Genna Sosonko - Smyslov On The Couch

Smyslov
on the Couch
a b a,
Smyslov on the Couch
Genna Sosonko
Smyslov on the Couch
Author: Genna Sosonko
Translated from the Russian by Reilly Costigan-Humes and
Ilan Rubin.
Typesetting by Andrei Elkov (www.elkov.ru).
© LLC Elk and Ruby Publishing House, 2018 (English version,
expanded versus the Russian version). All rights reserved.
© Genna Sosonko and Andrei Elkov, 2016 (Russian version).
All rights reserved.
Select passages of this book were previously published in
English as an essay "Death, Where Is Thy Sting?" in The World
Champions I Knew by Genna Sosonko, New In Chess, 2013, and,
before that, in New In Chess magazine. Reproduced with kind
permission from New In Chess and retranslated by Elk and Ruby.
The version of David Bronstein's article 'Thrown' Games in
Zurich included in this book was first published in English in
Secret Notes by Bronstein and S. Voronkov, Edition Olms, 2007.
Reproduced with kind permission from Edition Olms and the
translator of that book, Ken Neat.
Smyslov's article A Battle in Amsterdam included in this book
was first published in Russian in the December 2001 (no. 12)
issue of 64 - Chess Review. Reproduced with kind permission
from 64 - Chess Review. We are unaware of any prior English
translation and the translation given here is our own.
Front cover photo: Ararat Hotel, Moscow, 2004, at the opening
of the Armenia versus the Rest of the World match. Genna
Sosonko captained the Rest of the World team and Vasily
Smyslov was an honored guest.
Other photos: the author's personal photos and from the
archives of 64 - Chess Review.
Follow us on Twitter: @ilan_ruby
www.elkandruby.com
ISBN 978-5-9500433-2-1
Contents
PART 1: The Real Vasily Smyslov .......................................... 5

PART 2: Match Fixing in Zurich
and the Soviet Chess School ................................. 73
PART 3: The Final Years ................................................... 135
PART 1:
The Real Vasily Smyslov

' 7
"Today's a special day, Vasily Vasilievich."

"Why's it so special?"
"Fischer's turning sixty."
"You must be kidding! I can still picture him as a little boy.
Time really flies. Fischer's already sixty! People read out to me
statements he's made recently. He's insane, yes, he is. Those
ideas of his are insane... But you know what? Somebody asked
me to sign my book for Bobby a little while ago - he really
liked my effort. I signed it for him, of course. Mrs. Smyslov
had one of her girlfriends over this morning, and she asked
whether or not Fischer really was the most brilliant chess player
of all time. Now, that's what I call a coincidence. I said, "He
really was, of course, but there were some other most brilliant
players besides him. By the way, Fischer's birthday isn't the only
special occasion today. It's Shrove Sunday! We all have to ask
one another for forgiveness. So, please forgive me, Gennady
Borisovich, if I've ever said or done anything wrong."
''And you forgive me, too, Vasily Vasilievich."
***
I first saw Smyslov on the Kirov Islands, a huge park

near Leningrad. It was some chess event as I recall, with a
simultaneous exhibition. A tall, classy gentleman strolling from
table to table and a thick circle of spectators around the players.
That was way back in 1956; it feels like pre-historic times now.
We played our first official game twenty years later at the
interzonal tournament in Biel, Switzerland. Two years after,
we spent nearly all our free time together at the Sao Paulo
tournament. Smyslov was fifty-seven, and I didn't have the
slightest inkling that I'd write about him one day. We simply
had a unique bond, and the many years between us didn't make
8 Smyslov on the Couch
us feel like we were different ages. We got together countless

times - including at his Moscow apartment, at his dacha, and
at my place in Amsterdam, not just at tournaments and chess
Olympiads. We spoke on the phone just a few days before he
checked into the hospital from which he never came home.
Smyslov was far more interesting in casual conversations than
when speaking to the press. In interviews, looming subconscious
thoughts always reigned him in - What will the higher-ups at the
Chess Federation think? Will an off-hand comment bar me from
the next tournament abroad? What will they think about what I
said? So he always kept a tight hold on himself and hid behind
stock phrases. As a result, all of his interviews, even in the post
Soviet days, when he no longer had to hold back, seem flat and
dull.
We developed a unique, lighthearted tone that we could
demonstrate at great length. It may have looked like two
superannuated students keeping a joke running for years, but
our talks would often touch upon rather tragic subjects, which
were surely no laughing matter. I never made light of Smyslov,
though, despite our outwardly light tone, and I definitely don't
now; that would be the worst kind of injustice and ingratitude.
His monologues were so interesting that I found myself
thinking, "this can't be forgotten, this part of chess history
shouldn't be lost." Remembering Horace's words - "trust
tomorrow e'en as little as you may" - I started recording his
stories. At times, I cite seemingly trivial facts, but just as every
minor detail helps a detective get to the bottom of things, some of
my notes capture Smyslov's personality much more effectively
than a simple list of his accolades could.
I think he knew the point of our sessions, and he even
prepared for a few of them and tried to articulate his thoughts
lucidly.' He once said, "You have to write a lot of things down,
PART 1: The Real Vasily Smyslov 9
Genna. You know, it's very beneficial to keep a journal, since

the details disappear from your memory and major events start
to blur. Not to mention there are some memories that people
just don't like to preserve."
When I was unfurling our long string of dialogues, I made
a conscious decision to preserve the inarticulate quality of
verbal exchanges and remove certain flattering words pertaining
to me. I left some of them in, but only in rare cases, so as to
ensure that our conversations don't feel disjointed. I ventured
to actually quote Smyslov - I do not retell his monologues,
but rather reproduce them, word for word. The talks I recorded
have preserved his living, breathing Moscow accent, with its
long a's instead of unstressed o's. He would speak in a slightly
antiquated way, with phrases such as "ereyesterday", "in these
times", "erewhile", "it's the devil's work", "the devil beguiled",
"I should have used dental pliers" (a quote from a Chekhov
work, which when employed by Smyslov boiled down to "I
used one method but should have used another") and "vanitas
vanitatum". He would often repeat the maxim -fait ce que dais,
advienne que pourra (do what should be done and what will be
will be) - either in French or Russian.
One time, I told him about Krylov, the famous Russian
fabulist, who didn't write a single autobiographical sketch
or glance at a biography about him that was written for an
encyclopedia, even when he was asked to proofread it. "Let
them write what they want," was his response.
"That's it! You have to do what you were put on this Earth to
do, and then people will write about you," Smyslov said.
Like most people, he did the bulk of his reading as a child
and adolescent, but it stuck with him forever. He would relish
quoting the Russian classics, and do it often, peppering our
chats with old adages, aphorisms, and distiches from Pushkin,
Griboyedov, Nekrasov, and Maykov, or lines from Gogol and

Ostrovsky etched in his memory.
I asked him once, "When was the last time you read Gogol,
Vasily Vasilievich? Sixty years ago?"
"Sixty? Try seventy and some."
I'd find myself slipping into his style and using his turns of
phrase whenever we met. "Well there, Genna, I guess you were
too busy for a walk yesterday, preparing for your game and all?"
he asked me while I was still upset after a loss. "Fate at last ran
down its quarry."
"Sure did," I heard myself saying. "The stars must not have
been aligned. I should have used dental pliers." This astrological
reference was a favorite expression of his, and he could come out
with it in all sorts of circumstances. When Spassky invited him
to his marriage ceremony at the Moscow registry office back
in 1976 Smyslov declined the offer. "God helps him who helps
himself," he explained. His thinking was that, with Spassky
being "sanctioned" at the time and planning to marry a foreign
citizen, it was wise to decline. "The way the stars are aligned I
have to say no," he continued.
Another time, when I'd just failed to beat Karpov despite
being a piece up, I joined him for a walk the next morning and
asked: "What did I do wrong yesterday, Vasily Vasilievich? What
was it? Just don't say the stars weren't aligned. What should I
do now?" He adjusted his glasses and replied, "let me tell you
what you should do - forget it! As soon as possible! That's what
you have to do! Otherwise, you won't be able to play at all today.
Forget it!"
A fellow grandmaster, who noted that we were always
together, asked: "Is Smyslov absolutely candid with you?"
Who can actually answer that question? Of course, he was
onfy candid with his wife Nadezhda Andreevna, or Nadyusha or
Nadine. However, I wouldn't say this was candidness as such. It

was something different. After all, how can you be candid with
your own hand? She was part of him, and her voice could always
be heard in the background whenever we spoke on the phone; it
reflected something deeper than his thoughts, his unconscious
reflexes perhaps. No matter where Smyslov went, he'd take a
picture ofNadezhda, young and smiling, out of his suitcase and
place it on the bedside table the instant he got to his hotel room.
One time, we were drinking tea at his dacha, and I asked,
"when did we first meet, Vasily Vasilievich?"
"What kind of silly question is that, Genna?" Smyslov gave
me a reproachful look. "You know perfectly well that we've
known each other our whole lives."
He would tell me things you generally don't share with
others, and not simply because we were that close. It just kind
of happened that way. He could let his guard down around
me, which he couldn't do around Soviet people. He didn't
have to torture himself by speaking to me in butchered English
or German. Moreover, my experience of living in the same
country as him for nearly three decades made many things a
foreigner could never understand obvious, and we shared the
same profession, yet our interests never overlapped, and that's
really something!
He never refused to pass things along to my relatives in Saint
Petersburg. "Obviously I'll do it, Genna. But I can't say when
I'll get the chance to send it from Moscow."
Now he's gone. His books, CDs and records with touching
notes written on them, the letters sometimes crawling on top of
each other, are left as a reminder of him. He's gone. The people
he gave my Dutch presents to are long gone, too, but nothing
has disappeared, not really - everything has been preserved,
everything's there in my grateful memory.
It felt like Vasily Vasilievich Smyslov and I had established

an ideal sense of distance in our relationship. Meeting up at
tournaments and Olympiads (and, less frequently, privately) and
speaking on the phone regularly (once the authorities permitted
it), we developed a trusting tone without ever getting excessively
familiar. Would that type of familiarity even have been possible,
though? I can't remember anyone calling him by a short name,
Vasya; he was Vasily Vasilievich for everyone, practically since
he was a teenager.
He possessed an incredible memory, although one time,
when I started needling him and bombarding with questions
about the olden days, he said: "Oh Genna, don't wake my
memories. What's done is done, done to oblivion. I don't
remember a thing! I've been blessed with the ability to forget.
There is an uncanny pattern to things, though; you best of all
remember what you should forget."
He always had some new hobby, and he'd dive into it head
first. In the late forties and early fifties, it was table-tipping and
spiritualism, which, according to him, were a common practice
among top Soviet officials. He knew many of them personally
and he named some of them to me. Later on, after we became
friends, he constantly talked about the afterlife, that light at the
end of a long tunnel, and began nearly all his sentences with
the words: Life After Life 1 says that...Then he took up collecting
wooden idols and little decorative gods. That short-lived
obsession started after his trip to Iceland in 1977, and it ended
with him, thoroughly disillusioned, discarding all his dolls - out
of sight and out of mind.
1
A book by Raymond Moody first published in 1975 discussing
near death experiences
He once said, "I'd argue that the game of chess has a certain
mystical quality. I'm not convinced that it actually came from
India; I think it was brought here from Atlantis! This occurred
about 7,000 years ago. I have made a thorough study of the
subject and can assure you that in those days there were spirits,
centaurs, and then came the first people! They probably came
from outer space."
I witnessed his phases with UFOs, mysterious phenomena,
and aliens, too. At the 1979 Tilburg tournament, when Smyslov
started going on about UFOs yet again, Oleg Romanishin made
some sort of snide comment, which deeply angered him. Seeing
Filipino healers remove tumors without anesthesia made quite
an impression on him, but that phase passed, too.
He believed in prophecies, horoscopes, and all sorts of
superstitions. He and Mikhail Beilin were working on a
manuscript together one summer day, at his dacha. Suddenly, a
bird flew in through the open window on the porch and landed
on a stack of papers. Smyslov got terribly worked up: "That's a
bad sign, Misha. Birds don't land on manuscripts for nothing."
"It doesn't mean anything, Vasily Vasilievich. Some bird
flew inside. So what? It's long gone anyway."
"No, no, Misha. Birds don't go flying into rooms and sitting
on manuscripts just for the sake of it. It's a bad sign." Despite
his best efforts, Beilin simply couldn't get Smyslov to do any
proofreading that day.
In July 1999, a new theme cropped up in his conversations.
"There are some important dates coming up - do you know
what I'm talking about, Genna? Yep, you got it! The dates of
Nostradamus' prophecies! Many of his prophecies did tum out
to be true. For instance... " He would discuss the particulars of
the apocalypse and had one unassailable argument to use against
me, inveterate skeptic that I was. "I heard it on TV the other day
with my own ears!" That obsession petered out, too, as soon as

the days of Nostradamus' prophecies came and went.
***
His interest in religion trumped everything else, as so often

happens, especially when the end of one's path through life
comes into view. He claimed, admittedly, that he had started
believing in God at a young age. It's impossible to verify that
claim, but he was wearing a cross on a gold chain when we first
met, and whenever one of our walks took us past a church, he'd
stop in, light a candle, and cross himself before the icons. He
was no scholar of the Bible, but does that really matter? After
all, you don't need knowledge to have faith, and real faith knows
no doubt. He knew I was indifferent towards religion, and he'd
furrow his brow when I'd ask questions that were painful for
every believer.
"What was God doing before he created the world?" I asked.
"He was constructing hell for people who ask questions like
that!" he would answer in an irritated tone.
One time, my head filled with Shestov's2 ideas, I asked him:
"if the Scriptures can be discredited by citing self-evident truths,
how can you believe in them?"
Smyslov furred his brow and answered, "Look Genna, you're
reading about all sorts of scribes, Pharisees, and Sadducees, but
you'd benefit from going to church a lot more, or at least to the
synagogue."
His exhortations had just as little effect on me as did the
stories of the Virgin Mary appearing in the cave at Massabielle in
2
Lev Shestov was a Russian existentialist philosopher
Lourdes and Jesus turning water into wine. Nevertheless, he was

well-disposed toward me and allowed me to express views that
didn't match his own, provided I refrained from doing so too
frequently and refrained from asking overly piquant questions.
Yet, when I showed some humility and tried not to question
him, he couldn't help but feel that I was playing Agrippa to his
Paul: he was probably thinking, "you almost persuaded me."
I started to avoid discussing religion, realizing that winning
an argument was impossible, while hurting Smyslov's feelings
wasn't all that hard. Moreover, a person who disregards
arguments based on logic and reason, who possesses faith that
comes from his heart, doesn't need any proof. Like all believers,
he considered life on Earth nothing more than a step on the
path to eternal life. I don't know what he imagined heaven
would look like, ifhe "made a run for it" (another of his favorite
expressions!) and managed to get in. He probably pictured it as
a place filled with divine song, Bach, chess, delightful outdoor
strolls, and leisurely conversation with friends.
"I was Spassky's second for his match against Hort in 1977.
We were invited to the Soviet embassy for a reception. This was
all in Reykjavik. I don't remember what we were talking about
at the time, but Spassky jested to the ambassador, 'I'll have
you know that Mr. Smyslov believes in the big guy upstairs.'
The ambassador - and especially his wife - lost it. 'That's all
utter nonsense! Obscurantism! Sacerdotalism!' Then they asked
me, 'is that really true?' 'It's true. It's really true,' I answered,"
Smyslov said.
He was very nervous when he recorded his first album while
in the Netherlands, so he went to church in the morning and
prayed for a while, and when he returned from the studio in
Hilversum after an excellent session, he said, "You won't believe
it, Genna, but Mother Mary winked at me, as if to say, 'go for
it, everything's going to be just fine.' What do you know - my

jitters just went away!"
In August 1998, I had an interesting conversation in Elista
with Maia Chiburdanidze and her spiritual advisor. As I was
leaving, Father Raphael, an imposing, sixtyish dark-haired man
who always wore a cassock, asked me a tough question: "if a
man's best friend betrays him, and the man forgives the betrayer
on his deathbed - does it mean he's been forgiven?"
The very next day I saw Smyslov, in Moscow, and I put
Raphael's question to him. Smyslov didn't need to mull that
one over for long. "They'll figure it out in the afterlife!" He
often delivered that reply, and to everyday questions, not just
religious ones.
I visited Leningrad in 1982. Although I already had a Dutch
passport by then, I was strongly advised against taking that trip.
It was the height of the Cold War, and the consequences of such
a visit were unpredictable in the Soviet days. Opting out of the
city tour that was supposedly mandatory for all the passengers
on the cruise ship that took me to my home town, I decided to
follow my own route. Simply unable to contain myself, I poked
my head into the Chigorin Chess Club a few hours before the
ship's departure from Leningrad.
"The doors are all shabby. When are they going to renovate
the place? Look, now there's a foreigner coming to see your
club, you've got to make the right impression," I blurted out
as I, the aforementioned foreigner, walked into the building I'd
known since my Leningrad childhood. New "details" ofmy visit
surfaced later on. Sosonko had supposedly come to Leningrad in
secret and promised to donate ten thousand dollars to renovate
the club.
"I, heard all about your foray into Leningrad, Genna,"
Smyslov said smiling, when we met up a month later at the
Ttlburg tournament. "You decided to make a run for it? Have you
completely lost your mind?" he chided me in a fatherly tone.
We faced off in round five. We had drawn all of our previous
games, sometimes without trying. Smyslov played passively in
the opening, and my advantage grew with every move. When
Black's position was completely lost, he rose slightly from his
chair, extended his hand, and congratulated me, "Enjoy this
one, Genna, but don't let it go to your head. I can't play against
my friends." He moaned and groaned the whole next day, still
upset with me: "That guy? Yeah, he'd knock off his own father
for five hundred dollars. Him donating ten thousand? I don't
think so!" But then everything went back to normal, with our
daily walks around the village of Oisterwijk near Tilburg, where
the tournament participants were staying, and long talks about
everything.
Smyslov didn't forget about that game, though, and he got
his revenge at Tilburg two years later, playing spirited chess that
made me think ofTal, who once said that Smyslov would "screw
the pieces into the board" whenever he was on a roll.
Meekness, the core of Christ's philosophy, didn't come
naturally to him. His life's work, chess, didn't exactly jibe with
the savior's attitude of forgiveness. Smyslov had a fantastic will
to win over the board, and his focus and the power of his chess
genius contrasted sharply with his softness and eccentricity
typical of the Moscow intelligentsia, and which he radiated
when he wasn't playing a game.
I may have only caught the tail end ofhis career, but Smyslov's
posture, gait, and appearance were a testament to his unfailing
composure, decisiveness, and even mercilessness at the board.
There's no doubt all those qualities were even more pronounced
during his younger years. After all, it's impossible to achieve the
kind of success he did without these traits.
His style was very clear-cut; he was considered a wonderful

master of the endgame. Jan Timman, known as the Best of the
West during the eighties, who grew up on Botvinnik's games,
once said that he thought Smyslov's style, due to his original
strategic vision, lucid play, and virtuosic endgame technique,
was the best.
Indeed, Max Euwe, who had a very poor record against
Smyslov, would say: "This amiable giant of the chess world makes
moves that, frankly, any other grandmaster could make. There's
just one small difference: Smyslov wins, but the other GMs don't.
His playing style is really slippery; he doesn't attack you head-on,
doesn't threaten mate, and yet follows some path that only he
sees. His opponents are caught quite off-guard and fail to see his
secret plans. They think they have a perfectly decent position ...
Then suddenly they realize that something isn't right, but it's too
late! An attack is building up against their king and they can't
beat it off. Yeah, Smyslov is an amazing player, an amiable and
obliging man, but so dangerous to play against!"
Or Boris Spassky, highlighting Smyslov's incredible intuition,
called him "the Hand", explaining this as follows: "His hand
knows on which square each piece belongs, he doesn't need to
calculate anything with his head."
There was his dynamism, too; Smyslov would react to any
change on the board instantly and was remarkably good at
recognizing tactical opportunities. One time, after he defeated
Pachman (Amsterdam, 1994) with a nice tactical blow, I started
joking with him: "Smyslov, an endgame expert? A positional
player, you say? Nah, he's a trappy player."
I could tell Smyslov was enjoying my barrage of irony. He
played along, smiling: "You're spot on! I'm a player who lives by
trap� and tricks! You're right, Genna... cavalry charges, that's
all I've got!"
One time, I told him about a theory that was becoming

popular at the time - you have to devote ten thousand hours
to any pursuit if you want to achieve success at it. "Ten
thousand hours, you say? Don't know about that. I worked at
chess a lot as a kid, though, a whole lot. I never counted how
many hours I played, but I could spend eight hours or more
at the board looking over Alekhine, Capablanca, Tarrasch,
and Nimzowitsch's games. My father had roughly a hundred
chess books in his library, and I perused all of them. By the
way, have you read Tarrasch? Tarrasch fell out of favor in the
Soviet Union, later on, like so many other people did. He
was banned, but his book The Game of Chess is excellent. He
explained everything in a very accessible way. You haven't read
it? I really recommend you do. It's never too late. I realize
this may not sound particularly modest but when I read all
those books I had this feeling that I was already familiar with
everything the authors were saying. I never needed a Caruso
to give me advice about chess." Caruso was Smyslov's favorite
singer, and he would often say that the great Italian came to
him in a dream and offered some key pointers on his singing
technique.
"I played my first tournament in the summer pavilion in
Moscow's Gorky Park, in 1935. I was fourteen at the time,
and my dad was keeping me at home and not letting me play in
tournaments. At first, he'd give me rook odds, and then my uncle
Kirill, a second-category player, challenged me to a match and
gave me Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess. My uncle wrote:
'To the match winner, future world chess champion, Vasily
Smyslov. May 29th, 1928.' I still have that book in my library
after all these years."
***
Like many other Russian people, he revered everything

foreign and marveled at good customer service, especially in
restaurants, craftsmanship, and just the way people treated one
another outside the USSR, but still felt a certain disdain for it
and constantly poked fun. These feelings, contradictory as they
might have seemed at first glance, actually coexisted quite easily.
They had a place in Russia at every stage of history, as people's
attitudes towards everything foreign shifted dramatically one
way or another, and still do today.
One time, he stepped into a large store on Amsterdam's main
commercial street, saw a wide variety of blouses and dresses on
display, and quoted Nikolai Nekrasov's Who Is Happy in Russia ?:
"The cotton is French,
And it's reddened in dog's blood."
Shopping fever was a syndrome that affected nearly every
Soviet person who travelled abroad, which made perfect sense,
given the constant shortages in the USSR; Smyslov, however,
was prone to a slightly different ailment - the need to exchange
an item he'd only just bought. He would examine his purchase,
discuss its merits with his colleagues at length, and then march
back to the shop the very next day to exchange it or get a refund.
I don't know when this sickness first reared its head, but by the
mid-seventies it was already progressing, becoming an incurable
malady. I think the first exchange must have gone so smoothly that
he developed a taste for that sweet feeling, and then he needed
that rush constantly. Just like the alcoholic who claims he can
abandon his debilitating proclivity whenever he wants, Smyslov
didn't consider his love of exchanging a sickness. He would try
to recount purchases that hadn't ended in exchanges or simply
claim that he could go without returning items, no problem.
"Let's go for a walk, Genna," Smyslov suggested, as he

traditionally did before a round at Tilburg, "but I have to stop
by the shop and buy the Mrs. a new cardigan first."
"No, thank you, sir. Go get whatever you need. I'll wait
outside, and then we'll exchange it tomorrow, alright?" I said,
laughing.
Another time we were exchanging a blouse he'd already
exchanged the day before, because he'd decided it was too low
cut.
"Do you really like it, Genna?" Smyslov asked, in the same
tone he'd used the day earlier when deciding whether to buy it.
He added, sighing, "You know, I was playing in this tournament
in Switzerland, and I got Mrs. Smyslov a cardigan. She ripped
me to shreds over it. It just so happened that I was Spassky's
second for his match against Portisch in Geneva two months
later. I went to a big department store; I had eyes like saucers!
And what do you know... I chose the same exact same cardigan
as last time, even though there were hundreds of different
designs!"
"Everyone keeps saying that you can buy anything you
want in Moscow now. But for some reason, Soviet people
get everything in the West. Why is that?" I asked him at the
beginning of Perestroika.
"Do you remember that scene from one of Ostrovsky's plays?
'What kind of wine would you like?' the lackey asked. 'French?
Top-of-the-line?' Slap a foreign wrapper on it, and you've got
us hooked. We'll always think foreign is better. Do you see what
I mean, Genna?"
We were sitting in a Tilburg cafe on October 14th, 1992, after
our morning walk.
"So, you're heading to New Zealand, Genna? For how
long?"
"Yeah, I am. I think I'll go to Australia first and then hop over
to New Zealand. I'll probably be there for about two months, at
least."
"Yeah. You know, I was reading Thor Heyerdahl's book just
the other day; he and his young wife went on their honeymoon
to Tahiti. Picture palm trees, ocean breeze, and exotic fruits -
Heaven on Earth, basically. They met a fellow Norwegian there
who'd been living in Tahiti for a good thirty years. 'You sure are
one lucky guy,' they said to him. 'I could really go for a brisk,
autumn breeze and some cloudberry,' he replied.
"I was playing down in Mar del Plata in 1962. There were
more different kinds of fish and other delicacies than I could
ever eat. My hosts said, 'we'll prepare the most delicious fish for
you this weekend. It'll be quite the treat!' Yes, the cook made
some kind of fish in a little pot. He even made some special sauce
to go with it. 'Try it,' everyone said. 'It's quite the delicacy.' I'm
chewing and chewing, and everyone's sitting around the table
and looking at me. Goodness gracious! Their treat was cod! In
Argentina, it's an exotic dish, but I'd bought it at the market in
Moscow for Nadezhda at a ruble a kilo just the day before. You
see what I mean, Genna? Alright, it's time to get a move on.
The round is starting soon."
At the hotel, I pushed the button for the elevator, and then
Smyslov said, "You know, there's this doctor in Russia -
Medvedtsev - he's always on TV. He recommends not using
the elevator at all because every step you climb adds a second
to your life. So, now I always take the stairs, and I'd advise you
to do the same. Won't you take the stairs with me? You really
should. As Marina, Spassky's wife, always says, 'a tout a l'heure,
a tout a l'heure. "'
I 'only saw him truly angry on rare occasions. I distinctly
remember one instance; it was on May 13th, 198 1, during the
IBM tournament in Amsterdam. We were on a walk, as usual. I

told him about how somebody had attempted to assassinate the
Pope, but he was caught.
"The shooter was caught? That villain needs to be strung up
in Saint Peter's Square without delay as a deterrent. And not just
that - he should be hung by the balls."
Ruined by Western democracy, I gasped and started saying
something about due process. He didn't let me finish my
thought. "I'd hang that scoundrel by the balls and be done with
it. None of your due process for him."
He never used any profanity, even the mildest "bad" words,
although he was more than forgiving of others' swearing. One
time, he was telling me about a Russian folk music concert
conducted by Nikolai Nekrasov that he'd attended. "They
banged out the Kamarinsky quite well. The lyrics are pretty
indecent - I shouldn't even repeat them: 'you son-of-a you
know what, the Kamarinsky guy runs down the street exposing
his what's it'. Well, that's just how the song goes. There's nothing
I can do about it."
Another time we were talking on the phone about a famous
grandmaster. "You know, Genna, Koblencs has known him
since before the war, and once called him a pretty bad word. I
can't tell you which one because Mrs. Smyslov is right next to
me."
"What did he call him, Vasily Vasilievich? Just whisper it."
"No, I can't. I can't even whisper it."
"Just tell me what letter it starts with, and I'll figure it out
myself."
"You're so instant! Alright, the word starts with a 'd'."
"With a 'd'? I can't think of a swear word that starts with a
'd'. Was it 'dummy'"?
"Nah, not 'dummy'. I would have said that aloud."
"I can't think of it for the life of me. I guess I've been out of
Russia for too long. Was it 'dickhead'?"
"Eww! You have such a potty mouth, Genna! No, Koblencs
called him something else."
I never did find out what Koblencs called the famous
grandmaster.
***
Smyslov played in the 1982 interzonal in Las Palmas. He was

already over sixty, but his spectacular performance enabled him
to advance to the candidates matches. He hardly even prepared
for his games; instead, he'd walk down to the sea before
breakfast, take a dip, and then sit on the beach all alone, gazing
off into the distance.
"Do you two know each other?" he asked me on the first
day of the tournament, introducing me to a young man
with remarkably vibrant eyes and a dark red beard. "This is
grandmaster Lev Psakhis. Lev is a vegetarian. By the way, it's
not all that hard to be a vegetarian in Krasnoyarsk, if you know
what I mean, Gennady Borisovich." [In those days meat was
hard to come by in parts of Russia - G. S. ]
During later December stays at the same hotel in Las Palmas,
I would sit by the water, remembering Smyslov, whose age at
that tournament I had myself long overtaken, and reflect on
how quickly life goes by.
His fighting spirit, the attitude he had in the early 1950s,
and, most importantly, his faith that he was destined to win
and face the world champion, returned during the 1982-1984
candidates cycle. However, while in his younger years his faith
in his destiny and his work ethic were fueled by youthful vigor
as well as his phenomenal natural talent, he "only" made it to
the candidates final thirty years later, conceding defeat to the

20-year-old Kasparov, who played a different kind of chess.
The Soviet leadership was more than skeptical about the
veteran's chances of becoming world champion. Smyslov
attended a reception held by Marat Gramov, the Chairman
of the Soviet Sports Committee, before his semi-final against
Zoltan Ribli in 1983.
''At your age, you shouldn't be chasing the world
championship title, Vasily Vasilievich," the bureaucrat chided
him. "You should be thinking about something else." Yet
despite his age, he still had the drive and level-headedness to
fight for the crown. He prepared for the match together with the
young, energetic Viktor Kupreichik like never before and scored
a well-deserved victory. His match against Ribli in London was
held simultaneously with the Kasparov-Korchnoi encounter,
which the public and press followed much more closely. I came
to cover their match, too, but Smyslov and I still had time to see
each other quite frequently.
One time, he treated me to some cookies he'd brought from
Moscow. "Try the sugary shortbread cookies, Genna. They're
some ofNadezhda's finest. You won't be able to find any cookies
like that in all of London. And the Italians with their tiramisu
have nothing on my Nadezhda. Go on, try them."
Sometimes grandmaster Leonid Shamkovich, who'd come
to London as a correspondent for Voice of America, would join
us for walks. "Oh, Leonid," Smyslov said, taking the former
Muscovite by the arm in a paternal manner, although he was
just two years his senior. "You're still a young man, Leonid.
You've got your whole life ahead of you." He loved saying that
to people.
He agreed to a draw in the last game, although he was a piece
up.
"But why?" I asked him.

"Garry asked me the same question, too, Genna. Garry's
still a young man, excitable, but you know that I was merely
following tradition. What's the point of finishing Zoltan off
when all I needed was a draw to win the match?"
He believed that he was fated to defeat Kasparov and face
Karpov for the world championship title; however, he didn't
realize just how formidable a force Garry Kasparov was already.
There was also the matter of their opening repertoires - it was
like Smyslov was trying to fend off a tank with a three-line rifle!
"There was a clear divide among the audience at our match
in Vilnius; the opera performers, led by Noreiko, were rooting
for me, while the pop musicians on tour at the time, including
Alla Pugacheva, were for my opponent. After all, he was forty
years younger than me, so he had the young people behind
him," Smyslov recalled.
He once said: "You have to always be ready for combat
operations when you're contending for the world championship
title. I got this feeling that the whole world rose up against me
after I won in '57. It was me against the world. So, I couldn't
relax and enjoy life; my heart wasn't at ease. That may explain
why I came up short against Botvinnik in our return match, and
not just the fact that I was sick. Maybe my disturbed spirit was
why I got sick to begin with. When I lost, the whole country was
told that the ex-world champion had gotten a big head, that he
hadn't come back down to Earth, and didn't prepare adequately.
You know how it goes in Russia. But actually, I was sick, really
sick, and I had to play a number of games with a fever. I was out
with pneumonia after the match."
Well, what did Botvinnik think? After losing in 1957 he
thought long and hard about whether to play in the return
match. "The question was whether I was capable of regaining
my title," the Patriarch recalled. "I carried out tons of analysis,

put together a preparation program, but spent ages on the final
decision."
One of Botvinnik's closest friends, a high-ranking diplomat
by the name of Boris Fedorovich Podtserob, an ambassador for
special missions, told him categorically: "Mikhail Moiseevich,
you have to play. I've studied you carefully. You can't just 'live'. If
you give up the battle for the world title now, you'll come up with
something else. In that case, you're better off playing chess."
Botvinnik recounted in his memoirs of the match (published
in English as Botvinnik's Complete Games (1957- 1970) and
Selected Writings (Part 3) by Moravian Chess Publishing House,
200 1 and 20 15) that he was put under considerable pressure to
decline to play the return match. He continued that he was told
that he should avoid embarrassing himself and that Smyslov
was a worthy world champion. However, after analyzing the
1957 match Botvinnik believed he could still win, and became
even more convinced of this after Harry Golombek sent him
his own book about the match containing a foreword written
by Smyslov, which, Botvinnik believed, betrayed Smyslov's
overconfidence in his own abilities. The former champion saw
this overconfidence as a fatal weakness.
Smyslov was plagued by his defeat in the 1958 return match
for decades afterwards. He returned to the theme of early spring
1958 at every available opportunity. Dmitry Plisetsky recalled
meeting the Smyslovs by chance on the train in the mid-80s
when travelling from Moscow to his dacha: "Smyslov was
pleased to see me as always, but after the train set off his first
sentence was 'You know, Dima, I was ill back in 1958 during
the return match with Botvinnik, very ill . . . ' and once again sank
deep into the events of those days, which were etched deep in
his memory."
Yet whenever Smyslov talked to me about the return match,

he unconsciously (or maybe consciously) avoided using the
word "lost." "Fate was ill-disposed to me during my return
match against Botvinnik," was his usual line.
Yeah, and he resorted to euphemisms when discussing other
occasions too: "I tested out my new system in the Grunfeld against
Botvinnik at the 1946 Groningen tournament, and although the
outcome was disappointing, I managed to defeat Euwe in 1948
with that opening, and the system now bears my name."
He had a winner's attitude from an early age. Smyslov was
fourteen in 1935, when Alekhine lost to Euwe. One of his
buddies at school asked him, "Do you want to be like Alekhine,
Vasily?" "Do I want to be defeated? No!" the teenager replied.
He believed in himself and fate. "Winning the candidates
tournament twice in a row? That's highly improbable," he once
said about another player.
"But didn't you do it, Vasily Vasilievich? Didn't you?"
"Yes, but that was me!"
There was a meeting once where other grandmasters, ostensibly
his colleagues, criticized him for his frequent trips abroad. He
laconically commented: "I don't recall Capablanca ever asking
anybody for permission to play in foreign tournaments."
Despite his apparent meekness, Smyslov would often act
independently and could take liberties that weren't an option
for many other players. In 1979, before the Soviet Spartakiad
competition, he was summoned together with the other members
of the Moscow team to the city Party headquarters for the
traditional pep-talk. The Second Secretary was holding court and
he didn't beat about the bush: "We've made huge efforts to enable
you to prepare properly for your tournaments. And we really want
you io win the Spartakiad too. What do you say to that?" The
room fell silent, but then Smyslov spoke up with a smile. "You
know what? My wife Nadezhda Andreevna also takes good care

ofme before competitions. But I don't win them all... "
***
Shortly before he passed away, Botvinnik gave me an

interview that lasted several hours. He recalled, "there was no
antisemitism in the 1920s-30s. But then it appeared, instigated
from above. Of course there was some backstory when I played
Smyslov, that it was a Jew against a Russian. No, you couldn't
hear any antisemitic noises in the playing hall - and my hearing
is excellent - but there were some phone calls, especially during
the return match, with antisemitic abuse. Yes, there was that.
But I just called the police from my neighbors' phone and those
calls ceased."
Although Yakov Gerasimovich Rokhlin would talk about
Smyslov's Jewish mother, a student of the conservatory, with
whom Smyslov's father, a graduate of the Saint Petersburg
Technological Institute, had fallen madly in love, he did so in a
tightly knit circle. In public, Smyslov was portrayed as being a
hundred percent Russian, unlike Botvinnik - and indeed unlike
other Jewish chess players, who accounted for an extraordinarily
high share of the total in those days.
Testimony then appeared in 20 14 of Moissei Shenkman,
whose aunt had worked for more than a decade with Smyslov's
mother. Shenkman, a former Muscovite who had moved
to Ratingen in Germany, wrote that according to his aunt
Smyslov's mother not only knew how to speak Y iddish but
could even write it.
One way or another, Smyslov was included in a book
published in Israel in Russian and written by Vadim Teplitsky
called Jews in the History of Chess.
March 20th, 1998. "You know, Vasily Vasilievich, someone

recently sent me an Israeli book about renowned Jewish chess
players. You made the list, too."
He started chuckling. "Well, that's just their way offlattering
me, Genna. I remember some talk about a book . . . But no, I
didn't think . . . " He paused and then continued, "Yeah-a-a-h-h,
they were just flattering me, though."
A few years later, this matter surfaced once again. "Was my
mother Jewish?" A long pause ensued. "Nah, she probably
wasn't. . . Rokhlin and some other guys said something about her
being Jewish, but . . . I don't know. I really don't know. Nah, I
really don't think she was . . . Of course, if you dig deep enough
you can unearth just about anything. It's more likely there was
Jewish blood on my father's side, not my mother's. I was looking
at my father's Saint Petersburg Institute of Technology degree
certificate the other day. It turns out that my grandfather's name
was Iosif, not Osip. My father died in '43; my mother outlived
him by nearly forty years. My older brother lived with her. But
once you start digging, you can trace things all the way back to
Ivan the Terrible.
"I've always been received with the utmost respect, no matter
where I've gone, be it Israel or the Arab world. I don't get too
worked up over those ethnic matters. One time, I got a call from
the compilers of the Jewish Encyclopedia; they were putting
together a list of famous Jews. They asked me the same question
about my mother. I answered it the way I always do: 'Seems like I
have some Jewish blood, but I can't say for sure.' They said, 'ifyou
don't know for sure, then we can't include you on the list.' Unlike
Botvinnik, I have no reason to take pride in my heritage. But you
know, Genna, none of this ever really interested me anyway."
Let's stop dwelling on the 7th world chess champion's ethnic
background. That isn't the point. Neither is Boris Spassky
sometimes calling him by and mispronouncing his patronymic,

