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In-Depth Information
Mainline (BAM), originally begun in 1938 but
continued sporadically since, was given a promi-
nent place in Soviet planning and propaganda,
and construction began in earnest until its com-
pletion in 1991. The BAM departed from the
Trans-Siberian Railroad west of Lake Baikal, cir-
cled its northern shore, and reached the Pacific
Ocean to the northeast of Khabarovsk. Travers-
ing stunning terrain, it is little used and poorly
maintained. In the prerevolutionary era, the
journey from one end of the Trans-Siberian to
the other took nine days and the International
Wagon Lits Company ran a “Trans-Siberian
Express,” with full amenities such as sleeping
cars, library, chapel, and music room for its more
affluent passengers. The journey now takes six
days, and while passenger trains were best
known in post-Soviet times, the Trans-Siberian
Railroad has become an important route for con-
tainer traffic between Europe and the Far East.
Canadian All-Star team in a memorable series
that surprised the heretofore dominant Canadi-
ans, who had expected to win with ease. With
TsKA and the Soviet national team, Tretiak won
numerous honors during his long playing career.
From 1970 to 1984, he was chosen every year as
goaltender to the Soviet League's First All-Star
Team. Starting in 1981, he won the Golden Stick
Award given to the best European player for
three consecutive years. In addition to the three
Olympic gold medals won at Sapporo in 1972,
Innsbruck in 1976, and Sarajevo in 1984, Tretiak
played in 10 world championships with the
Soviet national team, which the team won four
times. Curiously, Tretiak was not in goal during
the one memorable loss suffered by the Soviet
team in this period of international domination:
the gold medal game of the 1980 Lake Placid
Winter Olympics, won by the United States. Tre-
tiak retired after the 1984 Winter Olympics, frus-
trated by the rigidity of the Soviet hockey
establishment, which prohibited him from play-
ing with the Montreal Canadiens of the National
Hockey League (NHL), who had drafted him in
1983. In subsequent years he received offers to
coach with the NHL but was not allowed to
accept them. Nevertheless, in 1989 he became
the first player from outside North America to be
inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame. Two
years later, with the collapse of the Soviet Union,
Tretiak was finally able to coach in the NHL,
when he joined the Chicago Blackhawks. In
2003, he was elected to a seat in the
DUMA
.
Tretiak, Vladislav Aleksandrovich
(1952-
)
athlete
Russia's greatest hockey player and one of the
most outstanding goaltenders in the history of
hockey, Tretiak led Soviet Olympic teams to
three gold medals between 1972 and 1984, dur-
ing a decade that marked the emergence of
Soviet hockey on the world stage. He was born
in the Moscow suburb of Dmitrovo, and at the
age of 10 began playing for the youth organiza-
tion of the prestigious Central Red Army hockey
team (TsKA). Five years later, he was training
with the main squad and, in 1968-69, at the age
of 17, became a team member. The following
year he became the team's starting goaltender,
beginning a distinguished career of 16 seasons,
during which the Central Red Army team won
13 Soviet league championships. In 1972, the
world hockey community witnessed Tretiak's
world-class goaltending prowess at the Winter
Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, where the Soviet
Union won the gold medal in ice hockey. Later
that year, the Soviet national team played a
Trifonov, Yuri Valentinovich
(1925-1981)
writer
A prominent author from the late
BREZHNEV
era,
Trifonov sketched sharp portraits of Soviet life in
the great tradition of Russian realist writing. Tri-
fonov was born in Moscow into the family of an
Old
BOLSHEVIK
. His father, a founding member of
the Cheka (czarist secret police), was a military
specialist who foresaw an inevitable war with
fascism and wrote a manuscript, “The Contours
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