Zhuk's students won a total of 138 medals, 67 of them gold, at the Olympic Games as well as European and World Championships. One of his most successful pupils was Irina Rodnina, who, alongside various partners, became world champion in pairs events for ten consecutive years - a feat that no other pairs athlete has since managed to repeat. Rodnina also won three Olympic gold medals and became European champion 11 times.

Levandi, who started figure skating at the age of six and competed under her maiden name Kondrashova, trained under Eduar Pliner during her breakthrough years. She made her title-winning debut in 1983, and a year later won bronze at the European Championships. She also finished fifth at the Olympics and took silver at the World Championships, finishing second only to the legendary German skater Katarina Witt.

After a successful season, she then changed coaches on the recommendation of the Figure Skating Federation and joined Zhuk's training team. According to the Russian media at the time, Zhuk had previously refused to coach Levandi for years, saying she had no championship potential. In 1984, however, Zhuk accepted her, though their cooperation did not go as smoothly as had been hoped.

Zhuk mocked Levandi due to her weight

The Russian (Soviet-era) media contains articles reporting how Zhuk was unhappy with the level of dedication shown by Levandi. Levandi herself also admitted that the coach's methods did not always produce results, but did cause her pain. Fellow coaches noticed that Zhuk was constantly harassing Levandi and also mocking her because of her weight.

In her book "My Sergei: A Love Story," which was dedicated her late husband Sergei Grinkov, two-time Olympic pairs champion Ekaterina Gordejeva wrote at length about life in the mid-eighties under Zhuk's care.

"Stanislav Zhuk was the head coach of the army club at the time. He was in his fifties, short, with a big belly and a round face. He had very scary, little, dark eyes. He also had strong but not very pleasant hands. I didn't like the way he showed us the movements with his hands. Sergei didn't like Zhuk as a person. He drank every night and talked very badly to the boys. He treated the boys like soldiers, he liked army rules."

"I shared a room with Anna Kondrashova. Zhuk mocked us when we went to the canteen for dinner. Anna had a problem with her weight, and we ended up skipping dinner because Zhuk kept telling us how much we ate and how much we would end up weighing if we kept eating like that," Gordejeva wrote in her book, which was published in 1996.

"Once I saw Zhuk hitting Anna. I was in the bathroom when Zhuk came into our room and started shouting at Anna. I thought I'd stay where I was, but because they were arguing I went in anyway and saw him hitting Anna on the back. I ran to call Sergei, but when we got back, Zhuk was gone. Anna was crying. But that was nothing new, she cried every day. Zhuk kept tormenting Anna, but I was so young that Anna never told me what was behind it. I realize now that this was probably his way of trying to get her into his bed. He had done it to many girls over the years."

Zhuk was seen as an extremely tough coach, and also a stubborn man with a direct way of speaking. He had been complained about before and been stripped of his position as head coach of the Soviet national team.

In 1986, Levandi and the now successful coach and choreographer Marina Zujeva sent a letter to the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union complaining about Zhuk's training methods and accusing him of inappropriate behavior. The letter had been signed by several skaters, but they had no evidence to support the claims.

Elena Vodorezova, the first Soviet female figure skater to win a medal at the European Championships, wrote a letter in Zhuk's defense. There had also been allegations that Zhuk had sexually harassed Vodorezova, but she refuted them in her letter and defended Zhuk. However, this did not prove to be enough and Zhuk was sent into early retirement from coaching at CSKA, aged 52.

"Such a beautiful area and so ugly inside"

One incident was described at length in the 1994 book "Goodbye Friends! The Sory of Allar" by Paavo Kivis and Allar Levandi, and then also separately by Anna Levandi herself.

"The first year with Zhuk was quite pleasant. The next year he had seen that I was not progressing. But that's not possible with Zhuk! He's the best, that kind of thing doesn't happen to him! Well, he said: it would be better if I stopped. Then I realized that he didn't need me, he needed a medalist. He didn't care who you were as a person," Anna Levandi recalled.

"Who you are as a woman, unfortunately, did. He was sexually sick. So many girls went away from him because his talk was short: you either sleep with me, or you're going to have sex. He told me that too. Well, now you've found someone to tell it to – a girl with my upbringing!"

"When he saw that the talk wasn't having any effect, he started stalking me. It was like the KGB. Started accusing me, saying he saw me here with this and there with that... God, I was so tired from eight hours of training that I barely got home when I fell asleep on the corner of the dining table."

"Some others would have sent him packing straight away. At one point, I was so out of my mind, I thought: I'll just put a collar straight on. Not much else was missing."

Levandi describes how Zhuk wanted to ban the athletes he was training from communicating with each other, but in fact, they got along really well.

"We ended up writing a collective letter to the CSKA management. Our six-page letter caused a shockwave. Zhuk had, of course, always had friends in high places, he was a king under Brezhnev. But now he was stripped of his privileges. And sent into retirement," Levandi wrote.

"Soviet figure skating – it was like the mafia. There were so many souls for sale that there were no decent ones at the top. Such a beautiful area and so ugly inside. /---/ Not schools, but mafia gangs fighting each other. Beat the winning kids through a meat grinder. A good coach is supposed to be like a mother to the children. Now, take it from me: I feel like I have the nervous system of a fifty-year-old... There were decent coaches, of course, but they didn't get anywhere, and they weren't chosen for their kindness or skills."

Levandi later went on to train with Stanislav Leonovich, winning two further bronze medals at the European Championships. According to the Russian media, Levandi's life in the national team did not get any easier after the coaching change, as Leonovich too was perceived as a bully by other athletes. In 1988, Levandi finished eighth at the Calgary Olympics and decided to bring an end to her professional skating career.

Working according to Zhuk's methods

Last fall, speaking on ERR podcast "Spordis ainult tüdrukud" about becoming a coach, Levandi said that 80 percent of what she knows she has picked up from coaches she worked with during her career.

"I remember myself very well as a child, how coaches treated me and I know what I definitely wouldn't want to do. There were all sorts of things going on in the Soviet system. Humiliation is definitely something that should never be allowed to happen to children, especially young children, it gives them such trauma for life," she said in the podcast.

 "I'll give you an example of how I was given skates by the club - there was nowhere to get them, I was successful, I was good, so I was allocated some. But then I ended up with a coach who didn't think I fit in, somehow he didn't want me. The head of the department was called, and there the head of the department, just in front of everybody in the changing room, just ripped the skates off me. That's out of the question now, I'd probably end up in jail, I'd definitely lose my license anyway."

"It's absolutely unthinkable. Not just in sport even, but in my view, just in life," Levandi added. "Sport has to be healthy, it has to be positive. It can be physically and psychologically tough. There's nothing wrong with that if we can overcome those difficulties and move on. But humiliation and insulting people doesn't get you anywhere, it ruins a person.

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