold Olympic medals and one silver, seven world championships and the Order of Lenin. Yet Fetisov spent the late '80s being systematically harassed by his government. After being denied, year after year, the right to play in the National Hockey League as he had been promised, Fetisov decided to sue the U.S.S.R. for his freedom.

This was his first act of patriotism: refusing to defect. His reward: he was stripped of his team captaincy and given desk duty. He was threatened with exile to Siberia. He was beaten by government thugs. Using the Soviet court to sue the government, it turned out, wasn't very effective.

Eventually, in 1989, Fetisov was allowed by President Mikhail Gorbachev to emigrate and led the Detroit Red Wings to two Stanley Cups. He now lives in suburban New Jersey, where he works for the New Jersey Devils. Yet he has agreed to coach this year's Russian Olympic team. For free. "It would be the easiest thing for me to turn my back. I have my family here. I have a nice house," he says. "But I can't say no to the people of Russia. People who raised me, who gave me education--how can you deny them? How are you going to be mad at the Russian people?"

So Fetisov, who says he was privately recruited by President Vladimir Putin, took the job, and he now has to struggle with both the past and the present problems of Russian hockey. He must negotiate with the same hockey authorities who tried to derail him--and who still hate him for opening the floodgates out of Russia to the riches of the NHL for many players after him. Those players are now millionaire hockey stars, and although they owe their careers to Fetisov's bravery, he has nothing with which to recruit them for the Russian Olympic team but the dry spigot of Russian patriotism.

Four years ago, when NHL players entered the Olympics for the first time, many Russian players refused to play for the motherland. This year Florida Panthers player Pavel Bure, with the support of other Russian NHL players, lobbied for Fetisov to coach in a closed meeting with Putin. Soon after, Russian hockey execs buckled. So there's nothing they would like to see more than Fetisov coming home without a medal. "I don't want to get into details, but everything I try to do, they try to sabotage," he says. "I was fighting for freedom and democracy, and I beat them in a legal way, and they still won't forget me. It's been a long four months since I took this job."

Fetisov didn't get help from all the players who brought about his appointment either. Three major NHL stars--the Maple Leafs' Alexander Mogilny, the Stars' Sergei Zubov and the Sabres' Alexei Zhitnik--are refuseniks. "Russia doesn't mean anything for them anymore," Fetisov says in disgust. "What about families who live there? What about friends they have over there? What about coaches who worked with them since they were 5?"

Fetisov is determined to make it through this experience in the traditional Russian way--by suffering. It is his third act of patriotism. In addition to not defecting, he chose not to escape when he was caught in Moscow during the coup that took Gorbachev hostage. Instead, he and his wife went into the streets and stood in front of the tanks.

Now he is trying not just to give Russia the pride of an underdog gold medal but also to build the future by fixing the past. In 1992, when the Unified Team, as the national team was then known, won, coach Viktor Tikhonov wanted a gold medal of his own. So he grabbed one from Nikolai Khabibulin, then 19 and third-string goalie, now Russia's star goaltender. Fetisov plans to get that one back for Khabibulin, even if he wins another. Repairing the Soviets' damage is a grueling patriotic struggle, even for a hero.