David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

3. Psychological—steadiness in the struggle.

Many of these points had already been raised with the Sports Committee, though two of Spassky’s demands—that everyone involved in his training should be sworn to secrecy and that the location of the match should be for him to decide—were new. The last worried the committee: they wanted Spassky to concentrate on chess and leave the rest to them.

Demichev’s one line was enough. His request to be kept informed raised the stakes for the Sports Committee. In Soviet culture, it stated “the Party views this match as ideologically important.” In other words, “Watch out!” Or, as Spassky expresses it in English, he had succeeded “in jumping through Pavlov’s head.”

After receiving it, the Sports Committee was, or at least saw itself as being, unusually complaisant toward Spassky, even when it became plain that he lacked faith in them. For example, the committee wanted to send a doctor, a translator, and its choice of journalist to Reykjavik. Spassky insisted that they send a grand master, Isaac Boleslavskii, rather than a professional chess writer. And he rejected a doctor and a translator, telling Ivonin, “We don’t need a translator, we can do everything ourselves. It’s a matter of trust.” Decoded—and of course Ivonin understood the code—that meant Spassky thought the translator would be a KGB officer, there to observe him. The committee would have had to approve these staff and arrange their passports. Ivonin’s note of the conversation gives Spassky’s remark three exclamation marks.

The balance of power had shifted to the chess champion. “Heads down” became the rule in the Sports Committee. “Why risk intervention?” muses Beilin. “Pavlov was no idiot. This was now Demichev’s and Spassky’s responsibility. Okay, so you guys take responsibility.”

Today, Spassky remembers that he was not given the team he wanted and denied the interpreter and cook of his choice—Karpov in 1978 had a squad of forty, he complains. He is also disdainful about his lineup: “Krogius was not much of a psychologist…. In Reykjavik, 1972, he was useless. Nei was a tennis partner, not much of a chess player. Geller was the only one who helped me.” But the truth is that the committee did its best to convince Spassky that a head of delegation and the other assistants were necessary. The limited chess team in Iceland was the team Spassky himself had assembled.

On 4 January 1972, in a secret memo to Demichev covering every aspect of Spassky’s training, including his diet, Pavlov tried to reassure the Central Committee that everything was in hand.

Scientific workers and specialists from the Academy of Medical Sciences and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Physical Training have been brought in to provide thorough medical care, organize the appropriate nourishment, and devise recommendations for quickly reestablishing the ability to work after major mental, nervous, and psychological labors.

The issue of providing high-calorie foods is being decided jointly with the RSFSR Ministry of Trade.

In the ensuing months, with the world champion’s family finally settled into a newly built, plush four-room apartment in Vesnin Street in the elite diplomatic quarter, Spassky and his team moved from handpicked dacha to handpicked dacha—Krasnaia Pakhra thirty-five kilometers from Moscow (where he was billeted during his championship match with Petrosian), Arkhys in the North Caucasus, Sochi on the Black Sea, and finally Ozera near Moscow. In Ozera they lived in a sanatorium where defeated German field marshal Friedrich von Paulus had been held after the war. The Sports Committee kept an eye on the facilities and living conditions—and tried, as discretely as it could, to establish how hard Spassky was working.

Unhappily, the training paradise now created contained a number of serpents.

By the time he arrived in Reykjavik, Spassky was feeling the strain caused by the breakdown of two key relationships during his training period, one with the director of the Central Chess Club, Viktor Baturinskii, the other with the champion’s personal coach, Igor Bondarevskii. There was also a quarrel with Mikhail Botvinnik, opening a rift sufficiently wide for Botvinnik to refuse to sign a petition to save the struggling magazine Moscow Chess from closure simply because Spassky’s signature was also on it.

The consequences of the breach with Baturinskii, in particular, were to be serious. Spassky put at arm’s length the man who had direct responsibility for chess and chess players, who led the negotiations with the Americans and with FIDE over the location of the match, and who might have been a highly effective team leader in Iceland.

The immediate cause of this dispute appears trivial. Spassky wanted to lend his car to a friend. To do this, he needed a duly notarized letter of authority (as is still the case in Russia today). In late November 1971, Spassky drafted such a letter and asked Baturinskii to affix the Central Chess Club seal and countersign it. Baturinskii refused. He was not qualified to sign, he told Spassky. (Actually, he thought there was something suspect about the document and believed Spassky would do better to take it to a lawyer.) The champion took this as a personal slight and made it plain that as far as he was concerned, Baturinskii was no longer to be trusted. From this point on, Baturinskii was effectively excluded from close contact with the preparations.

Even in his final years, as a blind, hard of hearing, apartment-bound pensioner, Baturinskii’s memory of Spassky’s attitude revived an indignant anger. As a Soviet, he desperately wanted Spassky to triumph. Equally, as a Stalinist by upbringing, he had little time for the free-spirited Spassky, who felt that when the world champion spoke, the chess world should follow.

In terms of personality and politics, there was an inevitability about his break with the champion. Some surmise that Spassky created the car issue to confront Baturinskii and distance him from the match.

Spassky informed the authorities that he objected to Baturinskii representing him at FIDE in negotiations over the match conditions. Ivonin tried dissuading Spassky. Strictly speaking, he said, Baturinskii had been correct not to sign the letter of authorization. But Spassky’s mind had been made up. In any case, at that point, Baturinskii drew the line. “I told Ivonin that I refused to go. He said that my passport and all the documents were ready. I said that’s not important—if someone who ought to trust me doesn’t trust me, I just won’t go.”

The row undoubtedly upset Spassky and drained his energy. In practical terms, the negotiations for the match were left in the hands of Geller, who understood chess, and Aleksandra Ivushkina, the deputy head of the Sports Committee’s International Department, whose work covered relations with international sports federations. She spoke excellent English, had wide experience in working with other federations, and knew the Sports Committee’s position. In terms of legal acumen, though, it was hardly the sharpest team.

Spassky’s breakup with Baturinskii affected the conduct of the match. The other breakup—with Bondarevskii, his longtime coach—affected his preparation. Bondarevskii and Spassky had begun to work together in 1961, as the future champion’s career and personal life ran aground. Intriguingly, he was later to part from Bondarevskii as his second marriage was also foundering. Spassky’s winning the title had changed both relationships. Bondarevskii had not been trainer to the world champion. Suddenly he was. Similarly, Larisa had not married a world champion. She complained that when Boris took the title, he began to dominate all aspects of life—he even gave her advice on how to cook soup.