"Vasilievich, Vasilievich, what a smart Jewish mind you have!"
when the two of them analyzed positions together. 3 Nor is
Smyslov asking Neishtadt: "Could you buy me two jellyfish,
Yakov? I don't feel comfortable buying them myself," when he
went to Israel. Nor even is the fact that he looked like a biblical
prophet, straight out of a Rembrandt painting, during the last
few years of his life.
Russia, his Russia, was his sole homeland, and he was
profoundly Russian. The Latin expression, "ubi bene ibi patria"
meaning, "where there is bread, there is my country" did not
apply to Smyslov. He once said, "You're so anxious before a trip
abroad, counting the days. It's all you can think of. Then you're
there for a week and you're already dying to come home, to
spend time outdoors and go fishing. As for Spassky's comment
about the two cannons at my dacha pointed at the Kremlin . . .
Genna, you know there are all sorts of wretched things going
on in our country, but as Pushkin once said" - he took off his
glasses and rubbed the lenses on his shirt - "although my lifeless
body doesn't care where it rots, I'd like to repose closer to my
beloved land."
Even in the Soviet days, he avoided uttering Lenin's name,
referring to him as "Daddy," and Leningrad as Petersburg. He
would say things like, "When I was playing in the 196 1 Soviet
Championship in Saint Petersburg. . . "
Boris Gulko was banned from playing in tournaments for a
year because he refused to sign the letter denouncing Korchnoi's
In Russian, calling somebody just by their patronymic is as a rule

a form of endearment. Changing the stress on the patronymic in this
way makes it sound like a surname, and a surname ending in 'ich' in
Russia would often have been Jewish
defection. Smyslov invited the shamed grandmaster to assist

him as his second during a prestigious tournament, which
was quite a bold statement in those days. Gulko recalls: "The
hotel in Leningrad was across from the Alexander Nevsky
Monastery. We touched upon various topics during our daily
walks, but when the conversation turned to the Soviet system,
Smyslov didn't mince words, calling it demonic and nothing
else."
Another time, he carefully examined a book which the
Posev anti-Soviet emigre publishing house had published
and I had given him, and then started talking about Lenin's
Tomb, saying that it was an exact copy of the Seat of Satan in
Pergamum. During the last few years of his life, he called Lenin
the "antichrist", and said that his mummified body should have
been removed from Red Square long ago.
***
In 1977, we both played in Brazil. We'd stroll around Sao

Paulo and often make it down to Livraria - a book store
specializing in Russian-language books, many of which were
anti-Soviet and written by exiles. For this reason, Smyslov was
reluctant to venture inside. "You never know, somebody might
see me," he'd say. He would wait for me on the bench in the
square while I rummaged through the books inside. I gave him a
copy of Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago the night before a
rest day at the tournament. The next morning, he sat in the hotel
lobby, his expression sullen, waiting for the employees from the
Soviet trade representative office to arrive, so they could go to
the store with him to pick up some leather products.
"!)h, Genna, look what you did to me... I was up until five
in the morning, reading. I kept reading and thinking back
to that time. Solzhenitsyn was spot on, spot on. My father

graduated from the Saint Petersburg Institute of Technology
too, before the revolution. Many of his university classmates
were arrested in Moscow and Petersburg. He tried to protect me
from all of that, but I wasn't a little kid anymore. Sure, maybe
I didn't understand everything that was going on, but I figured
something was up."
He closed his eyes and put his hands to his forehead.
"There they are... On their way, those villains." Smyslov
noticed the men with crew cuts, all of them nearly identical,
coming through the revolving doors. "Hello, hello," he said,
rising to meet them. "I'm glad to see you. Where's Nikanor
Ivanovich? He couldn't make it? Oh, what a shame."
We faced off in the final round; our game, which practically
guaranteed him first place in the tournament, was a mere
formality. We quickly signed our scoresheets and set out on a
long stroll around Sao Paulo, only returning to the hotel after
nightfall. We talked about everything imaginable, including
chess, of course. I remember asking him whether it made
any sense to play openings like the Petrov, citing Furman's
argument that you run the risk of not defeating a weak player,
while you can lose to a strong opponent. Smyslov, one of the
only GMs who played the Petrov at the time, which he did
frequently (it's now a fashionable opening at top-level chess),
challenged my claim: "Of course, it's nearly impossible to win
if White's determined to draw, but I opt for different openings
against people who play like that. Well, if your opponent plays
for a win, then the position becomes unbalanced, and Black
has some chances, too."
Later, after Smyslov 's death, Kasparov commented that
Smyslov's approach had been simple: the former champion
had once let slip that he would play forty good moves and if his
opponent managed to do the same then the game would end

in a draw. Yet, as Kasparov pointed out, doing the same was
actually very difficult for his opponents - Smyslov's technique
was ahead of its time.
In Sao Paulo we also discussed religion, and visited a church
a couple of times. I remember Smyslov being quite impressed by
Our Hope, a book by Dmitry Dudko, who was popular among
believers in those days. He was disheartened when the clergyman
recanted, under duress, on national television. "The flesh is
weak, so weak," Smyslov said, sighing. He then expressed his
sympathy for Father Dmitry: "If the Apostle Peter failed his test
and denied Christ three times then what do you expect of mere
mortals?"
We saw each other half a year later, in South America,
once again. We nearly witnessed a real sensation at the 1978
Olympiad in Buenos Aires - the Soviet team was on the verge
of going home without gold medals. Going into the final round,
the Hungarian team led the Soviets; however, they were due to
play the strong Yugoslavian team, while the Soviet grandmasters
were taking on the Dutch. Guess who the captain of the Soviet
team at the Olympiad was? Smyslov. He ambled between the
tables, smiling to himself about something, taking slow steps,
like a ship of the desert.
I was playing against Polugaevsky. He shied away from a draw
in the opening, got a passive position, and then grew visibly
anxious. "Don't you dare, Genna," Smyslov said, cracking a
faint smile when we bumped into each other in the playing area.
"Genna, don't you dare!"
A few moves later, Polugaevsky made a freeing breakthrough
and offered a draw. I approached Smyslov and said: "Lev offered
me a draw. Our captain's nowhere to be found. I honestly don't
know what I should do."
"Go and agree to a draw, Genna. Just take a look at Lev. He's
a nervous wreck," Smyslov said, enjoying a hearty laugh.
In 1979, Lev Alburt requested political asylum in West
Germany. "We'll just say he was abducted," the head of the
Soviet "Thunderbird" delegation instructed the players at a
meeting. "In my day, girls were the ones getting abducted,"
Smyslov commented placidly.
The whole team was transported to the trade union office
upon their return to Moscow, as soon as they stepped off the
airplane. Some government officials, including a few young
men, their ears pricked up, ready to pump the players for
information, awaited the delegation.
Smyslov was given the floor first. A long pause ensued. Finally,
he said, "Lev Alburt and I were from different generations..."
Then he fell silent again. "What else is there to say?" he
appeared to be asking himself. "He was a demonic fellow. One
could expect just about anything from him."
We would meet a few blocks away from the hotel at the 1985
Montpellier Candidates Tournament, since there were an awful
lot of "minders" accompanying the Soviet grandmasters this
time around. On the final day, he whispered to me at breakfast,
"meet at our usual spot in half an hour?"
"I picked up a little present for you, Genna. You're always
spoiling me with books, so here's my turn. A Russian guy who
now lives around here gave it to me at the beginning of the
tournament. I simply can't take it back to Moscow with me."
He pulled a book out of his breast pocket and bestowed it
upon me. The cover read Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Russian
translation by Boris Zaitsev.
''Allow me to point out, Vasily Vasilievich, that Dante was,
of course, a dissident forced to flee his homeland; however, that
was more than six centuries ago, it hardly counts!"
"Yes, you're a real funny man, Gennady Borisovich. I want

you to take a look at what's written at the bottom, right there.
Just take a look."
"YMCA Press. It's the name of the publisher. So? What's
the big deal?"
" For you, it's no big deal. What if the customs officer were to
ask me where I purchased that book? What would I say? That's
what I'm getting at. So, accept my copy of Dante as a present
and don't think about putting up any resistance. It won't hurt
having him on your bookshelf in Amsterdam."
"Thank you, Vasily Vasilievich. I have to admit that I don't
have any Dante at home. I tried to fight my way through one of
his books . .. but I just couldn't do it. I was a much younger man
at the time, though. I recently read that Inferno is brilliant,
while Purgatorio and Paradisio are much less compelling. The
explanation is simple; man is inherently flawed, that's why
Dante's Inferno worked so well. What do you think?"
"Oof, Genna, our bus leaves for the airport in an hour and
from there we return to Moscow, and here you go asking me
questions like that! Let's just say our goodbyes. You head back to
the hotel first. Don't want anyone seeing who I've been secretly
meeting with - you never know. I'll trudge back by myself .
Better safe than sorry, after all."
He came to the 1981 IBM tournament in Amsterdam all
by himself. "Where's Alexander Chemin?" I asked innocently.
''Alexander won the tournament last year, he should be playing
in the main event this year."
" Chemin?" Yeah, his soul must be black, too," Smyslov
answered emphatically. 4 " People get their names for a reason;
4
Chemin sounds similar to the Russian word "chorniy" meaning
"black" '
don't try to tell me otherwise, Genna. I'm telling you! I distinctly

remember our team taking a tour around Jerusalem after the
1964 Olympiad in Tel Aviv. Father Germogen - he was quite
the imposing guy - showed us all around. We're standing there
at the site of the Last Supper, and Father Germogen is telling us
all about how He was betrayed. ' How did Jesus know everything
ahead of time?' asked one of our chess team's minders. 'Did
he get some sort of signal?' Father Germogen drew himself up
to his full height and yelled: ' He knew everything! He was the
Son of God! ' The minder from the security services bore the last
name Pristavka. 5 You see, Genna, people get their names for a
reason."
"What are you getting at, Vasily Vasilievich? What's his last
name got to do with any of this? You've never even seen Chemin
before. He's just a young guy, it isn't his fault that you wanted to
play in Amsterdam instead of him."
"I said, 'no, that's not going to happen. God and the
Power of the Cross is with us, ' as soon as I found out about the
tournament, and then I paid Mr. Pavlov a visit." (Sergey Pavlov
was the chairman of the USSR Sports Committee.)
When I started shaking my head in disapproval, he took me
by the arm and tried calming my nerves: "Genna, you're just a
young man, too. You practically have your whole life ahead of
you."
"Smyslov 's a good man, isn't he?" a certain Soviet
grandmaster asked on one of our daily walks. Then he answered
his own rhetorical question himself: "Of course, he's a good
man. There are two different Smyslovs, you only know the
version that comes out when he's abroad." He started explaining
5 " Pristavka" sounds similar to the verb "pristavat", one of whose

meanings is to be attached to somebody
that there was also a Soviet Smyslov who only looked out for
himself, citing instances when he went to tournaments abroad
instead of somebody who deserved the trip more than him, and
he mentioned Gennady Kuzmin, who had been replaced by
Smyslov at an interzonal.
The grandmaster said that Smyslov had influential patrons,
such as his fishing buddy Pyotr Demichev, who stood at the very
top of the party hierarchy, and many others. What can I say?
That was probably all true. To paraphrase Alexander Herzen,
"Truth is my mother but Smyslov is Smyslov. " 6
Knowing how to please Smyslov, I once read him an excerpt
from Leonid Panteleev's memoirs. The Soviet writer had
received an award from Grigory Romanov, the First Secretary
of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, and then trudged
off to the Transfiguration Monastery, clearly distressed.
Here's the passage, published posthumously during
Perestroika. "I'm ashamed to admit this. I realize that there's
a certain degree of recklessness - much as it dismays me to use
that word - involved in this whole endeavor, in walking along
the razor's edge. Naturally, that isn't the most important thing.
The most important thing is that I need to cleanse myself, atone
for my sins, and thank God - I will express my gratitude openly
- for the fact that I don't do anything deliberately evil, despite
the hypocrisy of my existence, and for protecting me from all
that is wicked and pointing me towards all that is good."
"That's spot on, Genna. I try to do the same... You know,
I've been offered membership of the Party a few times, but I'd
always make up some seemingly legitimate excuse and tum
6 , Herzen had replied, "Truth is my mother but Bakunin is Bakunin"

when refusing a request to print material criticizing Bakunin
them down. I wouldn't flatly refuse, I'd just put off making a ,
decision and then head to some tournament abroad. Eventually,
they stopped hounding me. Evidently, the Lord shielded me
from all that was wicked, even though I've sinned a great deal
in my time."
***
In 1970, he and Vladimir Tukmakov played together in a

tournament in Argentina. The latter wrote in his memoirs:
"His calm, even deferential acceptance of how the world was,
coupled with remarkable inner harmony fueled his stunning
professional longevity. Smyslov was having a rough time of it
in Buenos Aires; however, his obvious dissatisfaction with his
performance didn't spill over into irritation or forced attempts
to reverse his fate at the tournament. Smyslov remained just as
tranquil and cordial as ever."
Smyslov was an early riser. Late nights were a rarity for him.
At his dacha, he'd listen to the BBC's morning program in its
entirety (in Russian, naturally), take a leisurely walk and admire
nature awakening from its slumber, and then listen to a recording
of the same program. He once said: "It was with great pleasure
that I heard you speaking in London, Gennady Borisovich,
especially when you were being asked about the prize money at
stake in the Karpov-Kasparov match. Yeah... Botvinnik and I
were used to different purses in our day."
He played in the 1 987 interzonal in Subotica, Yugoslavia.
We'd go for an early morning dip in the nearby lake when
everyone else was still asleep. Smyslov would get there before
me, and his appearance indicated he had already gone for
a swim - his red, sunburned freckly body was plastered with
green reeds, which made him look like a water spirit.
"Don't you worry, Genna. The water's fabulous. All the water
plants stuck to me are a testament to the pristine environment,"
Smyslov assured me. He caught my distrusting gaze and asked,
his expression innocent: "What are you doing after breakfast,
Genna?"
I didn't have a whole lot to do - Lev Alburt, whom I was
assisting as his second at the tournament, had an opening
repertoire consisting of the Alekhine Defense and Benko
Gambit, both of which we'd been over many times. Smyslov
didn't prepare for his games one bit. After breakfast, we went for
a walk in the park and talked, our conversation touching upon
nearly everything, but the Soviet Union was our primary focus.
By the summer of 1987, the country only faintly resembled the
one in which Smyslov had spent his whole life. Towards the
end of our stroll, he suggested poking our heads into the local
department store for just a minute.
"What do you need to go to the department store for,
Vasily Vasilievich? You were in Paris just a week ago, and
you'll be going to Switzerland in a month. What's the point
in going to a department store in Subotica? It's no different
to the ones in Moscow," I said, feigning resistance. "That's
where you're wrong, Genna," Vladimir Bagirov, who'd
occasionally join us for our habitual strolls, interjected
convincingly. He was Tal's second, and he had to wait until
noon to wake his player. And Bagirov was right. In these days
of Perestroika, the supermarket in Subotica offered far more
than those in Moscow.
October 1992. "Genna, I just got back from Belgrade. My
singing really took off there, and Botvinnik said, 'Smyslov is a
better singer now!' You know, I think the Patriarch is right. I
have been devoting a lot of time to my singing lately, and I truly
have improved my technique."
"... I just heard on the radio that our Gorbachev's been invited
to Willy Brandt's funeral. Don't they realize that Gorbachev
cannot leave the country now? Surely you realize that, Genna?"
October 1993. The Smyslovs were in Moscow, in their
apartment on Kudrinskaya Square (the former Uprising
Square), near the parliament building, which was under siege.
"I can hear shots, barrage after barrage, and my wife's sticking
her head out the window. Can you imagine that, Genna? I say to
her, 'you never know, Nadya. You might get hit by a stray bullet,
and you'll be done for. Close the window, fast.' But no, she just
has to watch it all, take it all in. That kind of curiosity is a sin, I
tell you."
August 1994. Smyslov flew to Amsterdam to play in the
Donner Memorial. I met him at the airport. He had no luggage,
just a small bag.
"What could I possibly need? Everything's in God's hands."
Then in the car, he said, "Genna, I heard an old adage the other
day: 'His spirit flutters up to the heavens but his legs shuffle
along in hell.' I thought to myself, 'isn't that old adage about
me?' I went to confession for the first time in my life two days
ago. The priest asked me, 'have you sinned?'
"I answered, 'naturally, Father. Of course, I've sinned.'
'What do you see being your most serious sin? "'
Smyslov said something that I won't repeat here.
"You came right out and said that?" I interrupted his story.
"Yep, that's exactly what I said. We're dealing with a
priest here, after all. I'm supposed to tell him my sins, and
he's supposed to absolve them. I'm confiding in you, Genna,
because I'm well inclined towards you... "
"Have you ever heard the story about a certain sinner's
confession, Vasily Vasilievich? The priest asks him, 'have you
killed anyone?'
' I have,' answered the sinner.

'Have you committed adultery?'
' I have.'
' Have you plundered?'
' I have.'
'Have you stolen?'
' I have.'
The final question was: 'Are you a heretic?'
' Heaven forbid! "' We enjoyed a good laugh.
I'd go to the tournament every day; we had dinner together
quite often, and one time we even walked from the tournament
hall to my home.
" I was recently at my dacha, and I saw a little girl raking up
some leaves. I started shelling out praise, and she was like, ' I'm
a big girl already. I'm five years old!' She's working that rake so
well. Nadezhda says to me, 'you can't even put leaves in a pile,
let alone light a fire.' It's really nice at our dacha - tres jolie, as
Alberic O'Kelly liked to say. Tres, tres jolie . . . Yeah, Alberic . . . In
Moscow, I feel like a badger. You know, Genna, badgers make
their setts, and they always make another tunnel, a deeper,
inner sett, just in case some unwanted visitor shows up. Same
goes for me. It would be so nice for Gennady Borisovich just to
come visit me at my dacha and for us to see him in Amsterdam,
without all this visa hassle."
Suddenly, his eyes shifted away. " I keep thinking about how
I was up a pawn against Ree today. I must have missed a win
somewhere. What if I had put the bishop on b2, along the long
diagonal? Do you remember the position?"
He stopped as we were approaching my apartment, adjusted
his, glasses in his characteristic way, and then looked ahead
intently. " Let me give you one special recipe, Genna - but you
should only resort to it if you're gravely ill, and the doctors are
telling you nothing can be done. The recipe is Indian - many

generations old - and it really works."
"Would you tell me what it is already, Vasily Vasilievich?"
His keen gaze fixed on me, he uttered in a solemn tone: "You
have to drink urine."
"Huh? Urine?"
"Yep, that's right! You drink your own urine for fourteen days
in a row - it won't yield the desired effect otherwise. Two weeks
straight or your body won't adapt, and it'll all be for naught. I
read an article about it in this one magazine, and it said..."
His faith in the written word was absolute. Faith coupled
with constant control over what could and what could not be
put down on paper.
"Your piece on Mikhail Tal was good, Genna. It was accurate
but awfully frank, very Western. Yes, even if all those things did
happen... Oh, I don't know... it's simply too European."
When I asked Smyslov about Tartakower, whom he knew
personally, he hesitated and then started saying something about
the chess writer's wit. Eventually, he plucked up the courage to
talk straight. "I don't even know whether I should be telling you
this. This may not be something you should print, Genna, but
you know... Tartakower would frequent casinos, especially if he
won some prize money. He would always blow it at the casino.
Maybe it's not such a good idea to write that, Genna. What kind
of example is that for our youth? Well, actually, the youth of
today are just like... you remember what Saltykov-Shchedrin
once wrote? "They're willing to pledge their allegiance to a
worm while feigning innocence."
He finally relaxed back at my place, had a glass ofwhite wine,
kept asking me how many calories were in each dish - calorie
counting was trendy at the time - and then sighed heavily
at the end of the lunch. "I probably put away a good fifteen
hundred calories, Genna, if not more, even though just some

salad and fruit would have filled me right up. Nadezhda makes
a mean vegetable soup - it's simply divine." (The Smyslovs'
spacious apartment used to host the most varied set of public.
Not only chess players but also musicians, singers, actors, even
party functionaries. I visited them on multiple occasions after
Perestroika, and I do testify that Nadezhda Andreevna was a
fantastic cook.)
"Make sure to write down the recipe, for future reference.
Do you have a pen and paper? First off, you need cauliflower.
Second off, you'll need... And some sour cream - don't forget
the sour cream, Genna, it's not the same without it..."
We stepped out into my garden. "Do you know that plants
can sense your attitude towards them? It isn't just animals.
Plants can even curl up if someone with impure intentions -
if they're looking to tear a leaf off its branch or mangle them
somehow - comes towards them. Don't you doubt me for a
second. I saw it on TV the other day. An expert said... Genna,
your tulips are doing quite well at our dacha. The purple ones,
and the red ones - but I like the white ones best of all.
"I can't stop thinking about today's game against Ree.
Wasn't there a win somewhere? There must have been. Do you
have a chess set at home?"
He sat there analyzing the position, flexing his fingers. "Have
you calculated everything, Genna?" he asked. ''Aren't you afraid
you'll come under attack? You're up a pawn, of course, but you
can always get mated."
"You're playing Bronstein tomorrow, right? Do you
remember your first game against him?" I asked.
'½gainst Bronstein? I remember Yudovich sending me two
• Ukrainian players' games back in 1940. They'd achieved their
master norms, and I was supposed to determine whether they
were worthy of the title. I was only nineteen at the time, but I
had been appointed to the qualification board. Everybody was
obligated to do volunteer work in those days. I took a look at the
games and made my assessment - both of them were worthy
of the title! That was exactly fifty-five years ago. The players'
names were Boleslavsky and Bronstein. How do you like that?"
September 11th, 1994. The Tilburg Interpolis Tournament.
During one of the rounds he strolled between the tables and then
led me off to the side: "My memory's starting to fail me, Genna
- it's absolutely terrible. You see, Gik, the guy who writes books
with Karpov, is sitting right next to me playing his game. I didn't
recognize him. I mean, Gik has interviewed me multiple times,
and been to my house - not too long ago, either. But I didn't
even recognize him today. Nobody can change that drastically.
There must be something up with me."
"That guy isn't Gik, Vasily Vasilievich. It's Glek, a
grandmaster from Moscow."
"Come again? Glek, you say? Never heard of him. Woo,
what a relief. I was thinking, 'I've seen him a bunch of times,
but I didn't recognize him. Smyslov, you're getting old.' Did
you see how I won my game against Seirawan yesterday after
my king escaped on f7? I was so elated I couldn't help but call
Nadezhda right away. Do you think I should include that one in
my best games collection? What do you say? Oaf, I'm getting a
big head here."
In Tilburg, I spoke with Botvinnik at length, and then
transcribed my recording the next day. I asked Smyslov:
"What else should I ask Botvinnik? What do you think, Vasily
Vasilievich? I spoke with him for four hours straight yesterday."
"What should you ask him? I recently talked with him
about the thought process. You know what I realized? That
Botvinnik's thinking is wholly grounded in materialism; I would
even say it's machine-like. There's nothing spiritual about it -

absolute rationalism. Our dachas are about twenty kilometers
apart. We may not get together all that often, but we do speak
on the phone sometimes, too. You know, there are certain issues
that I don't argue with him about.
"You're well aware that if Botvinnik has formed an opinion
on something, he won't change it for the rest of his life. All of
that is vanity and vexation of the spirit, but Botvinnik doesn't
feel 'vexation of the spirit.' I mean, Botvinnik still subscribes
to Pravda and keeps saying Russia is a 'democrappy' now, not a
democracy."
May 5th, 1 995. I called Smyslov at his dacha when I heard
the news of Botvinnik's death. "Yeah, Genna, that's just how it
goes sometimes. It seemed like he was eternal, that Botvinnik
would outlive all of us, God rest his soul. He didn't believe in
any gods, though; he thought that machines would reign over
everything. The last edition of his book was called Achieving the
Aim. I keep thinking to myself, 'just what aim was he trying to
achieve?'
"Now I'm a marked man. Do you remember quoting
Tyutchev the other day? 'Our days are numbered, our losses
innumerous.' I'm also in the queue to meet the Lord."
December 14th, 1995. He had just got back from Saint
Petersburg. I could tell from his voice he was in a chipper mood.
"You know, Genna, I sang twice in Saint Petersburg - once at the
Hotel Astoria conference hall and another time at the Musical
Instruments Museum. It's Count Zubrov's former estate, given
to him by Catherine the Great for his special services. You know
what services I'm talking about, Genna... Pushkin himself used
to frequent the Zubrov estate, so I decided to rent a tailcoat
from the Mariinsky Theater for the event."
***
February 22nd-March 3rd, 1996. Cannes. We were playing

in the same tournament - seniors versus French juniors. "Do
I use a computer? You've got to be kidding, Genna. I can't see
a dam thing. What would I do with a computer? I had one in
Moscow., but then I gave it to my goddaughter. At least her little
boy will have some fun with it."
He would often stand on stage, his back facing the hall, and
study his position on the demonstration board. His English had
deserted him, so he'd even analyze positions with the French
boys in Russian. They were too shy to say they didn't understand
what he was saying, they just listened reverently to the world
champion.
On the last day, the Smyslovs and I strolled down the sun
drenched Promenade de la Croisette and then stopped by a
church. They lit some candles, crossed themselves, and prayed
for a safe return trip to Moscow. After that, they ordered
bouillabaisse at a seafood restaurant, drank some rose, and
allowed themselves a moment to unwind. They told me it
was their first hot meal in Cannes; before that, they'd bought
some things at the store - just some cookies and such. They
relied on the heating wand they brought from Moscow to do
their cooking. This was to avoid spending a valuable resource -
foreign currency - on trifles such as food.
September 11th, 1996. He came back to Moscow from
France, where he'd lost his match against the 13-year-old
Etienne Bacrot 1:5. He was incredibly upset. "It's all gone!
Absolutely everything - my Ela points and my honor! Absolutely
everything! But you should have seen how the boy played against
me, how well-prepared he was! He plays the Dragon, and I
choose the variation I used against Botvinnik in our match. It's
about as obscure as it gets! That was before not just the boy but
even his father came into this world! He knew the whole line and
came out with a novelty. After the match, Dorfman said, 'the
boy has tons of notebooks filled with variations.' I'm drained,
Genna, completely drained."
"You just have to forget about it, Vasily Vasilievich. Just
forget about it, like you taught me in Tilburg."
"Yes, you're right. Just forget about it. Forget all about it! But
how can I forget such a blowout. There's no other way to put it
- a complete and total blowout!"
November 1996. "Wish me luck today, Genna. It's my
first big performance! Well, I haven't made it to the Bolshoi
Theater yet, but I '11 be singing in the Grand Hall of the
Moscow Conservatory this evening. Yes, my full repertoire,
and then the chorus and I will do 'There Once Lived
Twelve Bandits.' Do you remember the album I recorded in
Hilversum?"
February 1997. I'm in Moscow, at the Central Chess Club on
Gogol Boulevard. Smyslov's very excited since his first album
just came out, and he's giving me a copy. He's talking about
music, karma, his calling, and his plans for the future. "You
know, Genna, Stradivari's most productive years were from
the age of seventy-two to ninety-three. So, I have a lot to look
forward to!"
November 1997. The Hoogeveen tournament. He had a poor
showing. The very next day after the closing ceremony he and
Nadezhda had to catch a flight out of Amsterdam's Schiphol
Airport.
We're riding in the car to the airport. "My eyes failed me,
Genna. I couldn't see a thing, nothing at all. I even considered
bowing out of the tournament but there were only four
patticipants to begin with. You're not allowed to ask the arbiters
how many moves you've made. I couldn't even write them ddwn
properly; I'd hold my scoresheet up, right in front of my eyes,
but I couldn't make anything out anyway. It was just a bunch of
squiggles.
"Genna, did you notice that I hit an upper A at the closing
ceremony?" he continued, sharply changing the subject. "That
means I'm already becoming a tenor. I had to foot most of
the bill for the album - the sponsors chipped in five thousand
dollars, and I covered the remaining eight."
At the airport. One suitcase for the both of them - the
missing handle has been replaced with a clothesline twisted
in half. It looks like it was purchased back in 1953 during the
Zurich Candidates Tournament. '½t least I won't get it mixed
up with any other suitcase," Smyslov said.
We had already said our goodbyes, but then suddenly he
stepped off to the side, visibly distressed by something. "I
thought of the game I lost to Van Wely yesterday. At first, I had
a clear advantage. Then the position was equal. And then...
no, it's terrible, just terrible. Like an apparition haunting me.
An evil force led my hand astray." Shaking his head, he went
towards passport control.
Well, another time we were walking out of the Central Chess
Club in Moscow together, long after the Soviet Union had
collapsed and the Iron Curtain was lifted. He looked around
to ensure nobody was nearby, and said: "I'd like to ask for
some advice, Genna. I received an invitation... " He names
an exotic, faraway South American country, with a time zone
and temperature vastly different from that of Moscow. The
organizers' offer is modest, and that's putting it mildly.
"What do you think, Genna?"
"That's a very odd invitation, Vasily Vasilievich. You probably
should tum it down."
"What do you mean 'turn it down'? It's an invitation - to

play in a tournament - abroad! Do you think I should ask for
more money?"
For little Vasya Smyslov, who came to play at Moscow
tournaments in the 1930s with his father, Lasker and Capablanca
weren't simply great chess players; they were foreigners. They
might as well have been aliens! After the war, he started travelling
abroad to tournaments regularly. Only the older generation of
Soviet people can truly appreciate what those trips meant. They
entailed filling out tons of forms, undergoing multiple security
checks and interviews, obtaining letters of recommendation,
and attending pep-talks at the district, city, and sometimes
even central communist party committee. At times, people
from Stalin's inner circle, or even Stalin himself, would sign the
papers allowing players to travel abroad.
Although things loosened up a bit in the later Soviet period,
having a "clean" biography, going through all the different
layers of bureaucracy, worrying about everything right up until
you boarded the flight, and feeling tense during the trip itself,
were all still part of the process. Besides the prestige involved,
these trips provided material comforts, hard currency, and
currency certificates that made the holder extremely rich by
Soviet standards. Getting to play in a tournament abroad was
a special occasion for any Soviet grandmaster, and it meant
something quite different to what it did for their West European
counterparts; that's why Smyslov treated each trip abroad with
some anxiety, nearly up until the day he died.
***
'
Singing was his passion. In his younger years, he even
considered making a career out of it. In 195 1, he auditioned at
the Bolshoi Theater, advanced to the second round, but didrf t

make the next cut. He thought about joining the Mariinsky (then
called the Kirov) Theater. Boris Khaikin, the creative director
and conductor at the theater, listened to Smyslov, noticed his
voice and technique and extended an invitation to join the
troupe. There was only one condition - the poster for their
production of "The Queen of Spades" would read "featuring
Grandmaster Vasily Smyslov as Prince Eletsky." Suffice it to say
that Smyslov never joined the troupe.
Knowing how to please him, I gave him a book about his
favorite performer, Caruso; his wife would read it to him. I once
saw a postcard sent by me to him from Sorrento, where Caruso
died, on the kitchen table at his dacha.
We saw Eric Lobron at a restaurant in Tilburg one morning,
and he joined us for breakfast. When introducing them, I
mentioned that the German grandmaster enjoyed singing, too.
Smyslov lit up.
"How do you do it?"
"I generally sing during my morning shower."
"Nah, I'm asking you where your diaphragm is. Genna,
translate for me. Tell him it's all about your breathing, your
breathing is everything. That's why the placement of your
diaphragm is so important. For instance, I used to hold my
diaphragm wrongly. You have to use all of it, not just part of it.
Caruso told me that. Tell that good-looking young man he can
be sure of that."
Smyslov stood up and belted out a few notes to confirm his
claim, right there in the restaurant.
He liked discussing contemporary performers. "I watched
Dmitry Hvorostovsky's concert on TV the other day. Here's
my take - he has a great voice and all, but he lacks emotion.
He did warm up by the end, especially when he was singing the
Neapolitan songs, but his Russian folk pieces were pretty flat.
They were technically smooth but some of the notes weren't
that clear. You know how Chaliapin did it? All of his notes were
distinct. It was just marvelous! My teacher Konstantin Zlobin,
may God rest his soul, would always say that you need crisp
sounds, especially the vowels. Nonetheless, Hvorostovsky's an
excellent singer.
"I would make the trip up to Saint Petersburg - remember
that city? - all the way from Moscow to see Zlobin. He lived
in a communal apartment along the Fontanka River. Oh,
the trill coming from his room for hours on end would make
his neighbors furious! Well, they learned to put up with it.
I remember a certificate hanging on his wall - the whole
synagogue community had noticed that Cantor Zlatkin's
voice, which had once been terribly grating, had become rather
melodic after some lessons from Konstantin Zlobin. 'We would
like to express our appreciation to the professor for that.' He
had many students, but none of them were from conservatories.
Conservatory folk didn't go to Zlobin, because his teaching
system was completely different. I would visit him in Saint
Petersburg quite a few times every year; he helped me develop
my voice, although I was already twenty-seven when I first came
to him in 1948.
"How'd I find him? One time, I was visiting my friend
Alexander Senkov, an associate member of the Soviet Academy
of Sciences, who thoroughly enjoyed singing. He performed
some Russian romances, and then Alatortsev [Vladimir
Alatortsev, a chess master and one-time chairman of the Soviet
Chess Federation - G. S. ] stood up and said, 'You know, Mr.
Smyslov likes singing Russian romances, too.'
"'What's your voice type?' Nezhdanov, the actor, asked. I
said, 'bass.' I sang some Russian romances, then Nezhdanov
said, 'you're a tenor, not a bass!' We argued about what type of

voice I really had. 'Ok,' Nezhdanov said. 'We'll pay my friend
Konstantin Zlobin a visit tomorrow. He's a music teacher, he'll
definitely be able to tell you your voice type.'
"Zlobin lived until the age of 92, and we always had a special
bond. I never took lessons from anyone else after him; I would
practice by myself. After all, I had to change my singing style
completely to follow Caruso's advice and get my diaphragm
involved. I had to redo everything - there's a completely
different breathing rhythm involved, it's the Italian school. This
enables me to sing whenever I want to, without warming up.
What are my favorite pieces? Glinka's 'Doubt' and Massenet's
'Elegy'. Generally, if I was asked to sing an encore, I'd pick
Anton Rubinstein's 'Swirling Waves.'
"In Moscow, Genna, Alexander Sveshnikov himself,
a distinguished professor, encouraged me to enroll at the
conservatory. 'You'll graduate from the conservatory and then
become a teacher. It's a cushy job. You just sit there and correct
the odd la or sol here and there.'
"I spoke with Nekrasov, Yudasin's second, at the Manila
interzonal. He's a palm reader; he told me that I was destined
to be world champion for more than a year. I asked him
what I should call my book; he immediately answered, 'Life,
Inspiration and Harmony.' I think the title will sound something
like that. Chess is harmonious just the way it is. Fischer chess
is utter nonsense. That setup deprives the game of its inherent
harmony.
"I can immediately sense the onset of disharmony, whether
it's in life or at the board. I was putting together a best games
collection - only 32 1 games, played from 1935 through 1991,
made it onto the list. If you look at them purely in terms of
absolute harmony, then I could only put a tenth of them into
that category without reservations. Life, though, is far vaster

than chess, and you have many more chances of making a
mistake. I could always sense when I was doing the wrong thing,
and it would nag me and weigh on my mind."
December 1 997. He's in Holland. He has just lost two games
to the young Morozevich in Groningen. He calls me up.
"Genna, I have had a great misfortune. A great misfortune."
"What's the matter, Vasily Vasilievich?"
"Little demons swiped one of my pawns! Morozevich and
I have just reached a rook endgame. I can see the game will
soon be drawn; I have enough activity. I think to myself, 'let me
strengthen my passed b-pawn with my a-pawn.' I was just about
to play a3-a4 but then I see I don't have an a-pawn. It's like a
bunch of demons made off with it. A puff of smoke - and it's
gone! It was pure devilry."
January 1 9th, 1998. "I just got back from Stockholm. I was
playing in an open tournament. Got off to a terrible start. My
tooth was just killing me! I racked up 4. 5 out of 5 points as soon
as I fixed my tooth. Genna, congratulations are in order."
"What's the occasion?" I asked.
"I picked up thirty-five points in one fell swoop. So, looks
like I've still got it. I'm piling up Elo points."
August 1998. He had just returned to Moscow from Vienna,
where he'd been playing in the women versus seniors tournament.
"Was it 'veni, vidi, vici' for you in Vienna, Vasily Vasilievich?"
"Vici? You must be kidding! Genna, now I'm more about the
'vidi' part. As for 'vici', the ladies nearly vicied us. If it hadn't
been for Korchnoi who scored big, the seniors would have lost.
The musicians had the worst luck of all. Portisch and I finished
with minus two, while Taimanov wound up with minus seven.
Portisph and I couldn't sing for toffee, as it were, and Taimanov
wasn't pressing the right pedals.
"What? You're bowing out of the national championship?

