Theokritos
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In the 1890s, a British winter game, known under the synonymous names "hockey" and "bandy", made its way across the English Channel to Continental Europe. Over the course of the decade, this stick-and-ball game on ice was picked up in Amsterdam, Stockholm, Prague, Vienna, and … Saint Petersburg.
In March 1898, the newspaper Peterburgsky listok ("Petersburgian Paper") reported:
The "gentlemen-sportsmen" who lined up were members of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers, a club of wealthy individuals with an international outlook. The group was headed by the renowned skaters Alexei Lebedev (a lawyer) and Pyotr Moskvin (a bank employee), and included, among others, Eduard Vollenweider and Paul Lidvall, two foreign-born dressmakers who served as court tailors to the Russian Emperor. 14 players were involved – seven per team.
In the following years, the "fashionable game from England" [2] spread to Moscow and to other places and areas subject to the Russian Empire – including Finland. Local league competitions as well as inter-city matches began to be held. As a consequence, a need for uniform rules and regulations arose. The first game in March 1898 had been contested by seven players per team, but that format was quickly abandoned for eleven players per team.
Hockey team of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers (shirt with the broad horizontal stripe) with another local club, the Yusupov team (vertical stripes).
Credit: A. V. Safronov (via sports.ru)
A more protracted issue was the question what kind of ball should be used and how it was supposed to be handled during the game. Supporters of "high-flying balls" that allowed for spectacular trajectories across the rink were opposed by those who favoured "low-flying balls". One of the latter was Georgi Duperron, a leading member of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers. Based on his belief that "the only game that is interesting is one that is difficult", Duperron stated:
Interestingly, Duperron was aware of the fact that there was another variety of ice hockey practiced over in Canada. He knew that it was played with a disc instead of a ball, and, moreover, he mistakenly believed the Canadian game to be a historic predecessor of field hockey, which in turn had inspired European ice hockey with the ball. For Duperron, the development from a sliding to a flying object of play was a regrettable deterioration, and he bemoaned that "the entire character of the game was lost" with the use of high-flying balls.
Georgi Alexandrovich Duperron
Duperron's comment was printed in March 1903, and it's certainly no coincidence that it is at the same time that we find his colleague Alexei Lebedev reaching out to Canada.
From one world-class skater to the other, Lebedev wrote a letter to Canadian figure skater Louis Rubenstein, whom he had met at a competition in Saint Petersburg back in 1890. The two exchanged information on hockey as practiced in their respective countries, and Rubenstein made their correspondence known to the Canadian press. The original report in the Montreal Witness is not available to me, but the article was reprinted in the Daily Examiner (Peterborough) on May 4th, 1903:
The envisioned tour was never made and we're left wondering how the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers would have fared against Canadian top teams like the Montreal Victorias or the Ottawa Hockey Club.
Emblem of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers.
Credit: A. V. Safronov (via sports.ru)
Just like in 1972, the rule differences between Canada and Russia would have called for a compromise agreement. As the newspaper articles suggests, the Russians were ready to switch back to seven players per team. But even if Lebedev thought "the Canadian game is all right", it's extremely hard to envision the Russian "gentlemen-sportsmen" agreeing to a game with bodychecking – after all, they appreciated hockey, as they knew it, for being "less dangerous" than association football. On the flipside, it's hard to envision the Canadians not bringing a physical component to the game that their Russian guests would have been very uncomfortable with, even in case outright bodychecking was disallowed.
Not used to handling a rubber disc instead of a ball, the Saint Petersburg side would certainly have struggled with the puck and with the Canadian sticks. If rematches would have been played with the Russian ball and sticks, the reverse would have applied to the Canadians, but given that the Russians only had five years of experience with their own game, whereas Montreal and Ottawa had been playing hockey for almost three decades, it's not unlikely that the greater overall experience and quality of the Canadians would still have carried the day.
Perhaps the greatest unknown is what impact the different offside rules would have had. Canadian hockey was still at a stage where no forward passes were allowed – a concept that was very alien to the Russians even in the days of the Tsar. Undoubtedly, in a game without forward passing Lebedev & Co wouldn't have stood a chance against future Hall of Famers such as Russell Bowie and Harvey Pulford, but a game with forward passing – familiar to the guests and completely unknown to the hosts – could initially have been a more open affair.
