Late 70s I think. Pre-revolution Russia. Maybe the Cossacks? At one point, one of the tough characters gets his foot blown off, and just jams his stump into a boot and keeps on going. There may have been some horse polo type game.
Not Michel Strogoff, was it? I don’t remember those particular scenes, but it’s the only late-70s minseries I know of set in pre-Revolution Russia.
The film was The Horsemen (1971) starring Omar Sharif. My parents took me and my brother to a drive-in screening when it first came out. Maybe 15-20 years ago I recall catching part of it on late-night television somewhere. From what I recall, Sharif’s character plays buz-kashi, the Central Asian equestrian game played on the broad plains with a sheep carcass. An injury festers and he has his foot cut off (that’s the piece I recall indelibly from my childhood, thanks mom & dad). He rehabilitates to come back and play again. What an uncommon sports plot?
My parents had been in the Peace Corps in Afghanistan in the 1960s. That is why they were interested in the film. I found the novel on which it is based, by Joseph Kessel, many years ago in a used book store and probably have it laying around in a box somewhere. Oddly enough, it was translated from the original French to English by Patrick O’Brien pre-Master and Commander.
Thanks! Coulda swore it was a mini-series.