Soviet Hockey League

Soviet Hockey Championship

Republic(s)	Byelorussia Estonia Kazakhstan Latvia Lithuania Russian SFSR Ukraine
Founded	1946
Folded	1992
Relegation to	Soviet Class A2 Soviet Class B
Championship	Soviet Hockey Championship
Associated Title(s)	Soviet Cup
Most successful club	CSKA Moscow (32)

The Soviet Hockey Championship (Russian: Чемпионат СССР по хоккею) was the highest level ice hockey league in the Soviet Union, running from 1946 to 1992. Before the 1940s the game of ice hockey was not cultivated in Russia, instead the more popular form of hockey was bandy, with history of the game in Russia dating several centuries into the past. Following the dissolution of the USSR, the league was temporarily renamed the CIS Championship in 1992. This organization was the direct predecessor of the International Hockey League (Russian: Межнациональная хоккейная Лига), and subsequent Russian Superleague (RSL) and current Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).

The first cities to enter teams in the Soviet League were Arkhangelsk, Kaunas, Leningrad, Moscow, Riga, Sverdlovsk, Tallinn and Uzhhorod. The teams were populated with amateur players who were actually full-time athletes hired as regular workers of a company (aircraft industry, food workers, tractor industry) or organization (KGB, Red Army, Soviet Air Force) that sponsored what would be presented as an after-hours social sports society hockey team for their workers.