Alexei Pavlovich Lebedev
Beyond the specifics of the game, there was another major difference between the two sides: competitive sport was incomparably less developed in Imperial Russia than in North America. In Canada, the old-fashioned supporters of the amateur principle were already in the process of losing their battle against commercialisation, and the top level of Canadian hockey was on the verge of becoming openly professional. Meanwhile in Russia, the game was still exclusively pursued by upper-class gentlemen, and it was only in the 1920s that "sham amateurism" began to emerge in Russian sport – a development Soviet theorists condemned just as vigorously as Canadian amateur idealists had done. Their fight, however, proved equally futile. By the 1930s, professionalism was firmly established in Soviet sport, but without being formally recognized and admitted – just like in other European countries, but in sharp contrast to Canada, where the early 20th century talent drain to openly professional leagues in the neighbouring USA had perhaps made any pretence pointless.
Over the decades following Georgi Duperron's comment on which ball to use and how to handle it, the controversy in European hockey continued. The rules of the game in Russia underwent several changes, and the need for international uniformity between Russia and other countries (like Sweden and Norway) was not successfully tackled until the 1950s. By then, Canadian hockey ("hockey with the disc") had long superseded "hockey with the ball" in most places in Europe.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Patrick Conway, to whom I owe the original discovery this story is based on: Very Early Russian Hockey
[1] Petersburgsky listok, March 10, 1898
[2] A contemporary newspaper, quoted after Sergei Glezerov: Modnye uvlecheniya blistatelnogo Peterburga (2022).
[3] Sport, February 23, 1903 (134)
[4] The Daily Examiner, May 4, 1903
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
In March 1898, the newspaper Peterburgsky listok ("Petersburgian Paper") reported:
On March 8, a circle of sport lovers staged the first game of "hockey" in Russia at the Severny Rink. This kind of sport is completely incomprehensible to those who have not seen it. Groups of young people on skates beat (party by party) a small rubber ball with long sticks with a hook at the end. The goal of the game is to drive the ball into the base of the opponents (…) In the future, it is planned to arrange a whole series of public hockey competitions, since this game is much more entertaining than football and polo, and at the same time less dangerous for the health of the gentlemen-sportsmen. [1]
The "gentlemen-sportsmen" who lined up were members of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers, a club of wealthy individuals with an international outlook. The group was headed by the renowned skaters Alexei Lebedev (a lawyer) and Pyotr Moskvin (a bank employee), and included, among others, Eduard Vollenweider and Paul Lidvall, two foreign-born dressmakers who served as court tailors to the Russian Emperor. 14 players were involved – seven per team.
In the following years, the "fashionable game from England" [2] spread to Moscow and to other places and areas subject to the Russian Empire – including Finland. Local league competitions as well as inter-city matches began to be held. As a consequence, a need for uniform rules and regulations arose. The first game in March 1898 had been contested by seven players per team, but that format was quickly abandoned for eleven players per team.
Hockey team of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers (shirt with the broad horizontal stripe) with another local club, the Yusupov team (vertical stripes).
Credit: A. V. Safronov (via sports.ru)
A more protracted issue was the question what kind of ball should be used and how it was supposed to be handled during the game. Supporters of "high-flying balls" that allowed for spectacular trajectories across the rink were opposed by those who favoured "low-flying balls". One of the latter was Georgi Duperron, a leading member of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers. Based on his belief that "the only game that is interesting is one that is difficult", Duperron stated:
Needless to say, the game with high strikes is much more interesting for the public, because it is certainly entertaining when the ball flies high, but for the players a true game (...) should certainly be more interesting; (...) it is not difficult to give a high strike or catch a ball flying through the air; it is much more difficult to pass the ball across the ice so that it is caught by your own player and not by someone else, and it is much more difficult to catch a quickly moving ball than to wait for the opponent to catch the flying ball, then wait for him to lower it onto the ice, as required by the rules, and then fight him off. [3]
Interestingly, Duperron was aware of the fact that there was another variety of ice hockey practiced over in Canada. He knew that it was played with a disc instead of a ball, and, moreover, he mistakenly believed the Canadian game to be a historic predecessor of field hockey, which in turn had inspired European ice hockey with the ball. For Duperron, the development from a sliding to a flying object of play was a regrettable deterioration, and he bemoaned that "the entire character of the game was lost" with the use of high-flying balls.
Georgi Alexandrovich Duperron
Duperron's comment was printed in March 1903, and it's certainly no coincidence that it is at the same time that we find his colleague Alexei Lebedev reaching out to Canada.
