THE REPLACEMENTS
The Soviet Union’s Secret Hockey Team
Joseph Stalin ruled the Soviet Union for more than three decades, using the threat of violence as a significant tool in keeping enemies at bay. The death toll from his regime is difficult to estimate, however, and Stalin’s government didn’t keep track of its crimes (how convenient). But most agree that the number of lives taken during his reign is north of ten million depending on whether you count the victims of famines. Regardless, it’s safe to say that most Soviets—even those close to Stalin—rightfully feared him. Including a man named Vasily Dzhugashvili. Even though he was Stalin’s own son.
Dzhugashvili was born in 1921, just one year before his father became the singular leader of the Soviet Union. Dzhugashvili’s mother, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, was Stalin’s second wife; the two married in 1919 when Alliluyeva was between seventeen and eighteen years old and Stalin was a forty-one-year-old widower with a twelve-year-old son. The marriage between Dzhugashvili’s parents was relatively short-lived—and not because of the age difference. In 1932, Alliluyeva died under suspicious circumstances. The official cause of death was appendicitis, but this doesn’t explain why her body was found holding a gun. The timing of her death was also odd: She and Stalin had just had a public argument at a dinner party. Dzhugashvili was only eleven at the time of his mother’s death. His younger sister, Svetlana, was only six.
Stalin didn’t step in as the primary caretaker of his two children from Alliluyeva. Instead, he had guards and servants act as their guardians. But despite losing his mother and rarely seeing his father, Vasily found success in the Red Air Force. He rose in rank faster than most others in the force, becoming Commander of the Air Forces of the Moscow Military District before his thirtieth birthday. And by the late 1940s, he was also the president of VVS Moscow, the air force’s sports club. Dzhugashvili was therefore in charge of a very public element of Soviet national pride.
But on January 5, 1950, a tragedy put all of this success at risk. That day, most of the Soviet hockey team (eleven of the thirteen players, plus the team doctor and a masseur) were involved in a plane crash on the way to a match. The plane had tried to land despite extreme weather conditions—a snowstorm with strong wind. All nineteen people on board, including the six-person crew, died.
In most cases, a tragedy like this would have resulted in a national day of mourning and a state funeral. But in this case, the exact opposite happened: Dzhugashvili hid the crash from his father and all of the Soviet Union. It’s believed that Dzhugashvili may have been to blame for the tragedy, especially given future events in his career. In 1952, he would be dismissed from the air force for another tragedy in which he allowed planes to fly despite bad weather. Regardless, Dzhugashvili feared his father’s wrath. So he decided to cover up the accident, pretending it never happened. This plan required a team, however, so the next day, Dzhugashvili made sure he had one in place. As The New York Times reported, he “immediately recruited a new team, and his father apparently never knew the difference.”
Perhaps Stalin just wasn’t much of a hockey fan—or perhaps the replacements were good enough players to complete Dzhugashvili’s ruse. And their record is certainly evidence to that end. In 1951, a national annual hockey tournament called the Soviet Cup debuted in the USSR, and VVS Moscow came in second place. The next year, VVS Moscow won the cup.