David Edmonds - Bobby Fischer Goes to War

For several years, there had been hints of trouble to come. According to Spassky’s autobiographical section of Grand Strategy, during the 1969 title match with Petrosian, the Bondarevskii-Spassky relationship had broken down over the living arrangements Bondarevskii had made (too far out of town, Spassky thought). However, they eventually made up. Spassky respected Bondarevskii and acknowledged that he had to accept him as he was. Looking back at the dawn of his relationship with his third and last trainer, Spassky remembered, “He knew how to stimulate me and make me work. That was his secret.”

That was his perspective in 2002. Thirty years earlier, things looked rather different. On the morning of 2 February 1972, Bondarevskii told Ivonin that he and Spassky could no longer work together and they had come to an amicable agreement to part. There was no real communication between them, said Bondarevskii, so they accomplished little. Since he became champion, Spassky had practically ceased to listen to his recommendations. Nor was Bondarevskii satisfied with Spassky’s work rate. Before he saw Ivonin, he visited Baturinskii. Baturinskii remembered the conversation thus: “‘Viktor Davidovich, I’m stepping down from this job’—How can you refuse to work only three or four months before the beginning of the match? You are his chief trainer—you’re putting him in a very difficult situation. ‘It’s impossible to work with him, impossible. I am standing down. He doesn’t follow my instructions: he gets on with all sorts of other things. With so little time before the match he can’t concentrate.’”

Nikolai Krogius draws a distinction between the old Spassky and the new, between the aspiring world champion and the title holder. “Previously (for example, during the preparations for his 1969 match against Petrosian), Boris might initially disagree with a proposal, but later, having thought about it, he would often (usually on the following day) admit that it was sound. Bondarevskii and I would joke that Spassky must be persuaded in two stages: first a refusal, then a yes. But now, having said no, Boris stubbornly maintained his position—frequently without foundation.”

Some believe that Bondarevskii abandoned the team because he feared his trainee was heading for defeat and was apprehensive of being associated with failure.

The same reason may explain the simultaneous resignation of V. I. Postnikov, then president of the USSR Chess Federation and a friend of Bondarevskii’s. Postnikov was succeeded by his deputy, Yuri Averbakh—no one else, according to Averbakh, was willing to take on the risk. Averbakh says that from this moment on, he grew pessimistic about Boris’s prospects. Only Bondarevskii’s force of personality could induce Spassky to keep slogging away—to work up the necessary mental sweat. Yes, Spassky labored, “but in a light style, let’s say.”

But plenty of people are inclined to side with Spassky in the dispute. According to Yevgeni Bebchuk, the former president of the Chess Federation of the Russian Federation, the coach was a very difficult person. “He was an ingenious coach, a prince among coaches, but his rudeness was quite impossible. When he became Spassky’s coach several years earlier, Spassky had needed his skills as a trainer, irrespective of his character. But when Spassky was at the height of his profession and Bondarevskii swore at him—he had always sworn at him—Spassky would no longer put up with it.”

Vera Tikhomirova also knew Bondarevskii from their hometown, Rostov on Don. An expansive, formidable woman, she had survived Stalin’s famine and terror to become the Russian Federation’s women’s chess champion, though at this point she taught chess for the Federation’s sports committee. Vera retains a maternal love for Spassky. In return, he loves her as would a son. Her verdict on Bondarevskii: “He was said to be strong-willed. But he wasn’t. He definitely didn’t like taking responsibility.”

The day of Bondarevskii’s departure, Spassky, Geller, and Krogius arrived in Ivonin’s office to give their side of the story. Bondarevskii did not believe in their success; he was not completely committed. Spassky would no longer put up with being treated like a child, spoken to in harsh language. What is more, Bondarevskii had not kept up with theoretical advances in openings: now that Geller was in the team, Bondarevskii was of no real value. Spassky added that he, Spassky, had been the first to declare they had to part.

To sweeten the pill, the group gave Ivonin a reassuring summary of their labor to date. Thanks to the Sports Committee, their personal problems, the dacha, flats, salaries, and living permits, had been resolved. The group was conducting its studies in a businesslike fashion, the creative work was going well, and the preparation plan had been successfully fulfilled. In groundwork they were probably ahead of Fischer. Ivonin noted: “They said Spassky would have a significant edge against Fischer in the opening because Fischer would not have time to rework his very limited repertoire.”

Whatever the basis for Bondarevskii’s departure, the original group had been working and living closely together; the loss of a member was inevitably unsettling. If there had been a driving force in the group, it was Bondarevskii. With Spassky as the new leader, the team simply performed what he wanted of them. An independent leader could have forced Spassky to do what he needed but did not care to do. Geller filled Bondarevskii’s place, but he was not at all suited to it. Unwilling to confront Spassky himself, he would quietly take Nei to one side. Could Nei cajole the champion to work?

“Obstinate, with a dimpled chin and a slow waddle, Geller looked more like a former boxer or elderly boatswain who had come on shore than the world-class grandmaster he was,” is the portrait drawn by Genna Sosonko in Russian Silhouettes. Spassky praised him as “a very complete player…. His diligence was extraordinary. He developed his talent by sitting on his backside, and his backside developed in turn thanks to his talent.” He belonged to a very elite club of those having a plus record against Fischer; over the course of his career, he had beaten the American five times.

Geller came from the most cosmopolitan city in the Soviet Union, the southern port of Odessa, and outwardly had the familiarity and warmth of the Jewish neighborhood where he grew up. However, Spassky once said the good nature was on the surface; underneath, Geller was envious and hostile. He was also wholly Soviet in outlook, deeply suspicious of the West and what he saw as its corrupt and devious ways. In his book Soviet Chess, Andrew Soltis quotes Geller as saying that success in chess awaited only those players of deep morality and high intellect who were “free from the flaws and evils rotting through the capitalist system.” Bondarevskii’s departure put this problematic character at the champion’s right hand in training and at the match.

With all these distractions, how effective and concentrated was Spassky’s preparation?

There are many gossipy tales of slackness; some might well come under the heading of vranyo —the Russian weakness for exaggerated, often preposterous untruth. Given Spassky’s insistence on complete secrecy, only a select few were granted any real insight into his training. One engaging story that seems short of genuine eyewitnesses recounts how Bondarevskii made his exit after Spassky was given a weekend off and came back a fortnight later. Another tells how visitors saw Spassky whiling away the time with whiskey and copies of Playboy magazine.

Still, that Spassky had a considerably more relaxed schedule than his opponent is unquestionable. Yuri Averbakh recalls that his first action when he took over as acting president of the USSR Chess Federation after Postnikov’s sudden resignation was to visit the camp for himself: “Spassky was sitting there with Geller and Krogius…. On the table were cards and dominoes, and when lunchtime came Spassky pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Everything became apparent to me immediately.”