A couple of additional points. It's puzzling to me why North American stars of the 20s and 30s are ranked high by their achievements in comparison to their contemporaries, and Soviet players are not. The situations are almost identical, except the Soviets, on a few occasions, can be evaluated on their play against North Americans, and the stars of 20s and 30s obviously cannot (except Howe... j/k).
Makarov is also woefully underappreciated in Russia. He barely cracks Top 10 Soviet players in the court of public opinion (among the people I spoke to), ranking behind, not just Kharlamov and Tretiak, but also behind Larionov and even perennial underachiever Maltsev! His jersey is not retired by CSKA. I attribute this to several factors, one of them being this. Europeans (Russians included) always valued the beauty and poetry of the game no less than the actual results and especially statistics (they call North American approach "the cult of statistics"). This in part stems from soccer, where a player can sometimes accomplish absolutely nothing, as an individual or as part of a team, and yet be revered for his "art." Kharlamov and Maltsev were viewed as "artists," and Makarov was not (in spite of being a highlight reel): he was viewed as a part of Tikhonov's machine and less artistic than, say Larionov. Which is very unfair.
