Sochi pushes against the Black Sea in the Krasnodar Region, on the very European side of Russia. It's just north of the border from Georgia, a former Soviet republic that has been tragically starred at the Olympics lately. It's also not too far from South Ossetia, which was the site of Russian and Ossetian aggression against Georgia before and during Beijing 2008. Back then, there was even talk that Sochi might be stripped of its Winter Games.

Nobody at the Sochi 2014 pavilion is talking about that now. Instead, construction is well under way in this small Imeretin Valley resort city of 600,000 -- and up in the North Caucasus mountains as well. Sochi's winning bid idea is being brought to life. It's already visible in massive miniature in Vancouver, where pretty Russian girls answer questions about venue planning and construction, in five different languages.

The centerpiece of the 2014 Winter Games will be Olympic Park in Sochi. All events except for the skiing will be in one place -- the 40,000-seat ceremony stadium, the two hockey arenas (Major and Minor), the speed skating oval, curling arena, and the Bolshoi Ice Palace for figure skating. In the middle of this circle, the medals plaza. The International Broadcasting Center and Olympic Village will be there too, also within easy walking distance. It will be the tightest cluster of venues since, well, the magical Winter Games of Lillehammer 1994.

I asked if having everything in one place might make things dull after a week or so. I mean, the central venues of Vancouver 2010 are spread out over a metropolis of 2.5 million people, but it's an exciting new experience every day.

"This will be exciting," said the young woman in the impeccably pressed suitjacket, gracefully passing her palm over the model. "We will transform it each day with culture."

Or if the city gets to be too much, you can always escape to the mountains. The alpine and nordic events, as well as all the sliding, will take place at the Rosa Khutor resort. In stark contrast to faraway Whistler, the "mountain cluster" will be 30 miles (48 km) from the Olympic Park. And Russian Railways will take you there and back on modern supertrains, too!

Sochi's path to 2014 hasn't been an easy one. Environmentalists are concerned with the Games' impact on the region, and last year a report in Der Spiegel detailed homeowner protests and construction projects running out of money because of the global economic downturn. But Russia has been much more resilient than most countries, and has seen a rise in GDP for two straight quarters. After spending 2009 in recession, it appears to be out of it.

Hidden in the history of the Olympic Games is the history of global power shifts. There's no other way to frame Beijing 2008 but a massive display of new Chinese power. Likewise, Sochi 2014 will be an introduction to major corporations that we in the West may not be familiar with yet. Some of them are getting to know us with lavish layouts in Vancouver 2010's Rusky Dom.

The organizers have inked limited national sponsorship and "general partner" deals (worth $100 million or more each) with Russian corporations Sberbank (finance), Bosco Sport (apparel), Aeroflot (airline), Rosneft (oil), as well as Rostelecom and Megafon (telecom). (Hey, IOC! With this kind of income diversity, who needs to sign over control of venues to TOP sponsors?)

As this will be Russia's first-ever Winter Games -- and the first Olympics of any kind since the boycott-scarred Moscow 1980 Summer edition. Either way, the rest of the world still doesn't know this post-Cold War power very well, and we're still getting used to that new flag, so public relations is a big part of the Sochi 2014 pavilion. On a stage, traditional singers in full costume brought a Canadian gentleman into the performance, dressing him up in the snazzy threads of Krasnodar.

Not for me. Instead, I walked up the long spiral walkway into the high dome, a centerpiece of Vancouver's Expo 86 that's now showing its age. There's an Omnimax theatre inside that uses the inside of the globe for an immersive motion picture experience. These days, the Russians are using it to introduce visitors to its cinematic history.

One short movie really got my attention, an animated cartoon about ice hockey.

The plot: a ragtag squad made up of young lads, all wearing blue shirts and rosy pink circles on their cheeks, practiced at a run-down rink. The action was set in motion when they received a phone call. It was a team of red-clad lugs, wanting to set up a challenge game. The blue team was thrilled -- they'd obviously heard of this side, and the opportunity to play against them represented a dream come true. The red team hung up the phone, and all guffawed together, thinking about the easy win they were about to enjoy.

Game day arrived, and the red team jumped out in front early. But there was a shift in momentum -- by sheer grit and pluck, the underdogs staged a comeback against the clearly superior side. Here, the blue team finally tied the score, before going on to an improbable win.

The drawing style of the cartoon was crude and rudimentary, and it was certainly not made recently. But its influences were clear: the zany, physics-defying Warner Brothers shorts from the 1950's. Players skated so fast their uniforms came off, and there was a gag in which the red team snuck into the opposing goal and painted a puck on the ice -- fooling the blue team and the refs as well. The rock-and-roll and jazz soundtrack showed, as well, that the Curtain was not as Iron as all that. And I recognized the story arc immediately. Didn't you? Could this really have come from the Soviet Union?

After the show, I rushed down to the crowded information desk in the lobby. "The hockey cartoon they're showing up there," I asked. "When was it made? Please, I need to know."

The blonde lady at the desk checked with a worker who spoke no English. "1972," came the reply.

I was floored. Not only was this one of the most subversive cartoons I'd ever seen, it was also one of the more prescient. Eight years later, the story came true in Lake Placid, at local expense. What was this film called? Who made it?

"It has no name," offered a gentleman with a heavy accent. "Just cartoon for kids."

Easy to forget that in the age of Communism, things weren't signed or titled, and artists weren't afforded proper credit. Also that the heat of the Cold War was predicated on misunderstandings and misinformation about what was happening on the other side. In the 1970's and 1980's, it was hard enough to believe that the Russians loved their children too, but how different would history be if we'd known that those kids were being entertained with Tex Avery-style cartoons, ice hockey, hep-cat jazz and underdogs?

In 2014, we Olympics-goers will be introduced to a new Russia. We'll live there for 17 wonderful days, 20 hours each, and we'll get to properly know its people. As it turns out, we've have always had a lot in common with them, so friendship will be pretty easy. There were just all those politics in the way before, so it'll be an exercise in making up for a ton of lost time.