A Quote by Gabe Polsky

One ironic thing is that although (the Soviet Union) was one of the most oppressive systems, with no respect for the individual, it somehow produced the freest hockey on the planet. These guys, when they got on the ice, it was like watching jazz. They could do anything. I find that a paradox. It's interesting because I think the North American style was a lot less free. It was not encouraged to be creative.
What I found interesting about Slava Fetisov was that he went through three different generations of Soviet hockey. In the late 70's, he experienced the Miracle on Ice, and then in the 80's became with his teammates the Russian Five, the most dominant team in the history of hockey, and then helped bring down the hockey system when the Soviet Union collapsed and became one of the first players to play in the NHL, and then ultimately came back to Russia.
Ice hockey is the closest thing to religion permitted by the Soviet Union.
One interesting thing about jazz, or art in general, but jazz especially is such an individual art form in the sense that improvisation is such a big part of it, so it feels like it should be less soldiers in an army and more like free spirits melding. And yet, big band jazz has a real military side to it.
I think jazz was just seeking respect and validity because a lot of people didn't believe it was a viable art form, and then they got a lot of attention in Europe. A lot of bands that can't catch flies in the US have these followings in Europe, [but] it's less and less the case. American audiences are way more sophisticated and adventurous than anyone thinks that they are.
The point is, once they have a missile that can hit the United States, we are now back in the kind of game we used to worry about with the Soviet Union, only the Soviet Union was more mature about this whole thing than I think the North Koreans will be.
This much I would say: Socialism has failed all over the world. In the eighties, I would hear every day that there is no inflation in the Soviet Union, there is no poverty in the Soviet Union, there is no unemployment in the Soviet Union. And now we find that, due to Socialism, there is no Soviet Union!
I grew up watching American films, listening to American music, and it's a big contribution to the rest of the world. I mean, American jazz, for me, is the best thing culturally that America has produced.
The ultimate goal is not simply a superhighway, but an integrated North American Union--complete with a currency, a cross-national bureaucracy, and virtually borderless travel within the Union. Like the European Union, a North American Union would represent another step toward the abolition of national sovereignty altogether.
Why do you think [Russians] hacked into our election? Because they have to make sure that Donald Trump got elected so that he could help them with what I think is a huuuuge deal, not only to lift these sanctions, but to take over, y'know, all of these Soviet countries and pull 'em back into the Soviet Union, so that they could have access it to all of these resources. It's clear to me!
Growing up, I didn't know very much about my heritage and the Soviet Union and things of that nature. But when I saw the Soviet Union play hockey for the first time, to me, it was profound.
Well, it was an interesting phenomenon, because I come from a very union town - I come from Chicago. And have been involved in unions most of my life. I think in a lot of ways unions aren't necessary anymore, because what they were started for, I think a lot of those conditions don't exist. And this union is so odd, because any sort of fight we do in this union is not for us, it's for future generations.
When I looked into the story of Soviet hockey and its players, I realized that it has nothing to do with hockey. It was a larger story using hockey as a window into the story of the rise and fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian people, with friendships and betrayals, paranoia and oppression, and the meaning of sports to people and nations around the world, and how sports was used as a political tool.
I grew up watching North American sport - basketball, hockey - so I like it when it's a little bit more energetic, rowdier, heckling either for you or against you. I think it's fun to have that in sport.
I have six brothers and one sister, and I was an ice hockey player when I was younger. I think my dad thought I was going to be in the women's league for ice hockey. But, I totally fell in love with drama in grade school, and I asked my mom if I could get involved with it.
Soviet mathematics was particularly good in the second half of the 20th century, basically because of the arms race, because the Soviet Union realized... World War II created the conditions for the Soviet Union to become a superpower.
I think it's that thing of growing up all the time watching American movies and listening to American music. It hits you in a way that's a lot purer because you are not in that culture that you're watching.
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