.
That's simply not an option, Genna. You have to play. Rough up
those showoffs! Look at me - I'm a half-blind grandmaster, but
I'm keeping at it. Sometimes it goes like it did in Vienna - 'the
sword falls out of his quavering hands,' or whatever that poet
said. Do you remember the title of Yakov Rokhlin's book? It
was Think and Win.
"You can take me along as a consultant if you want... A
hoofed consultant?7 Exactly! We'll put our heads together and
come up with something. But if you just can't handle it, then
thank the organizers for their gracious invitation and say you'll
play next year. They may not invite you back otherwise. Do you
want to stop playing over the board? No, I wouldn't advise that.
Keep playing, at least occasionally. After all, what's the most
important thing? Finding the place for chess in your life and
figuring out that place for yourself - that's it. . .
"The thing is, Genna, I believe in fate when it comes to
chess. I remember playing against Ossip Bernstein back in
1946, in Groningen. It was a rook endgame; Bernstein had a
resignable position, and just about anyone else would have
resigned. Bernstein was a very nice guy. He was an old school,
top-notch lawyer, but a coffee-house player. 'Eh, you Moscow
crook, you Moscow crook. You put one over on this old dope,'
he kept saying in his excellent Russian and shaking his head.
"Bernstein cracked me up, and I went ahead and made a
move without thinking. What do you know? It was stalemate! We
would often kick back in my hotel room during the tournament
after that. He kept showing me his game against Kotov, 'look
7
Meaning the Devil dressed up as a consultant, referring to a scene
from Bulgakov's Master and Margarita
here, Vasya, see how I beat Kotov with this queen sacrifice?'
he'd say. He dreamt of coming back to Russia one last time and
tasting Antonovka apples again. He said he'd tried many kinds
of apple in his lifetime but there were none like Antonovkas.
'�d there was another funny story from the Groningen
tournament. So, I'm playing Lundin in the last round, and we
start repeating moves. A draw would have gotten me third place.
I could sense that I had a win but I opted for perpetual check
instead. As it turns out, I could have mated him after a simple
rook move. Then I found the exact same position in a Chigorin
game but, obviously, he didn't let that golden opportunity
slip away. I guess it wasn't meant to be. Nah, it wasn't simple
carelessness. It was fate. A half-point here and a half-point
there and I would have shared second place with Euwe.
"Yes, it's fate. I made an inexplicably high number of
mistakes in my 1958 return match against Botvinnik. In one
game, I moved my king to the wrong square. Botvinnik would
have had to resign if l had gone to a different square. What about
Botvinnik running out of time? I saw him engrossed in thought,
oblivious to the clock. His flag was about to drop. I stepped
away from the table, while Stahlberg, the chief arbiter, was
standing right there, watching. Grisha Goldberg, Botvinnik's
second, was sitting right across from him in the hall, his eyes
fixed on Botvinnik, but he couldn't do a thing. Another time I
adjourned a hopeless position. It was bad all around. After the
adjournment I had to choose between a losing bishop endgame
or a rook endgame - also losing.
"Bondarevsky, my second during the match, comes up to me
and says, 'Let's flip a coin.' We did just that, and we wound up
with a rook endgame that I drew."
"Vasily Vasilievich, you've played against famous veterans
ever. since you were a kid. Guys like Tartakower, Bernstein, and
many others. What did you feel sitting across the board from
them?" I asked.
"What did I feel? Respect, first and foremost, although
some thoughts typical for youngsters like, 'come on, old geezer,
what's taking you so long?' would creep into my mind. I have to
admit that I had similar feelings towards Botvinnik, although he
was only ten years older than me.
"You know who I had trouble playing against? It made me
physically uncomfortable. . . Geller, God rest his soul. Your
profile of him was spot-on. Nadezhda read it to me. You could
read what he was thinking in his face - 'destroy the opponent,
stomp him to death.' I got sucked into having similar feelings,
which removed me from my usual state of seeking harmony
at the board. Eventually, I realized what was going on, and I
would occasionally agree to a draw in positions in which I still
had some play, simply to get the game over with as quickly as
possible and not let myself slip into his state of mind.
'½s for Botvinnik, Euwe, and Reshevsky, their faces didn't
clearly show that killer instinct. The fact that Sammy kept
offering a draw in the same game didn't bother me at all, because
I understood he was doing it in the heat ofbattle. Sammy offered
me a draw three or four times during our decisive game at the
1953 Zurich tournament, but that didn't rub me the wrong way,
because Sammy always played fair. I saw Reshevsky for the last
time at my birthday tournament in Moscow. He won our game,
and then I scolded him afterwards: 'Why did you pounce on
me like that, Sammy? How would you like it if I came to your
birthday tournament in New York and did that to you?'
"' My score against you is too bad. I merely improved it a
bit,' he replied. He was incredibly happy, walking around and
telling everyone, 'I'm not afraid ofanyone now. Barn, I just beat
Smyslov!' I did beat him quite often, and I won both games in
the 1945 Soviet Union-America radio match. I won pretty, too.

Botvinnik won both his games against Denker; however, Arnold
was just an amateur at the time, while Reshevsky was a top
notch grandmaster.
"Then the two of us played a rapid chess match at my party.
The final score was 2:2. Funnily enough, there were no draws,
and Black won every single game. Leading 2: 1, I had the White
pieces in the last round. I was better for a while, but Sammy won
and tied.
"Was Reshevsky a great chess player? Well, he sure was
spectacular, but his knowledge of opening theory was spotty.
There were openings he played wonderfully, like the Nimzo
Indian Defense or the Queen's Gambit. We hugged and enjoyed
a heartfelt goodbye, as though we could sense it was our last time
seeing each other in this world.
"Things occasionally got quite tense during my matches
against Botvinnik. You know that we played a huge number
of decisive games, but I'm referring to our relationship off the
board. I have noticed that I play better if I treat my opponent
with respect, no matter what disputes may arise. That type of
attitude cleansed my soul, which enabled me to focus solely on
the board and the pieces. My inspiration would wane and my
performance would suffer whenever I let my emotions get the
better of me."
June 1999. Petrosian Memorial, Moscow. The Cosmos
Hotel. The roulette wheel keeps spinning in the casino every
evening. He stares ahead, by now seeing very poorly, as he
patiently waits for the ball to fall on his number. He chuckles
every time the digits flash up on the screen. "I've missed the
money again!" It was obvious that he truly hoped things would
turn around.
***
January 1st, 2000. I called to wish him a happy New Year.

Mrs. Smyslov picked up the phone. "Vasily Vasilievich went
outside to drop some bones off by the garage for the stray dog
that lives in our neighborhood. He comes back fifteen minutes
later, and I say to him, 'Yeltsin just resigned!' Smyslov laughs
and says, 'I step outside for a minute to feed the dog and I come
back to presidents abdicating the throne!'"
August 7th, 2000. "You know, Genna, right by our dacha,
they just chopped down a century-old pine forest and started
building. Got to make room for more garages! Before, everything
was forbidden, but now it's the other way around. Everything's
permitted. You can do anything you want! Especially if you've
got cash. Makes me think of Chekhov - what do you need a
cherry orchard for when all you can think about is how to put
food on the table!
"Mrs. Smyslov and I just had a talk with Karpov. He
understands these matters much better than we do. He said
there was nothing we could do about it directly. We had to take
it up with the cooperative, that's who handles this stuff. I never
thought I would have to attend to such issues in my old age.
Well, it turns out that I have to. As Pushkin once wrote, 'And I,
too, like everybody else, have adapted.' That sounds about right.
You know, Genna, all of our troubles today can be attributed to
our lack of spirituality. First off, we have to remove Lenin from
Red Square and bury him somewhere, and send Stalin back to
Georgia, otherwise our motherland won't get anywhere."
Mrs. Smyslov says in the background, "Yes, of course things
used to be far better. We would stay at the Grand Hotel Europe
in Saint Petersburg for five rubles a night. What does it cost you
now?"
60 Smys l ov on the Cou ch
Smyslov celebrated his eightieth birthday on March 24th,

200 1. He said at the time: "When I was young, I dreamed of
living through to the third millennium. I assumed that the
new century would deliver us something especially beautiful,
spiritual, that something would be found in it - no, not the
ultimate truth, that's far too grandiose, but at least the harmony
that I sought. But no, the new century has disappointed me.
Apart from technological progress, I would say that it hasn't
brought any improvements. The level of spirituality has clearly
declined."
I called him several days later. "I came up with 64
compositions!" he said with a solemn air. "I am approaching
the ill-fated number 66. Do you want me to tell you one of
the positions? Do you have a pen and paper? Or can you
remember it all without writing it down? Genna, you told me
Timman liked my compositions, right? He said they reminded
him of Seleznev's? Give my regards to Jan, of course, but tell
him my compositions are nothing like Seleznev or Grigoriev's.
They're Smyslovian compositions! What was the theme of my
latest composition? Couldn't tell you. It's my theme! The
Smyslovian theme! There haven't been any themes like that
before ... Genna, did you find out whether New In Chess would
like to publish my book? ... How much are they offering? ...
That's all? Tell them to add another zero to that number, two
in fact. I'm not just some random guy! I'm the seventh world
champion! What about the sponsors? Don't they have any
sponsors?"
The concept of a "sponsor", which had become a fixture
in Russian society after the fall of the Soviet Union, sounded
completely abstract to Smyslov. In his mind, the West appeared
a� a larger and better version of Beryozkas, the state-run retail
stores in the USSR aimed at foreigners which only sold goods
for hard currency - where you could choose whatever you

wished, without facing any restrictions.
Van Oosterom's tournaments, which offered just about
everything one could imagine, except perhaps Russian "bird
milk" cakes, only served to reinforce Smyslov's skewed
perception of the West. If somebody mentioned that something
cost thousands of dollars he could nonchalantly comment that
he forked out forty whole rubles for the same item, completely
oblivious to how worthless those rubles were compared to the
dollar price. Although he had been traveling to the West for
tournaments for sixty years, he had only the vaguest idea about
the cost of goods and services. Strolling around a little village
outside of Tilburg we would sometimes pop our heads into the
local church.
"Those prices are frightening," he said during our first visit
as he stood by the counter where candles were sold. "50, 100 . ..
is that really in guilders?"
"No, Vasily Vasilievich. It's in cents."
''Are you positive it's in cents, Genna? You never know."
"Yep, I'm positive, Vasily Vasilievich."
"Well, then we can get a candle. How about I get you one,
too, Genna? You aren't of the Christian faith, but it's good for
the soul. Well, it can't hurt, at least."
Later on, we kept going from one bank to another. He had
brought 90 Norwegian Krones (worth roughly 30 dollars at the
time) with him from Moscow to Tilburg in small notes and
wanted to exchange them "at the very best rate."
"I simply don't care to pay those pirates' commissions!" he
said, and then supported his argument with tidbits of wisdom
like, "a penny saved is a penny earned", "your own eye is the
best spy", and "waste not, want not." When I finally convinced
him to exchange his money at some bank, he merely sighed as
he opened up his wallet. "Yeah, Lilienthal would have said, 'half

a loafis better than none."'
October 200 1. Amsterdam. It's Van Oosterom's women versus
seniors tournament again. He had just won a game against Alisa
Galliamova. "Genna, do you remember that anecdote about the
nephew who was invited to America by his blind uncle to take over
the family business? The nephew goes to the KGB. He's advised
to write to his uncle a letter asking him to sell the business and
send the money to the USSR. Then he receives a letter from his
uncle that says, 'I'm blind, but not crazy.' Same goes for me. The
girls think I'm clueless. I may be blind but I'm not crazy. They
think they can beat me since I lost to Ksyusha (his endearing
Russified nickname for the Chinese player Xie Jun).
"Yeah, those girls... I remember one time when Boleslavsky,
Sokolsky and I decided to play a little preferans. This was after
the war. The only thing was we couldn't find a deck of cards
for the life of us. Then suddenly I remembered that I'd brought
a deck with naughty pictures of girls with me. I bought it in
Sweden. Boleslavsky protested as soon as he saw those cards.
'This is so crass, too crass,' he said.
"Sokolsky and I had to use some pressure to get him to play
with us. Sokolsky, may he rest in peace, supposedly had a so
called 'niece' living in just about every city, but that's a story for
another time, Genna. So, we're playing and playing. Boleslavsky
botched his hand pretty bad. He was probably too busy gawking
at the girls. He tossed the cards in a fit. ' It's hopeless, hopeless,
I'm not going to play with those cards anymore.' That put an
end to our game. Eh, those dames, Genna. Have you noticed
that if a dame is wearing dark clothing that means she wants
to draw attention to herself? You haven't noticed? Well, you
should have. I remember Najdorf teaching me how to answer
the South American senoritas' questions.
'Senor occupado ?' [Are you tied up ?]

'No.' [No.]
'Casado ?' [Are you married ?]
'Muy poco. '[Just a little.]
'Cuanto hijos tiene ?' [How many children do you have ?]
'No hijos!' fl have no children!]
"You should try to remember those lines - they may come

in handy.
"So, you're telling me that young grandmasters prefer poker,
Genna? Well, isn't that what being young is all about? Pushkin
dabbled in his day, too, and I already told you about Tartakower.
He would go running to the casino as soon as he got his hands
on some cash."
Smyslov was staying at the Amsterdam Grand Hotel
Krasnapolsky downtown on Dam Square, where the tournament
was being held. Both he and his wife had come down with
something, but they wouldn't go to the hotel restaurant even
when they were healthy. Instead, they'd load up on provisions at
a nearby supermarket and make their own coffee and tea in their
hotel room with their heating wand. One day, in need of more
provisions, we left Mrs. Smyslov in the room and headed down
the stairs. A girl was sitting at the piano in the lobby, playing
Chopin. He stood there and leaned up against a column, his
eyes closed, until the end of the piece. "Bravo, young lady!" he
said. Then he slowly stepped out into the gray Amsterdam day,
propelling his gangly figure forward rather tentatively.
"You know, Genna, Feodor Duz-Khotimirsky wrapped himself
up in some bed sheets one night and went over to Boris Verlinsky's
hotel room. 'You're playing Duz-Khotimirsky tomorrow. You must
lose to him,' he said in a ghost's voice. Verlinsky wasn't going down
that easy, though; he won their game the next day."
64 Smys l ov on the Couch
There were throngs of people in Dam Square. Hordes of

tourists - languages from all over the world, smells particular
to Amsterdam. He heard some music. " Let's go over there , " he
said. We went over there. A man wearing a kilt was stepping on a
clapper and blowing into bagpipes, creating the semblance of an
orchestra. Smyslov came a little closer, and then closer still, his
barely functioning eyes fixed on the man. His gaze slipped down
to the kilt. He crossed himself with a few sweeping movements.
" If the Lord will . . . " The piper, who'd grown used to just about
everything, was completely unfazed. "Genna, we have the same
stuff going on in Russia, too. Anytime I tum on the TV I see
these African dances; you should hear them holler. "
The city's hopping - carousels going round and round, an
enormous Ferris wheel spinning, magicians showcasing their
somewhat basic skills, a man covered in pigeons posing for
tourists, a knight painted silver standing completely still on a
pedestal, only responding to the sound of coins jingling as
they fell into his hat, while Smyslov's telling me what Abram
Rabinovich said at the Moscow Young Pioneers Palace in 1 936
just as Amsterdam's signature drizzle sets in.
In the store. "We'll consume this tin of Nescafe in the
hotel and take the other one with us to Moscow. Botvinnik
said I shouldn't buy Nescafe packaged in Russia, if you know
what I mean, Genna. 'We teachers claim that things must be
done our way, otherwise disaster may strike, ' that's what Pyotr
Romanovsky used to say. Do you remember Nozdrev8 asking for
someone to fetch him a bottle of what he called burgundy and
champagne all at once? Perhaps we should pick up some herring
and Dutch cheese. The cheese you brought us last time didn't
stick around in our fridge all that long. "
8
A character from Gogol's Dead Souls
With his father. Vasily was

fourteen years old in this
photo.
The new world champion and his
wife walk past fans after his victory
over Botvinnik (Moscow, 1957).
"When we left the Tchaikovsky
Concert Hall traffic on the Garden
Ring came to a standstill. "
"Botvinnik and I played three

matches... you can count the months
I spent sitting across the board from
"No matter where Smyslov went, him. "
he 'd take a picture of Nadezhda,
young and smiling, out ofhis suitcase
and place it on the bedside table the
instant he got to his hotel room. "
"I have just completed

my one hundred and fifth
study - it will be number
41, after the 64 published
ones. Want to see it? As
soon as 1 come up with
them I give them to Oleg
Pervakov to check. "
"On the last day,

the Smyslovs and I
strolled down the sun
drenched Promenade
de la Croisette and then
stopped by a church.
lhey lit some candles,
crossed themselves, and
prayed for a safe return
trip to Moscow " (Cannes,
1996).
Beginning a simultaneous game

against a little girl called Sasha
Kostenyuk. Did he suspect that
his opponent would tum into a
grandmaster and women '.s world
champion ?
"Listen, Genna, make sure to

write that Smyslov didn 't count
calories, and he overindulged in
juice at brea kfast. "
With Mikhail Botvinnik

and Yakov Rokhlin,
origin ator of the
"Leningrad " axiom:
"chess is gymnastics of the
mind".
With the Lilienthals (Moscow, 1990).

"It's my first big pe,formance! Well, I haven 't

made it to the Bolshoi Theater yet, but I'll
be singing in the Grand Hall of the Moscow
Conservatory this evening " (Moscow, 1996).
With the singer Galina Vishnevskaya.
Schaakgrootmeester
Vassily Smyslov zingt
"Sharoev said that some experts

listened to my rendition of
Epithalamium andpraised it highly. "
"There was a clear divide among the audience at our match in Vilnius;
the opera performers, led by Noreiko, were rooting for me, while the pop
musicians on tour at the time, including Alla Pugacheva, were for my
opponent. " Kasparov vs. Smyslov Candidates Final, 1984.
Smyslov first played against Bobby Fischer when the American was fifteen
years old.
Five world champions: Tai, Botvinnik, Kasparov, Karpov and

Smyslov (Moscow, 1990).
"Of course, he was only
candid with his wife
Nadez}1da Andreevna,
or Nadyusha or Nadine.
However, I wouldn 't say
this was candidness as
such. It was something
different. After all, how can
you be candid with your
own hand?" At home in his
apartment (Moscow, 2004).
"What was the theme of my

latest composition ? Couldn 't
tell you. It's my theme! The
Smyslovian theme!" (with
the author, Moscow, 2000).
With Anatoly Karpov (Moscow, 2006).
"Have you calculated

everything, Genna ?
Aren 't you afraid you 'll
come under attack ?
You 're up a pawn, of
course, but you can
always get mated "
(Ti/burg, 1976).
With Vladimir Kramnik

(Moscow, 2004).
"Now our life solely depends on

our charming girl, our Belka. . .
She � as sweet as can be, but
if something doesn 't go her
way then her eyes flare up in a
predatory flame. . . She doesn 't
let me study chess - I sit down
at the board to think about a
composition, and she starts
scratching and my pieces go
flying. "
Giving a book as a present to

Magnus Carlsen. Magnus � father
is next to him (Aeroflot tournament,
Moscow, 2004).
The grave shared by Vasily and

Nadevida Smyslov, as well as
Nadevida 's son from her first
marriage, Vladimir Selimanov,
at the Novodevichy Cemetery in
Moscow. Vasily and Nadezhda died
within two months of each other.
PART 2:
Match Fixing in Zurich

and the Soviet Chess School
PART 2: Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School 75
December 2nd, 200 1. "Did you read what Bronstein just wrote
about me in 64! . . . You didn't have a chance? Bronstein called my
performance at the 1953 Swiss tournament into question. Here's
the magazine. You can read it for yourself. Davy's a real sore loser.
I'm going to write a response. Do you remember the reply to the
Turkish Sultan? Or our reply to Chamberlain?"
Smyslov's last comments require some explanation. The
reply to Sultan Mehmed IV, whose drafting Repin painted,
was a sharp letter written by Zaporozhian Cossacks in the
seventeenth century in reply to a demand to submit to the
Sultan's authority and accept him as the master of the world and
God's representative on Earth. At the same time, "our reply to
Chamberlain" was a slogan that first appeared in 1927 following
the diplomatic note sent by the then British Foreign Secretary
Austen Chamberlain, which the latter had written in response
to a noisy propaganda campaign in the USSR.
Actually, though, Smyslov's light-hearted comments hid his
very real umbrage taken following the publication ofBronstein's
article about the behind-the-scenes plots weaved by the Soviet
functionaries during the 1953 candidates games. This article,
with the startling title 'Thrown' Games in Zurich, was first
published in Russian in the monthly Russian chess magazine
64 - Chess Review in the October 200 1 (no. 10) issue. 9
9 It was later included with some changes in a chapter ofBronstein's

and Sergei Voronkov's Russian-language book David protif Golia/a
("David against Goliath", Ripol Klassik Publishing House, Russia,
2002, pp. 456-462) and appeared in English in Secret Notes by the
same authors, Edition Olms, Switzerland, 2007, pp. 1 3 1 - 1 36,
translated by Ken Neat, by which time Bronstein had died (he passed
away in 2006) . The Edition Olms version was a translation of the
newer Russian version included in David protif Golia/a.
Before we look at the actual text, it is worth stopping on the

Russian word for "thrown games" used in the original title of
Bronstein's article: "splavka". "Splavka" or simply "splav"
(i.e. the non-diminutive form) has the meaning of an earlier
agreed loss of a game by one competitor to another. The zero in
the tournament table is compensated for by financial or other
means, and ultimately it's other players in the tournament, as
well as the watching public, who are cheated.
The word "splavka" comes from the lexicon of the criminal
underworld. It originally signified an inexperienced cheater
being tricked by a group of experienced cheaters: the latter
would draw the inexperienced trickster into a card game and
then, acting secretly as a team, they would lose the game to one
of their team members and divvy up the winnings.
Dutch GM Hans Ree was Korchnoi's second during his
quarter-final against Petrosian (11 Ciocca, 1977). Korchnoi was
also aided by Jacob Murey, who had emigrated from the USSR
shortly before that match in Italy. After working with the former
Muscovite master Murey (later an Israeli GM) the Dutchman's
vocabulary gained the noun "splav" and the respective verb
"splavit", which he constantly heard from his colleague.
Ree recalled that Murey was a hundred percent convinced
that Soviet chess was entirely based on "splav". "The purchaser
acquires a point, and his opponent who throws the game
acquires cash or compensation in the form of a 'win' against
another player. Elementary, my Dear Watson," the hot-headed
Jacob explained to the narve Dutchman.
Korchnoi confirmed Murey's claims: "It's disgraceful,
obviously," he told Ree, who had asked him to explain what
this was about, "but if you had 200 professional chess players
in Holland instead of eight, you would encounter a similar
practice."
Bronstein's article that so upset Smyslov, which we reproduce

below using the "book" version, raised a whole series of questions.
Note that I only highlight a couple ofchanges between the original
article and book version insomuch as they are relevant to the story.
'Thrown' Games in Zurich 10
My account of Switzerland would be incomp lete, if I did not

finally reveal the truth about the tournament in Zurich. Yes, the
book about it brought me world fame. But for many years the
tournament itself has sat like a thorn in my heart. How long can
one suffer ? And I have decided to pull out this thorn....
The 1953 Candidates Tournament took place at a difficult time.
The events of the spring (the death of Stalin) and the summer (the
arrest of Beria) disturbed the whole world - everyone was afraid ofa
new war and it was no time for chess. And for Soviet citizens the very
idea ofa trip abroad looked suspicious. JVhy did they need to go there
at those troubled times ? But nevertheless an imposing Soviet delegation
- nine grandmasters and eight seconds (I alone did not have one) -
flew to Switzerland. The FIDE schedule had to be respected.
The tournament was nervy and exhausting: two months' play
and 30 rounds! The leaders of the delegation (the deputy head of
the Sports Committee Postnikov, his deputy Moshintsev from the
KGB, and grandmaster Bondarevsky, who worked for both ofthese
organisations) inflamed passions, all the time reminding us that on
no account must Reshevsky be allowed ahead. Ifhe had qualified
for a match with Botvinnik, we would all have had to payfor it. Just
think: nine Soviet participants unable to stop one American!
10
In this text from Secret Notes we retain, with a few minor exceptions,
its original spelling conventions and use of quotation marks, which
differ from those used in the rest of this book - publisher's note
But as bad luck would have it, Reshevsky in fact took the lead
together with Smyslov. This unsettled our 'triumvirate '. And before
the 13th round, when I was preparing/or my game with Reshevsky,
they came to my room (I thought they had had one too many) and
stated that the following day, despite the black pieces, I had to win.
It was an order! There was nothing to be done and, contrary to my
habit, for five hours I did not get up from the board - I displayed
my zeal. In time-trouble, Reshevsky as usual wanted to confuse me,
but he met his match. The adjourned position looked only slightly
betterfor me, but, fortunately, a study-like way to win was found.
For the time being our leaders calmed down. But after Smyslov
lost to Kotov and Reshevsky again caught up with him, they again
grew nervous. Here, after one of the regular check-ups, the team �
doctor Vladimir Alexandrovich Ridin reported to Postnikov that
Bronstein and Keres were in a normal condition, whereas Smyslov
had weakened and might not last out to the finish at the desired
level (I was later informed of this fact in Moscow by Ridin himself).
In addition, in the second half of the tournament none of the four
of us had yet met, and anything could happen . . .
I have to admit that I myselfpartly provoked th e 'avalanche '.
On the free day before the 24th round, Boleslavsky and I were
in his room, peacefully playing cards. Suddenly Postnikov came
in: 'Why aren 't you preparing?' Issak Efremovich kept quiet, but
I went and blurted out: 'Why prepare ? Tomorrow I have Black
against Geller and I'll make a draw. Then I have White against
Smyslov. ' Postnikov looked hard at me, stoodfor a short while, and
then silently went out. And Boleslavsky immediately reproached
me: 'Why did you say that to him ?' Apparently he sensed better
than I did the mood of the 'chief', as we called Postnikov.
At any event, the 'triumvirate ' decided to act. They summoned
Keres to the shore of the Zurich lake and over the course of three
hours tried to persuade him to make a quick draw with White
against Smyslo v, so that in the next round the latter would be able
to assail Reshevsky with all his might (I was told ofthis that same
evening by Tolush, Keres 's second).
Keres courageously withstood the pressure. Perhaps he promised to
think about it, but he turned up for play in a fighting mood. But he was
al/flushed and agitated, and Isaw that he was not in a.fit state to play.
This was also noticed by Smyslov, who suddenly came up to me and
asked: 'Why is Paul looking at me so maliciously ? Have I offended
him, or what ? I didn 't know what to reply, and I kept quiet - suppose
Smyslov didn 't know what was going on ? Keres lost, ofcourse.
The 'triumvirate' decided to strike while the iron was hot.
First they convinced Geller that the following day Bronstein had
supposedly demanded a pointfrom him, so as not to allow Reshevsky
to go ahead. Then they summoned me to the lake and said: 'Geller
has already received the order to lose to you!' I tried to object, but
I made a mistake, by stressing not that it was unsporting, but that
Geller had a lready lost five games. 'What, do you want to ruin the
lad completely ?' 'No, no, he has agreed, he is a patriot. '
I made on that I was agreeable, but in fact I decided to be
cunning and to play openly for a draw, to exclude the possibility of
Geller losing. This was my second mistake. I should have simply
gone to see Yefim in his room and discussed it. But, I would remind
you, this was 1953, and throughout the tournament we had no
information at all about what was happening at home, and anything
was possible. Vainshtein, who had not been allowed to travel with
me as my second, had promised by the start of the second half
to send some innocent telegram, signifying that he was free. But
it hadn 't arrived. Later I asked what had happened. 'No thing, '
rep lied the norma llyfearless 'grandmaster Ferzberi '. 'Iwas afraid. '
So please don 'tjudge me too severely...
I naively thought that after Geller the conversation would end.
Oh no. 'Now,' said Postnikov, lighting up ano ther cigarette (beside
him the 'commissar' was gloomily striding around). 'After Geller

you have Smyslov. Remember that before his game with Reshevsky
he must not be agitated! He must know that you will later make a
quick draw with him.' 'But I have White!' 'What 's the difference ?
We cannot risk an American winning the tournament. ' 'But I too
can win in the event of a successful finish ?' 'I said: a draw and a
quick one, ' Postnikov cut me short, and added with importance :
'We have just received a coded telegram from Romanov [At the
time, the head of the Sports Committee - G. S. ] : "Play between
the Soviet participants is to cease. " Do you understand ?'
I was stupefied by such falsehood. My look did not appeal to
Moshintsev, and he decided to intensify the pressure by blurting
out: "What, did you seriously think that we came here to play
chess ?!' There was nothing I could say to that. 'So,' the KGB agent
continued, 'before your game with Smyslov you will go to him in
his room and agree how to make a draw. Is that clear ?' I hung my
head. And they left me alone to contemplate the lake ...
When I arrived for my game with Geller, I saw that he was very
pale. Had he really agreed to lose ? However, as I learned much
later, he had received a directivefrom Bondarevsky to win, to punish
me for my 'greed'! And while I was manoeuvering around in my
half ofthe board, 'playing openly for a draw', Yefim methodically
s trengthened his position. Even so, I should have played rather
more carefully, but Isimply blundered a pawn and lost. I was vexed
- not because I had lost (anyone could lose with Black against
Geller), but because for two hours I had been defending his chess
fate, whereas he had taken and handed me such a bitter pill!
When, after the tournament, we were returning/or Bern, where a
reception had been arranged at the embassy, Geller (also somewhat
intoxicated) suddenly sat down beside me and with vexation in his
voice asked why Ihadn 't spoken to him for ten days. Then I told him
how they had dealt with me. Heflew into a rage and began screaming
PART 2: Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School 8 1
so that the whole carriage could hear: WI that swine Bondarevsky!'

Here Igor Zakharovich [Bondarevsky - G. S.] hurried up, seized
him by the shirt-front and, shouting, 'let's go, ' led him away. . .
After th e game with Geller I drank a tumbler ofArmenian cognac
and intentionally looked in at the room where on an evening all our
group assembled. Everyone fell silent. Just think: David was drunk!
But I sat there without speaking/orfive minutes and then left. Simply
to show that I was alive, and was not intending to throw myself into
the lake. [Mark Taimanov, who also played in that tournament,
recalled: "That evening, suspecting nothing, I walked into
David's hotel room and was truly horrified - it was the only time
in my life I would see my friend in that state. A drunk Davy was
weeping like a child in the smoke-filled room" - G. S.]
Of course, when I lost, Postnikov declared that this was petty
tyranny on the part of Geller, that he would not tolerate such a
disgrace, and that in Moscow Geller would get it in the neck. But
this was all a dirty game . . .
On the day of my game with Smyslov, a t about twelve o 'clock,
Moshintsev called in on me: 'Have you already been to see him ?'
'No. ' 'Then let 's go. ' 'And he literally pushed me along to the
neighbouring room: 'Go in, Smyslov is expecting you. ' Although
we were neighbours, I had not once called in on him. Now, under
escort, I had to knock. 'Come in. ' I go in and see a depressing
picture: by the window, not looking at each other, two of them are
sitting - Smyslov and his second, Simagin. I say hello and go up to
them. Simagin averts his eyes and demonstratively looks out of the
window. I talk about the weather, and about some other triviality. . .
Smyslov nervously interrupts me: 'No, Devi, te ll me, what are
we going to play ?' I mumble something. . . 'No, what are we going
to play ?' And unexpectedly he says: Keres played for a win and
he lost. . . ' It became clear to me that right from the start he knew
all about this devilish spectacle. 'Very well, ' I reply, 'we 'll find
something.'And I quickly leave. By the door Moshintsev is waiting

for me: 'Have you agreed ?' 'Yes. 'And he went away.
I go a long to the game. I play e2-e 4. Smyslov replies e 7-e 5. I
hesitate for a couple ofminutes, but Irealise that I'm trapped. Even
if I win, this will not change anything: after the loss to Geller, all
the same Icannot catch Smyslov [in the original article Bronstein
also wrote here that somebody else would just get the order to
gift Smyslov a half or even full point instead - G.S.]. And in
Moscow there will be new problems. In addition (or above all else ?)
I was sure that Vainshtein had already been arrested for his long
standing work under Beria and my obstinac y might make things
worse. IfBoris Samoilovich [Vainshtein - G.S.] had been free, he
would surely have sent me the promised telegram!
In short, Idid not hesitate for long. I chose the Ruy Lopez, but as
soon as Smyslov played a 7-a 6 I took his knight with my bishop. And
it had to happen that at that moment Reshevsky was walking past.
On seeing my move, he stopped and made an expressive 'Hmm...' I
can still hear that sound, because the shame has not gone away.
To show that I can play for a win in the 'Spanish', a round later
in my game with Reshevsky I did not take on c 6, but engaged in a
complicated struggle in the Chigorin Variation and won. I tho ught
that this was an open message: 'With Smyslov theyforced me to play
for a draw!' But I overestimated the intellect of the chess socie ty.
It would appear that Kuprin with his 'Marabous' was right... [A
short story written by Alexander Kuprin in 1909 containing a
grotesque portrayal of chess players as marabous - G.S.]
Recently I met the aging Smyslov and said to him: 'Don 't you
think it 's time that you told about the off-stage machinations in
Zurich ?' And he replied 'Devi, why spoil a good tournament ?'
Suetin in his last book revealed part of this KGB intrigue. I have
decided to complete his story. If he desires, Vasily Vasilievich can
add to it or correct it. It would only please me if he were to do so,
especially as personally I have no complaint about Smyslov. It was

not he, but the system itselfthatprevailed at that time in Soviet chess.
I realise peifectly well that any one of us could have ended up in
such a situation. In 1954, during the USSR- USA match, the 'New
York Times ' printed a cartoon entitled 'Kremlin puppets '. At the
bottom there were all of us - Smyslov, Bronstein, Keres, Averbakh,
Geller, Kotov, Petrosian and Taimanov, and above - the Kremlin
hierarchy, headed by Khruschev, holding us by strings. This looked
insulting. But now I think that the caricaturist was essentially right:
we really were puppets, only we did not realise this.
. . . When I returned at that timefrom Zurich to Moscow, already
at the airport I experienced a great relief Boris Samoilovich was
alive and well and, as usual, was the first to meet me at the bottom
of the ladder. Soon he conceived a strange idea: he began trying
to persuade me to write a textbook on the middlegame, based on
the Zurich games. Because of all these dirty goings-on, I didn 't
want to remember about the tournament. But he was persuasive:
'David, soon everyone will forget about your play, but they will
remember the book. 'And I capitulated. But in the first edition, two
games - with Geller and Smyslov - were left practically without
any commentary. I thought that this would be a broad enough hint,
but on this occasion too it would seem that no one guessed anything.
Vainshtein provedfar-sighted. In chess life I have been cast by
the wayside, but the book 'Zurich International Chess Tournament '
lives, is republished, and comes out in different languages. And, I
think, it will outlive me by a long time . . .
The following paragraph was appended to both the Russian

and English book versions:
P. S. . . . When I invited Vasily Vasilievich to 'add to or correct '

my story, I never thought that in his reply (published in '64', 2001
No. 12) only one paragraph would be devoted to the tournament in

Zurich, and that the main part would be taken up by various types
of conjectures and even direct disinformation. By essentially not
refuting any of the facts given by me, and, above all, completely
avoiding the 'Keres problem', Smyslo v, in my view, merely
confirmed the correctness ofmy account.
Let's now return to the title of Bronstein's article. Strictly

speaking, "splavka" wasn't a very accurate description of
the events in Zurich: after all, Bronstein wasn't alleging that
anybody deliberately threw their games against Smyslov. The
issue was actually about a much more common practice in
chess - prearranged draws. As Bronstein wrote, this is what
he and Paul Keres were forced into by the functionaries.
This was a significantly lesser crime than deliberately losing,
although it too was a violation of the sporting spirit. There
are countless examples of prearranged draws, including at the
very highest level. For example, during the 1952 interzonal
in Stockholm, the Soviet players concluded short draws with
each other without even pretending to battle over the board.
The best known case in the world championship cycle was the
candidates tournament at Curacao in 1962. Petrosian, Keres
and Geller had agreed even before the competition began that
they would draw all of their games. This gave them eight(!)
free days, which in the tropical climate they were playing in
proved a decisive advantage: they took the top three places in
that tournament.
Obviously, the draw that Bronstein as White was pressurized
by the functionaries into agreeing with Smyslov in 1953 was to
the advantage of the eventual winner. And the same is true of
the draw against Smyslov that the Soviet delegation demanded
from Keres, who was also White. The angry Estonian rejected
the demand, lost his self-composure and, as a result, lost the

game, thereby definitively falling away from the tournament's
leadership.
Consider the testimony of Mark Taimanov, another

challenger in Zurich:
We have no idea how the tournament would have ended, had

it not been for the Jesuit inteiference ofour leadership - there are
no "might haves "in history, and anyway Smyslov ".sfantastic form
(not to mention his complete lack ofinvolvement in the leadership ".s
schemes) meant that he hardly needed this unwanted back-up.
Nevertheless, the p lot to sweep one ofSmyslov s key opponentsfrom
his path to victory achieved its aim - Bronstein ".s psychological
suffering was p lain for all to see as the tournament ended. The
only conso lation is that this shameful story remained a secret for
decades to all but the tight circle ofits participants, thereby avoiding
blackening what went down in history as a fantastic tournament.
( Vspominaya samykh-samykh 11) .
Alexei Suetin wasn't at the Zurich tournament, but let's add

his testimony here for the full picture:
On the day when he was due to meet Smyslov, Keres was

summoned by the leader of our delegation D. Postnikov and
told that he did not have the right to play for a win. This would
supposedly be to the advantage of Reshevsky. According to Keres ".s
second, grandmaster A. To lush, it is unlikely that Smyslov knew
about this. The heated conversation continued for several hours.
11
" Recalling the Very Greatest" - Retro Publishing House, Russia,
2003
Keres flatly refused to betray his conscience, but he was unsettled.

