David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

That was without doubt true of the defense of Leningrad. Nevertheless, there was a substantial element of myth making in the official accounts of the siege, a myth that spoke of the wholly selfless Soviet patriotism of citizens and stressed the heroic role of the Party in sustaining the city and its people. The myth contradicted the reality of panic among the authorities and the continuance of political control by terror, even at the darkest moments during the German attack.

The myth ignored the brutalization of the people. In his Europe: A History, Norman Davies comments, “Descriptions of carousing in the Party House, alongside corpses in the street and scientific workers dead at their laboratory benches, only add to the tally of inhumanity.”

The myth making that came out of triumph over Germany would affect Boris Spassky in a number of ways. According to the contemporary Soviet journalist and author Vasili Grossman, the hardships of the Great Patriotic War (as World War II was named) had a decisive influence on Russian self-consciousness. With victory at Stalingrad in February 1943, a victory that cost a million lives, Soviet Russians began to differentiate themselves from other nationalities, and the word Russian acquired a positive meaning. It is a historical commonplace that Stalin chose to revive Russian patriotism to fuel the Herculean war effort, but he also used the war to proclaim state nationalism. State nationalism was differentiated from the nationalism of modern European countries. It had nothing to do with love of country. The Soviet nationalist had a profound, respectful, and loving attachment to the socialist state that in turn protected and cherished its loyal citizens. State nationalism was to become the sole form of patriotism acceptable to a socialist country. It was state nationalism that Spassky was expected to express in his playing. Soviet chess players must never forget they played in red shirts.

A second source of influence emanating from the mythology of the war was the belief summed up in the phrase Nashe Luchshe —“Ours (Means) Better,” that the system must necessarily triumph. Its correlative was a constant fear of public belittling, of having the shortcomings of the system exposed. The long-serving Soviet ambassador to Washington, D.C., Anatoli Dobrynin, records wryly in his memoirs that when Brezhnev visited Nixon in 1973, Brezhnev himself instructed the Soviet security service to organize his trip so that “he would in no way appear to the Americans inferior to the president of the United States.”

A self-imposed barrier stood in the way of attempts to make a reality of “Ours (Means) Better”: the culture of secrecy and isolation that condemned people to live in an astonishing state of ignorance. This was not something that affected only ordinary citizens. Remarkably, in 1959, when Khrushchev was invited to stay with President Eisenhower at the presidential retreat, Camp David, no one around the Soviet leader knew what or where it was. In his memoirs, Khrushchev remembered, “I couldn’t for the life of me find out what Camp David was. I began to make inquiries from our Ministry of Foreign Affairs. They said they didn’t know, either.” Khrushchev worried that the American authorities were slighting him by proposing Camp David, that somehow he was being discriminated against, put into quarantine. Eventually he discovered that it was considered an honor to be entertained in the equivalent of the presidential dacha. “I can laugh about it now, but I’m a bit ashamed. It shows how ignorant we were in some respects.”

The chess world was no better informed. A startling lack of knowledge about Fischer’s recent history was revealed at a meeting of the chess authorities with Spassky and his team on 13 August 1971 to review the champion’s preparation. The report of the outcome by Viktor Baturinskii, the director of the Central Chess Club, records: “A request was made to determine (through Soviet correspondents in the U.S. or by other means) the reasons why Fischer did not take part in any competitions for around a year and a half (1968–1970), where he was during this period and what he was doing, and also to gather information about Fischer’s behavior and statements in the future.” In the same month, Spassky’s “Training Plan” also sought permission to select, purchase, and translate into Russian, foreign theoretical journals so that all relevant data and analysis could be gathered. Censorship and shortage of hard currency entailed seeking official sanction for this basic resource.

Through the 1960s, as Boris Spassky climbed toward the world title, state nationalism became more important in spite of the passing of the war generation. Soviet leaders saw the necessity of trumpeting the very real technological achievements of the Soviet state, in science, in high-tech weapons, in sending a dog into space and then a man. They needed consumer achievements, too, Soviet blue jeans, new apartment buildings. And they needed sporting triumphs. In his study of the Russian mentality, The Russian Mind, Ronald Hingley reflects on the Russians’ historic capacity and requirement for what he calls “prestige projects.” “Gifted in areas as varied as chess, rocketry and athletics, Russians are often successful when they turn their combined efforts to prestige projects, many of which are functionally effective as well as impressively decorated. One important secondary aim is to capture the imagination of foreign observers in the hope that some may be sufficiently dazzled to overlook the poor living conditions endured by the average citizen.”

Soviet citizens saw Spassky’s role as defending the outstanding example of “Ours (Means) Better,” the USSR’s grip on the World Chess Championship. In fighting the American, he became the symbol of the fallen. Before Reykjavik, he received countless letters from Soviet citizens, reminding him of his patriotic duty to turn back the imperialist American who was invading the Soviet chess citadel.

Justifying the Soviet state was what was important to the Party, not the game of chess for its own sake. Of course, says a former president of the Chess Federation of the Russian Federation, journalist Yevgeni Bebchuk: “The party bigwigs felt like that. You should die for the homeland and the Party. As for the games themselves, only chess players were interested. What really matters is that at the board you’re a Soviet person.” Today he smiles at the memory of the morale-boosting exercises undergone by contestants in student tournaments, with the whole team gathered in the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee.

They would sit us down in front of some official who didn’t know anything about chess. He would walk about the room. Nikitin, Spassky, and I would be sitting there. He would say, “You realize the honor that you have to defend. Do you understand the honor? Do you understand it properly? Do you understand it or not?” We would just sit there quietly. He would say, “Who is playing today? Ah, Bebchuk, you’re a journalist. Do your colleagues realize the honor they have to defend?” “Yes, they understand.” “You had better explain it to them. Do they understand it properly or not?”

In fact, there were high-level doubts before the Rekyjavik match as to whether Spassky did recognize his duty as required. Viktor Baturinskii, the director of the Central Chess Club, was called in for questioning by Aleksandr Yakovlev, the acting head of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Central Committee and later Mikhail Gorbachev’s right-hand man. “Tell me, does Spassky understand he carries the moral responsibility for the outcome of the match in relation to the entire Soviet people?” Diplomatically, Baturinskii responded, “I hope he does understand.” Thirty years after making that statement, he admitted it had been deliberately disingenuous: he was clear that Spassky did not understand.