The first time I went to Russia, with my two kids and first wife, was in 1991, when St. Petersburg was still called Leningrad, and when historic changes were underway. Statues of Lenin had been toppled, revolution was in the air, the U.S.S.R. and its communist ways were in the process of collapsing, and although [...]

The cameras panned the Palace of Sports at Luzhniki in Moscow, where fans, the majority men and soldiers, stared hard at the ice and at the long-haired Canadian players swooping around. What were these fans thinking about these foreigners? They saw the long hair, they saw Esposito and others they recognized. They would scan the stadium, watching [...]

The first time I was in Russia, it was Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in October of 1991, at the time when communism was being dragged down kicking and screaming, and capitalism was about to take hold. It was where statues of Lenin had been toppled only days before, soldiers and tanks were in the streets both there and [...]