When he played/or a win it turned into a loss. (Shakhmaty skvoz
prizmy vremeni 12).
Well, Smyslov wrote a reply in the December 200 1 (no. 1 2)

issue of 64 - Chess Review. Both its heading and subheading are
revealing in themselves.
A Battle in Amsterdam
Against irresponsible iournalism
Let me say straight away that my article would never have been
written were it not for the publication in 64 no. 10/2001 of an
extract with the pretentious title 'Thrown' Games in Zurich.from
David Bronstein's future book ofmemoirs.
The author himself wrote: "Ifhe desires, Vasily Vasilievich can
add to it [i.e. his story] or correct it. It would only please me ifhe
were to do so, especially as personally I have no complaint about
Smyslov. It was not he, but the system itself that prevailed at that
time in Soviet chess. Irealise pe,fectly well that any one ofus could
have ended up in such a situation. "
There have been plenty ofattempts to rewrite history, including
chess history, and for the writer to show himself in a better light,
before David Janovich -s "revelations ". At.first I didn 't want to make
any comments, but then I realized that I was obliged to - as there
was nobody else able to reply. I consider my victory in the Zurich
tournament, which boasted an outstanding list ofgrandmasters, to
be among my greatest achievements, both sporting and aesthetic.
12 "Chess Through the Prism ofTime" - Russkoe Slovo Publishing

'House, Russia 1998, included in David protif Golia/a and published
in English in Secret Notes p. 136, also using Ken Neat's translation
Bronstein 's irresponsible journalism is unacc eptable. I wonder

how many more stains h e will pour on his recollections. . . What
a way to black en th e nam e of that era and of that gen eration of
brilliant grandmasters!
David Janovich blam es th e system prevalent at th e tim e in
Sovi et ch ess for ev erything. Yet th e system som etim es h elp ed him,
and in big ways!
. . . Budap est, 1950. Th e candidat es tournam ent. Surpris es
occurred ev en before th e tournam ent began. Bondarevsky n ev er
mad e it to Budap est, although h e was fully entitled to play th ere.
(It's possible that his trip to Zurich thre e y ears later as Geller's
coach was som e sort of comp ensation for that ugly episode.)
Isaak Boleslavsky play ed wonde,fully at Budap est. With two
rounds left h e was a point ah ead ofBronstein. And th en w e witness ed
a chess miracle ofsorts: Boleslavsky quickly drew his last two gam es,
wh ereas Bronstein finish ed en ergetically with two wins. Th e final
round wasparticularly shocking. Boleslavsky, playing White, agre ed
a draw in an advantageous position with Stahlb erg, while Bronstein
won with th e white pi eces against Keres. I rem emb er Isaak coming
up to m e and pronouncingjust on e word: "Disaster. . . "
Th e h ead of th e Sovi et d elegation in Budap est was non e oth er
than Boris Samoilovich Vainshtein . . . who was Bronstein 's s econd
at th e sam e tim e. A t th e tim e, Vainshtein work ed as th e h ead of
th e economic planning departm ent of th e prison camps, so h e
was influ ential in th e country as a whole. Before th e War h e had
activ ely oppos ed holding a match b etw e en Botvinnik and A lekhin e
and h e and Botvinnik had it in for each oth er. Boleslavsky had a
terrible record against Botvinnik. So it was obvious who this big
boss supported, with his passionate desire for som ebody to defeat
Botvinnik in th e upcoming world championship match. . . And
Boleslavsky just happ en ed to b e in th e path of Vainshtein 's b est
fri end, Bronstein.
Bronstein claims that he was cast by the wayside of chess life.

Well, three years earlier that 's what happened to the fantastic but
humble chess player Isaak Boleslavsky, who never again reached
such heights. . .
But let 's return to the key moment that Bronstein refers to in
his article. When he showed up at my hotel room two hours before
the game began I got an unpleasant surprise. I realized that he
was tired and didn 't want to take any risks. How could I reply
at the time? Obviously, only by saying what Bronstein expected
to hear: "I'm fine to draw at any time. " That 's what Euwe did,
when he was about to win his match against Alekhine. That 's
what I too did in 1983, agreeing to the draw proposed by Ribli
when I had a winning position. It seemed to me that a draw was
fine for Bronstein too, who at the time was a point and a half
behind me. It gave him great chances of coming second, which
guaranteed him direct entry to the following cycle 's candidates
tournament. (Admittedly, once the Zurich tournament was
over FIDE revised the rules, reducing the number of the next
candidates tournament 's players to ten and changing the selection
procedure.) The leadership 's wishes surely matched Bronstein 's
mental state. In the remaining rounds, my competitors - Keres
and Reshevsky - made do with halfpoints and Bronstein retained
his second place. So Ifind his pointing his finger at the leadership
of the time to be unconvincing.
I remember Kotov with his fighting spirit. . . In Zurich he
skillfully exploited my oversight and beat me without worrying
about any "instructions "from above. After I lost that game, some
of the players decided that I had grown tired and attempted to
avenge their losses from the first half. Reshevsky, on the other
hand, offered me a draw several times during our second halfgame
{round 25). I kept saying 'no ', though I bore no malice towards my
opponent and old friend, for whom I always had the warmest of
regards. I eventually won, and that game against Bronstein was

next...
Now, looking back at those events from a philosophical point
ofview, I wonder whether David Janovich had the moral right to
appeal to me with the cross he bore on his back for a lifetime and
attempt to pass it on to another person. It 's somewhat graceless for
Bronstein to have complained about his life, actually. Keres and
Reshevsky never got to play for the world title, whereas Bronstein
got to play Botvinnik and peiformed admirably.
Ultimately, the battle for the world championship demands an
iron personality and huge resistance to pressure. It's the biggest
trial you can put yourself through. Bronstein failed to grasp his
historical chance in 1951, just I failed to do so in 1954, when I
drew my first match with Botvinnik.
In 1983, it was my tum to come up against the ''system ". After
the cancelation of the candidates match in Pasadena between
Kasparov and Korchnoi the Sports Committee decided that if
Garry was going to be disqualified then I should be disqualified
too. Just to keep Garry company. So I found myselffighting not
only for myself. ..
In the Amsterdam candidates tournament of 1956, with three
rounds to go, Keres and Iwere equalfirst, with Bronstein and Geller
halfa point behind us. It was in those double-edged circumstances
that/ate brought me against Bronstein, who wasn 't prevented from
playing properly by anybody or anything. He put up a wholesome
fight. Our game was extremely tense. It was adjourned and I won
in the subsequent session. I remember a curious episode. Shortly
before resigning, Bronstein looked hard at Boleslavsky (who was in
Amsterdam in the role ofmy second), but Isaak Efremovich replied
merely by throwing up his hands. That gesture was more eloquent
than any combination of words. Keres drew his game during that
round and then, attempting to catch me, assumed too much risk in
his game with Filip. After that, Iwon a grudge match against Pilnik,
overcoming tough resistance from the Argentinian grandmaster in a
sharp rook endgame . 13
At the time, we were still young, and that in itselfis nice to recall.
But that unbelievable interest in chess ?! The oveiflowing halls, the
unprecedented numbers in the audience. Lasker and Capablanca,
whose play I had followed in 1935-36, spoke of our country as a
chess El Dorado . . . Sure, those were complex times, but you couldn 't
paint it all black. David Janovich wrote a wonderful book about the
Zurich tournament, where he ascribed aesthetic talent to all the
players. Yet it now turns out that they had nothing ofthe sort. It was
just a typical tournament with fixed games. It's nasty to write about
your colleagues like that. Salacious material is ofcourse a sure way
of reminding the world about you. But it 's much better to do that
differently, and I would like to see David Janovich return to chess,
the favorite art ofall ofus.
***
Before we consider which of these two top grandmasters,

who fought for the world title in the 1950s, was right, let's
turn to that time in the distant past when Mikhail Botvinnik
took up academic research and devoted remarkably little time
to chess. In 195 1 he had to fight hard just to draw his title
match with David Bronstein, and after that was rarely seen
in tournaments. His 1954 match with the winner in Zurich,
Vasily Smyslov, also ended in a draw, while their second match,
after Smyslov won the candidates tournament in Amsterdam
13 He may have called it a "grudge match" as he had lost his previous

game to Pilnik
( 1956), was won by the challenger. A year later, Botvinnik won

the return match.
Botvinnik wrote in his memoirs that in the period from 1953-
58 Smyslov was beyond doubt the strongest tournament player
in the world. He had a universal talent, capable of subtle opening
play, stubborn defense, powerful attacks and cold-blooded
maneuvering, while he was in his element in the endgame.
According to Botvinnik, Smyslov could make decisions that
were amazing in their depth. Smyslov's strength was seen
especially when he came up against a prepared variation. He
could sit at the board for an hour, holding his cheeks in his
fists, and then find a refutation. His blend of strong calculation
of variations, bravery, independence and good health made
Smyslov invincible in those days.
Garry Kasparov, meanwhile, who played a candidates match
with Smyslov after the latter was in his seventieth decade but
experiencing an Indian summer, wrote that Smyslov was the
strongest player in the world in the mid-1950s. It was a massive
sporting achievement to win two candidates tournaments and
play three title matches against Botvinnik. In total, Botvinnik
and Smyslov played over 100 games against each other, a record
only surpassed by the Karpov versus Kasparov duels. Kasparov
highlighted that Smyslov's defeat in the 1958 return match was
down to a mixture of Smyslov's ill health and his opponent's
iron will.
Another important point here is that it was only after
Perestroika that Bronstein and Smyslov were able to write their
articles. In communist times nobody had the right to challenge
the legitimacy of the victory of a Soviet chess player, and no
discussions on the matter would have been possible.
Both Bronstein's article and Smyslov's reply take us back
to that specific Soviet period. A period which gave birth to a
phenomenon known as the "Soviet Chess School" . Well, was

there such a school? And if so, what were the features that
distinguished it from the chess played by the rest of the world?
Why were Soviet players ranked at the top for decades? And
finally, do we see today, with the USSR long gone, any signs of
that unique occurrence that was Soviet chess?
The seventh world champion, Vasily Smyslov, was one
of the most distinguished representatives of Soviet chess.
Without a description of the Soviet Chess School not only
would his rapid rise to the top be impossible to explain, but
many of his other actions would be interpreted incorrectly.
Nor would it be possible to understand 'Thrown ' Games in
Zurich and the polemic that broke out between Smyslov and
Bronstein. In explaining the story of how the Soviet Chess
School was created I have sometimes drawn on my essays
that appeared previously in various chess publications. I have
deepened some, added to others, and reassessed many events
in them, based on facts that have emerged since the originals
were written.
As early as 1925, the Party Central Committee issued a decree
stating "physical education should be an integral part of general
political and cultural upbringing and education" . Chess became
an element of this cultural - but above all political - upbringing
and education. Absolutely everything was used as instruments
of communist propaganda, so chess shouldn't constitute an
exception.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Soviet chess magazines were full
of discussions about the game's role, and woe betide anybody
who questioned its political purpose. Those who challenged the
party line were dealt with severely in the USSR, and anybody
claiming that chess should be outside politics would be lucky to
escape with reprimands and criticism.
Three international tournaments were held in Moscow, in

1925, 1935 and 1936, with incredible opulence. Western stars
who arrived in the capital of the young state couldn't believe their
eyes. They were used to playing in smoky premises encircled by
a ring of spectators watching their games right next to the tables,
but here they encountered something quite different.
The grandmasters played in the most beautiful halls of the
city. Each game was shown on a demonstration board. The
spectators amounted to several thousand and mounted police
had to hold back the pressure from the crowds desperate to grab
a sight of these sporting celebrities. Such a phenomenon had
only been known in the West in relation to show business. Chess
was hidden in western countries in some back streets, and if you
went round saying that your job was a "chess player" you could
expect nothing but the raising of eyebrows in bewilderment.
In Soviet Russia they got to reside in the top hotels, enjoyed
a carte blanche in restaurants, took home prizes in foreign
currency and had every wish fulfilled. No expenses were spared
by the organizers: the Soviet state was the one and only sponsor
of all tournaments in that country and there were no private
philanthropists who enjoyed pushing the pieces around in their
spare time and donating huge sums to finance tournaments.
Once I had a conversation with Andor Lilienthal about the
Moscow 1935 tournament. This is what he told me: "When
I went to the Soviet Union for the first time I didn't have the
faintest idea what I was in for. I was just 24, and all I had seen
up until then was the chess tables in the cafes of the European
capitals and some pathetic tournament hall at Hastings. Arriving
in the USSR, I discovered a true El Dorado for chess players."
A grand match was organized in 1933 in Moscow and
Leningrad between Flohr, on his first trip to the Soviet Union,
and the rising star of Soviet chess, Mikhail Botvinnik. The first
part of the match was held in Moscow's Pillar Hall, and up to

2,000 spectators would visit the game every day. Government
functionaries' lodges in the theaters were reserved for them
and they were given the very best hotel rooms. Flohr had never
encountered anything like it. The Czechoslovak master won
the first and sixth games of the match. The bout then moved
to Leningrad, but the audience's enthusiasm there was equal to
Moscow's!
After Botvinnik won games nine and ten, the ovation in the
playing hall lasted nearly a quarter of an hour. The match ended
in a draw.
In both Moscow and Leningrad, Flohr gave simultaneous
exhibitions on fifty boards. He was paid fat appearance fees but
his opponents were first category players and even candidate
masters. Each exhibition lasted over eight hours. After the War,
when Yuri Averbakh asked Flohr about those simuls, the latter
replied with a question of his own: "You had only just played
against Shteinsapir in the Moscow championship. What was the
result?" •� draw," Averbakh replied.
•�ct I drew against him too, but that was the only one of
fifty games."
Well, let's just say that Bronstein, Spassky and Korchnoi
were extremely skeptical about Flohr's two consecutive losses in
the Leningrad half of the match...
After he moved to Moscow and became a Soviet citizen,
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr didn't like to go into detail about
events of that time. However, the grandmaster's friend, V ladimir
Moshchenko, recalled how Flohr once admitted: "Well, I will
say this: I showed my gratitude to my hosts for their hospitality."
And when asked why he was referring to "gratitude" given that
he had written about being depressed after losing game nine,
Flohr exclaimed: "What depression are you talking about?! You
PART 2 : Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School 95
know what I learned from the wise Ilyn-Zhenevsky? Diplomacy!

Is that clear now?... And I really wanted it to be a party for
everybody. Not just for me, but for Botvinnik as well, and for
Model and Ragozin, even for Comrade Krylenko - the head of
Soviet chess. I told Raisa [Flohr's first wife] that I expected to
receive more invitations to Moscow! She liked that, and, if I'm
being honest, so did it."
Flohr was not the only foreign chess player to be stunned
at the welcome he received in the Soviet Union. Capablanca
played in all three pre-War Moscow tournaments and expected
to play in a fourth, planned for 1938 but cancelled with Europe
on the verge of war and the Soviet government focused on more
pressing matters.
Arriving in Moscow and revered like a God, surrounded
by fans, many of them female(!), living in the best hotels and
dining with a carte blanche, Capa's fun time was far from the
life of ordinary Russians and the country's everyday reality.
Anyway, what would have happened had that huge decoration,
which the Soviet Union appeared like to foreigners, opened up
just a little bit so that Capa could peer behind the scenes? The
truth is that when everybody looks at you as a wonder of nature,
when you hear applause every day, and when every one of your
whims is met, you instinctively close your eyes to unusual sights,
even when they normally should ring alarm bells.
During Capablanca's trips across the Soviet Union, he was
accompanied by Valerian Evgenevich Eremeev (1899 - 1 980)
- an aid to Krylenko and one of the organizers of Soviet chess.
It was Eremeev who had maintained correspondence with the
Cuban in respect of his participation in Soviet tournaments.
Having graduated from high school before the revolution,
Eremeev had mastered foreign languages: his strongest, as was
the case with many students of his generation, was French, and
it was in this language that he corresponded with Capablanca.

Several of those letters have survived, discussing the Cuban's
upcoming participation in the tournaments held in 1935 and
1936. But that's not all they discussed. Capa asked Eremeev
to order a fur coat for his next trip, as well as other goods
that were much more expensive in the West. Having crossed
the border into the USSR, Capa cottoned on to the fact that
he should make such requests through subtle hints, which his
Moscow counterparty readily understood. Indeed, this was a
phenomenon familiar to generations of Soviet citizens.
Eremeev believed that this smart and sharp-eyed Cuban
would have a great feel for what was going on in the country
during his travels. During problematic situations Capa would
wink to him knowingly, as though to say "you and I, we know
what this is about..."
However, Capa obviously couldn't understand everything.
"It would be wonderful if the Soviet Chess Federation were
to organize a world championship match in Moscow with a
modest prize fund of 25 thousand dollars," he said to Eremeev
after winning the 1936 Moscow tournament. The problem,
though, wasn't the money, even if 25 thousand dollars was a
princely sum in those days, all the more so for a country which
was running short of hard currency.
At that time, Max Euwe was the world champion, and a year
later, after Alekhine regained his title, there was obviously no
question of holding a match between the Russian exile and Capa
in Moscow. The "white emigrant, renegade and monarchist", as
the Soviet press described him, was persona non grata, so there
was no surprise that the Cuban's proposal was left without reply.
Equally, Reuben Fine first visited the Soviet Union in 1937.
After the Second World War, he recalled about his trip: "Chess
was then, as now, the national sport of the Soviet Union, and
the situation I found myself in was far different from anything I

had been accustomed to. Everybody seemed to play chess, or to
know something about it, and I was recognized and applauded
in the most unexpected places. It was like being a baseball star in
America." (Lessons /ram my Games, David McKay Co., 1958,
p. 1 1 1. )
Emanuel Lasker had visited Soviet Russia back in 1924. He
played in all three international tournaments and, escaping
from the Nazis, he moved to Moscow in 1935.
In his memoirs, Mikhail Botvinnik wrote about the
Nottingham tournament of 1936, one of the greatest
competitions of the twentieth century: "World Champion
Euwe led the tournament for a considerable time, and I found
it hard to keep up. At a critical moment in the battle, Lasker
unexpectedly turned up in my hotel room. ' I now live in
Moscow,' he announced pompously, 'and as a representative of
the Soviet Union I consider it my duty to play for a win against
Euwe, especially as I'm playing White.' At the same time, the
old Doctor bore quite an alarmed expression. 'Don't be silly,
Dear Doctor,' I objected, waiving my hands in the air. ' If you
draw that will be fine.' Lasker breathed a sigh ofrelief: 'Well, that
will be easy,' he said, and then left the room, having shaken my
hand. The next day, Euwe, playing to win, missed a somewhat
straightforward tactical subtlety in an equal ending and lost."
Let's reflect for a moment on the meaning ofLasker's words.
Could we have imagined that same Lasker in, for example,
Hastings in 1895 saying to Tarrasch: "Sieg, we both represent
Germany, do you think I should play for a win against Pillsbury?"
"Oh, come on, Manny,'' Tarrasch replies to Lasker. "If you get a
draw against this American upstart it will be fantastic."
Of course there is no need to comment on this hypothetical
and entirely improbable dialogue, When learning that the aging
doctor, as a representative of the Soviet Union, wondered

whether he should play to win against a rival of his new fellow
countryman, you instinctively think just how quickly a person
becomes influenced by their stay in a strict totalitarian system.
Even a very short stay. Even a wise man and philosopher who
was born free.
Indeed, the isolation of the Soviet Union required a new
way for the masses to express their energy. The phenomenon
of Soviet chess, which lasted for half a century, appeared in this
very context, driven by support at the top of the government,
who saw success in chess as a great propaganda weapon together
with the low cost of equipment. Chess was monitored and
controlled tightly by the authorities and merged into the state
ideology, just like everything else in that bizarre country.
Yet before the Second World War, the political element of
chess in the totalitarian regime was more focused on its use as
an activity for the masses, as well as being an instrument used
to fool foreign visitors. International level chess was limited to
Botvinnik's performances abroad, the number of which could
be counted on the fingers of just one hand.
Bronstein was right when he stated that although the Soviet
Chess School, whose founding father was considered to be
Botvinnik, was established in the 1920s to 1930s, it really took
off in 1945, when the USSR thrashed the USA in the radio
match (15.5:4.5).
It was then that it became clear that the first part ofthe slogan
"To catch up with and overtake the West on the chess front" had
been fulfilled and that the time had come to finish the job.
"We simply didn't allow them to go beyond the opening...
What were they thinking - playing around with the pieces for an
hour a day and then taking on Soviet chess players?" Bronstein
recalled.
Before the Second World War, the Soviet Union hadn't been
a member of FIDE, which the Soviet press at the time termed
"an utterly rotten bourgeois organization far from the interests
of the labor movement." However, after Alekhine's death in
1 946, it became obvious that the Soviets could only gain the
world title by reaching an accommodation with FIDE. The year
after, the Soviet Union joined it.
That same year, the Party Central Committee adopted a
resolution on sport. Alexander Kotov and Mikhail Yudovich
wrote in Sovetskaya shakhmatna ya shko la ( "The Soviet School
of Chess''), 1 958: 1 4
In this historical resolution the Party Central Committee

indicated that the main goal in the near term was/or Soviet sportsmen
to become world leaders in the upcoming years in the most important
sports. An increase in sporting achievements by Soviet pros and
their victories in international competitions now assumes particular
political importance. Each new international achievement of our
sportsmen is a victory for the Soviet wa y of government and the
socialist physical education system. It is unequivocal proof of the
superiority of Soviet culture over the rotting culture of capitalist
countries. Bourgeois sport engenders the basest of passions,
spiritually and physically injuring people. It is dominated by the
laws ofprivate competition and profit. To develop the art ofchess in
our country we have created wondeiful opportunities that chess fans
in capitalist countries cannot even dream about.
Remarkable international victories of Soviet chess players are
a stark reminder of the advantages of the Soviet, socialist way of
14 There was a translation in English published by the Soviets and

reprinted more recently by Ishi Press, but this translation is our own
government that has created historically unprecedented conditions

for the best possible development ofthe people � talents in all walks
ofculture. The plans and efforts of leading Soviet chess players are
aimed at the wide -ranging development of a chess culture and at
proving the superiority of the Soviet chess school.
The book begins with a chapter on Chigorin. It relates

how difficult it was for this one-man band, madly in love with
chess, in Tsarist Russia: "The Soviet people's devotion to this
highly popular and beneficial game in the socialist era has
the strong support of the party, the government and all public
organizations. Therefore, it is far easier for us to develop the
art of chess and to make it part of our heritage. Our masters
dedicate every single success, each theoretical achievement, to
our dear country and people. They know that our great country
follows their performances and wishes them success."
Similar rhetoric is prevalent throughout the text and we can
draw but one conclusion from it: the state would stop at nothing
to make the slogan "Soviet means best!" a reality, including at
top level chess. But in exchange, the state demanded from its
chess players unquestioning loyalty, assigning them the role of
implementers and instruments of its policy.
In his memoirs, Botvinnik wrote frequently about how chess
was discussed at the highest level. Stalin praised the team for
defeating the Americans in the radio match. And in the run up
to winning the world title, Botvinnik was sometimes asked to
predetermine the outcome of games - to support the country's
prestige. The most important example was prior to the second
half of the 1948 world championship tournament held in
Moscow. Senior party officials, including Zhdanov, Voroshilov
and Suslov, tried to persuade him to agree to other Soviet players
losing to him on purpose, in order to prevent Reshevsky from
PART 2: Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School 1 0 1
winning. Botvinnik, though, wrote that he refused to be drawn

into any plot.
Although Botvinnik lost as White to Reshevsky in round 14,
he remained the tournament leader. He then scored yet another
victory against Keres, increasing the distance between him
and his nearest rivals. In that game, the Estonian GM, playing
White, lost a pawn "without sufficient reason," as Botvinnik
wrote in his commentary on the game. Even then, in the rook
endgame, Keres had several opportunities to force an easy draw.
In total, Keres lost four times in a row to Botvinnik in that
tournament, and only scored a win in the fifth game, when the
result no longer mattered. The Moscow tournament's outcome
gave rise to a wave of rumors about match fixing between the
Soviet G Ms. Although seventy years have passed, debate
continues to this day.
At the time, if foreign players asked Keres whether he had
been forced to throw his games, he replied with a stony face:
'½nybody could lose to Botvinnik - he is a very strong player,"
making it plain that he had no intention of discussing the topic.
Actually, although Botvinnik was officially declared
champion on 18 May 1948, as early as the end of April the All
Union Committee for Physical Education and Sport had drafted
the "Procedure for Announcing the New World Champion".
The typed original of that document is kept in the State
Archive of the Russian Federation and it leaves no room for
doubt: 'Mer the final game ends... Chief Arbiter Grandmaster
Milan Vidmar will announce the results of the tournament and
name the new champion with the words 'Long live the new
champion, Grandmaster... of the Soviet Union. Hurray!"' All
that was missing was to write in one of three names - Botvinnik,
Smyslov or Keres. This space was only left blank as a formality:
by then it was already clear who would win. Those present in the
Pillar Hall where the match was taking place were to stand up
and welcome the victor, after which the Soviet women's chess
champion, Elizaveta Bykova, would appear on stage and hand a
bouquet of flowers to the winner. Congratulations would follow
from chess playing Komsomol members, chess playing workers
and Pioneers. 15 A concert would conclude ceremonies. No detail
was left out in the preparations of this propaganda machine.
Two years later ( 1 949- 1 950) , the women's world
championship tournament was held, also in Moscow. Holland
was represented by Fenny Heemskerk. To the surprise of
everybody, she provided serious competition to the Soviet
players and was among the leaders with just a few rounds to play.
It was a cold January in Moscow and Fenny was careless enough
to complain that she had a slight cold. She was seconded at that
tournament by Lodewijk Prins, and this is what he told me:
We were sitting in a hotel room preparing for the next game

when there was a knock on the door. Two duty nurses entered into
the room carrying a stretcher, accompanied by a doctor and an
interpreter. They asked Fenny to come with them to hospital for
an examination, and added that there was an ambulance waiting
for them down below. We were totally shocked and replied that she
only had a cough. "You shouldn 't be so irresponsible about your
health. Maybe in your part of the world, in the West, that 's the
custom, but here in the Soviet Union the health of sportspeople
is fundamental, " the doctor started to insist. "Mrs. Heemskerk
requires an examination, after which the medics will issue a verdict
as to whether she can continue to play. " When I asked the doctor
why she needed an examination, he replied that the examination
15
The Pioneers were the Soviet equivalent of the scouts movement
would answer that very question. Eventually, we managed to

convince them that this was total nonsense, but to do that we had
to phone the Dutch embassy - which turned out to be no easy task
- and we requested intervention at the very highest level to make
sure they left Fenny alone. After that, they forced her to play two
games in a single day. With her nervous system all shaken up she
lost them both.
The title of women's world champion also had to belong

to the Soviet Union. Generally speaking, their play was head
and shoulders above that of foreign competitors, but the results
could not be left to chance and any means to achieve the goal
were considered allowed. Coaches and seconds of the players
sitting in the playing hall opening gave them hints. Soviet chess
players had a slang word for this: "lighthousing". Not only
the chess master Abram Polyak (Olga Rubtsova's husband)
and chess master Yefim Kogan (Bykova's second), but other
coaches too focused relentlessly on the games of their charges,
"lighthousing" at critical moments. "I played a sweet little game
today against Tolush," one of them boasted after his charge
defeated Ludmila Rudenko, who was coached by Alexander
Tolush. Everybody knew what he meant!
Moreover, back in 1946, a radio match was held with much
pomp and ceremony between the USSR and the UK. The
strongest grandmasters of the Soviet Union, led by Botvinnik,
sat behind chess sets in the Central House of Workers of the Arts
in Moscow. Their opponents were merely amateurs, and it was
a surprise that the Brits scored any points at all (the score was
18:6).
Each Soviet player was assigned a messenger whose
responsibilities included transmitting the moves to the radio
room. Young Moscow first category players were selected as
messengers and many of them soon acquired master status. The

match included two women's boards, with Valentina Belova
(later, Valentina Borisenko) and Ludrnila Rudenko facing off
against weak British opponents. Rudenko's messenger was
Viktor Khenkin.
"Vitya [Viktor] was exasperated at the fourteenth move that
Ludmila gave him," Yakov Neishtadt recalled. "' I'm not taking
that crappy move to the operator, ' he declared, and instead of a
quiet developing move he sacrificed a piece on her behalf!" The
game was soon won by Rudenko with a direct attack.
A similar example was in 1952, when the Soviet Union
sent Bronstein and Taimanov as their representatives to the
world students' championship in Liverpool. Bronstein, who
had never actually been a student, had already drawn the
world championship match against Botvinnik the year before.
Taimanov was by then a grandmaster, was close to playing
in the candidates tournament, and had graduated from the
Conservatory several years earlier. Yet both players were in
the right age group! The Soviets' choice had been approved at
the highest level, with Stalin himself signing the players' exit
applications.
Today it's hard to imagine the incredible popularity of
chess at that time in such a closed society. "Master of Sport in
Chess" in itself sounded most impressive, while holders of the
international master title were treated on a par with winners of
international piano contests and grandmasters were revered as
personal emissaries of Cai"ssa, sent on a mission to planet Earth.
This was the grand era of Soviet chess, when thousands
of people in concert halls, holding their breath, spent hours
following the movements of the wooden pieces. Special chess
reports on the radio featured the famous football commentator
Vadim Sinyavsky solemnly announcing "Chess fans, you no
doubt already have a pencil in your hand. Please write down the
position on the board..."
After Mikhail Botvinnik became world champion everybody
knew his name. The first time I intended to leave my home town
of Leningrad, on a visit to Moscow, I received the following
laconic instructions from my uncle, who lived there at the time:
"When you come out of the train station go to the taxi rank,
take a 'Botvinnik', and tell the driver the address." There was no
need for him to explain what he meant: taxis sported a sign with
black and white squares as though from a chess board, and were
known in slang as "Botvinniks".
The tournament in Bucharest in 1953 marked the
international debut of future world champion Boris Spassky. "It
sounds funny, but the Soviet authorities helped me," he recalled.
"The tournament began with a clash between Soviet players, as a
result of which the Hungarian Laszlo Szabo gained the lead. We
then got a telegram from Moscow: 'Put an end to this nonsense
and agree draws among yourselves!' Well, it was convenient that
I'd already scored a full point against Smyslov, but given my
youth and inexperience I think it would have been difficult for
me to achieve draws against Boleslavsky and Petrosian as well.
Yet here was everybody obeying the order from Moscow, and as
a result I became an international master."
This was one of very many cases where Soviet chess players,
even competing in the most run-of-the-mill tournaments
abroad, acted in consort. So it was no surprise that this was the
case in official tournaments. Sammy Reshevsky, who played
not only in the 1948 world championship but in subsequent
candidates tournaments as well, noted that the Russians always
played as a team.
Indeed, the Soviet players didn't bother to hide this fact.
After the candidates tournament in Curacao ( 1962) the Soviets'
coach Isaak Boleslavsky wrote explicitly "Our common aim at

the tournament, which was to ensure that a Soviet player became
the challenger, turned out to be relatively straightforward, as
the first two rounds demonstrated that our main rival, Bobby
Fischer, hadn't prepared appropriately for the battle."
Naturally, it wasn't unknown for Western competitors in the
same tournament to help each other in preparing for games
or analyzing adjourned positions. But this phenomenon only
became pervasive when Soviet players appeared in numbers at
international tournaments. Moral considerations disappeared
into the background, and achieving the set objective became
all that mattered. After my emigration, I was even offered help
by the Soviets (which I declined) in preparing for a game with
Portisch at the Biel interzonal in 1976, given that Portisch was
one of the leaders.
The Soviet championship was held in Leningrad in 1977.
Moscow GM Boris Gulko played in it, not having yet filed his
documents to emigrate but having by then caused a lot of bad
blood among the Soviet chess bosses. Not only had he behaved
extremely independently but he had visited Moscow court cases
against dissidents and, in 1976, had refused to sign the letter
condemning Korchnoi for defecting to the West.
Boris put in a good performance at that tournament and was
constantly among the leaders. Naturally, the head of Soviet chess
at the time, Viktor Baturinsky, wasn't keen on Gulko winning,
and he held long conversations with Karen Grigorian and Evgeny
Sveshnikov on the days they were due to play Gulko to remind
them of the particular importance of their games against him and
of the special responsibility that they bore for the outcome.
"You can't imagine the things they tried to stop you from
winning," Gulko was told by Iosif Dorfman, with whom he
eventually shared first prize, after the tournament had ended.
Mark Dvoretsky recalled: "During the interzonal in Rio

( 1979) Robert Hubner, a rival of the Soviet G Ms, adjourned
a game a pawn down against the lowly-ranked Harandi.
The heads of the Soviet delegation immediately engaged
their team's coaches to help the Iranian player analyze the
position. Even Tigran Petrosian, who was competing for one
of the candidates tournament places, took part in analyzing
Harandi's game."
The same was also true ofcountries in the so-called "people's
democracy bloc". In 1966, Ludek Pachman, at the time a
faithful communist, was a coach of the Cuban national team.
During the Olympiad at Havana, he did everything he could to
help his team reach the main final. He helped other countries'
players analyze adjourned games against Cuba's rivals, while
Laszlo Szabo recounted how Pachman personally asked the
Hungarians not to try too hard against his Cuban team. Players
from other teams said the same. Cuba did eventually make the
main final.
Victory for the Soviet representative was always the sole aim,
which the functionaries would spare nothing to achieve. The
events of Zurich in 1953 comprised just one of many examples.
Nobody cared about sporting or moral factors, and especially
not about fair play.
Before leaving for major foreign tournaments (including
Olympiads, world and European championships) Soviet chess
players would receive a pep-talk from Sports Committee
functionaries. The official speeches conformed to stereotypes:
the emissaries of the Motherland should do everything possible
to return home with gold medals; they were sent on a mission
by the Soviet state; the entire population was following their
achievements and expected nothing short of victory. And
who else if not the state had done everything to ensure that
grandmasters in the Soviet Union lived fairytale lives? Monthly

stipends, constant training camps at the state's expense, free
coaches and aids - Western players could only dream of that.
Thousands of others earned a perfectly comfortable wage
despite not being grandmasters or even masters, simply because
they were involved in chess as coaches, club administrators,
instructors, educationalists, or arbiters. Some of the jobs they
held were strange sinecures that could only exist in countries
where the state was the sole employer.
Moreover, there was a huge contingent of "army chess
players". After I graduated from university and completed
my year of military service, which amounted to playing
several times for the Leningrad military district, I was given
the option of taking extended service. This didn't involve any
responsibilities other than playing twenty odd games per year in
team competitions. Well, I rejected this offer. On the other hand
Mark Tseytlin (the future Israeli grandmaster), who completed
military service together with me in the same sporting regiment,
agreed, and was only demobbed twenty years later with the rank
of warrant officer, having spent those twenty years exactly as
stipulated in his contract.
Tseytlin is an example of many masters and even G Ms
playing for army clubs who appeared in military uniform very
rarely, and sometimes not at all.
When my colleagues from the Soviet Union came to play
in tournaments in Holland I sometimes asked them to guess
how many professional chess coaches lived in my new country.
Answers would vary, Some guessed a hundred, others thought
the Dutch more ambitious and went for several hundred, while
the realists among them said ten. But none of them guessed the
correct answer, which was zero. What, not one? How can that
be? And they looked at me with disbelief.
PART 2 : Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School 1 09
Actually, there was a symbolic salary allocated for one coach.

