Diplomatic Games by Heather L. Dichter

Author:Heather L. Dichter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2014-07-14T16:00:00+00:00

8

“Our Way of Life against Theirs”

Ice Hockey and the Cold War

John Soares

By March 1968, Canadians were sick of losing international hockey competitions to the Soviet Union. Hockey was their national game; even the Russians recognized Canada as “the homeland of hockey.”1 But the USSR had started a streak of world championships in 1963 that was unmatched since the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) began holding annual tournaments in 1930.2 Olympic hockey doubled as the world tournament in Olympic years, and the Soviet gold medal in the Winter Games at Grenoble the previous month had increased its streak to five straight world titles.3 Not only were the Canadians losing to the Soviets—even Czechoslovakia had started finishing ahead of Canada regularly. To combat the damage this losing was doing to Canada’s image abroad, Ambassador Robert A. D. Ford wrote from Moscow to urge Ottawa to encourage a visit to the USSR by a National Hockey League (NHL) team. Not only was the NHL North America’s top professional league—its players were almost all Canadians. In some stretches during the 1960s, there was only one non-Canadian playing in the entire league.4

Ford knew NHL players were far superior to the Canadian amateurs who were losing international competitions to the Soviets. His memo to the foreign ministry argued that “even one exhibition match by a good Canadian pro hockey team here would do more for Canadian prestige in this country than all the rest of our ‘cultural’ efforts put together.” Among that year’s programs was a trip to Moscow by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet; Ford warned that “bringing ballet to the Bolshoi [Theater] will be . . . at best ineffective, at worst embarrassing.” Subsidizing an NHL team’s trip to Moscow “would be infinitely more worthwhile.” An NHL team’s visit, Ford wrote, “would create more interest than anything since the Battle of Stalingrad.”5

Ford’s comments reveal hockey’s significance to Cold War politics and propaganda. Not only did Canada’s hockey performance affect its prestige in the USSR, Ottawa’s embassy in Prague reported that “hockey is the most potent single factor with the widest and most immediate impact on our relations with Czechoslovakia.”6 In fact, Canadian diplomats worried about the impact of hockey on their country’s image in much of Europe, writing to Ottawa to express their concerns about popular reaction to Canadian teams touring the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Sweden, Finland, and West Germany. Ford’s hope that a “good Canadian pro hockey team” would visit the USSR alluded to another Canadian concern: even though the overwhelming majority of NHL players were Canadian, most NHL teams were located in the United States. Expansion starting in the late 1960s placed an even larger percentage of league clubs there.7 Ottawa’s diplomats feared that Canadian players representing US cities would promote “a North American continental image” among Europeans, rather than recognition of Canadian distinctiveness.8

Scholars such as Walter Hixson, Gregory Mitrovich, Kenneth Osgood, and Scott Lucas have described the aggressive use of propaganda and psychological warfare in US efforts to defeat the Soviets and the Eastern bloc.

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