First of two parts

KHARKIV, Ukraine

DRUZHBA MEANS friendship in Russian and Ukrainian. “Druzhba-78” was founded in Kharkov, USSR, now Kharkiv, Ukraine, in 1982, by hockey coach Ivan Pravilov, originally to serve children born in 1975 with a combination of sports — mainly hockey and soccer — and an academic program that eventually led to six special Druzhba classes in Kharkiv public school No. 11. To participate, Druzhba club members must maintain good discipline and high grades.

The name Druzhba-78 came from a group born in 1978 that produced many successes, including Dainius Zubrus, who is currently a member of the NHL New Jersey Devils. The program introduced ice hockey to girls in Ukraine, and one young woman who became an outstanding scholar-athlete will enter Harvard College two weeks from now.

During the last two academic years 19 Druzhba-78 students from Kharkiv have had full scholarships at public and private New England high schools. Their travel, health insurance and other expenses are paid by grants from the Eugene Kinasewich Fund, to which I am an unpaid adviser, and by which I came to this story.

Ivan Pravilov is an entrepreneur in the true sense that he joins people with ideas and makes things happen. He built Druzhba-78, which currently serves 200 boys and girls ages 6 to 16. It is his life’s work. He is an intense man who has had periodic dust-ups with authorities in charge of Kharkiv’s only hockey rink, beginning when the authorities he had to deal with were communists.

In May 2005, the current city administration under Mayor Mihail Dobkin appointed Sergei Brizha “principal,” or director, of the rink. Under Mr. Brizha’s regime there have been accusations of corruption, theft and favoritism. There has been violence against Druzhba’s coaches, parents and players; the jailing for three weeks in July and August of parent Alexander Alifanov, without any charges being filed; and the jailing — ongoing in its fifth week as of this writing — of coaches Oleg Chekryshov and Vladimir Eryomin. Two other Druzhba coaches from Russia, whose border is 30 miles from Kharkiv, have been removed by Mr. Brizha and are being deported.

I heard the outline of this story from the Kinasewich Fund before leaving for Ukraine on a trip that already had a busy agenda. But when Victoriya (“Vika”) Mykolenko, a remarkable young woman who will be a senior at Proctor Academy in New Hampshire this year, asked me to come to Kharkiv (she is home for the summer) to investigate, her request was my command.

In the Soviet system, surviving was a crime in that people often broke rules just to survive. If one worked in a food dispensary and took some things to feed one’s family, or to make a few rubles on the black market, this malenkiy (petty) corruption, in contradiction to and under the nose of the velikiy (great) corruption of the whole society, actually served to introduce a sprig of humanity to a state organized to suppress humanity in the people’s name.

With the collapse of the larg-est land empire in the history of the world, this should have stopped, but of course it didn’t. I was perfectly prepared to accept the possibility that Mr. Pravilov might be doing the good I already knew about, and at the same time be doing well by breaking a few rules. He might be completely honest or partly honest, and so might Mr. Brizha. At the end of a 20-hour train ride to Kharkiv I kept an open mind.

The first thing I said to Vika when I got off the train was that, while I would try, there was probably nothing I could do to get Oleg and Vladimir out of prison. My main purpose was to bear witness to druzhba in the lower-case meaning of the word and to assure Druzhba-78 families that they would not be forgotten by their friends in the United States. Still, I remained prepared for the possibility I would learn things that would be less flattering than an alumnus in the National Hockey League and an alumna at Harvard.

I met extensively with three remaining Druzhba-78 coaches, with about 20 of the parents and several dozen children. I reviewed videotapes of the confrontations at the rink and the later public protest outside the city jail, which led to the jailing of the two coaches and the parent. With a translator, I watched the extensive local TV coverage of the controversy. (Under President Viktor Yushchenko, uncensored television is a great advantage that independent Ukraine now has over Soviet Ukraine — and over contemporary Russia.)

Finally, I had truncated interviews with the assistant head prosecutor of the Kharkiv Oblast (region); with the head of investigators in the city of Kharkiv; and with the chief investigator of the case against the coaches. I have read Natan Sharansky’s account of his imprisonment as a Soviet dissident, and of how, while they always denied it, his jailers were spooked whenever they knew Westerners were poking around. Bluffing with a business card, my expectation was not to get ones who had already refused to speak to the families of the jailed to talk openly with me. My purpose was to get them talking with each other. “That guy was in your office, too?!” I told each of them I had spoken to the parents and coaches, asked if they had any comment, and assured them the story was going to be told in the United States.

As I will explain next week, the story I learned to satisfaction fit to print was: 1) Based on carefully reviewed videotapes, Mr. Brizha (who declined to be interviewed) is a violent man who should never have been put in a position of authority over children. 2) The current government of Kharkiv and the judicial system it manipulates for its own dishonest purposes are rotten to the core. 3) Druzhba-78 is a free, private institution, suffused with the voluntarism of parents seeking a better life for their children.

David A. Mittell Jr. is a member of The Journal’s editorial board.