Even then, the Dutch Chess Federation was worried every year
that it would be reduced in size or even cut completely. But this
salary was no more than an appendix to a normal income, not
sufficient to keep its recipient above the poverty line. Whoever
received it earned their crust elsewhere, as a teacher or in an
office.
The biggest joy any Soviet citizen could hope for was a trip
abroad, and chess players were no exception. Apart from the
fact that such a journey opened a completely new and unknown
world, it could also deliver material rewards. Quite considerable
ones, in fact.
Chess had a privileged status compared with other sports,
whose leading lights traveling abroad (the same was true of
musicians) were entitled to only a meagre daily allowance and
who would try to save every penny when buying food. Even
though chess players had to surrender the majority of their
foreign currency prize winnings to the Sports Committee, the
amounts they were allowed to keep made them feel like they
were the bees' knees.
A good performance in a tournament in a capitalist country
brought the equivalent of several times the annual salary of the
average Soviet citizen. So it's no surprise that just half a point
determined not only the player's future career but the wellbeing
of his entire family. Indeed, this resulted in the concept
"international tournament" meaning much more than just
playing chess abroad, as would have been the case for, let's saY, a
Dutch or British player.
It was mainly this reason, and not personality clashes or
differences in mentality, that led to the often prickly, suspicious
and sometiines openly hostile relations between the leading
lights of Soviet chess. This existence involved visits to the Sports
Committee, phone calls up the chain, letters to the party and

other bodies, and protection from powerful party bosses whose
names have disappeared into the River of Time.
Remembering the rules and customs of that now extinct
state, Ukrainian grandmaster Vladimir Tukrnakov resorts to
expressions understandable only to people who lived through
those times "inspection in the Organs", "allowed to travel
abroad" or "not allowed to travel abroad", "report to the Sports
Committee", "head of delegation", "processing of documents",
"lettersofrecommendation", "quotas ofman-trips", "allocation
of international tournaments", and "shopping", for which time
was always in short supply. Soviet grandmasters would use rest
days at tournaments not for charging their batteries or preparing
for upcoming battles, but for furiously buying up all the goods
of which there was a shortage in their home country - and in
those days, Tukrnakov wrote, there was a shortage of absolutely
everything.
There are a huge number of examples. Tigran Petrosian once
found himself in Paris in passing. Somebody offered to show him
around the city and take him to the Louvre. "The department
store is my Louvre," Petrosian replied. "I need to buy paint for
my dacha!"
I never met a single Soviet chess player, with the arguable
exception of Tal, who wasn't focused on his "shopping". Tal
usually brought a long list of orders from his friends and relatives,
but normally procrastinated until the final day or else asked one
of his colleagues to buy the goods on his behalf, such was his
disdain for the process.
Any foreign trip for a Soviet grandmaster was attractive in itself
(and going to a capitalist country was particularly tasty). Therefore,
the organizers of even the feeblest of tournaments could receive
an unexpected message from Moscow that a grandmaster would
come and play, and such a strong one that the outcome of the
battle for first spot would be settled there and then.
That was the case, for example, at the Asztalos Memorial
in Hungary ( 1965), where Korchnoi conceded just half a point
throughout (scoring 14.5 out of 15), and a tournament in Spain
( 1978), where Alexander Beliavsky scored a perfect 13 out of 13!
In 1973, Mark Dvoretskyplayed in the Moscow championship.
The battle for first place boiled down to him against the only
grandmaster playing, Anatoly Lein ( 1931-2018), who would later
emigrate to the USA. They had a great relationship before the
game between them, almost friends. However, after Dvoretsky
won their game Lein refused even to greet the Moscow master
anymore and took quite a dislike to him.
''At first I couldn't figure out the reason for such an abrupt
change," Dvoretsky wrote. "But then a friend explained it all to
me - 'Now you've won the Moscow championship, your prize
for that was to go to an international tournament in Poland.
There you made, what's that in our money? - a thousand rubles.
Yet had Lein beaten you he would have gone in your place. So
from his point of view you grabbed the thousand rubles from his
pocket. So how should he treat you after that?"'
Yet that was only about a tournament in a "people's
democracy", as East European states were referred to in those
days. The amount that Mark won was the equivalent of ten
months' salary of a junior engineer in the USSR! So you can
imagine what the rewards were to play in a capitalist country!
"If after a trip to America I exchange my dollars for less than
25 rubles each I consider my journey a failure." I heard this during
the Western part of my life from Valery Krylov, the masseur of
the Soviet national basketball team, who, among others, would
accompany Anatoly Karpov to foreign tournaments. While
listening respectfully, I simultaneously calculated silently that
at the "Krylov exchange rate" my monthly earnings in my last

years in the Soviet Union equated to six or seven dollars.
Soviet players going to play in Western tournaments for the
first time knew that they might not get another chance. This huge
pressure and resulting nervous tension could lead to the most
unexpected consequences. For example, nobody expected the
unknown player from Tallinn, livo Nei, to come first equal with
Keres at Wijk aan Zee in 1964 ahead of players such as Larsen,
lvkov and Portisch. Another example was Anatoly Lutnikov's
second place at Wijk aan Zee in 1967, just half a point behind
the winner Spassky. Sometimes, though, the consequences were
the opposite: Igor Platonov put in a dreadful performance at
Wijk aan Zee in 1970 and was never again allowed to travel to a
foreign tournament prior to Perestroika, with the exception of
one held in communist Cuba.
The harshest penalty - the one that chess players feared
the most - was being banned from foreign travel. The strong
grandmaster Ratmir Kholmov, who had put in a number of
impressive performances at the Soviet championships, played in
Poland, Hungary, Yugoslavia and Cuba. But he was only permitted
to travel to capitalist countries after Perestroika, by which time he
was well into his sixties. He never found out why he was banned
from travelling to them. He filled in plenty of applications to play
there and got used to officials telling him "Ratmir Dmitryevich,
you have once again been refused an exit permit."
Another example: Alexei Dreev was banned from travelling
at all for several years. He took this really badly: while other
players who were banned had normally already achieved success
at the board, having gained titles and stipends, Alexei was a mere
fifteen years old when he was suddenly stopped from playing
abroad. This young and highly promising player was forced to
stew in the soup of domestic competitions.
PART 2 : Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School 113
It was only at the height of Perestroika in 1988 that Dreev

was once again permitted to travel abroad. He became a strong
grandmaster, won international tournaments, once even qualified
for the candidates matches, but who knows how his career would
have turned out were it not for those four unfortunate years.
Even the best of the best in the Soviet Union had no certainty
about their futures. A career could be suspended at any time for an
unknown duration, and sometimes would be destroyed entirely.
For example, sanctions were applied to Mark Taimanov after
he lost his match to Fischer 0:6 in 1971. He was kicked off the
country's national team, his stipend was slashed by a third, and
he was stripped of his title of honored master of sport. Yet these
were nothing more than mosquito bites compared with his ban
on traveling abroad and playing in international tournaments.
Even Mikhail Tai was banned from travelling to foreign
tournaments, and more than once. He suffered the humiliation
of being summoned to the Sports Committee and the Latvian
Party Central Committee where he would be ordered, "either
live with your wife or marry your mistress!" Sometimes he would
hear about a ban just as he was about to board the aeroplane.
One occasion was prior to a tournament in Yugoslavia, and
another, in 1968, was when he was supposed to go to Lugano
and play at the Olympiad.
When Tai played in a minor tournament in V iljandi, Estonia
( 1972), taking on eight local masters and three candidate
masters, newspaper reports attributed his decision to his endless
love for chess. However, the real reason was more prosaic: Tai
was subject to one of his travel bans at the time and was simply
glad to play anywhere he was allowed to, even in the USSR.
Also, after David Bronstein refused to sign the anti-Korchnoi
letter 'signed by nearly all Soviet grandmasters, he was also
banned from travelling abroad. Spassky, too, faced problems
1 14 Smyslov on the Couch
after losing to Fischer - he simply wasn't told about invitations

sent in his name. Actually, I could write a very long list of such
cases, and it would be easier to name those players who never
had any problem getting an exit visa than those for whom it was
never a smooth process. It even happened to Botvinnik after
some reckless criticism of Karpov in 1983.
Tukmakov, meanwhile, noted in his memoirs that the Sports
Committee ran a "simple but harsh" quota system for foreign
chess trips. The overall quota, based on the notion of "man
trips", was totally insufficient to meet demand from Soviet
players. The lion's share went to the current world champion
and other elite players, though not all elite players - their
treatment depended on a range of factors, such as their status
in society and their relations with the current world champion.
Then, further down, chances of gaining an invitation depended
in part on connections, and in part on playing strength.
In fact, it was a common occurrence for players to learn of
invitations to tournaments addressed to them personally but
sent to the address of the Sports Committee or Soviet Chess
Federation long after the event had ended or not at all. This
happened to a vast number of players, including the elite such as
Spassky, Tal, Bronstein and Korchnoi.
And even when a master or grandmaster with no enemies
whatsoever among Soviet Chess Federation officials received
a personal invite to a tournament, they had no guarantee that
they would make the tournament. In fact, obtaining a personal
invitation in itself could provoke a negative reaction: private
initiatives were discouraged and tended to arouse suspicion up
the ladder. "Why has grandmaster X got an invitation for the
second year running to a tournament in West Germany? He's
probably met some people there and got some good connections.
No, something's fishy!"
The practice of sending only those players abroad whom the

Federation believed worthy of such an honor existed practically
until the collapse ofthe Soviet Union. "Our other grandmasters are
busy," was the standard answer of the functionaries when Western
organizers expressed surprise that somewhat lesser grandmasters
would play at their tournaments instead ofthe invited elite players.
After Anatoly Karpov became world champion he would be
accompanied to foreign tournaments by coaches and aids. At
first he was accompanied in the list of tournament competitors
by Semyon Furman - a perfectly decent grandmaster but by
then quite an aging one, and definitely not the one invited.
Furman would later be replaced by Yuri Balashov, another run
of-the-mill grandmaster but Karpov's official second during his
world championship matches.
The organizers of the Interpolis tournament in Holland,
one which was held for a decade and a half and where Karpov
always played, were resigned to the fact that the Soviet
grandmasters playing at Tilburg would be whichever ones the
Sports Committee chose to send, and they never even bothered
to object. This happened at many other tournaments as well.
For example, at Hannover ( 1983), where I played alongside
Karpov, we were joined in the competition by Yuri Balashov and
Tamaz Georgadze, another of the world champion's coaches.
Naturally, this was a means for Karpov to recompense his aids,
and at the expense of the state to boot.
However, before sending anybody to play abroad, sports
functionaries had to take the global political situation into
account. What were the Soviet Union's relations with the
host country? And who else was playing in the tournament?
Were there no outspoken anti-Soviet players or defectors
there against whom it was undesirable to play? And might the
players sent there by the USSR also end up defecting? Because
in such politicized cases other state bodies would take charge

of the situation. The All-Union Chess Federation reported to
the USSR Sports Committee, and the Sports Committee was
in the domain of the Party Central Committee Propaganda
Department's Sports Section.
The head of Soviet chess, V iktor Baturinsky, recalled how,
after Korchnoi had made critical comments about Karpov to
a Yugoslav newspaper in the aftermath of losing their 1974
candidates final match, he got a phone call from the Party
Central Committee demanding that he impose sanctions against
this loose-cannon grandmaster. Then, after Korchnoi requested
political asylum in Holland two years later, dealing with the
"traitor" became a matter for the country's top leadership.
In fact, the history of such interference goes back a long
way. Arturito Pomar, at the time a fourteen year-old rising star
who had just won the adult edition of the Spanish national
championship, was to play in the first post-war tournament in
London, in 1946.
The invitation of this shy boy to London led to the Soviet
grandmasters refusing to play. Although TASS had already
officially confirmed the participation of an impressive Soviet
contingent - Smyslov, Boleslavsky, Kotov, Flohr and Rogozin
- Moscow discovered at the last moment that the tournament
included a representative of Spain, with which the USSR didn't
have diplomatic relations, and whose leader, Franco, was
termed the "bloody torturer of the Spanish people".
There were many similar cases in the history of Soviet chess,
and all players selected for an international tournament knew
that until the aircraft reached the clouds there was no guarantee
that the trip would actually take place. Any political event or
unexpected change in the geopolitical weather could ricochet
onto chess. For example, Taimanov was due to become the first
grandmaster from the Soviet Union to play at the traditional

Wijk aan Zee tournament, in January 1957. The tournament
organizers obtained consent from the Sports Committee and
Taimanov began to prepare for his trip. However, the Budapest
uprising took place a month and a half before the tournament,
and Soviet tanks on the streets of the Hungarian capital led to
extensive anti-Soviet demonstrations across Western Europe.
As a result, it was many years before Taimanov got to play at
Wijk aan Zee. Naturally, it was nothing personal. He was just in
the wrong place at the wrong time.
To demonstrate the level at which such matters were settled
in comparatively innocuous times, let's consider a case with
a publication which innocently discussed nothing more than
theoretical variations and opening recommendations: in 1969
Yakov Neishtadt submitted his manuscript for a book on the
Catalan Opening to the Fizkultura i sport ("Physical Education and
Sport") publishing house - the country's leading state publishing
house for chess and other sports. Several days later, an editor called
him back: "You can't mention Pachman in the book!"
Neishtadt was totally frustrated: the Czech grandmaster had
played a large number of key games in the Catalan, including
against Botvinnik, but Pachman had been a key activist during
the Prague Spring and that was far more important. The author
then appealed to an acquaintance who was high up in the party
and had a reputation as a reformer. "It's silly, of course," the
reformer replied. "What could they have against his chess
games? Anyway, let me ask Yakovlev."
Alexander Nikolaevich Yakovlev, who later became a leading
proponent of Perestroika, was at the time the head of the Party
Central Committee's campaign and propaganda department.
Neishtadt was told the result the next day: "Pachman's name
has to be scrubbed entirely from the book."
The FIDE congress in 1966 discussed where to hold the

world junior championships. The Israeli delegate, citing the
success of the Olympiad held in Tel-Aviv in 1964, argued that it
would be hard to suggest a place better than Jerusalem to host it.
"What? Do you intend to hold the tournament in
circumstances where the young players will be in danger just
about every day?" exclaimed the Bulgarian delegate.
"The Bulgarian delegate was enthusiastically supported by
the Soviet Union's representative," Mikhail Abramovich Beilin
- that very Soviet representative - told me. "You can imagine
what happened next. The American came out in support of the
Israeli proposal, but then the Hungarian argued that holding the
competition in such a volatile part of the world was unthinkable.
Then your Dutch guy took the mic, after that - a Pole. You
get the picture . . . The speeches seemed to be split around fifty
fifty, but then we held a secret vote. And the result? All but two
votes in favor of Israel. Those delegates loudly opposing holding
the games in Israel were eyeing their fellow communists with a
suspicious yet ironic look, each feeling embarrassed like nuns in
the starkers," Beilin smiled.
Well, that was nothing more than an amusing vignette from
those days, but events were no joke for the promising Leningrad
master Andrei Lukin. The Six-Day War that happened a year after
Jerusalem was selected for the world junior championship led to
the USSR breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel. Lukin, who
was due to represent the Soviet Union in Jerusalem, had to stay at
home. And by the time of the next championship he was too old. In
fact, Andrei's international career ended before it began.
At the time, the Soviet Union held all the world titles. The
Soviet Chess Federation was both the largest in terms ofmembers
and the most influential in FIDE. The latter was essentially told
what to do by the Soviets.
After the USSR became a member of FIDE, all disputes,

confrontations, boycotts, (both open and secret) were one way
or another the work of the Soviets. There was a huge number of
them. Korchnoi's boycott, even though most Soviet functionaries
denied it existed, was the best known. But there were many others
that the leaders of Soviet sport would instigate or threaten.
Interestingly, at the 1964 Olympiad in Tel-Aviv the Soviet
team found itself in a qualifying group with South Africa. The
functionaries pondered deeply boycotting the match. Not only
did the USSR not have diplomatic relations with the Apartheid
state, but it campaigned for an overall boycott against it. The
team captain, Kotov, was particularly vocal in arguing against
playing, all the more so as the Soviet team had already qualified
for the finals and even losing 0:4 (as would have been the case for
not turning up) would have made no difference. Eventually, the
match did take place, with the Soviets winning all the games, as
it did in all its qualifying matches except for half a point dropped
to Spain. Above all, it was Botvinnik who argued with Kotov,
stating at a team meeting that he would still play his game even
if Kotov got his way.
In fact, the Soviets often threatened boycotts of one form or
another. They knew that the Soviet bloc, with the exceptions
on occasion of the more independent Yugoslavia and Romania,
would support them.
Fast forward to bids to host the 1976 Olympiad. Argentina,
Sweden and Israel all started out as candidates, but the first two
soon withdrew their bids. Haifa was hence selected, and although it
was supported by the majority ofcountries, a large number opposed
it, led by the Soviet Union with the communist bloc in tow.
At the time, I lived just a few steps away from the FIDE
headquarters in Amsterdam. I witnessed Euwe worrying that
the entire event would be cancelled. In the end, he issued an
ultimatum: either the tournament would be held in Israel or

not at all. Well, it did take place, but the so-called '½gainst
Chess Olympiad" was held at the same time in Tripoli under
the patronage of Colonel Qaddafi, where 34 teams took place
compared with 48 at the official tournament.
That said, only four international masters turned up in Libya,
and not a single grandmaster. The Soviet Union considered playing
in the •�ainst Chess Olympiad" too, but none of its grandmasters
professed any desire to travel to Tripoli, and the sharp wit Petrosian
pointed out at a Federation meeting: "We need to send a team of
youngsters. They need to learn all about warfare..."
The Soviets were sufficiently irked to discuss internally
replacing Euwe with a more friendly President, potentially
from Yugoslavia, who, unlike Euwe, wouldn't take a "pro
American" and "pro-Zionist" line. This became clear following
the collapse of the USSR after the discovery of a secret letter in
the KGB and Sports Committee archives addressed to the Party
Central Committee at the time of arguments about the Israeli
Olympiad, written by Pavlov, the Sports Minister and Head of
the Sports Committee.
I don't know what Anatoly Karpov now thinks about those
times, but in 1990, during Perestroika, he wrote: "The idea of the
'Against Chess Olympiad' was proposed, and the functionaries
started to expand on it enthusiastically. There was only one way
to interpret their attitude: crude political intrigue, primitive
socialization of sport, an attempt to split the chess world to
support those functionaries' narrow career interests. Everybody
saw and understood that was happening (this was ten years before
Glasnost!) but to call a spade a spade just wasn't customary."
I too got boycotted. This happened after I won the Dutch
championship in 1973, a year after emigrating. If the Russian
press harmlessly tended to ignore my name, it was no laughing
matter when the Soviets decided not to send any players to Wijk
aan Zee after learning that I was to take part, even though Tai,
Vasyukov and Balashov had played the previous year. I don't think
this decision was ever escalated to the country's upper echelons -
the chess functionaries just preferred to err on the side of caution.
Another secret letter later emerged after Perestroika written by
Pavlov to the Party Central Committee recommending that the
Soviets boycott Dutch competitions for a number of reasons,
including my citizenship and Korchnoi's residence there, as
well as regular participation in tournaments in the country by
the ex-Soviet former woman's world championship candidate
Alla Kushnir, by then an Israeli, and the ex-Czech grandmaster
Lubomir Kavalek, who had moved to the US by then.
It goes without saying that team matches against my ex
colleagues were a particularly spicy affair for me, packed
with events. Just one example: our match at the Buenos Aires
Olympiad in 1978.
As I mentioned earlier, the Soviet team, which up until then
had claimed a clean sweep of Olympiads, had played somewhat
below par this time around and, with one round to go, was a
point behind Hungary. Still, the situation was tense: the Soviets
were to play Holland, while the Hungarians took on a strong
Yugoslav team. Eleven o'clock at night. The phone rings in my
hotel room. It's Mikhail Beilin, by now the head of the Soviet
delegation. He wants to meet me. Then he comes into my room,
number 1920 (earlier I had joked a couple of times to other
players that I shuddered every time I walked past rooms 19 17 ,
19 18 and 1919 before I reached my own) .
Beilin, in a somewhat roundabout way, asked me to go easy
in my game the next day. "Don't forget that you still have your
sister in Leningrad," he eventually blurted out, "and you know
we can work miracles in getting people visas . . . "
"I'm not playing against the Soviet Union, but for Holland,"
I answered jovially yet half truthfully. "I'm not going to get into
any discussions. I'll play properly tomorrow."
I got the impression that Beilin was quite satisfied with my
reply: he had done all he could, and should his team fail to
carry home the gold (which is what happened) he personally
would be beyond reproach upon his return to Moscow. I even
read respect for me in his expression: I wasn't stupid, I had
displayed no weakness, and I knew damn well that his promises
and enticements were worthless anyway.
Three decades later, I was a guest at Beilin's dacha when
he admitted that those were exactly his thoughts at the time...
Anyway, the Soviets had got it all wrong. After Perestroika I
transformed from persona non grata in Russia into persona
gratissima. But I know for sure that this was down to the time
that I had been persona non grata.
***
No involvement of the Soviet Union anywhere bypassed

the political element. Its grandmasters heading off to play in
tournaments where ex-Soviets who had legally emigrated were
slated to play - to say nothing of defectors - always received
special instructions from the Sports Committee.
One example was prior to the interzonal in Mexico ( 1982).
Head of the Soviet delegation Nikolai Krogius insisted on a
complete boycott of Igor Ivanov, who had defected two years
earlier and who was due to play at the tournament. According
to Krogius, the Soviet players had to avoid any contact with
the "traitor". At the final pep-talk at the Sports Committee,
the latter's deputy head, Ivonin, supported Krogius' views:
"Before the game it's best to avoid shaking his hand," said
the former KGB general, though he added that if anybody felt

uncomfortable then shaking Ivanov's hand could be allowed.
The Chinese women's team made its Olympiad debut at
Malta ( 1980), where it claimed fifth place. The Soviet team,
which blew all the other countries away, could no more than
draw with the Chinese. It was a sensational result, and the Soviet
ladies were subject to heavy criticism, all the more so as relations
between the two states were extremely tense at the time.
At a team meeting, Baturinsky yelled at Nona Gaprindashvili:
"How could this have happened, Nona? How?... You're a party
member! Moscow's going to call tomorrow and I'll give you the
receiver, you can do the explaining!"
Delegation heads would also psyche up the grandmasters at
team meetings. For example, at the Havana Olympiad in 1966,
prior to playing the US team - always a particularly important
match - team boss and Central Committee functionary Alexei
Servov asked the grandmasters directly what they thought of
the upcoming battle. Each of them muttered some words in
agreement with the notion that the following day's match was
special.
"Well I think," said the eternally independent Boris Spassky,
when it was his turn to reply, "that we should stop talking this
crap." The other team members burst out laughing and the
meeting abruptly ended.
Yeah, not many were brave enough to speak out, though
Alexander Beliavsky was another exception. When the head of
the Ukrainian team at the Soviet Spartakiad, psyching up the
players, told them: "Ultimately, don't forget that you're here
because we are here," Beliavsky interjected, "No, YOU are here
because WE are here!"
But these were rare examples. Team members nearly always
listened to the functionaries' cliched pep-talks in silence.
Bronstein recalled getting a real tongue lashing straight after

he lost to Robert Byrne at the Helsinki Olympiad in 1952. But
that wasn't enough. Upon returning to Moscow, the grandmaster
was read the riot act: his play had been too gung -ho and, above
all, he had lost to an American!
Even though nearly seven decades have since passed,
matches with the US are even today a focus of attention of the
Russian authorities. While for US players they are just tough
games, for the Russians they remain politically charged. This
can be seen in today's Russian media in relation to any sport,
not just chess.
Russian grandmaster Vladimir Fedoseev, who was born in
the mid- 1 990s and knows of the Soviet Union only from history
textbooks, believes: "chess is a political sport. There have always
been political confrontations, including the USSR versus the
West, the USSR versus defectors, and Russia versus the West.
All important events in the development of chess have been
interwoven with politics. Chess has become an argument in
itself on the political chess board. " 16
In fact, chess only became "an argument in itself on the
political chess board" with the appearance of the Soviet Union.
When world championship matches were contested by Steinitz,
Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine and Euwe, much weight was
accorded to the chess community's view of who would be the
worthiest candidate, whose results assigned them the moral right
to challenge for the ultimate title. Financial and organization
considerations were also crucial, and while personal ambition
played its role too there was no political element in those
matches. It appeared together with the Soviet players.
16
Interview with Izvestia, 2 February 20 1 8
There was an interesting secret communique sent by Pavlov to

the Central Committee on 31 July 1971: an update on the battle
to retain the world title. After a long excursion into the history
of Soviet training methods, the note stated: the USSR Sports
Committee is taking additional measures to prepare Petrosian and
Spassky for the world championship matches. That year, a group
of grandmasters had been charged with analyzing Fischer's
play, and a report with over 500 games that he had played over
the previous 1 5 years had been put together. The country's most
experienced coaches, theoreticians and players had been engaged
(Averbakh, Korchnoi, Krogius, Geller, Bondarevsky and Suetin).
Individual plans had been developed to prepare Petrosian and
Spassky for upcoming matches. At the same time, given the real
balance of forces at the time and Petrosian's 14 years of seniority
over his American adversary, achieving the objective of Petrosian
defeating Fischer at the candidate's matches stage would be very
challenging. Therefore, the note continued, the Soviets would
have to plan for Fischer taking on Spassky.
The political element reached its apex once a real threat to
the Soviets' hegemony appeared. High-ranking Soviet officials
began to worry before Fischer qualified to play Boris. Although
Fischer's outbursts could be portrayed as the eccentric behavior
of a man from another planet, his frequently reported appeals
not to sell US equipment and grain to the Soviet Union caused
the Soviet leadership much irritation. Fischer spoke directly of
Soviet intrigues in the chess world and insisted, after Curacao,
that the candidates tournament be replaced by matches, where
the players would compete on a fair footing.
At the very start of the 1970s, prior to the American's world
title match, the Soviet campaign to discredit him intensified.
Whereas_ the Soviet press previously merely subjected Fischer
to constant criticism, calling him a loudmouth, half-educated
braggart, articles now appeared about the Brooklyn trouble

maker not only in chess publications, but in the main press
too. Condemnation of Fischer became so frenzied that TASS
decided to curb the zealots and, in September 1 97 1 , announced
that Soviet grandmasters had never taken part in intrigues
against Fischer. Then, several weeks later, an article appeared
in Jzvestiia in Smyslov's name in which the ex-world champion
remarked on the American's many positive qualities - including
his immense opening knowledge, clean style, energy, will to win
and bottomless love of chess.
Once the Soviets' pessimistic forecasts about Petrosian's
chances were proved correct, no effort was spared to ready
Spassky. Valery Krylov, a specialist in psychophysical rehab,
recalled: " Prior to the match, we were ordered to collect all
possible writings about Fischer in all countries where any Soviet
entity whatsoever was accredited. These included embassies,
trade representations, Aeroflot, and others. We ended up with
several folders of articles. "
The spy mania, whose apogee was reached in Reykjavik
with the examination of the American's chair, began back in
the USSR itself. Baturinsky recounted that, should anybody
show up at Spassky's training camp, the grandmaster would
immediately sweep all the pieces off the board in order to hide
the position.
The secret plan to prepare Spassky, signed by the player
himself and submitted on 1 7 November 1 97 1 to Central
Committee Secretary Piotr Demichev, contained eight points.
The first stated: " Everything concerning this match should
be kept secret. All participants in the preparation should sign
an undertaking not to reveal their work-place secrets. " Prior
to his match with Fischer, Spassky was provided with the best
imaginable conditions to prepare for it.
The preparations for Spassky's match took place at

government dachas and sanatoriums. Not only experienced
coaches were engaged. The effort spread to picking the brains of
academics and doctors. In fact, the Central Committee ordered
the Sports Committee to mobilize the entire elite of Soviet chess
to support their world champion. The command was passed
down to leading grandmasters to provide their assessments of the
American challenger, highlighting his strengths and weaknesses
and providing written recommendations. Keres, Korchnoi, Tal,
Petrosian and Smyslov all provided their evaluations. Both the
Sports Committee's requests and the grandmasters' submissions
were classified as "secret" - and sometimes as "top secret".
They only became public after Perestroika. Sergei Voronkov
and Dmitry Plisetsky wrote an interesting book which covered
this topic. It appeared in English as Russians Versus Fischer in
2005, published by Everyman Chess.
After losing his crown, Spassky didn't hear the end of it for
years: he was criticized for his maverick behavior during the
time that he was world champion, for not taking his preparation
sufficiently seriously, and for ignoring the head of the Sports
Committee, Sergei Pavlov, who had insisted with the score 2:0
in Spassky's favor that he immediately return to Moscow.
At the post-mortem held by the Sports Committee, an
official raged: "We spend millions on chess and end up with an
American world champion!" Another chess functionary, Boris
Rodionov, piped up in support: "Spassky has forgotten that he's
not just a sportsman but a sportsman in a red T-shirt!"
When Fischer refused to defend his title, FIDE declared
Karpov world champion. But the American tried to make
contact with Karpov, to convince him to play a match on
Fischer's terms. Karpov didn't particularly avoid a meeting, and
negotiations over a match with a multi-million dollar prize did
128 Smys lov on the Couch
take place. Rumors reached Moscow, and the final decision, as

always, was taken at the level of the Party Central Committee
and signed by its secretaries Zimyanin, Katushev and the Soviet
Union's chief ideologist Mikhail Suslov. The party leadership
supported the Sports Committee's view that allowing such a
match would be unwise, instead suggesting that the latter put
together a set of counterproposals together with Karpov that
Fischer would never agree to.
***
However politicized Soviet chess was, constantly supervised

by state structures, it was not only about clan warfare where
mafia laws ruled, where what was key was not with whom you
were friends but against whom you were friends. Soviet chess
was not just a battle for the right to foreign trips and tournaments
and not only about privileges, match fixing and coalitions.
Soviet chess delivered a professional approach to the game
that the world had never seen before. This approach had nothing
in common with players earning a living by playing for stakes in
smoky cafes in Berlin or Vienna, nor with the attempts to live
off chess by the first world champion Steinitz and a handful of
elite players of his time, such as Johannes Zukertort.
Once, a wealthy customer of Simpson's in the Strand asked
Zukertort scornfully whether he was a chess professional.
Although the great player gave a perfectly adequate reply, that
there were two types of professionalism in life - professionalism
of work and professionalism of laziness - such a question
appeared totally natural not only in the nineteenth century but
in the majority of the twentieth century as well.
Society regarded these freaks who had turned a board game
into a means of earning their living with puzzlement at best.
Max Euwe related how, prior to the Second World War, only
Jacques Davidson was brave enough in Holland to come out as
a chess professional, but that the latter suffered great difficulties
both financially and socially. Chess as a profession?!? Apart
from being a risky enterprise, was that really a fitting way for a
gentleman to earn his way? And was it really respectable to tum
an honorable hobby into a job? Even Euwe's winning the world
title changed little in this respect: he continued to work as a
maths teacher in a girls school in Amsterdam, mostly playing in
tournaments during the school vacation. Meanwhile, Donner's
announcement at the end of the 1940s that he was a professional
chess player was treated more as a provocation and an expression
of his desire not to work.
The emergence ofthe Soviet Union had a fundamental impact
on the country's attitude to chess. Vladimir Lenin, while he was
still in exile, had noted that the vast majority of revolutionaries
were those for whom revolution was a credo and not a profession.
Lenin named such a circumstance "amateurish" . Taking power,
he argued, was only possible with a professional approach, and
professional revolutionaries would first need to replace amateur
revolutionaries for the revolution to succeed.
Lenin's idea was proved right in 1917, and the state's new
leadership applied his idea to chess as well. Although the leader
of Soviet chess, Mikhail Botvinnik, was not a pro as such, he
stood out through his focused, professional attitude to the game
long before the computer period, programming himself for battle
at the board. Such training included, for example, practicing
against players who blew smoke into his face in order to learn
to cope with opponents who smoked heavily during the game,
as well as practicing with the radio blaring to cope with noisy
playing halls. No time wasting with post-mortems or visits to the
press center after the game, especially as one might accidentally
give away valuable information. No staying for the concerts after

the tournament's official closing and no reading the newspapers
- journalists understood nothing about chess, after all. And
definitely no sex during tournaments - that deprived the body of
phosphorus, which was so vital for the thought process!
Yet Botvinnik's most important contribution was his method of
systematic, total preparation. Not only for the world championship
but for each game that he faced. Deep study not only of openings
but also of the middle-game positions that arose from them.
Having fallen under the steamroller of Botvinnik's
preparation - in other words, having been crushed with the
white pieces - Yefim Bogoljubov commented after the game at
Nottingham in 1936 that he lost to other players there by chance
but his loss to Botvinnik was NOT by chance!
Botvinnik's fantastic theoretical preparation was key to his
winning the world championship tournament in 1948. His
faultless plans struck down his foreign opponents, who often
found themselves defending dire positions by the time they
got to the middle game. A relentless machine would grind
them under huge pressure from the very beginning. Garry
Kasparov wrote how his teacher's scientific thinking established
an unprecedented approach to preparing for competitions,
including fundamental opening improvements. His systematic
study of opponents' styles and scrupulous analysis of his own
games followed by publication of that analysis so that others
could criticize it was also key. Such a method, Kasparov noted,
became widespread in Soviet chess.
Indeed, it was Soviet players who made a breakthrough in
treating chess as a serious profession. Close creative collaboration,
constant training sessions that often lasted for weeks, indeed days
when they would practice nothing but chess, accorded Soviet
players a clear advantage versus their Western competitors.
This immense octopus-like organism was continuously

