Journalist Yuri Brokhin's mysterious death in 1982 could be a plot from "The Americans"
Soviet émigré was critical of Soviet sports system during the Cold War
In 1978, Soviet émigré and journalist Yuri Brokhin was one of the earliest whistleblowers on his native country’s system of state-sponsored amateurism, authoring a fascinating book about sports inside the Soviet Union titled “The Big Red Machine: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Olympic Champions.” I use it regularly to inform discussion of the Olympic Games during the time of the Cold War. And, let’s be honest, the Olympic Games were way better during the Cold War of the 1970s and 1980s.
Four years later, in December 1982, Brokhin was found by his girlfriend in his New York City apartment. He was dead, killed by a single bullet in the back of his head. Fifteen thousand dollars cash was left untouched. There was no sign of breaking and entering. To this day, his killers have yet to be identified.
The circumstances that surround Brokhin’s death could easily lead one to believe Elizabeth and Phillip Jennings had something to do with it, and that they are merely playing another cat-and-mouse game with Stan Beeman. (If you don’t get this pop culture reference you need to get a Hulu subscription and binge watch The Americans.)
Nearly 40 years have passed since Daniel Burstein of New York magazine authored a deep dive into the circumstances and theories around Brokhin’s death. It is available to read through Google Books.
Burstein’s profile of Brokhin paints a complicated picture of the writer. He was married to an aspiring actress Tatiana, who went by Tanya. While living in New York, Tanya’s dog was mysteriously killed. In April 1981, she drowned in her own bathtub, a death ruled accidental. She was an alcoholic and it is surmised she passed out in the bathtub.
Shortly thereafter, Yuri fell in love with Tina Ragsdale, who would later find his dead body. Yuri was alleged to have been involved in drugs, counterfeiting and other schemes. He had, reportedly, fallen out of favor with the burgeoning Russian Mafia beginning to dominate the Brighton Beach area in Brooklyn.
Why was Yuri so willing to report on the Soviet system, ostensibly sharing state secrets? It is a question not explored by Burstein in his profile, nor was it a focus of a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times in February 1988 accusing the KGB of directing criminals to U.S. careers as U.S. review of Russian émigrés lacked rigor.
But back to sports. One of the many stories Brokhin focuses on in “The Big Red Machine” is the tragic life of Soviet distance runner, Vladimir Kuts, who, at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, won the 10,000-meter run, besting the record at the time by more than 12 seconds. Kuts retired from running when he suffered a heart attack at age 29. When Kuts passed away in 1975 at 48 years of age, Brokhin wrote, it was the result of his fourth heart attack. Kuts’ Wikipedia biography suggests his death was a suicide, although the New York Times also reported it as a heart attack.
The accusations were two-fold. One, shaving 12 seconds off a 10-meter run time in the late 1950s was unheard of. Kuts’ record would last until 1960 when another Soviet runner beat the time by about two seconds. Kuts had to be artificially enhanced in some manner, Brokhin would insinuate. The second accusation was that rarely would we expect an Olympic-caliber distance runner to have a heart attack before 30, and certainly not suffer four heart attacks before age 50. Kuts had to have been doped in some fashion.
On the day the 1976 Olympic Games opened in Montreal, Brokhin published a short essay in The Nation magazine, wondering if Russia could lose. The answer, it turned out, was no it could not. The USSR captured 124 medals at the Games, 30 more than the runner-up United States. Cold War sports was alive and well, and the Soviet bear was dominating.
“Three million coaches with specialized secondary school training and 300,000 college-educated sports specialists invite persons of all ages and professions to come to the 100,000 first-rate Soviet sports complexes where, quite free of cost, they may run, jump, swim and play games - provided, of course, that they don’t ask why Soviet tanks are firing in Angola, what freedom of speech is, or how the KGB operates.”
Brokhin would directly accuse the Soviet Union of doping and steroid use a year later in a 1977 article in the Miami Times. Unfortunately, Yuri’s writing about sports was short-lived and appeared to end with the publication of his book in 1978.
Why would the KGB (one theory) kill a Soviet émigré, who once appeared on the American game show “To Tell the Truth,” and who published a book and several articles about the Soviet sports system in the late 1970s? As Burstein’s profile suggests, Brokhin likely turned his attention to other pursuits and was swept up in the criminal underworld that is the Russian Mafia, KGB, and organized crime.
Perhaps Jack Ryan can help solve this mysterious death in Season 4.