From one world-class skater to the other, Lebedev wrote a letter to Canadian figure skater Louis Rubenstein, whom he had met at a competition in Saint Petersburg back in 1890. The two exchanged information on hockey as practiced in their respective countries, and Rubenstein made their correspondence known to the Canadian press. The original report in the Montreal Witness is not available to me, but the article was reprinted in the Daily Examiner (Peterborough) on May 4th, 1903:
There is a possibility of a Russian hockey team visiting Canada within the next year or two, if negotiations now under way are successfully carried through. This will be interesting news to the hockey loving public of the Dominion, and Canadians will doubtless be pleased to welcome a team from the land of the bear. About two months ago Mr. Louis Rubinstein [!] received a letter from Mr. Lebeudff [!] of St. Petersburg, requesting full particulars as to the playing of the game in this country, and regarding rules, rinks and other features surrounding the sport as played by Canadian teams. Mr. Rubinstein in reply, sent the information desired, and at the same time he mailed to Mr. Lebeudff, a picture of the team, ex-champions of the senior hockey league. On Friday, Mr. Rubinstein received an acknowledgment, and enclosed were several interesting souvenirs, one showing a picture of the St. Petersburg players in the heat of the contest, while on an engraved card the names of the officers and players of the clubs were signed.
Mr. Lebeudff thinks that the Canadian game is all right and he intimates that the St. Petersburg seven are anxious to meet our boys at some future date.
Mr. Rubinstein believes that such a meeting could be brought about if the different, senior hockey clubs throughout the Dominion would come together and encourage the idea. [4]
The envisioned tour was never made and we're left wondering how the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers would have fared against Canadian top teams like the Montreal Victorias or the Ottawa Hockey Club.
Emblem of the Saint Petersburg Circle of Sport Lovers.
Credit: A. V. Safronov (via sports.ru)
Just like in 1972, the rule differences between Canada and Russia would have called for a compromise agreement. As the newspaper articles suggests, the Russians were ready to switch back to seven players per team. But even if Lebedev thought "the Canadian game is all right", it's extremely hard to envision the Russian "gentlemen-sportsmen" agreeing to a game with bodychecking – after all, they appreciated hockey, as they knew it, for being "less dangerous" than association football. On the flipside, it's hard to envision the Canadians not bringing a physical component to the game that their Russian guests would have been very uncomfortable with, even in case outright bodychecking was disallowed.
Not used to handling a rubber disc instead of a ball, the Saint Petersburg side would certainly have struggled with the puck and with the Canadian sticks. If rematches would have been played with the Russian ball and sticks, the reverse would have applied to the Canadians, but given that the Russians only had five years of experience with their own game, whereas Montreal and Ottawa had been playing hockey for almost three decades, it's not unlikely that the greater overall experience and quality of the Canadians would still have carried the day.
Perhaps the greatest unknown is what impact the different offside rules would have had. Canadian hockey was still at a stage where no forward passes were allowed – a concept that was very alien to the Russians even in the days of the Tsar. Undoubtedly, in a game without forward passing Lebedev & Co wouldn't have stood a chance against future Hall of Famers such as Russell Bowie and Harvey Pulford, but a game with forward passing – familiar to the guests and completely unknown to the hosts – could initially have been a more open affair.
Alexei Pavlovich Lebedev
Beyond the specifics of the game, there was another major difference between the two sides: competitive sport was incomparably less developed in Imperial Russia than in North America. In Canada, the old-fashioned supporters of the amateur principle were already in the process of losing their battle against commercialisation, and the top level of Canadian hockey was on the verge of becoming openly professional. Meanwhile in Russia, the game was still exclusively pursued by upper-class gentlemen, and it was only in the 1920s that "sham amateurism" began to emerge in Russian sport – a development Soviet theorists condemned just as vigorously as Canadian amateur idealists had done. Their fight, however, proved equally futile. By the 1930s, professionalism was firmly established in Soviet sport, but without being formally recognized and admitted – just like in other European countries, but in sharp contrast to Canada, where the early 20th century talent drain to openly professional leagues in the neighbouring USA had perhaps made any pretence pointless.
Over the decades following Georgi Duperron's comment on which ball to use and how to handle it, the controversy in European hockey continued. The rules of the game in Russia underwent several changes, and the need for international uniformity between Russia and other countries (like Sweden and Norway) was not successfully tackled until the 1950s. By then, Canadian hockey ("hockey with the disc") had long superseded "hockey with the ball" in most places in Europe.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to Patrick Conway, to whom I owe the original discovery this story is based on: Very Early Russian Hockey
[1] Petersburgsky listok, March 10, 1898
[2] A contemporary newspaper, quoted after Sergei Glezerov: Modnye uvlecheniya blistatelnogo Peterburga (2022).
[3] Sport, February 23, 1903 (134)
[4] The Daily Examiner, May 4, 1903
Posted on Behind the Boards (SIHR Blog)
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