refueled from beginner-level and junior chess. Nowhere else in
the world was there such a large number of children regularly
practicing at clubs in the palaces and houses of culture, coached
by high-quality teachers. And while the profession of children's
teacher was long-established in music throughout the world, it
first appeared in chess in the Soviet Union. Often, these coaches
were real pioneers who taught the children to see chess as the
most important thing in life. To be precise, not just the game
of chess, but the entire world attached to it, where a semi-final
of a junior championship had the same ring to it as the greatest
of songs, where analysis of rook endgames appeared to be the
greatest show on Earth, and where the question who was to play
which board for the local, city or regional team was a matter
of global importance. Children keenly felt this obsession with
chess and got infected by it.
The output from this colossal labor consisted not only of
the great achievements of Soviet chess school graduates in
international tournaments and matches. Former Soviet chess
players who managed to leave the country occupied places in
teams of all sorts of countries and many of them went on to
become top class coaches throughout the world.
The "average" level of chess in the USSR was also very
strong. I was only a national master at the time I left, but after
reaching the West in 1972 I won almost all the tournaments held
in Holland, and shortly after I won the national championships.
Was that a surprise? I had studied in the Soviet Chess School and
the results made themselves felt straight away. Having started
almost from scratch in a new country I became an international
master a year later and a grandmaster two years after that.
And even before then, Western players had immense respect
for the Soviets. One of the strongest Dutch masters, the future
grandmaster Hans Ree, claimed more than once that whenever

he visited the Soviet Union he got the impression that any tram
conductor played better chess than he did.
Donner, meanwhile, who had a terrible score against players
from the Soviet Union, never took the plunge to play in the
chess El Dorado, even though he had plenty of tournament
invitations to that country. Maybe he was thinking of what
happened to Frans Kuijpers.
Having reached master level, having graduated and won
the Dutch championship, Kuijpers decided to try out as a pro.
Everything could have gone smoothly, but Frans chose the
wrong country to focus on: the invitation sent on his behalf to
the Dutch Chess Federation came from the Soviet Union.
Well, he didn't come last in his first international tournament
there, but his score was pretty low: three points out of fifteen.
Frans had learned the hard way, and, shedding his illusions,
returned to the Netherlands and joined Philips, where he
eventually reached senior positions. Kuijpers continued to play
chess in his free time, and after that captained his country's
team for many years.
Some people claim today that there was no such thing as
the Soviet Chess School. Well, even they cannot deny that
Soviet chess was organized. And it was that organization, and
the toughest of competition that it imposed on masters and
grandmasters forced to battle with each other, that created
the hegemony of Soviet chess players for half a century. This
hegemony was broken for a short time by Fischer but was
restored after the American left the scene.
Soviet chess, with its undoubted achievements on the one hand
and cynicism and total absence of morals on the other hand, was
the fruit of the monstrous state system, controlling everything,
that was the Soviet Union. And it died alongside that country. The
end of Soviet chess was further facilitated by the appearance of

strong computers. Working with these powerful engines, Western,
Chinese and Indian players proved to be the equals of the best
that Russia offered, and managed to outplay them in the biggest
competitions of all - the individual world championships, both
open and for woman, and at the Olympiads.
Well, let's return to the question ofwho was right among these
two great grandmasters, Smyslov and Bronstein. Was it true that
the leaders of the Soviet delegation in Zurich told Bronstein
to draw with White against Smyslov, thereby surrendering the
little chance he had left of fighting for first place in the 1953
candidates tournament? Did they ask Paul Keres to do the same,
after which the Estonian grandmaster, rejecting their offer, lost
his composure and, with it, the game?
There is no doubt that all of that did happen, all the more
so as it wasn't only Bronstein who told the story. Indeed, there
is no questioning the other facts that he revealed half a century
after the tournament. So was Bronstein right?
But wasn't Smyslov right, even though he didn't actually
answer his colleague's accusations, in pointing out that his critic
had also received privileges from the Soviet government - and
pretty big ones in fact?
Smyslov brought up the finale to the previous candidates
tournament in Budapest, 1 950, where the head of the Soviet
delegation, Vainshtein, was at the same time a high-ranking
security services officer and Bronstein's second. Where Davy's
friend, Isaak Boleslavsky, who had led throughout the entire
tournament, agreed two short draws in the last games and
thereby allowed Bronstein to catch him. So weren't Smyslov's
arguments just as powerful?
In reality, the conflict between these grandmasters was
about much more than the outcome of those two candidates
tournaments. Its solution was contained in that simple sentence

uttered by KGB agent Moshintsev during that stroll along Lake
Zurich. In fact, it reflected the entire Soviet credo, not just in
relation to chess, but for sports as a whole.
When Bronstein began to object to Moshintsev, muttering
something about having the white pieces and his own chances
of winning the tournament if he could just win that game, his
counterparty interjected: What, did you seriously think that we
came here to play chess ?
Even though Bronstein had not expected such a cynical
comment, to which there was nothing he could say in reply, in
fact there had been no need to explain anything to either him or
Smyslov: they both knew the situation perfectly well. And that
is why there were no rights or wrongs in this conflict: they both
found themselves trapped inside a heartless system that took
away everybody's independence, whose instructions, rules and
laws had to be obeyed slavishly.
Naturally, it wasn't just the two of them forced to survive in
this surreal world, but all Soviet chess players. The shy and the
outspoken, the principled and the unprincipled, tough guys and
those who didn't care, those who loved the government and
those who hated it. The mental consequences of having lived in
that bizarre environment remained with all of them, for a long
time and sometimes forever, even if they managed to leave the
Soviet Union. To shake them off was no easier than removing a
birthmark or a tattoo.
And that is why I never asked Smyslov what actually happened
in Switzerland that autumn of 195 3. Vasily Vasilievich also knew
that he didn't have to explain anything to me, that I understood
it already.
PART 3:
The Final Years

PART 3: The Final Years 1 37
March 2002. Smyslov called me, which he rarely ever did,

although we'd spoken on the phone the previous day.
He got right to it. "Need to fix the study, Genna! A tiny
mistake wormed its way into the one I told you about yesterday.
The knight should be on f8 , Genna, otherwise there's no
solution to the study. If they print it with the knight on f4, I'll
carry the shame until the day I die! Everyone will say, ' Smyslov's
coming up with all sorts of nonsense. "'
(The next day, I received an email from Sergey Rozenberg,
a Moscow-based master who was checking all of Smyslov's
studies on computer and helped Smyslov in general. He said he
had checked this study and there was no need to fix it: keep the
initial setup, false alarm.)
''After we got done talking yesterday, I heard that Bagirov
died, " I said tentatively.
"Volodya? Well, may he rest in peace! He was only sixty
three? He was still such a young man . . . He could play a mean
Alekhine Defense, but I fooled him once. By the way, if you
think there's a sideline that solves yesterday's study with the
knight on f8 , then you're wrong, because the queen can slide up
from b 1 to e4. "
Like many others who had reached a ripe old age, h e didn't
really like it when people talked about death or players he 'd often
known his whole life dying. Naturally, this was an unconscious
feeling of wanting to save himselffrom the inevitable, from what
was inexorably approaching. His bitterness at hearing of the
passing of colleagues would be countered with the instinct of a
long-distance runner who had to continue the race no matter
what, who had to suppress his emotions not only in relation
to the passing of his contemporaries, of which by then few
remained, but in relation to the passing of younger colleagues
too.
Smyslov, who had crossed the line into that realm where
"shells are landing closer and closer," instinctively stepped back
from this emotional burden. He adopted a well-known defense
mechanism, which ensured him a long life on planet Earth.
March 2003. I told him that somebody had ripped the
Russian flag off the parliament building the previous day, and
that the old Soviet one, with the hammer and sickle, had flapped
in the wind for a good hour.
"So, you're telling me they ripped the flag off the building,
Genna?" Then, without hesitation, he started belting out a
Soviet marching song:
We have a red flag.

It's on a white pole.
And the bravest of them all
Will carry it on.
The swiftest ofthem all
Will take up the drums.
He'll bang out the clear count
For our march.
Genna, you're too young to have heard those marching

songs. They're stuck firmly in my head. They got stuck seventy
years ago, and I can't get them out.
"I remember one time before the 1974 Olympiad in Nice.
I broke my arm trying to get my car's crank started, but I was
set to give a bunch of simuls in the French Riviera. So, I had to
push the pieces with my left hand; however, oddly enough, my
right hand started to ache by the end of one of those simuls. We
took a trip down to Sainte... Sainte... Sainte-Maxime - I think
that was it. We're sitting at a restaurant one evening, and there's
Simone Signoret at the next table. Her villa was nearby. Everyone
PART 3: The Final Years 139
was egging me on - 'she's a famous actress, an international

celebrity. Don't you want to get her autograph?' Well, I don't
go chasing people for their autographs, but I thought, 'she's a
famous actress, after all.' I went over to her table, and my friends
introduced me. Simone Signoret squinted, her eyes probing me,
and then asked: 'why don't people in the Soviet Union like Yves
Montand?'
"'I couldn't tell you. I'm no politician. I'm just a chess
player,' I replied. Simone Signoret gave me her autograph, and
there were two bottles of premium champagne - a gift from her
- waiting on our table by the time we returned to it.
"...We got your package. Thanks for the Belgian candy,
Genna. Nadezhda loves those candies, but we haven't opened
the box yet. There's a time and place for everything. Thanks for
the bulbs, too. We'll make sure to plant them soon. The ones
you brought a few years back didn't stand the test of time...
Meaning what? Well... meaning we messed everything up. We
planted them right by the street, next to the fence. You know
what our fence looks like. Nah, nobody cut them down. That
wouldn't have been half-bad. Somebody tore them right out of
the ground, roots and all. It's a real shame. Your tulips grew
magnificently.
"I'm heading down to Cap d'Agde soon, but I have to stop
by the dacha first. Our neighbor is building a fence; he wants
to snatch fifty centimeters along our property line. That's quite
a lot of land. That's the kind of world we live in today. Before,
we treated each other nicely. Now we have to file complaints.
He's a young guy, about forty or so. I've received your postcard
with Francis of Assisi preaching to the birds. Thanks for not
forgetting about me, and the postcard is really nice."
. February 2 1st, 2004. I'm in Moscow. The phone rings at
around eight in the morning. " I didn't happen to wake you, did
I, Genna? What time is it anyway? Eight? We just got up. We

don't even know what time it is. It's just that Nadezhda told
me to give you a call. We woke up in the middle of the night.
Nadezhda turned the radio on right away, before I even had time
to cross myself or say the Lord's Prayer. Well, Nadezhda started
listening to the program. She listens to everything. Everything
that's broadcasted, she listens to it. The Vechernaya Moskva
newspaper that I subscribe to for old time's sake, well, she reads
that, too, from cover to cover, as well as a chess newspaper.
Have you ever seen how tiny those letters are? That's how she
takes care of her eyes after her operation, and then she'll go
complaining to the doctor that something's off with her vision.
So, how's that kid Carlsen doing, Genna? I really liked him...
Nadezhda, did you hear what Genna just said? The boy beat
Sergey Dolmatov with a killer attack in twenty moves. By the
way, are you free for lunch today? Why don't you stop by?"
We met at their apartment on the 11th floor of a high-rise
on Kudrinskaya Square, which Smyslov still called Uprising
Square. They had furniture from the fifties, a chaotic dinner
table - a fruit bowl, a table lamp with an icon leaning up against
it, a plain-looking postcard depicting some saint, stacks of the
book he'd just published, plates, and an open box of candy.
There was a chess table off to the side with an endgame position
on the board.
"Vasily Vasilievich, your chess set is rather unsightly, don't
you think?"
"Well, Genna, I'll have you know that Levenfish and I used
this set when we were writing our book on rook endgames. I've
gotten used to it. I have all kinds of sets. You won't believe it, but
I have one made out of sperm whale teeth. It was given to me
in 1957, when I beat Botvinnik. I couldn't tell you where it is,
though. It's probably collecting dust in some closet.
PART 3 : The Final Years 14 1
'½h, Levenfish, Levenfish! He personally awarded me a

Longines watch for winning the Soviet school championship.
I still have that watch around here somewhere. I followed the
1937 Levenfish-Botvinnik match when I was just a kid. I still
remember those games well. Levenfish was in stunning form,
and he played wonderfully, held his own, and maintained his
title as Soviet champion. After all, the Soviet championship
in Tbilisi served as a recommendation of sorts for the Sports
Committee on whom to send to the AVRO tournament.
Nevertheless, Botvinnik got where he wanted to go. Levenfish
didn't have enough friends in high places, which kept him at
home. It must be said that Botvinnik was a young man who said
all the "right" things. By that time, Levenfish was pushing fifty.
Botvinnik played well, you have to give him that, but how fair
was the selection process? Then, of course, Levenfish got barred
from traveling abroad because he launched a full-blown war
against Botvinnik, which was an ill-advised move. That's why
Levenfish relished commentating on the games I won against
Botvinnik in our match.
"When I went to Saint Petersburg for a tournament in 1939,
I watched him with great interest. I tried to model myself after
Levenfish in every way possible. That was the tournament where
Keres and Reshevsky played, too. Officially, it was called a
'training tournament'. He was told it was a training tournament
because no prizes were to be awarded. I remember Levenfish
playing against Flohr, and he blundered terribly in the endgame
and lost, although his technique was still top-notch. One of the
spectators asked him, 'why didn't you play such and such a move
and just defend passively.' He replied heatedly, 'was I supposed
- to play that position all night?' Then he resumed his adjourned
game against Ilya Rabinovich fifteen minutes later and won. He
was in a much more congenial mood after that. He would bang
the pieces on the board during the post-mortem, saying, 'I could
have played this, this or that.' Levenfish had quite the temper,
though. He liked to take risks, unlike Romanovsky, for example,
who was more of a romantic, a teacher, a theorist, always
surrounded by flocks of students. Did Levenfish understand
what Soviet power meant and what kind of state he was living
in? He understood everything perfectly. He understood much
better that many other people did.
"My father and Levenfish studied together at the Saint
Petersburg Institute of Technology. He was the most intelligent
of men, yet he led a life of poverty. He would give talks and
simuls all over the place to make a living. He was even forced to
do so as an elderly man. Levenfish always treated me kindly, and
I loved him dearly. In his final years he came to my apartment
with a stack of papers - his manuscript on rook endgames
- and asked me to check it. We spent many days together,
analyzing and talking, the board lit by that Sevres porcelain
lamp you see there. He was the one who told me it was Sevres
porcelain; I knew it was an antique, but Levenfish identified
the manufacturer right away. I checked his analysis and made
some adjustments, but he was the one who did the heavy lifting.
I insisted on having Levenfish's name come first on the cover,
although the publishers were of a different opinion.
"The only time we couldn't reach an agreement was on
which verb to use when writing 'the king was cut off: otrezanny
or obrezanny. Levenfish had a good laugh at that one. 1 7
"My heart still aches that I wasn't able to go to his funeral. I
had an adjourned game against Khasin, if I remember correctly
17 The first word, otrezanny, is more usual in this context. The

second word, obrezanny, also means circumcised
- I had to finish up on the day of Levenfish's funeral. I kept'

trying to win it but, of course, I couldn't. That's where vanity
gets you, Genna."
Levenfish and Smyslov's Rook Endings has been reprinted
several times and translated into many languages. 100,000 (!)
copies of the third edition were printed in the Soviet Union
alone. When Judit Polgar was asked about her favorite chess
book, she replied almost instantly: "Levenfish and Smyslov's
Rook Endings. Those endings arise more often than any of the
others. Everything is explained so simply in the book."
There's a mat with little white balls on it on the back of
the chair next to the chess table. "They say it's very, very good
for your back. You just sit there, and it's like you're getting
a massage. Our apartment is all cluttered up, and you can't
find anything - it's absolute chaos. Everything's packed
away in suitcases. So many suitcases, filled with photographs,
playbills, certificates, and letters. I have no clue what I should
do with all this stuff. I can't seem to get around to sorting
through it all. You know, Fischer didn't like clunky trophies.
He used to say they just took up space. Bobby preferred cash
prizes. It seems like Mrs. Smyslov's burning something in the
kitchen."
A voice comes from the kitchen: "Nothing's burning in my
kitchen, that's just Mr. Smyslov's imagination. I'm cooking
everything on a low flame."
He would call his wife Mrs. Smyslov and she'd call him Mr.
Smyslov. They sounded like Afanasy Tovstogub and Pulkheria
Tovstogubikha, the married couple from Gogol's Old World
Landowners, transported into 2 1st-century Moscow.
One couldn't help being moved by how much they loved

each other, and how endearingly it shone through their formal
manner, addressing each other always by "Vy" instead of "Ty",

and Mr. Smyslov and Mrs. Smyslov. 18
"Did you break that chair, Mr. Tovstogub ?"

"It 's alright. Don 't get upset, Mrs. Tovstogubikha. It was me
who did it. "
They never had any children, so they were completely enamored
with each other.
"It appears as though this porridge has got a little burnt, don 't
you think, Mrs. Tovstogubikha ?"
"No, Mr. Tovstogub. Put some more butter in it, that way it
won 't seem burnt to you. Or add some mushroom sauce. "
"Perhaps I will. Let 's see how that tastes, " said Tovstogub,
sliding his bowl towards her. "Where would we go ifthe house were
to catch fire, Mrs. Tovstogubikha ?"
"Heaven forbid!" Mrs. Tovstogub said, crossing herself.
"Well, let us just suppose our house burnt down. Where would
we move to ? "
"God knows what you 're saying, Mr. Tovstogub! How could our
house bum down ? God won 't allow that. "
"Well, what ifit did bum down ? "
"Well, then we would move to the kitchen outhouse, and you
would take up temporary residence in the housekeeper 's room. "
"What ifthe kitchen outhouse burnt down, too ?"
"God knows what you 're saying! Iwon 't listen to you any longer!
It 's a sin to speak like that, and God will mete out punishment!"
"Will you leave the poor guy alone, Mrs. Smyslov? He'll help
himself if he wants more. Can't you see his plate's still full? Ah,
18
The Russian equivalent of "Vous" and "Tu" in French
Nadezhda, what's going through that head of yours, why do you

insist on telling Genna your tall tales? You're just like the wife
in that Chekhov story who's chided by her husband for making
no sense. Or like those street kids in the story. 'We are eating
pancakes today. A soldier came to visit us.'
"You know what, Genna? We had a presentation at the
Cosmos Hotel yesterday. It was chilly, and the roads were
slippery. The chauffeur rushed over to help me, and I said,
'N adezhda, save N adezhda.' Yes, no wonder they say that 'hope
dies last."' 1 9 He hugs his wife, her adoring eyes fixed on him.
''Ah, Smyslov, Smyslov," she says.
Me: "Nadezhda Andreevna, have you considered hiring
some help? You're the one doing all the running around."
Smyslov: "You can't be serious, Genna. Russia's a country
of criminals. You never know what's going to happen next - you
should see the horrible things they show on TV and write in the
papers. We're getting too old for all this stuff."
Mrs. Smyslov: "We sold our car, so we hardly go to the dacha
anymore. We used to spend nearly all our time there."
Smyslov: "Now I can't get Mrs. Smyslov to go anywhere,
isn't that right, Nadyusha?"
Mrs. Smyslov: "Why must you resort to slander, Mr. Smyslov?
You're the reason we don't go to the dacha much. You used to
write your books there, back in your study. All your books were
written there. Now you can't see a dam thing, so we don't go
anymore."
Smyslov: "Bishop Pitirim died last year. I dreamt about him
last night. We were on amicable terms. The bishop was dressed as
befits his position, but he was barefoot. I wonder what that could
19 The name Nadezhda is also the Russian word for "hope"

mean? He told me he'd just spoken to Virgil... How fascinating!

I was visiting the bishop at his monastery one time. He brought
me over to the icons, gave me his blessing, and then asked me
to sing something. I sang him the piece about the twelve bandits
and ataman Kudeyar. The bishop had a good laugh. It turns out
that he earned a reputation as a strict and cantankerous teacher
at the seminary, and he'd often fail students. One time, he came
to the lecture hall, and ' KUDEYAR' was written on the board in
enormous letters. Bishop Pitirim was a very handsome man; the
ladies would go crazy over him. We have his picture somewhere
around here. I can't seem to find it, though."
We sat down at the chess table. "My neighbor, an ex
diplomat, gave me this table. He doesn't need any tables now,
Genna, if you understand what I'm getting at. He used to visit
us. Take a look at my latest study. I struggled to get the pieces to
dance for me just right."
We started saying our goodbyes around three. He grabbed me
by the arm and said to his wife: "I want to speak with Genna
in private." My stomach was in a knot. Uh oh! We stepped
out into the spacious hallway. We stopped at his neighbor's
door. "Gennady Borisovich, I'd like to ask for your advice on
something."
I keep quiet, acknowledging the importance of the moment.
"You see my neighbors painted their door dark brown? Do you
think we should do the same, or keep it as is?"
February 26th, 2004. Moscow. "Gik called me yesterday
and asked me to commentate on the game Korchnoi's going to
play against newspaper readers. Korchnoi will earn a fee, while
I'm supposed to be doing it for nothing... Which newspaper?
Moskovsky Komsomolets. Evgeny Gik criticizes Karpov in his
pieces... Why? They used to write books together. Well, it's well
known that Evgeny would do the writing - he was really quick -
and Karpov would put his name on the cover. They started
fighting over something - eh, money, it's all about money now.
People die for metal. You know that money's the root of all
evil, Genna? So Gik wants his cut from a book they published
abroad. Karpov tells him that not only did the book not make any
money, but they lost big, and that they should share the losses,
as well as the profits. Gik didn't get that Karpov was joking, so
he keeps blasting him. He can be downright nasty, too.
"You should have a sense of humor about these things.
Grigory Geiler used to come around quite often. He was the
champion of Geneva, even before the Revolution. He was the
smartest of guys. Our home was open to everyone in those days.
Maizelis, Kan, and just about everyone would visit. Nadezhda is
a true hostess. Geiler. . . yes. He just up and disappeared one day.
It was like he vanished into thin air. He shows up three months
later. We ask him, 'what was going on?' During his last visit, he
told us about a most unfortunate incident. He was sitting on
the toilet. He pulled on the chain and then some lead bar came
crashing down, right on his head. He was seriously injured, but
we were cracking up. Geiler got all bent out of shape over that,
though. My point is you have to have a sense of humor about
these things, and Gik didn't."
April 30th, 2004. "I just put together a pawn endgame
miniature. Do you have a pencil with you? Well, it's just a trifling
little thing. I'm slaving away over my hundredth study. It just
won't click. Oleg Pervakov told me making ten compositions
would be an achievement, let alone a hundred. I thought to
myself, 'how am I supposed to come up with them when I don't
have any inspiration, and I can hardly see anything?' Then the
Lord intervened, and the ideas started flowing, one after another.
"I want them to be complex and elegant. I thought I was
finished, and I then decided to check it on the computer. That
damn number-cruncher found a hole in one spot. One thing

makes me happy - the computer has totally mastered positions
with six pieces on the board, but positions with seven pieces
cause some real trouble, because they require 300 truckloads of
metal. The number of positions grows geometrically, you see.
Remember the wheat and chessboard problem? We're talking
about seven pieces, but if you plug in all the pieces it may very
well tum out that chess is no more than a math problem.
"Evgeny Sveshnikov recently expressed that notion. He
claimed that c5 is the best reply to e4, as White still has the
initiative after e5. He claims that chess is actually just a math
problem and that soon enough the computer will be able to
evaluate any position perfectly. I agreed with him about that,
but when the computer gets to that stage it'll be evident that
human life itself is a math problem, and that the Lord in Heaven
is the only one who knows the answer.
"I've heard that you have a gift for writing, Genna. Everyone
really praised your last book, they said it was... "
"I don't know about having a gift, but I did give you a book
last year, Vasily Vasilievich."
"That's true. Nadine read me a few stories, but now her
vision's going, too. She's going under the knife for cataract
surgery any day now. I'll tell you what, Genna. You keep writing
about chess players. What about trying to write about another
field? I heard some American lady wrote something - she wasn't
even a writer - and she got a fat million-dollar paycheck! You
could make a million bucks, too, Genna, so go for it! Be bold!"
"What do I need a million dollars for, Vasily Vasilievich? Be
bold, you say? What would that get me? A monument to me,
next to Gogol's?"
"Which monument do you mean, Genna? The grandiose
one on Gogol Boulevard or the other one? The one between
tower blocks, by Suvorov Boulevard, if my memory serves me

right? I like that one more. Gogol's sitting there, his head down,
immersed in thought. Gogol's thinking about life. Speaking of
Gogol, do you remember what Nicholas the First said after the
premiere of The Inspector General? "
"I can't remember. I think he liked the show. "
"He liked it for sure. He just advised Gogol to redo the
ending, where the inspector finally turns up and that's it. The
Czar suggested showing how things improved after his arrival.
Gogol paid it no mind, decided against changing anything, and
then left the country.
"...I recently found a letter from Vladimir Liberzon, God
rest his soul. Mrs. Smyslov hid that particular message from me
for some reason. Something about it seemed frivolous to her.
Actually, Vladimir was a romantic, a very candid and honest
man - and he wrote about his infatuation with a beautiful girl
he'd been courting, who'd come to Israel from Poland. Vladimir
was disheartened, because love alone wasn't enough. Women
are calculating creatures. Sometimes you need two million. So
now you know why you need a million dollars, Genna.
"I really helped Vladimir at one time, fought tooth and nail
to get him an apartment in Moscow. Eventually, he did get it.
Liberzon never forgot that, which probably accounts for why he
began the letter with the words, 'My dear friend!' He took us to
all the holy sites when Nadezhda and I visited him in Israel, but
I remember the curative spring best. It was even mentioned in
the Bible. Jesus would sit by that very spring with his disciples.
Actually, I remember the little rickety bridge best. You had to
walk over the crocodiles down below! Horror movies are no
match for what we saw: one guy lost his kippah, another lost
his camera. N adezhda and I plucked up the courage to walk
across the bridge; it took some coaxing from Vladimir, though.
But at the very end, when it seems like they're all gone ..:. seven
crocodiles pop out at you. Good Heavens, that scared the pants
off me. Just imagine if you fell in! Well, they might not touch
you, though. They might think you're one of them, Genna the
Crocodile. 20 You're telling me you've never been? Make sure to
check out that bridge if you find yourself in Israel."
May 2004. Moscow. "You hear our academy members have
rebelled, gone against God? There are two schools of thought -
one for God and the other saying science is everything. That all
comes from excessive pride, obviously. They claim man can do
anything. My doctor friend Ivan Bunin told me that man is so
full of mystery that sometimes doctors have no clue what to do.
"How's your pal Gijssen doing? He broke his hip, didn't
he?... Is he recovering?... What?... He's hoping to come to
Moscow for the Aeroflot Tournament in February? Did you
know Boris Naglis, Genna? [The former head of the Moscow
chess club - G.S.] In situations like that, Naglis would always
ask, 'do you really hope?' Gijssen's a naive man. He'll be lucky
to get off those crutches one day, but he's already thinking about
tournaments and such.
"...The papers are saying that the Hotel Moskva has been
knocked down, and they're going to keep the lot empty. There's
supposedly a wonderful view from there. I remember trams
used to run through there, and all sorts of peddlers would gather
at Okhotny Ryad. That was a long time ago, back in the late
twenties.
"What do I do all day? Sit at the chessboard, more than
anything. I decided to keep going after the hundredth study.
20
Gena (rather than " Genna") the Crocodile was a character in a
famous Soviet children's book and cartoon
I already have my hundred and first one. Denisov, a friend of

mine who lives in Frankfurt, recommended I make one hundred
and one compositions - he says it's a good number. Yes, it is a
good number, but I have some ideas for my hundred and second
study, too, since I've been devoting a lot of time to chess lately.
Want to write it down? It's a pawn endgame - both sides queen
and then White's queen climbs down the ladder, as it were.
"What's new in the chess world? Did lvanchuk really fall
off the stage? You don't say! That's happened to singers, too.
Lyubeznov fell off the stage once. Another time, this heavyset
woman - I can't remember her name - had the same thing
happen. She was performing in The Queen of Spades. There was
a hole in the stage. Somebody just covered it up with plywood,
a rush job, but the platform collapsed. What was her name? The
audience had no idea what was going on. They probably thought
it was all part of the director's plan.
"What about the world championship match? You say
Kasparov demanded guarantees from Dubai? Guarantees?
How can they give guarantees? Najdorf once said to me, 'what
kind of guarantee can Buenos Aires give? Sure, they can give all
the guarantees they want, and so what?'
"Do you know what I heard? Jacob Murey wants to stay
in Moscow indefinitely. He went to the police station. The
officer took a look at his papers and said, 'so, you want to
stay in Moscow? Well, I should arrest you immediately for
violating our immigration laws.' Jacob had been staying with a
distant relative, and he hadn't registered with the authorities.
Murey turned to Karpov for help. He said, 'Jacob, 500 dollars
should do the trick in Moscow.' I don't know how it ended,
though."
July 22nd, 2004. "You know, whenever I think about Fischer,
I start feeling sorry for him. I'm afraid he'll get sent back to
America. He just always needed someone who'd be there for

him, take care of him, look after him. He was always a Don
Quixote, if you see what I 'm getting at. I came up with this study
that I want to dedicate to Bobby. Maybe that'll help him out.
What do you think?
" . . . So, Genna, you just finished reading Anna Karenina, for
the first time as an adult. Well, I don't care for that book. Too
much pathos for me, and that actress, what on God's Earth
was her name? She performed at the Moscow Art Theater.
Golovleva? Nah, that's not it. She was over the top. I don't care
for Dostoyevsky, either, although Mrs. Smyslov recently read
me his short stories. That's a whole different Dostoyevsky, you
know. "
August 22nd, 2004. "Well , Genna, is Fischer free from
the Japanese jail? Did you see the letter Spassky wrote to the
American president on his behalf? I didn't like that letter,
Spassky is just pulling our leg, and the ending was fit for a jester.
I acted differently. My study in the seventh issue of 64, with the
knight on h i , symbolizes Fischer, backed into a comer. The
republican party's symbol is the elephant on a l . 2 1 The democrats
are donkeys. I dedicated that study to Fischer and sent it to the
email address on his website. I don't know whether they'll post
it or not, but still. At first, there was no knight on h i , but Oleg
Pervakov, my advisor and judge, said, 'that's old hat'. Then a
wave of inspiration hit me, and the knight planted itself on h 1 .
I just realized - that was my 103rd or 104th study, I think. As
for our recent talk on philanthropists, van Oosterom sure is a
philanthropist. Well, I'm practically one, too, because I didn't
get a single cent for that composition.
21
Bishops are called "elephants" in Russian
"I remember playing with Boleslavsky in Stockholm. Some

philanthropist coffee king who was a passionate lover of chess
ran the whole thing. There was a philanthropist involved in
Rishon LeZion, too, a lawyer in a wheelchair. He showed me
some pictures from my simul he played in at the 1964 Olympiad.
'Didn 't we draw ?' I asked.
'Nope, you won,'he replied.
'That can 't be r ight. '
'You offered me a draw but I declined it, and then you wound
up winning. '
"You know, one lady called me the other day and said she
wanted to talk to me, Spassky, and Averbakh about a movie on
Alekhine that she wanted to make. I told her they'd already shot
a film about him. She said they wanted to do a documentary.
She called Spassky. He said, 'I'm a Frenchman. You're asking
the wrong guy.'"
November 30th, 2004. "My father, Vasily Osipovich, taught
me not only chess and music, but spirituality, too. He was born
in 188 1 in Astrakhan on the Volga and only moved to Saint
Petersburg to study at the institute. It's not only Levenfish
he played with, but Alekhine as well. He even beat him once.
That was in 1912, the game was published somewhere. That
was his greatest achievement in chess. He played well, but his
personality didn't really suit chess: he was very emotional and
got so worked up after losing that he would stay awake all night,
tossing and turning. The scoresheet of his game with Alekhine
was kept by the chess master Nikolai Grigoriev, but I've no
idea where it is now. My father was passionate about music,
and when he was young he sang before Chaliapin and was even
praised by him. But in those days singing and chess weren't
considered professions. They were fine as hobbies, but not as
serious occupations ... Then he moved to Moscow and began to
work as a financial manager. First at the Gosznak factory. His

monthly salary was 200 rubles, 200 before the revolution and
200 after. Of course, those were really different currencies, if
you see what I'm getting at, Genna...
"He had a difficult time in the mid-1930s, when they
printed some defective securities. Nearly all of his colleagues,
old pros, met a cruel fate, but Dad got off lightly - he was
simply sacked and couldn't get another job. That went on for
two years and we lived really, really frugally. We even wound up
selling our piano in 1936 ... We'd played on that piano together
with four hands, and when my father sang I would accompany
him. But then he got some luck: he got a job at the Stalin
factory, then at the Likhachev factory. He worked there until
the war began. By then I was playing in adult tournaments,
either for the Kry/ya sovetov team or for Torpedo. My father
was my most loyal fan. I really took after him, both in terms of
personality and my hobbies. Though I loved my mother dearly,
too. She came from a very poor family, her mother brought up
five children. My father first met her in Saint Petersburg when
he was a student. Then she lived with my brother, he's two
years older than me, born in 1 9 1 9. He graduated during the
war from the Moscow Communications Engineers Institute,
then he lived in Leningrad and left service with the rank of
colonel. I can't say that my brother and I were that close, but
we got on fine. It's our wives who had problems with each
other. Well, you know women, Genna. If there is something
they don't like then one thing leads to another and the matter
gets out of hand...
"You know, I keep thinking about all them now -
RomanovskY, Lisitsin, Grigoriev. I was really close with Grigory
Levenfish, God rest his soul! Those guys didn't just play chess
well. They also had a way with words. It was uncanny! I have the
impression that I lived in chess's golden age. In those days, the

whole country followed games and placed bets on the outcome of
individual games, even individual moves. You recently remarked
that a good number of today's grandmasters don't much care
for the game and they only keep playing because they can't do
anything else. Our chess ancestors sure had their doubts at times
- what plan to choose? Is a pawn worth the initiative? They'd
argue about blockades and such. Nevertheless, they loved chess,
because they treated it like a creative pursuit.
"Has the game changed? Have times changed? Computer
chess? Let me say that the computer is a brilliant invention, but
it has its advantages and disadvantages, Genna. Computers have
brought great analytical clarity to the game, but they've destroyed
its spirit, the clash of personalities. It used to be so interesting
- people had their own personalities and styles. Botvinnik was
like this, Tai was like that, and Geller was something completely
different.
"What about compositions? You spend an enormous amount
oftime and energy, not to mention inspiration - a fickle creature
- to come up with a puzzle or study. Maykov once wrote, 'don't
think about solving the divine mysteries of harmonious verse
by looking at wise men's books.' The computer clicks through
puzzles like it's as easy as one, two, three.
"Take Loyd's puzzles, for instance. The computer solves
them in a few minutes simply by shuffling through all the
possible moves. I'm still waiting for it to find one variation on top
of another and create a circular reference that clogs the whole
system. All this information will suffocate the computers, and
their transformers will short out. I remember paying Botvinnik
a visit at his lab in the Central Chess Club. Botvinnik was trying
to make his own computer, too, in order to crush humans. I
wished him luck, but only for after I'd breathed my last.
"Do you know who came up with the first computer?

