Secret negotiations, endless crisis management: How the '72 Summit Series became reality

Ice War Diplomat: Hockey Meets Cold War Politics at the 1972 Summit Series

Gary J. Smith

Ice War Diplomat arrives at a depressingly timely moment. After 30+ years of the Cold War shrinking in history's rear view, Russia's invasion of Ukraine gives renewed urgency to Gary J. Smith's story. Last year, this book might have been seen as a runway for another hockey summit series. No one now, athlete or ambassador, has any appetite for another Canada-Russia hockey tournament.

If history demands the right person, in the right place, at the right time, Gary J. Smith was it. In 1971, he was a young diplomat, fluent in Russian, newly posted in Moscow. At the same time, he was also a passionate player and student of hockey. When Leonid Brezhnev, Andrei Kosygin and Pierre-Elliot Trudeau started using hockey to build bridges between Russia and Canada, Smith rose to the occasion.

He was not the most senior member of the diplomatic team, but he was the one who worked hardest to bring about the '72 Summit Series. Those in the know would probably agree that without Smith, Canada's greatest sporting moment might never have occurred. His work – the seemingly endless crisis management and secretive negotiating – is what Ice War Diplomat is all about.

As a prelude to the eight games that thrilled two nations, Smith explains how Canadian hockey was introduced to the Soviet Union in the 1930s. Then, he contextualizes Russia as our Foreign Affairs department has traditionally seen it.

The history includes " …purges, pogroms, starvation policies associated with agricultural collectivization, a mass of wealth and privilege at the top and little to nothing at the bottom. Political repression of one kind or another, aided by various secret police