Jonathan Swift! You remember he had this contraption with
the alphabet that recorded everything. They talked about
how they could break down any thought that way. Naturally,
that's disconcerting. Breaking down variations - is that the
fate of chess? This innovation may be useful, but it sure is
demonic. Now readers can refute Kasparov's analysis with their
computers, and they'll keep doing so. If the computer isn't a
demonic invention, but rather it's a human one, then a natural
question arises. Who invented man himself?
"I think it was Odoyevsky who wrote about how somebody
helped man, and man not only rid himself of all his problems but
he also received the gift of being able to see what was going on in
other people's souls. He was jumping for joy! How did it tum out
in reality, though? He could see everyone's inner mechanisms,
their very fiber. He was a clairvoyant, which terrified him. What
about girls? Are they geniuses of pure beauty?
"You're saying Lilienthal 's ninety-three already? That may
be a record. I remember meeting Edward Lasker at a New York
chess club when he was 96 or 97. He was a sprightly man, but
he didn't make it to a hundred. We recalled his game against the
other Lasker - Emanuel - when Eduard was up the exchange
and a pawn but could only manage to draw.
"Sergey Rozenberg checked my two knights-versus-pawn
endgame against Lilienthal in our 1941 game. According to
Troitsky's theory, my position is lost, but I found all the right
moves and deftly tucked my king away on the only safe square.
The computer approved of my play. The computer disparaged
my game against Siladi in 1960, however - when I had an extra
pawn that I eventually promoted. It says there was a mate in 34,
or in 49 after my move, then the evaluation goes back and forth
between a draw and a win. The machine can play endings like
that flawlessly. So, the champion must repent at the end of his
life - he thought he played well, but the stupid machine has a
different view on things.
"Well, I'm writing a book, my sixty best games. I was
reviewing my game against Savon. Guess what? The computer
found so many mistakes - one after another! So Rozenberg
tries to placate me: 'You cannot expect to have played a game
without a single mistake.'
"The thing is, I used to consider that game one of my best
ever. Yeah, the computer can get the better of anyone now. I
commentated on my first win against Petrosian. I wrote that
if you make this move, then that move follows, and then the
blockade is intensified and a win follows shortly thereafter.
Then Ken Neat checked everything with the computer and
wrote that the computer suggests playing this and that, and then
it's unclear how to intensify the blockade. So, I had to write that
I do this, then he does that and so on, and I'm still a long way
from winning.
"What's going on in the chess world?.. . They arrested
Azmaiparashvili?... Really? Right at the Olympiad?... At the
closing ceremony? What did he do?... Nah, Genna, they won't
release him that quickly. This is serious business. I guess Zurab
fell prey to hubris. What does the commandment about false
pride say? Seems like he just got a big head. This is serious
business. He should repent, and maybe he'll be forgiven."
December 2004. Mrs. Smyslov answered my call. "Have you
heard the latest news, Genna? Do you know who he showed up
with?... You don't?... With her! She was dressed to kill. I didn't
see her myself but that's what everyone's been saying. What do
you mean, he couldn't have?..."
Smyslov picks up the phone. "Your conversation with
Nadezhda sounded like that piece in Moskovsky Komsomolets.
There were three lines on the Calvia Olympiad, but the article
with a heading in huge letters and pictures of Azmaiparashvili
in handcuffs took up almost the whole page. You and Nadezhda
are just like the rest of them. Anyway, that's the way it's always
been and always will be. What does the public want? Scandal,
idle talk, and gossip.
"I remember there was a checkers master, Kuptsov, at
the Club. He was the one responsible for simuls. He would
occasionally ask me to play simuls. He would play a checkers
simul at the same time, too. I'd move my pieces and really be
sweating, while he'd lap me three or four times, winning game
after game. But that's not what I wanted to say. The real fun
would start afterwards. The organizers would take us into an
office, and the table would be all set with beverages appropriate
for the occasion, too. Getting to talk over dinner was more
important for the organizers than the simuls themselves. W hat
am I getting at? The public finds the gossip more interesting
than the play. There's nothing new about that.
"What's allowed these days? Nowadays, you can bow out ofa
tournament the day before. Why is that? Oblivion. . . it's all faded
into oblivion. Do you remember Saltykov- Shchedrin's A Wise
Minnow?... You don't? Well, that's what the fable is about. The
minnow was led to a pike, and the pike asked him in a severe
tone:
'I've heard that you 've been telling everyone that fish must not
feed on other fish. Is that right ?'
'Yes, 'answered the minnow. 'That 's a law. '
'You don 't say. Summon the chub!' shouted the pike. They
summoned the chub.
'Is it true there 's a law barring one fish from feeding on another ?'
the pike asked.
'There certainly is, Your Majesty, ' he answered. 'But the law
has/alien into oblivion. '
"Well, we're in the same boat. Everything's fallen into

oblivion. Oblivion, Genna! And fateful passions are found
everywhere and there is no defense against fate.
... "Why are we still at the dacha? Well, it's not all that cold
yet. We've already turned on the heating, though. It's autumn.
It wasn't just Pushkin who noticed it, ordinary people do too.
Did you see the article about me in Shakhmatnaya Nedelya with
studies by me and V isokosov? Why is his name on them? All he
did was to suggest pushing a pawn from a7 to a6 somewhere, and
now they've attributed that study to both of us. Oleg Pervakov's
not like that at all. He's more than willing to give some advice
but he doesn't need any credit.
"I have to finish up the foreword to my book. What did
Pushkin say? 'Once signed - it's out ofmy mind?' ... Oh, that was
Griboyedov? A fan of mine from Germany, a Pushkin scholar,
has got me all mixed up. He calls me frequently. According to
him, Pushkin, not Griboyedov, wrote Woe from Wit. Pushkin
needed money since he'd often lose big at cards. Supposedly,
that's how he paid off his debt to Griboyedov. Yershov's The
Little Humpbacked Horse and Lermontov's Motherland are his,
too, he claims. My fan says I look like Pushkin. Of course, it's
nice to hear things like that.
"Mrs. Smyslov has been reading your book to me. She just
read the part about Botvinnik. You did a good job on him. It was
quite poignant."
I try to hit the same tone as him. "It was quite a lively
portrait."
"Oh no, it wasn't about being lively, it was about the
poignancy. Botvinnik was a lonely man towards the end there.
He would take the trolleybus or walk to work at the Central

Chess Club. He could hardly see anything. I once asked him,
' Mikhail Moiseevich, aren't you scared?' He replied, ' I know
every little pothole and bump in the road to the club.' He
would always give me tea and sandwiches - on Borodinsky
bread, because he really like it - whenever I visited him at
the Club.
"His mathematician employees were very skeptical of his
ideas, so he would change them often. Well, as time showed, his
ideas were a bit outlandish. As you may know, Botvinnik didn't
deviate from his principles. He would visit us at our dacha. He
really liked cabbage pies. Nadezhda has a divine touch with
those pies, as you know.
" I would go to his dacha, too. One time, I spent four days
there and played a few practice games. How many? Three, I
think. I didn't take them as seriously as I should have, while
Botvinnik gave it his all. How did it go? I lost one game and
drew the other two. We called it at that. Botvinnik fully realized
I was just messing around.
"I know that Geller spent some time at his dacha and played
some games. But he nearly starved to death there. Botvinnik
had a strict regimen you see, with lunch and dinner at set times.
Geller liked his food, though, and it wasn't enough. At first he
coped by snacking on rye bread croutons at night, but he soon
couldn't take any more and left. His wife Oksana told me that,
but women sure love to exaggerate. So I don't know the real
story.
"One time, we went to his dacha. The door slammed shut,
and the key was inside. He started reprimanding his wife,
' Ganna, how could you?' Then he went somewhere, produced
a tall ladder, clambered up to the attic, and opened the door
from the inside. I remember saying to him, 'Yeah, Mikhail
Moiseevich, you've got it made. With that ladder you could go

and visit girls in their homes!'
"Botvinnik didn't feel any job was beneath him. I would see
him with a spade and with a broom. He would meticulously
sweep the walkways at his dacha. He once said to me, 'Vasily
Vasilievich, your car looks a tad dirty. Let's give it a good wash.'
He had already picked up a cloth and was ready to wash my
car. I had to pry the cloth out of his hands by force and promise
that I would wash my car myself at home. He could hardly see a
thing at the end of his life, though. I remember crossing the road
with him in Linares. I would take him by the arm - although
I couldn't see much either - and say, 'it's green. Let's go!' I
remember thinking to myself. 'If I get this wrong, two ex-world
champions will bite the dust in one fell swoop.'
"Botvinnik was so proud when they gave him an honorary
doctorate in Italy - they put the robe and hat on him and all.
Botvinnik and I played three matches, after all; you can count the
months I spent sitting across the board from him. You know, I did
Botvinnik a favor and got him the Gioachino Greco plaque. When
Alvise Zichichi - what a good man, God rest his soul - gave me
one I said to him, 'you know, Botvinnik wrote about Greco' and I
showed him an excerpt. That's how Botvinnik got his plaque.
"Botvinnik would get upset with me. What for? Because I
didn't sign those letters against Kasparov. It was easy for him
to talk - he wasn't an active player anymore. What about me,
though? If I had taken a stance then I would have stopped
getting tournament invitations. You're out for a few months,
and people forget your name, especially if you're not twenty
years old any more. You decline one invitation and then another.
Soon enough, nobody can be bothered inviting you.
"Do you remember the Baron in Gorky's The Lower Depths?
He used to change his suits frequently. Well, I can only reminisce
about how I varied my tournaments all the time. You can't be

too picky these days.
"I have just completed my one hundred and fifth study - it
will be number 41, after the 64 published ones. Want to see it?
As soon as I come up with them I give them to Oleg Pervakov
to check. Then he plugs them into the computer and tells
me the result. I was at the Danilov Monastery just the other
day. The patriarch there told me the church allows chess and
acknowledges its value. I guess my life wasn't wasted, then. "
April 2005. "Things are tense at the Federation. Nobody
knows how it will end. As Barreras, [a Cuban Chess Federation
functionary - G. S.] would say, 'who knows?' No matter what you
would ask him, that's what he would say, 'who knows?' Same goes
for us . . . How am I holding up? Well, I'm wrestling with time and
decrepitude. I take a handful of pills - including "Umnik", the
one you make in Holland, 22 every morning. The doctor probably
thinks it'll make me clever. Actually, Genna, "Umnik" is for my
adenoma. Those are old man problems, though. You're too young
to know about that stuff. My heart's in good shape, at least. The
doctor says I have the heart of a young man, but the chest pains
are really getting to me. Where'd they come from? I didn't use
to have any chest pains. Now I'm on a diet. For my eyes. I don't
know whether they will get better. At least they aren't getting any
worse . . . What's my diet? I can only eat organic food. I have to
avoid anything processed - it's all bad for you.
"Salami, hot dogs, even chicken's no good. After all, God
knows what they feed chickens these days. No milk or sour
22 The medicine is actually called Omnic. The expression used by

Smyslov, somewhat ironically, is a Russian word meaning "clever
boy"
PART 3 : The Final Years 163
cream. None of the stuff I used to like. All kinds of vegetables

are good, though. Like zucchini, tomatoes, and eggplant. Just
add a little garlic for flavor, fry it with some onion on sunflower
oil on low until it's good to go. It's a stupendous meal! Mrs.
Smyslov makes it for me, and it's scrumptious. Make sure you
get baby zucchini, Genna, that way you don't have to peel it -
it's better for you, too.
"Nah, I haven't been drinking at all lately. Experts say
that vodka is actually good for you, but I don't really drink it,
because I don't have anyone to drink with. Only when you drop
by in November... Mind you, the other day I had a shot in a
restaurant, at some party. Nadezhda nipped that in the bud and
started pouring me juice. Well, she thought it was juice. But
actually, it was red wine. It wasn't half bad, either. You know, I
got so sloshed I could hardly stand up from the chair and I was
stumbling all the way home.
"My leg has been acting up lately. I'm having trouble
walking. The doctor gave me some exercises to do, some kind of
gymnastics. I said to him, 'gymnastics? I'm an honored master
of sports, and you want me doing gymnastics?' Ogurenkov
himself trained me! You know how that happened? In the early
1960s, I was in Cuba, and it just so happened that the Soviet
Union's great boxer, Evgeny Ogurenkov, was staying in the same
hotel. I liked the guy a lot. He was kind and gentle, although his
sport was rough. I guess he took a liking to me, too. We became
friends, and then he invited me to the stadium once we got back
to Moscow. I went to see boxers training and I saw how nimble
and observant they are firsthand. Well, Ogurenkov offered to
teach me the basics of boxing. What's the shortest distance
between two points? A straight line. Well, punch straight!
Ogurenkov pointed out, though, that I was too kind-hearted,
and I lacked the aggression it takes to be a boxer.
"Some Kalmyk researchers from the Roerich Institute paid

me a visit recently. You know what they said? Can you guess
who I'm the reincarnation of? Alekhine? Nah, Alekhine is
Kasparov. Tarrasch is Huebner. I'm Petrov. The one who came
up with the opening, though he was actually a civil servant. Do
you remember Petrov's puzzle? The Retreat ofNapoleon I from
Moscow.
"Money's all that matters in Moscow nowadays. Rubles,
rubles. Now all anyone asks for is rubles - rubles, and lots of
them! I picked up some buckwheat the other day. It used to be
four rubles. What does it cost now? 1 0 rubles? Try 17! So I went
home all upset, and then Nadezhda said, 'go and buy a pack.
It's not like we can't afford it."'
September 30th, 2005. "You know, Genna, the cats are
taking over. They've engulfed the whole house. We can't live
like this. First, a female cat showed up. Then she brought a
tom cat home. They were huge. Then kittens came out of the
woodwork. Then the cats left, but the kittens stuck around.
Another cat just showed up; she's all white and fluffy. Nadezhda
named her Belka.23 She immediately became my favorite.
She's so gentle, and those eyes of hers are like little buttons.
Those other two street cats would do their business everywhere.
Now Nadezhda has to scoop it up, even though she put some
newspapers down for them. We recently discovered that the
curtains in our dining room were wet, and they had an aroma, if
you know what I mean, Genna. So, we could only keep Belka.
We came back from Moscow one evening, and she was sitting
23 Belka literally means "squirrel" in Russian but is a popular name

for pets, especially as the first two Soviet dogs to survive being sent
into space were named Belka and Strelka ('½rrow")
on the windowsill, waiting for us. The whole house was spick
and span - she was in charge, after all - if you don't count the
buckwheat or pearl barley spilled all over the floor. She'll come
into the bedroom in the morning, first over to Nadezhda's side
and then mine. It's like she's saying, 'come on, I want to play! '
" .. . Are you heading to Israel soon? Well, send my regards to
Levant and to Boris Gelfand. He visited us awhile back. What?
He has a new addition to the family! You hear that, Nadezhda?
Boris' wife just had a baby girl.
"Well, we have a new addition, too, one that keeps us from
going to Moscow. Our kitty is marvelous. Those other cats will
do just fine out in nature. They have some nice coats on them.
Maybe someone you know in Holland wants cats? I asked the
Central Chess Club to take the cats. You know, they're doing all
sorts of repairs, gearing up for the Russian championship. They
said, 'we've already got forty cats roaming around the club.'
They have a restaurant there. They have tons of mice, because
the cats are lying down on the job. I like having them and all, but
they can be quite a handful! When I told my friend our epic tale,
he said: 'Vasily Vasilievich , we live in a fascinating world. There
are so many interesting things going on these days, and you're
going on about your cats.'
" Say, Genna, do you know how the chess club on Gogol
Boulevard came to be? You don't? Let me tell you. One of
my neighbors in our apartment block by Uprising Square was
none other than Mikhail Posokhin, Moscow's chief architect.
He proposed - at my urging, by the way! - that chess players
be provided with a facility downtown. Khrushchev himself
appointed Posokhin chief architect and spoke in favor of the
project. So, as you can guess, everyone supported Posokhin's
initiative. Moreover, chess players were in the public eye in
those days. We had all the titles. As for me, God helped me to
draw my first match against Botvinnik, and then I wound up

winning the next one. "
December 1st, 2005. "We will be celebrating New Year at
the dacha this year. We used to do that sometimes, but now
with Belka, going to our apartment in the city for the winter
isn't an option. She became my favorite right away. She's so
picky - I bought her a liver pate special. I don't touch it but
she loves it. Other than that, she only eats special cat food. We
tried to give her some fish, and other stuff, too. She'll only go
for that cat food, though. One time, I dropped my keys, and
she started playing with them. She walks all over the table. You
can't leave anything out. Or she'll chase after a ball of yam on
the patio. Or she'll dart outside and shoot up a tree! She has
room to roam here; our apartment's too cramped. If she were to
start racing around she'd knock all of our dishes down - maybe
even the porcelain ones, Heaven forbid! She's a real beauty -
mostly white with patches of beige on her back and sides. Her
eyes shimmer. I took her for a walk today. She sprang on the
fence and lifted her tail; she's a real beauty, and the neighbors
couldn't take their eyes off her. She sure can fly up trees! Maybe
our Belka is a lynx? Do you remember what Goethe wrote:
' God has made the cat to give man the pleasure of caressing the
tiger.' [Actually, it was Victor Hugo who wrote that - G.S.] We
have a friend in Germany. When he was visiting us at the dacha,
he looked at Belka and said, 'yeah, she'll be smarter than you
one day. ' Then he added, 'and smarter than me, too, ' probably
to soften the blow."
December 12th, 2005. "How's my life? Now our life solely
depends on our charming girl, our Belka. She sets our whole
schedule - that's why we're not going back to Moscow . She's
as sweet as can be, but if something doesn't go her way then
her eyes flare up in a predatory flame. The little mischief-maker
wants everyone to play with her and give her attention. That's
what women are like, Genna. She doesn't let me study chess -
I sit down at the board to think about a composition, and she
starts scratching and my pieces go flying. It's like my kings were
never even there. Why kings? Because I always start setting up a
position with my kings. Or she'll start flinging the other pieces
off the board or carry a pawn away in her mouth and hide it.
Then she'll sit down across from me and become all pensive.
We have already bought a basket to take her to Moscow, but
we're afraid she'll ransack the apartment. We can't not take her,
though. We don't know what to do.
"How have I been feeling? Well, Genna, I don't have much
spring in my step. A drink to bring in the New Year? It's not
out of the question, as one distinguished academy member
once said. It's not out of the question. You know, Genna, I've
been thinking about my life a lot lately. Do I regret anything?
Naturally, it's a shame I didn't take a sufficiently serious or
academic approach to the game. Maybe I would have been world
champion for longer if l'd gone about things that way. Yeah, and
my singing, too. I probably would've gotten more out of it had I
been more committed. Your singer friend in Amsterdam would
argue I have the talent to go pro. I take that as a big compliment.
Yeah, I could make a living singing. I got an invitation to sing
five arias in Samara for 1,000 dollars. I turned them down,
though. Sure, it isn't all that far but it would have been draining.
You know what Chaliapin used to say when asked to sing for
free? 'Only the birds sing for free! "'
February 27th, 2006. "We just got through a brutal cold snap.
We spent the whole winter at the dacha, just making occasional
runs to Moscow and always coming back by evening after just
a few hours in the city. We were completely removed from
civilization. I've already composed 114 studies - working on the
1 1 5th one now. That cat keeps distracting me, though. So, I'll
sit down at the table and set up the pieces, and she'll take a seat
across from me. I'll touch a piece, and so will she. Sometimes
she'll sweep up a few of them. What a smart cat! Ooof. . . it's nice
being with her, lots of fun. Shrovetide just started, you know.
Lent starts next week, but I don't uphold any of those customs.
I eat whatever my heart desires. "
May 25th, 2006. Moscow. "What do you think of Topalov?
Four out of four. And six out of six in Argentina. He could have
gone seven out of seven. Just like Alekhine or Tal. Winning that
many games in a row, that's really something! I don't remember
if I ever pulled something like that off. I guess there was that
Soviet championship. I scored five out of five or six out of six,
I can't remember now. Yeah, and then I drew a game because
Alatortsev, my second at the time, talked me into it. Then I lost
to Botvinnik, a French Defense. I played e5 too early. What do
you make of the persistent rumors that Topalov has a computer
hidden in the sole of his shoe? I don't even care to think about
such things.
"What did you think of Moscow this time around? Pricey?
That's because you're always gallivanting around and eating
out, Genna. If you cook your meals at home then it still isn't
cheap, but you can get by. We had a splendid apple harvest this
year. We filled a few sacks, so come on by. I'll treat you to some
Antonovka apples. Our pears are thriving, too - we haven't seen
that many for twenty years.
" How's Belka? She's in charge and knows it, of course. She
acts like a princess. If we have guests, she'll take her seat at the
table, as courteously as you could wish, like she's a member of
the family. We were at our Moscow apartment the other day.
No, we didn't take her along. What if she leapt out the window?
What then? Belka was crying with joy when we came back; she
even licked Nadezhda's face. She's the only friend we have left.
Nobody calls us anymore. What use are we to anyone? Only you
and our friend from Germany check up on us. He's an amateur
player, roughly candidate master strength. The Pushkin scholar,
that's him. Do you know that Pushkin was right about Mozart
and Salieri?24 Salieri wasn't the one who poisoned Mozart, it
was his student who did it. I just heard that on the radio."
June 9th, 2006. "Genna, we took our cat Belka to the
hospital for an operation. Well, you know for . . . snip, snip. It
turns out Belka is a boy, a tom, but he's still so charming. You
can't let him outside, though. He starts chasing after the birds,
and it will end in tragedy if he catches one. That can be quite
dangerous . . . What do I mean? Well, they said on TV that bird flu
is raging . . . Birds are safe? Don't be silly! It's not for nothing it's
called the bird flu. Now Mrs. Smyslov and I have been through
life's dramas, as Pyotr Romanovsky used to say.
"There was another guy, Nikolai Zubarev, head of the
chess department of the Council of Physical Education. A
bureaucrat, in other words, but he was a pretty strong master.
I remember Yerlinsky terrorizing him, constantly asking,
'where's my grandmaster title?' Verlinsky did earn the title,
since he'd won the 1929 Soviet Championship. Yerlinsky was
deaf, and Zubarev would keep chasing him out of his office and
telling him to come back another time. I think Yerlinsky was
awarded the title - just the international master title, though
- posthumously. So, once I was sitting in Zubarev's office for
an official meeting, and a strongly-built man came in and said
he had a very important proposition to make. Zubarev sat him
down and listened carefully. The visitor said it would make sense
24
Smyslov is referring to Pushkin's play entitled Mozart and Salieri
to transfer chess from the Sports Committee to the Ministry of

Health because the game is good for your health. Zubarev asked
him what department he happened to be representing. The
visitor answered that he had recently undergone treatment at
the Kaschenko psychiatric hospital, and many of the patients
who took up chess - even the most unruly of the bunch - really
did get better. You won't believe it, Genna, but the funniest part
of this story is that a few years later chess really was transferred
from the Sports Committee to the Ministry of Health, as he had
suggested. Those were the times we lived in."
December 2006. Moscow. "I'm looking at the Tai Memorial
results, and I keep thinking of Majorca, where Kasparov chaired
the Grandmasters Association meeting. Someone - I think from
Yugoslavia - said, 'could we limit the number of grandmasters
from Russia at tournaments? They always come in and scoop
up all the medals, and we're left with nothing.' Somebody
said to him, 'play better, and that problem will go away.' I'm
saying that because of the recent Tal Memorial results. Now the
picture looks completely different; it's the exact opposite. How
did the Russian grandmasters fare? One of them came in last
while another two finished in the middle of the pack. Their blitz
performances were far from spectacular, too.
"It's a shame we didn't really get to talk at the opening
ceremony. The legendary Vera Tikhomirova [ a chess player
and functionary - G.S.] was sitting next to us. Afterwards, I
was told that she was a legend, anyway - that's what the papers
said... Why is she a legend? That's like comparing my physicist
friend Pyotr Kapitsa with his son Sergey. One of them was an
outstanding scientist, while his son, how to put this, promotes
science on TV more than anything. Sure, he's a good guy, and
he's a legend for someone out there. Tikhomirova is that kind
oflegend.
PART 3 : The Final Years 17 1
"Did you know Pyotr Kapitsa played chess, too? Quite well,
as a matter of fact. He was candidate master strength. There was
something English about his style. He would often play against
Ishlinsky, another academy member. Once, I gave Kapitsa a pre
war opening encyclopedia, the one Levenfish edited. Ishlinsky
came up to me at a celebration for Kapitsa and said, 'why'd you
give him an opening manual? Now he's crushing all my favorite
variations.'
"Want me to tell you how I organized the Kramnik-Topalov
match in Elista? Radio Liberty called me, asked for an interview,
and brought me to the studio, although admittedly they didn't
pay me anything. They said to me, 'we can't make head or tail
of it. Who's the real world champion? And why are the Russian
players showing such modest results?' I said, 'we have to
organize a match between Kramnik and Topalov, who won the
8-player tournament and became champion. Ilyumzhinov, our
president, needs to take care of that. By the way, I haven't been
receiving any support from him lately. Well, actually, it's been
seven years.' The higher ups heeded my words - it's a big-time
radio station - and Mr. Ilyumzhinov agreed to hold the match
in Elista.
"Then they asked me who I was rooting for. I told them,
'Kramnik!' When they asked me who would win I said, 'the
guy I'm rooting for!' Sometimes, I'm endowed with the gift of
prophecy. I remember dodging my fate when I was in Switzerland.
I was supposed to play a simul in Geneva, and they got me a
train ticket. I thought, 'why not fly? Wouldn't that be easier?'
Then they told me, 'the train ride's three hours, and by the time
you get to the airport and then drive from the airport to the city,
it'll take you just as long.' I agreed to take the train, and then
when I got to Geneva I found out that the plane I was supposed
to take crashed - the first ever plane crash in Switzerland - and
everyone on board died. In 1990, I remember coming to Geneva

as Spassky's second for his match against Portisch. Spassky's
father-in-law, an avid mountaineer said, ' I 'm heading to the
Alps tomorrow. ' I said to him, 'postpone the expedition. Don't
go to the mountains. ' Spassky replied hotly, 'what are you going
on about, Vasily Vasilievich? He's an experienced climber. You
think this is his first time?' You know what happened? He left
and went missing. Just vanished. They only found his body eight
years later. He fell off a ridge.
" . . . You were asking me about Fischer. How did he win like
that? The Lord was with him then; he would pray to God before
every game . . . No, I don't go to church now, although there's
a church not too far from us. I can't see anything, and even
if I could, I still might slip and fall. I say a prayer every day,
though. God has tested me, probably because I was prideful and
thought I played better than anyone else in the world. Hubris . . .
Once, back in 1974, I decided to head to the dacha, so I went
to the garage, grabbed the crank to start up my car, and started
thinking, ' I have it made. I'll be enjoying a nice cup of tea in a
half hour, whereas Christ had to walk everywhere. It probably
would have taken him a few days to cover that distance. But
now I 'm going to ride like the wind. Getting there'll be a piece
of cake. ' I spun the crank once, twice, but the car wouldn't
start. Then I put some muscle into it; the crank slipped and
spun with such force that it broke my arm in several places. See
what hubris gets you! It's a good thing I realize that now. You
know what Churchill once said? He was no fool. . . You don't
know? He said that a happy man is one who makes mistakes in
his youth, yet is spared from repeating them in old age . ' Yeah,
happiness, happiness. . . Genna, do you remember a story by
Zoshchenko where the glass-maker reminisces on the happiest
day of his life? One Saturday a mirror measuring four by three
was smashed in a pub, right before his eyes. The glass-maker

obviously didn't have any competitors there, so he named an
astronomical price, and you know what? He got the order! So he
certainly wasn't God-forsaken, he got some luck in life. That's
how it goes!
" . . . I was invited to Zurich for a club anniversary, but I turned
it down on account of my eyes. Well, how can I go anywhere
if I can barely see? I gave them an interview, though, and told
them how much Zurich means to me. After all, I won my best
tournament there, back in 1953! I've been back many times, and
with Keres and Flohr, too. You should have heard Flohr tell us
about how he lost his final two games in his 1933 match against
Botvinnik and then got a really fancy gift. A fur coat! Not just
any fur coat, but a sable one! Well actually, a furrier in Prague
told him it was weasel fur, not sable, but that's beside the point.
"I remember touring Switzerland in the sixties. I had a
lengthy shopping list, obviously. I bought everything except for
one item - a door chain. There weren't any door chains for
sale in Moscow at that time. You won't believe it, Genna, but I
couldn't find a door chain in Zurich or Geneva. The Swiss had
no clue what I wanted. So, I went back to Moscow and said,
'there wasn't a single door chain in all of Switzerland. "'
March 28th, 2007. "I can't see anything at all lately. Before,
I could make things out if I got close enough. Now I can't even
do that. Retinal degeneration is scary business. Now I can't
even see the most basic things, like the electricity bill. N adezhda
doesn't want to handle that stuff. I said to her, 'they'll tum the
lights out on us.' She replied, 'fine, let them do it.'
"We recently made the trip into Moscow from the dacha to
check our mail. You know what, Genna? I found an awfully
surprising note from Raymond Keene. My book isn't doing
all that well, and I'm not entitled to all that much money - a
mere 28 pounds have trickled in. Keene asked what account he

should transfer the money to. Huh, who would have thought?
"I caught a program on TV about how stem cell treatment
can restore sight to the blind. You know, five out of the six
patients got better. Some of them got much better... Was the
sixth person worse off? Remember what Barreras used to say:
'Who knows?'
" Genna, I'm going to do some volunteer work. Now try to
guess what I 'll be doing. Nah, not with the DOSAAF, 25 definitely
not them. Moskovsky Komsomolets ran an announcement a
while back about a miraculous new powder. You know, this
incredible power that'll make you live to eight hundred or even
nine hundred years old, just like that. That's how it used to be
- it's in the Bible, you know. They wrote all about it. They've
been running tests on mice; those mice lived till thirty... So
you've never heard of it? That's what they wrote. So, there are
no obstacles on the road to perfection any more. I realize that's
all the devil's handiwork, but still...
"Incidentally, I don't know about the mice, although they
did bring a dead horse back to life... How? Well, it wasn't entirely
dead, it was just half-dead, but when they gave the blind horse
the powder, it could see so much better that one could say it had
seen the light. The horse's retina was acting up, just like mine.
Basically, they need subjects, and I volunteered because I fit all
the criteria for the powder. Naturally, it's hard to believe I'll live
to eight hundred. As for improving my vision - well, stranger
things have happened. I called this professor. He asked me how
old I was. I gave it to him straight - eighty-six. The professor
25 The Volunteer Society for Cooperation with the Army, Aviation,

and Navy
went, 'oi-oi-oi.' I said, ' I realize I don't have a great shot at

living to eight hundred. Fixing my eyes would be great, though.'
So now I'm waiting for my powder.
" I bumped into my ophthalmologist friend in the store
ereyesterday. I told him about the powder, and he promised to
figure out what's in it and what kind of miracles it can perform.
You know, Genna, I believe in miracles. I was listening to this
priest's talk about miracles. You know what he said? He said
God has given us miracles throughout all of time, not all by
himself, but often through intermediaries here on Earth. Such
cases have been known to happen.
"The priest said the most important thing is to never let
yourself doubt! Mustn't doubt! Back in the day, I talked to a
sorcerer in the Philippines who performed surgeries with his
bare hands, without using any medical instruments. He told me
the same thing - just believe, don't give into doubt! With that
attitude, you can walk along a red-hot iron bar if you really want
to. Just get up and move! So I'm waiting for the miracle powder.
Let's see what comes of this.
"I had this dream last night - I'm sitting there reading, and
I feel so good, like I'm in paradise. The book's interesting, too,
and I can see the text clearly, every little letter. Then I woke up
in a dense fog again.
"This whole powder affair is irrational. My other story is
rational, though. Genna, I have to get an operation done to put
a metal plate in my leg, like they did with Vera Tikhomirova's
hip replacement a few years ago. She could hardly walk, either.
Now she supposedly runs the 100-meter dash like it's nothing.
" . . . My left leg is decent, but my right one is going haywire.
I was at the doctor's for an x-ray. He showed it to me and
said: 'look' - And I can't see anything! The bone was almost
completely worn down in my right leg.
"But I can't see anything on the film. The doctor's insisting

on performing an operation. He keeps saying if I put it off for
too long, there'll be no operation that can help. So I have to go
under the knife in June.
''Are you going to visit soon? . . . In November? . . . For the
Tai Memorial? . . . Wasn't that last year? . . . There's another one
coming up? . . . There's another Tal Memorial, but there haven't
been any tournaments in Botvinnik's honor. Nah, I'm not
talking about Tal being from a different country now. It's just
that Botvinnik deserves his own tournament, too.
"You know, Genna, Tai came to my place exactly a month
before his death. It pained me to look at him. He was as sick as
a dog. We started playing blitz, and he won every single game.
Well, he won literally every position - when he was better, when
he was worse - and all the endgames, too."
"You mean to say he won every game, Vasily Vasilievich? All
of them? You probably mean almost all of them, right?" I asked.
"N ah, every single game, not most of them - all of them.
I was a strong blitz player in my younger years. I liked goofing
around, sure, guilty as charged. In 1946, Najdorf was beating
everyone at blitz in Groningen; he started challenging me, 'come
on, let's play. ' I was a young fellow - just twenty-five at the time
- and although I hardly ever played blitz, my hand kept finding
all the right squares . . . Nah, we were playing just for fun, not for
money. Tolush and Vidmar were playing for money in the lobby.
But not at chess, though. Professor Vidmar was a heavyset man,
so crossing his legs took quite a bit of effort. They started betting
on whether or not he could. There wasn't that much at stake -
just a guilder. Tolush looked like he was winning at first, but then
the professor quickly got the hang of things, and the tide turned.
Eventually, Tolush declared, 'I'm done with this gambling! ' I
remember visiting Vidmar in Ljubljana in 1954. He showed
me his famous board signed by Lasker, Alekhine, Capablanca,

Euwe, and Botvinnik. Vidmar started nagging me about it, 'sign
it, sign it.' I said, 'but I'm not world champion.' He replied,
'you will be once you sign it.'
"So, what were we talking about anyway? Oh yes, about
Misha Tai. Ah, Misha, Misha. His soaring to the top elicited a
certain degree of Salieri-style jealousy among his more seasoned
colleagues - there's no point in hiding that now.
"...Have I been singing? Nah, not really, hardly ever. I can
tell my voice is going flat. It might be because I was in the
hospital for a while or just because I'm getting on. I remember
Ivan Kozlovsky had that complaint. You know how Kozlovsky
and I sang and played together at the Live Chess Festival at
some stadium in Moscow? We performed the scene before the
duel in Evgeny Onegin. Mr. Kozlovsky sang, 'opponents! They'd
not long been parted' and then played 1.e2-e4.
"I can walk alright with a cane, but I've started taking blood
pressure pills. I check my blood pressure myself. I have two
machines; one of them even talks to you. It'll give you tips like,
'change the batteries' or 'you hooked something up wrong.' The
machine knows everything. We came into Moscow the other day,
for two reasons. The first one was to get the 1,700 rubles that have
just been sitting in the bank since 1997. The second one was to
receive the pension bonus that Mrs. Smyslov and I have been
racking up. We took a taxi into the city and waited in line for an
hour and a half. The lady at the window crunched some numbers
regarding the first amount - our money had just disappeared. We
were now entitled to a ruble and seventy kopeks. At first, I was
speechless, and then I started cracking up and said to the lady,
'you can keep it.' We worked our way through another line and
received our bonus payments - 55,000 rubles each. But then
somebody stole Mrs. Smyslov's payout from her handbag straight
away! Though I hung onto my money in my pocket real tight. So,

we step outside, and the taxi's still waiting. The driver says to us,
'you owe me 1,200 rubles for the waiting time. Take a look at the
meter. Well, OK, I'll reduce it to 600 rubles. '
"Who buys the groceries? Sometimes I hobble down to the
store. Other times we order food from the shop. Somebody
cleaned out our Moscow apartment, but the police haven't done
a thing. That's pretty standard for Russia these days, just like
Goncharov's A Common Story. You remember? People are just
too envious, that's what I think. I've been thinking of Botvinnik
a lot lately. He put people into two categories: swindlers and
scoundrels.
"Now what's it all about? Money, money, money. You
remember how that song by Ivan Kozlovsky in Boris Godunov
went? 'I have some money stowed away at home. ' A quiet voice
off-stage then said, 'and quite a lot, too! ' Kozlovsky gasped
when he heard that. Yes, I did receive some money for my
matches against Botvinnik but that was small change relative to
today's purses."
August 16th, 2007. "Lautier was on the radio ereyesterday,
and he was roundly critical of Paris. What for? After all, it
isn't like Paris is a dump. There are cute little cafes and bistros
everywhere you tum, with all sorts of cheeses, three hundred
kinds of fromage, and oysters. You know, Joel spoke Russian so
well that people were asking whether he was a real Frenchman
or not. The radio host kept answering for him, 'yes, he is a
Parisian, through and through. '
"Mrs. Smyslov recently read me what you wrote about
Leonid Shamkovich. It was a heartfelt piece. I still remember
when we stayed in the same hotel in London. We went to the
Madame Tussauds museum together, then to another museum
- I can't remember which one - and then it was time to head
to the airport. Our flights were practically at the same time. We

got to Heathrow, and there were two signs - New York flight to
the left and Moscow flight to the right. That's where we said our
goodbyes, and we never saw each other again. "
"You know, Vasily Vasilievich, I was listening to Piontkovsky,
the political analyst, and he said that back in the day, there was
another Smyslov; he played for FC Spartak. He heard that name
from his father who followed chess, not soccer, and rooted for
Vasily Smyslov at the 1 948 world championship tournament.
For some time, the young Andrey Piontkovsky was convinced
that Vasily Smyslov was a striker for Spartak when he wasn't
busy battling it out with Botvinnik or Reshevsky. "
" Let me tell you, Genna, those were the days. I remember
Smyslov the soccer player, too. Back then, Spartak Moscow
matches against the Leningrad-based team Dinamo were a
huge deal, and everyone and their brother went to games.
Shostakovich was a diehard Dinamo fan when he lived in
Leningrad, and then he became a fan of Dinamo Moscow upon
moving to the capital. You could bump into just about anybody
in Dinamo's North Stand, even Minister Abakumov, who was
also in charge of Dinamo, and naturally a big fan. The same
thing went for large chess tournaments - the halls were packed
to the rafters, and everyone had their own idol, whether it be
Botvinnik, Keres, Geller or me, the sinner.
"Vadim Sinyavsky reported on all the soccer matches. I knew
him quite well, but he was closer with Tolush, since they delivered
a chess program on the radio together. Sinyavsky could hardly
see a thing, but he commentated soccer matches passionately,
occasionally making up things that weren't actually happening
on the field. His blow-by-blow accounts had everyone glued to
their radios, even more emotionally attached to the game than
nowadays when they watch it on TV. "
November 6th, 2007. He had got back from the hospital

five days earlier; he still needed a walker and couldn't leave the
house. "The hospital was excellent, Genna, and the service was
superb. The only thing is, you have to pay for everything. 1 ,000
rubles for the night carer, same goes for the orderly, and that's
nothing compared with the doctors; Alexander Zhukov26 really
helped me out, though. Everything was free for me. Otherwise,
it all costs money, Genna. You should realize that human
relations in Russia follow different laws now. . . Mrs. Smyslov
somehow manages to keep the house clean without any help.
How does it work for us? We're expected to pay for everything.
I can hardly see anything, while others can see just fine. So, for
now we try to make do without any helpers. Being independent,
Genna, not having to depend on anyone, that's what we prefer.
Yeah, and trying to stay healthy, but I'll be turning eighty-seven
soon. I'm really getting up there!"
Lately, as is often the case for elderly people, he'd started
adding a year or two to his age. He was claiming to be eighty
seven, but in fact he was five months short of that age.
February 26th, 2008. "What's new in the chess world,
Genna? . . . Kramnik got married? . . . He only scored fifty percent
at Wijk aan Zee after his honeymoon? . . . And he was worn out?
Yeah . . . Capablanca was never worn out. You know, Genna, I
went to the Moscow tournaments in 1 935 and 1936, with my
father. I watched Capablanca's games with bated breath. I was
at the last round in 1936, when Capa won a magnificent game
off of Eliskases. Lasker played wonderfully, too, but he'd just
sit there, hunched over the board like a little owl without ever
getting up. Capa would stroll around and look into the crowd;
26 Russian Deputy Prime Minister and a strong chess player

he did have quite a few female fans. His style appealed to me

back then, and his whole image and mannerisms. I looked at
him more than anyone else, absolutely bewitched.
"He mastered the essence of the game, he always knew where
the pieces should stand - that comes from God, that remarkable
intuition of his. I learned a lot from his books - and his games,
too. He could always develop a viable plan amid the chaos on the
board. Being able to pick out the right square for a piece - now
that's a gift from above. What else can you call it? For instance,
take his game against Nimzowitsch at the 1914 Saint Petersburg
tournament. I remember it like it was yesterday. I played it over
many a time as a child, in total awe. He was a classical player. As
Black, he'd seek to equalize, first and foremost. He possessed
an inborn sense of harmony, and I'd say we're somewhat similar
in that way.
"Of course, Capablanca was an absolute genius, a pure
genius, the Mozart of chess. Of course, he loved chess, but he
divided his love among other pursuits, too. No, I don't think
he was a slacker. He was frivolous, there's no denying that, but
he was no slacker. He had a gift for writing, too. Just look at his
book and last lectures. Naturally, I don't know how he would
have fared against Alekhine in a return match, but it would have
been interesting, that's for sure.
"I'm of the opinion that players become world champions
due to their enormous capacity for storing energy; it builds up
inside them and bursts out at just the right moment. I remember
it being like that for me. I had an enormous amount of energy
when I was playing in the world championship. Capablanca
had the same thing, so did Botvinnik. It's no wonder Botvinnik
admired only Capa. He wrote the program for his computer
and although it never had much success it managed to find
the move Ba3, from his game against Capablanca at the
Amsterdam tournament. The machine found that move right

away.
"I'd say Spassky is probably a separate case, though I do
think that he was charged with a great deal of energy when he
was contending for the world title. Well, and Fischer's energy
went through the roof, of course. I remember playing in some
tournament with him, down in... Argentina, I think. I was
mostly drawing my games. Even though he'd already secured
first place, he still strove to win every single game. I asked him,
'what's the point of all this?' Fischer said something along the
lines of, 'there may come a day when I can no longer play like
this. '
"What's new with me? The doctor came by the other day.
He was like, 'you're doing remarkably well, Vasily Vasilievich. '
My goal is simply to survive, though. I'm very concerned
about Nadezhda. She has arthritis. I have no idea what to
do. Should I check her into the hospital? You probably know
what Russian hospitals are like. Yeah, the doctor who comes
by is more interested in me as a medical phenomenon. After
all, I've undergone three major surgeries in the past few years.
Inspiration? It doesn't come around an awful lot. I recently
composed a simple pawn study. It's more of an instructional
puzzle than a study, really, but I couldn't find Oleg Pervakov
and get him to evaluate it. Do you have something to write with?
There isn't much to write down, there are barely any pieces on
the board."
Here's our conversation on the eve of his birthday on March
22nd, 2008. "Listen, Genna, we're on the list of elderly people
who live with nobody else, so burglars completely cleaned out
our Moscow apartment. Now I need to change all the locks and
everything. A pack of thieves - they're called the mafia these
days - has been following us, and the woman who offered to
help Nadezhda drugged her and slid her Spanish gold bracelet
right off her hand. That lady's husband is a clerk. Guess where?
At a church! He doesn't believe in God, but he works at a church.
He and that lady, his wife, are in cahoots. I called the guy who
recommended that woman and said to him point-blank: ' She
was the wrong lady for the job.' We had a falling-out with our
neighbors at the Rublyovka dacha because of that thief - we've
known them all our lives. My neighbor said to me, 'nah, you got
it all wrong. She's a good woman.' Supposedly, I'm cheap and
don't pay her enough. I'm the cheap one? I started shaking with
fury and hung up on him. I couldn't calm my nerves for ages
after that. Sometimes this incredible rage overcomes me. I know
that's a grave sin, but I can't help myself. Before, I didn't even
know that people could be so self-seeking and avaricious. That's
especially true in Russia right now. You probably have people
like that in Holland but we have far more. That's the place
where we live now, the so-called Rublyovka. It's no wonder it
got that name, because the ruble decides everything now. This
new generation has no illusions or ideals whatsoever. They see
an old man and think, 'got to squeeze him like a lemon, and
fast."'
July 18th, 2009. "Well, what news do we have on the chess
front? Averbakh's the only one who calls me anymore...
Kamsky's advanced to the semi-final? Wowie! It's no wonder
he got to play against Karpov for the world championship title
and put up stiff resistance, even though Karpov had about
fifteen assistants on staff. I was at that match in Elista, so I saw
everything with my own eyes. I played a game against him after
he moved to America; I managed to win, but the boy defended
like there was no tomorrow. You can easily find that game - a
Sicilian Defense, played in New York. I don't know whether
he did the right thing by staying in America. After all, they'd
set everything up for him in Kazan. But now Galliamova is an

honored resident of Kazan; that could have been Kamsky.
"Listen, Genna, I was at a civil registry office in Moscow
the other day and saw married couples, with their flowers,
champagne, and celebratory music. But I had a different reason
to be there... What was I doing there? A woman was interrogating
us for forty minutes. She asked to see my ID, and she needed
Mrs. Smyslov's too. This lady was interrogating us like a
seasoned investigator - she asked us for our home telephone
number and address. Guess she was checking whether we were
of sound mind.
"I passed the test, and she said to me, 'Yuri Luzhkov, the
mayor of Moscow, would like to award you a gift, cash, for your
birthday.' I signed the paper and asked her. 'Please allow me to
inquire; what kind of amount are we talking about here?' She
replied, 'the amount of six thousand rubles will be wired to your
savings account.' I reply: 'That's not too bad, but it's not worth
making a special trip into Moscow and devoting the whole day
to getting it. ' So anyway, Genna, to get the interrogation out of
my mind, I took a car to the market - good thing my friends got
me a driver - and bought some farmer's cheese, smoked trout,
salmon, and some pickles and spent nearly the whole amount
that was going to be wired to my account."
November 3rd, 2009. I'm in Moscow. The opening ceremony
of the Tal Memorial is set for tomorrow. I called Smyslov's
dacha. "Me go to the opening ceremony tomorrow? You must
be kidding, Genna! l 've been bedridden for the past month. I was
standing there by the bathroom sink, and then suddenly it was
like a demon threw a punch at me. I collapsed on the floor, and
I've been in bed for a month now. Nah, I didn't break anything.
But I did bruise my back so bad that I still haven't recovered. My
woes didn't end there. They're all crooks, and they all steal. All
of them. A young couple from Kishinev has been helping out

around the house. They seem nice and all, but they're sneaky.
They look out for themselves first. They recently said that prices
were going up, so they needed a 30% rise. I already pay them
15,000 rubles a month. Convert that into dollars. Today, I gave
away three of my books at 1 60 rubles a pop because I needed the
money for the gas and electric bills. I have to pay for the utilities
at our Moscow apartment, too... Yeah, hardly anyone ever calls.
I've lost the use of my eyes, my legs too. But what about my
friends? All of them are in the Novodevichy Cemetery, and it
turns out that money is my best friend, the only one left.
"Mrs. Smyslov gave her nephew Yuri some money and his
wife a diamond brooch, so now they've taken to checking in and
calling on us. Yuri called me yesterday and said, ' Dear Vasily
Vasilievich, I'm going to stop by tomorrow. Would you be so
kind as to lend us 50,000?' I replied: 'You don't have to visit me
or come by. But I happen to need money now.'
"Mrs. Smyslov? She needs a lot of rest lately - can't work
like she used to. Even if she wanted to go out, she wouldn't have
anything to wear. Moths ate some of the dresses that she left at
the Moscow apartment. The ones left are too small. She needs
the next size up now. But where could I get them? ... Buy them at
the store? That's easy for you to say. It's hard to get her moving.
Plus crooks are running wild in the city. They'll rob you blind.
They prey on the elderly. Our upstairs neighbor, who lived on the
12th floor, was just murdered. She didn't shut the door properly
and was just sitting there. They snuck into her apartment, and
her neighbors - they're all old, too, the Obzhirkos actually just
passed away - hid instead of helping her when they heard the
screaming. That's what things are like nowadays, Genna. Come
and visit sometime. If you bring some Dutch cheese then we
can wash it down with some cognac. I still have my stash. I'll
sneak a glass now and again. I heard that some oligarch with a
silly name, like Cherepashka27 or something, started putting up
a building across from the Central Chess Club. That's caused
cracks in the club building. "
December 2009. " Sure, I can get up . . . but I have a walker. I
used to get by with a little cane. Now my main goal is to go back
to it. You know what, Genna? I 've been giving a whole slew of
interviews lately. I did one for Anton Sharoev, my friend who
just came out with a new production of Anton Rubinstein's
opera Christ. He claims it's better than The Demon. It's a totally
unknown opera. He dug it up in the archives. Sharoev said
that some experts listened to my rendition of Epitha lamium
and praised it highly. So, I'm keeping myself busy with all
these interviews. I'm not getting paid diddly squat, though. "
(Smyslov's colleagues would recall that if the triumphant
sounds of Epithalamium from the opera Nero could be heard
from his hotel room in the morning during tournaments then it
meant he had found a win in the game adjourned the previous
day!)
"I recently gave an Almaty newspaper a big interview. They
interrogated me for a few days; I only agreed to do it because I was
in Almaty during the war - our aviation institute was relocated
there. You know what they paid me? You'll never guess. A few
bags of dried fruit. They're in the kitchen. I don't even know
what to do with them. Make compote with it? Meditsinskaya
Gazeta ran a big interview with me. You should be able to pick it
up in Amsterdam. I tried drawing a parallel between chess and
medicine. If you can't find it in Amsterdam, then I know The
27
The diminutive form of "turtle" in Russian. Smyslov is referring
to Oleg Deripaska
National Library of the Netherlands in The Hague definitely

has it. The National Library has everything!
".. . I couldn't fall asleep the other night; I started thinking
about my age. I'm eighty-eight! How could that be? It's like
something out of a fairy tale... Sometimes you gripe about
getting old - try adding another twenty-two years to your age!
Then I started reminiscing about vacationing with my mother
and father in Sevastopol. Feels like yesterday. Actually, it was
eighty years ago, in the summer of 1928. Believe it or not, I
haven't been back to the Crimea since. I've been to Argentina,
Iceland, the Philippines, and just about everywhere else, but not
the Crimea.
"Do you know what Alexander Goldenweiser said when he
was my age? Yeah, the same Goldenweiser who was a professor
at the conservatory and played chess with Tolstoy. When he was
reprimanded by the Communist Youth League for skipping
Marxism-Leninism classes Goldenweiser said, 'my dears, at
this point, I feel closer to the primary sources.' I, too, have
come face-to-face with the primary sources... Genna, let me
tell you what old age, real old age, is all about. It's when you
pick up your address book and all the names are crossed out."
December 7th, 2009. "Well Genna, I won't be using
those crooks' services anymore. It's not just because of those
disreputable mugs of theirs. They cleaned me out. They stole
two of my winter coats hanging in the foyer - British cut, had
them ever since I can remember - and that was the last straw.
There were six people - just one woman - in their gang. I paid
them fifteen thousand a month, but they wanted twenty-five. I
was listening to a radio program the other day about whether
or not you can live on five thousand rubles a month in Russia.
Supposedly, you can. Some people can even get by on four
and-a-half thousand. Your average civil servant makes 60,000 a
month. You see, they needed 25,000. That's highway robbery! ...
I have groceries delivered to the house... Who does the cooking?
I do!
"...I heard Switzerland's the most expensive country in
Europe, then comes England, and then Holland. Is that right,
Genna?... People don't steal as much in your area, right?...
Thievery is everywhere on Rublyovka; everything gets stolen.
You can't even imagine it. People steal everything; they'll just
clean you out. I had a bottle of sunflower oil in the kitchen.
Where is it now? And the five cloves of garlic in the kitchen
cabinet? Where are they? Maybe I should tell Korchnoi that
Switzerland's the most stable country. I heard that your banks
in Holland are on the verge of collapse. Should I call Gijssen or,
better yet, van Oosterom so Holland would take me in? What do
you think, Genna?"
(Adrian Mikhalchishin recalled that Smyslov had also asked
him to help him emigrate. Mikhalchishin and some other
players he knew looked for an apartment for Smyslov on the
Adriatic and even found one together with a doctor and carer.
There were just some minor details to take care of before the
Smyslovs would be able to move there, but in fact it was Vasily
Smyslov himself who kept dragging things out.)
"People keep telling me to sell my garage. It's in the center
of Moscow, next to our apartment by Uprising Square, so it's
supposedly worth big bucks. Or sell a painting. I have one by
Alexander Kiselyov; his paintings are on display at the Tretyakov
Gallery. But how can I sell it? They'll dupe you just like that.
You know how it goes with paintings in Russia - you send it out
to be appraised; they paint a replica, one-to-one, in no time,
and keep the original. Thieves, thieves everywhere you tum.
Maybe I should give Korchnoi a call in Zurich? The Swiss are
a cultured people, and nobody steals there. I could purchase
a little house and settle in on the ground floor. You probably

have his number, don't you? Or maybe I should just relocate to
Holland? But those banks of yours... I heard they aren't as robust
as the Swiss ones. Moreover, there's no such thing as peace and
quiet in Amsterdam. I remember staying at the Krasnapolsky
- now that was Sodom and Gomorrah. How did you manage
to find a house in such a quiet place? You probably looked long
and hard. .. Belka is our only source of solace."
***
Belka had been coming up in conversation without fail.

They treated the cat like their child, and that made up for
a lack of tenderness in their lives. Mrs. Smyslov's son from
her first marriage had died young, and they didn't have any
other children. As often happens in such cases, Smyslov loved
children, and he'd often stop during our strolls to point out a
cute little cherub in the vicinity.
Constant griping about ubiquitous theft and deception
became the main focus of his monologues. It's very possible
that there were grounds for that, although Mikhail Beilin, his
second, co-author, and neighbor, who'd known the seventh
world champion in his prime, recalled: "The Smyslovs feared
that someone would break into their home, deceive them or
steal from them even back then, but this anxiety grew much
more severe during the last years of their lives."
Actually, they were impoverished millionaires. This happens
more often than you would think; you may have read about
someone discovering that a man dying in utter destitution
actually had a fat sum - like thousands of dollars, if not more -
in his bank account or under his mattress, but the Smyslovs were
a completely different case. You didn't have to be a financial
whiz to realize that their apartment in central Moscow, garage

and dacha with its sizable land plot in Razdory were worth a
few million dollars, but they were too haunted by thoughts that
they would be cheated, deceived or even killed to take any steps
to improve their financial situation. So, they didn't have the
cash to cover their daily expenses, especially during their last
few years when they truly needed help. Therefore, those who
saw them, a bit disheveled looking, ungroomed and not always
speaking coherently, at their near-dilapidated dacha, spoke
about the shocking impression they made.
He spent his 89th birthday at the Botkin Hospital. According
to his nephew Yuri, on March 24th Smyslov was still responding
lucidly to those wishing him a happy birthday, but then his
condition suddenly worsened. He stopped eating, refused to
take any medication, and started saying his goodbyes to friends
and family. He passed away on March 27th, 20 10. Generally, the
cause of death is omitted from the obituaries of people reaching
such an age. The doctors did indicate, though, that it was heart
failure.
An orthodox funeral was held in the tiny chapel at the Botkin
Hospital, while his official memorial service took place at the
Central Chess Club on Gogol Boulevard. Mrs. Smyslov didn't
attend the funeral. She was told that her husband was in the
hospital and should be returning home soon. She felt uneasy,
though, and kept calling his name, "Vasenka, Vasenka."
Smyslov and his wife lived together happily for sixty-two
years and died with full lives behind them. It may not have been
on the same day but it was the same year, just two months apart.
The name of Vladimir Selimanov, Mrs. Smyslov's son from
her first marriage, who passed on very young, was engraved
under the inscription ''Always Together" on the Smyslovs' grave
stone at the Novodevichy Cemetery. Hardly anything is known
about her son's father. Scattered sources claim that he was killed
in one of Stalin's purges in the early forties. Smyslov adopted
young Volodya when he was nine, treated him like his own son,
and devoted a lot of time to raising the child. It's no wonder
the boy was an avid chess player, eventually gaining a candidate
master norm and becoming one of the strongest youth players
in Moscow.
In 1957, Selimanov took part in the World Junior
Championship held in Toronto. He scored eight out of eleven,
which was a solid performance, but he didn't even gain a medal.
The American, Bill Lombardy, who went on to become a
grandmaster and Fischer's second, as well as a German, Mathias
Gerusel, and a Dutch player, Lex Jongsma, outpaced him. In
those days, the USSR expected its representative to bring home
the gold, as Boris Spassky had at the previous championship
(Antwerp, 1955). That explains why the Muscovite's fourth
place finish was considered a disappointment.
After returning to Moscow, Selimanov battled with
depression, which was only exacerbated by the fact that while
in Canada the eighteen-year-old had fallen madly in love with
a girl. There was absolutely no way the two of them would meet
again in the foreseeable future, so Vladimir was perpetually
sullen. Then he committed suicide three years later. Supposedly,
the young man had attempted to take his life a few times already,
before his last fateful attempt on November 15th, 1960, but
those attempts had been foiled. Some people have contended
that his serious mental health issues (possibly schizophrenia)
were what caused him to jump out of a window to his death.
I never touched upon that tragedy in my conversations with
Smyslov, but I've been told that up until the very end of his life,
he'd occasionally sigh and say: "I've got to go and visit Volodya
at the cemetery tomorrow."
***
Vasily Smyslov had to spend the greater part of his life in an

environment that didn't always - to say the least - jibe with his
way of thinking. Nevertheless, he managed to "keep it together
through all of our revolutions", as Zoshchenko once wrote,
thanks to his unique talent for living happily and harmoniously
in trying times. He was considered a sybarite, an observer, and
a slacker. Seeing things through to the end and adopting a rigid
academic or scientific approach wasn't for him, that's for sure,
but was he really a slacker?
After all, even in his later years, Vasily Smyslov didn't wish to
submit to esoteric idleness. An unconquerable need to express
himself creatively lived within him, and that passion stuck with
him almost to the very end. Smyslov reached an age most of us
will never see, and even ifwe do, there's a high chance we won't
be able to do anything worthwhile at such an age. His hunger to
create bolstered his spirits and elevated him to a high note that
didn't allow him to surrender to old age.
Despite being deeply religious, he was very much of this
world; he enjoyed being in the spotlight and being showered
with praise. He lapped up the crowd's applause. When I called
he'd frequently ask whether I'd read his latest interview in
64, Shakhmatnaya Nede lya ("Chess Week") or Moskovsky
Komsomolets.
The title of count, awarded to him by someone or other for
something or other, put him in high spirits, and he took pride
in telling people about his new position. Although he'd often
repeat, "all of this is vanitas vanitatum," he liked all of it a great
deal. Anna Akhmatova's line, "give others glory, the world's
toy," doesn't apply to him. Plato called the psychological need
for constant recognition "thumos." Hobbes attributed this to
excessive pride or vanity, Madison spoke about ambition, while

Machiavelli referred to everyone's inherent aspiration for glory.
Even the most sarcastic and knowledgeable individuals couldn't
sidestep this fate. Incidentally, even people in ancient times
knew that the desire to obtain recognition or glory was the last
thing that men lose, even wise men.
He enjoyed attending all sorts of galas, tournament opening
ceremonies and any other celebrations, events and birthday
parties, whenever his health permitted. He would resort to his
catch-all phrase "they'll figure it out in the afterlife" when faced
with difficult problems, but in chess his boundless faith in his
extraordinary talent made him think he'd figure it all out by
himself . In his final years, when the days granted to him were
more ofa burden than a blessing, he'd publish books and release
albums, even at a loss. He did that, despite his constant griping
about having no money and his increasingly miserly attitude,
which is often the case among the elderly.
When he sighed and complained that the operation didn't
help and his vision was almost completely gone, I consoled him
by saying that blindness was a noble affliction, citing Homer
and Milton as proof. He listened carefully without interrupting,
only perking up when I mentioned the inscription on Galileo
Galilei's tomb: "He lost his sight, since nothing in nature
remained which he hadn't seen." "Yeah, yeah, same goes for
me. You know how much I've seen in my life?"
Smyslov really liked the line on which Nikolai Karamzin's
hand stopped: "Oreshek would not surrender. " 28 "Would not
surrender!" he repeated with feeling when I read him the final
28 O reshek is an ancient Russian fortress in the Leningrad Region

that was built in 1 323 and belonged to the Swedes from 1 6 1 2 to 1 702
note made by the historian, who kept working until the very
end. "You know, Genna, I was lying in bed when you called. I
may have been lying around, but I can still stand on my own two
feet. It's not that easy to take me apart."
He looked very different in the last few years, with his
discolored face, small, nearly sightless eyes, and apprehensive
gait. Nevertheless, even in that state, you could discern the
Smyslov that had been, for wrinkles have no power over the
face of a man with a strong spirit. As often happens with people
who exceed the age limits stipulated by the Bible, he became
suspicious and mistrustful and would often retreat into his own
world. His body, which refused to serve dutifully, became an
enemy, not an ally - one organ after another started failing
him; he was hospitalized a few times, and, by the end, he was
unable to move. Nonetheless, the exceptional strength of his
spirit and thirst for self-expression outweighed the strain of his
daily life. Pain and affliction have no power over a spiritual
man.
"What do you think? What game do I cherish the most?" he
once asked. "You'll probably say some game against Botvinnik,
Keres or Reshevsky. .. You're way off! It was against Gerasimov!
I was fourteen, and this was the first game of mine to be
published."
Queen's Pawn Game

GERASIMOV - SMY SLOV
Moskvoretsky District Championship
House of Pioneers, 1935
Analysis by Vasily Smyslov in 64
1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 e6 4.Bd3 c5 5.b3. In this variation,

developing the queen's bishop to b2 has the idea of posting a
knight on e5 and launching an attack on the kingside. Also,

there's another way of playing this position, which involves
preparing e3-e4 by opening up the center after 5.c3 and
6.Nbd2.
5 ... Nc6 6.Bb2 Bd6 7.0-0 Qc7. Generally, 7...0-0 is played
here, first to make a useful developing move and then finding
a position for the queen depending on White's reply. So, if
8.Nbd2, then 8 ... Qe7 (threatening e5) 9.Ne5 cxd4 10.exd4
Ba3, getting counterplay on the queenside. Or 8.Ne5 Qc7 9.f4
cxd4 10.exd4 Nb4, neutralizing White's dangerous bishop. In
this game, Black decided to prevent White from transferring his
knight to e5.
8.a3 b6 9.c4 Bb7 10.Nc3 a6 11.Rel. 11.dxc5 bxc5 12.cxd5
exd5 13.Rcl , going after his opponent's hanging pawns, would
have been more energetic.
11 ... cxd4 12.exd4 0-0 13.Na4 Bf4. It's necessary to prevent
c4-c5. Now Black meets 14.c5 with 14...b5 15.Nb6 Rad8 16.b4
Ne4, and if 17. Bxe4 dxe4 18.Rxe4, then 18 ... Ne7 19.Rel Bxf3
20.Qxf3 Bxh2+ 2 1.Khl Bf4 with double-edged play.
14.Ne5 dxc4. Opening up the a8-hl diagonal for the light
squared bishop. The reply is forced due to the threat of b5.
15.bxc4 Nxe5 16.dxe5 Qc6! Suddenly, the danger of a
mating attack looms over the W hite king. W hite should
have forced a transition into an endgame with 17. Qf3 Qxf3
18.gxf3 Nd7 19.Be4 Rab8 20. Rad l Nc5 2 1.Nxc5 bxc5, etc.
With queens on the board, Black's attack soon becomes
unstoppable.
17.Bfl. As was already indicated, 17.Qf3 would have been
the correct reply. If 17.f3 then Black continues the attack with
17...Ng4 18.Be4 ( 18.g3 Be3+ 19.Kg2 Nf2 20.Qe2 Nxd3) 18 ...
Bxh2+ 19.Khl Nf2+ 20.Kxh2 Nxdl 2 1.Bxc6 Bxc6.
17 ... Rfd8 18.Qb3 Ng4 19.h3.
19 ... Rd3! The start of a nice combination. Clearly, White

can't capture the rook with his bishop. If 20. Qxd3 then 20...
Bh2+ 2 1. Kh l Nxf2+ follows, winning the queen.
20.Qxb6 Rxh3! Shifting the rook to the kingside is the point
of this combination. 2 1. Qxc6 doesn't work because of 2 1. ..
Bh2+ 22. Kh l Nxf2#. White attempts to protect f2, fending off
the mating threats; however, a windmill tactic proves to be the
White queen's downfall.
21.Bd4 Bh2+ 22.Khl Bxe5+. White resigned. If 23. Kg l ,
then 23. . . Bh2+ 24. Kh l Bc7+ followed by 2 5. . . Bxb6 is decisive.
This was my first published tournament game.
"My father was very proud of this game; he played it over and
over and showed it to his friends many times. 'Look at my boy
Vasily's pretty combination! ' he would say. Fedor Fogelevich,
the head of the Zamoskvorechye chess club, showed it to
everyone, too... He would say, 'He is a future champion! ' Even
Misha Tal liked the attack from that game. Misha said, 'That
game alone speaks to his enormous talent. '
"What do I consider my life's greatest success? What do you
think? Winning the candidates tournament? My match against
Botvinnik? You're way off again, Genna! My biggest success
came in 1937, at the Young Pioneers' championship, when I

won all eleven games. Not a single draw, not one! The field was
very strong; almost all the players went on to become masters.
I still have the tournament table. I remember Vladimir Simagin
in his velvet jacket. He was considered a prodigy of sorts. I beat
him too.
"You see, my father only allowed me to play at home until
the age of fourteen; he didn't want me to get too wrapped
up in all those tournaments. Maybe that's why I graduated
from high school with top marks. I played against him and
his friends at home, and then I went to the Zamoskvorechye
House of Pioneers. Our team would score crushing wins in all
of its matches. I remember playing with Zagurov, Golubevsky,
Kanoian, Usov, and Yeltsov. You know, Genna, when Alekhine
was asked shortly before his death who he considered the most
promising young player, he answered, 'there's this kid Smyslov
in Russia.' I was the best in the world at my art, albeit briefly."
***
1992. Tilburg. Smyslov had advanced to the fourth round,

in which he conceded to Evgeny Sveshnikov in a brutal back
and-forth struggle during their sixth blitz game. He was due to
return to Moscow the next day. It was a little before eight when
I went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. It was nearly
empty; a solitary man sat at a large round table in the center of
the room. It was Smyslov.
"I knew you'd come, Genna. Take a seat please. I've been up
since 4: 30. At first, I was plagued by the thought, 'you old fool,
why did you play the Pirc Defense?' Then I started replaying
my life... ' Eh.. . if only the Mother Volga could start flowing
upstream, then I would live my life from the start again, ' I said
to myself. . . Then I thought, 'how would I live again? I would

probably live the same way. ' Then I asked myself, 'when was the
happiest time of your life?' You know when? At the Moscow
Young Pioneers' Stadium, before the war. I can see it now -
Abram Rabinovich is analyzing a game, and us five or six boys
are crowded around the table. We said, 'Black's better here. '
" 'He's better? You don't know a thing, greenhorns, ' he
said. Hands start flashing over the board, everyone's dying to
make their move. He says, 'I go like this. ' Then we say, 'we go
like that. ' He's like, 'I go here. ' We're like, 'we go there. ' He
bangs the pieces down on the board and repeats to himself,
'your move, greenhorns. What do you know about chess?' Do
you know what Rabinovich said about me in those days? . . . You
don't? He said, 'look at Smyslov. Now he's going to be world
champion. He doesn't blunder away a single pawn, ever! '
"Then I decided to read something. I picked up the Bible
on the table. You know what, Genna? It seems like the Bible
is longer in English than it is in Russian. Could that be right?"
" I don't think so, Vasily Vasilievich. What made you think
so?"
" It just seemed that way. . . l wanted to ask you what this
English word 'sting' meant? It's the Russian word zhalo, right?"
"Yeah. What are you getting at?"
" I figured that out last night when I read the phrase, 'O
death, where is thy sting?' But let's not get bogged down in
that, it's early. Let's enjoy the viands set out on the table. Now
we'll feast on some Dutch cheese. We won't turn our noses
up at the ham, either. What were you saying about calories
ereyesterday?"
He went up to the table, gulped down a glass of juice, and
promptly refilled it. He tossed his head back, took a big swig,
and then caught his breath. " Listen, Genna, make sure to write
.
that Smyslov didn't count calories, and he overindulged in juice
at breakfast."
Then he adjusted the glasses that had slipped down his nose
and flashed his wonderful smile. "You'll keep it all straight,
Genna? You'll put it all in there? You won't forget anything?"
"I won't forget, Vasily Vasilievich."
Lightning Source UK Ltd
Milton Keynes UK
UKHW020642 ! 203 ! 9
33 8943 UK000 1 2B/205/P
I l l l l l 1 1 1 1 1 111 1 1 1
9 78 5 9 5 0 0 4 3 3 2 1
I n h i s th i rd fu l l - l ength memo i r about one of the wo rld's greatest ever
chess p l ayers Genna Soson ko portrays a warm p i ctu re of the seventh
wor l d c h a m p i o n Vas i l y Smys l ov, with whom he spent con s i derab l e
t i m e over t h e board, d u ri n g tou rnaments a n d wh i l e meeti ng a t eac h
other's homes. Smys l ov the man was far more balanced and spi ritu a l
t h a n most o f h i s contem porari es, capab l e o f a re l axed and yet
pri n c i p l ed approach to l ife . U n l i ke m ost top p l ayers he was able to
reach a very h i gh standard i n h i s c h osen hobby - i n h i s case, c l assical
s i n g i n g - even wh i l e p l ayi ng chess at the very top. His natu ra l
i n c l i nation to see the best i n peop l e was, howeve r, c ha l l enged as the
wor l d aro u n d h i m u nderwent fu ndamental changes l ate in h i s l i fe .
The n ew freedoms of the post-Sov iet era a l so engendered one of the

most extraord i n ary po l e m i cs in c hess h istory - David B ro n ste i n ' s
arti c l e 'Thrown ' Games in Zurich (200 1 ) - b r i n g i n g accu sations
aga i n st Smys l ov that forced h i m to defend h i mse l f at the age of ei ghty,
by w h i c h time many witnesses to the events i n Z u r i c h were al ready
deceased . In th i s book, Gen n a foc u ses i n parti c u l a r on that po l e m i c,
p l aces it i n the wider context of the so-ca l l ed Soviet Chess Schoo l ,
a n d asks whether B ro n ste i n ' s h u rt a n d accusations were j u stifi ed .
Fit �
E l k a n d Ruby
ISBN 978-5-9500433-2-1
V�lenl,n Kir,lk,,,,
W<Olo•- .... - � -·--

---- 9 7 8 5 9 5 0 0 4 33 2 1

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Smyslov

PART 1: The Real Vasily Smyslov .......................................... 5

The Real Vasily Smyslov

"Today's a special day, Vasily Vasilievich."

I first saw Smyslov on the Kirov Islands, a huge park

us feel like we were different ages. We got together countless

Genna. You know, it's very beneficial to keep a journal, since

Griboyedov, Nekrasov, and Maykov, or lines from Gogol and

Nadine. However, I wouldn't say this was candidness as such. It

It felt like Vasily Vasilievich Smyslov and I had established

with my own ears!" That obsession petered out, too, as soon as

His interest in religion trumped everything else, as so often

Lourdes and Jesus turning water into wine. Nevertheless, he was

it, everything's going to be just fine.' What do you know - my

His style was very clear-cut; he was considered a wonderful

One time, I told him about a theory that was becoming

Like many other Russian people, he revered everything

"Let's go for a walk, Genna," Smyslov suggested, as he

IBM tournament in Amsterdam. We were on a walk, as usual. I

Smyslov played in the 1982 interzonal in Las Palmas. He was

the candidates final thirty years later, conceding defeat to the

"But why?" I asked him.

my title," the Patriarch recalled. "I carried out tons of analysis,

Yet whenever Smyslov talked to me about the return match,

know what? My wife Nadezhda Andreevna also takes good care

Shortly before he passed away, Botvinnik gave me an

March 20th, 1998. "You know, Vasily Vasilievich, someone

sometimes calling him by and mispronouncing his patronymic,

In Russian, calling somebody just by their patronymic is as a rule

defection. Smyslov invited the shamed grandmaster to assist

In 1977, we both played in Brazil. We'd stroll around Sao

to that time. Solzhenitsyn was spot on, spot on. My father

opponent managed to do the same then the game would end

"Yes, you're a real funny man, Gennady Borisovich. I want

don't try to tell me otherwise, Genna. I'm telling you! I distinctly

5 " Pristavka" sounds similar to the verb "pristavat", one of whose

6 , Herzen had replied, "Truth is my mother but Bakunin is Bakunin"

In 1970, he and Vladimir Tukmakov played together in a

' I have,' answered the sinner.

telling you nothing can be done. The recipe is Indian - many

hundred calories, Genna, if not more, even though just some

even say it's machine-like. There's nothing spiritual about it -

February 22nd-March 3rd, 1996. Cannes. We were playing

"What do you mean 'turn it down'? It's an invitation - to

the Bolshoi Theater, advanced to the second round, but didrf t

said, 'you're a tenor, not a bass!' We argued about what type of

that category without reservations. Life, though, is far vaster

"What? You're bowing out of the national championship?

the 1945 Soviet Union-America radio match. I won pretty, too.

January 1st, 2000. I called to wish him a happy New Year.

Smyslov celebrated his eightieth birthday on March 24th,

for hard currency - where you could choose whatever you

he opened up his wallet. "Yeah, Lilienthal would have said, 'half

'Senor occupado ?' [Are you tied up ?]

"You should try to remember those lines - they may come

There were throngs of people in Dam Square. Hordes of

With his father. Vasily was

"Botvinnik and I played three

"I have just completed