Searching for Slavkas

the tenuous future of Russian chess

Russian chess is in crisis. In August, after the men’s national team finished 14th at the European chess championships in Göteborg, Sweden, even the most generous observers agreed that the situation was dire. There was some consolation that the women’s team took home the bronze medal, but it was hardly sufficient. The men’s gold medal went to undefeated Holland. And, much to the humiliation of Russian chess fans, the Russian team lost its head-to-head match to France 1.5 : 2.5.

Why the hand-wringing? Simply because a few decades ago any Soviet team would have beaten the French hands down. And both the Soviet and Russian men’s chess teams have only very rarely not come home with a medal, usually the gold. “In 1978, in the heyday of Soviet chess,” said renowned chess observer Yury Vasiliev, “when the then young Anatoly Karpov was calling the tune in world chess, the Soviet team unexpectedly lost the Chess Olympiad to the Hungarians. It triggered such a wave of criticism, both within the chess community and among the top levels of the Soviet leadership, that some chess VIP apparatchiks were ready ‘to put their party membership card on the table’ as they used to say in those days.”

Those were the glory days for Russian chess. General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev himself made a point to personally award the freshly-baked World Champion Anatoly Karpov with the champion’s laurels, saying: “Vzyal koronu, derzhi – nikomu ne otdavay!” (“You took the crown – hold on to it, don’t give it up to anyone!”)

Not so today. Last year, when Vladimir Kramnik defended his world title against Peter Lekko in a breathtaking match, Russian political VIPs were quite low key. After his win, Kramnik did not even receive the formerly much-publicized congratulatory telegram from the Kremlin. And for good reason: chess is no longer promoted on the state level.

Paradoxically, the Politburo understood the public relations value of chess better than do current leaders. In a public lecture delivered in May at the Moscow literary café Bilingua, former world chess champion, and now chairman of the political organization Committee-2008, Garry Kasparov was asked to draw an analogy with chess when evaluating the “type of political  leader Vladimir Putin is.” “Well,” Kasparov replied, “Russia’s leader is a judo master. It has no relation to chess, as it is beyond the realm of intellect.” Simply put, Russia’s current leadership rests its prestige on sheer force rather than on the force of intellect.

If state leaders do not care about chess, chess officials couldn’t care less. Last year, when the Russian team did rather poorly at the World Olympiad in Spain (the men’s team finished second and the women took third), functionaries tried to put the best face on things, saying that winning medals was a “sufficiently decent” result, because, in terms of total points scored, Russia was far ahead of any other country thanks to the men’s silver and women bronze. No one was ready yet to raise the specter of crisis.

But there is no more putting a good face on things. Alexander Bach, executive director of the Russian Chess Federation, admitted that he cannot fathom what happened in Sweden. “We will need to painstakingly examine it all,” he said. “For even a third place for the women’s team, no matter how young they are, can hardly be considered a success… For now, all I can say is that we are not talking about some coaching miscalculations or blunder in preparations. You can call it a coaching miscalculation when, say, your team narrowly misses first place. But when you finish 14th – that’s a different story altogether.”

The soonest opportunity for the Russian team to redeem itself is at the World Chess Championships, starting October 31 in Israel. According to preliminary information, the lineup of the Russian men’s team will be much stronger. Grandmasters Alexander Grischuk and Alexander Morozevich, who skipped Göteborg, have agreed to participate. But is that enough? For, on paper, – in terms of average rankings – both teams, the men’s (Pyotr Svidler, Alexei Dreev, Alexander Motylev, Yevgeny Bareyev and Artyom Timofeyev) and the women’s (Alexandra Kostenyuk, Nadezhda and Tatyana Kosintsev, Yekaterina Kovalevskaya and Alisa Galliamova), were far superior to their opponents in Sweden.

But the Russian men’s team lacked for “stars,”  largely explained by the current discord among current and former stars of Russian chess. Suffice it to include on the team Garry Kasparov and his-pupil-turned-rival Vladimir Kramnik (or even Anatoly Karpov), and Russia’s odds at winning the event would have certainly looked much better. Such zaboyshchiki (“heavy-hitters”) can even lead a rather mediocre lineup of players to victory by scoring decisive points on the top chess boards. But Kasparov unexpectedly quit chess this year to switch to politics, while Kramnik focuses on more lucrative individual tournaments than on “rank-and-file” European events. After all, no “communist party” can dictate to players in which events they must participate. For instance, last year Kramnik opted out of the Chess Olympiad because of his match against Lekko – something that would have been unheard of in the Soviet era. It all comes down to the simple fact that chess – like so many other sports – no longer serves the state goal of promoting the “advantages of socialist regime.”     

But then, in general, chess is much more than a simple sport – it is a reflection of Russian society. Like so many other aspects of Russian life, it has not been spared by the new economic and social realities. “In a society where money decides everything,” said Yevgeny Sarmatov, a first category player at the Moscow Chess Club, “the system of training young chess players – what the USSR was always famous for – has collapsed. That is, the schools still exist [see boxes, pages 56-7], but no one is financing them anymore on the same level, so they live from hand to mouth.”

Young, up-and-coming chess talents are no longer encouraged to travel the world to play in tournaments. Nor are they “attached” as they used to be to the adult teams at major events, so that they can test themselves in real matches – often at a coach’s peril. Not surprisingly, in 2005, no Russian chess player won a major chess tourney. The spoils instead went to players like Hungary’s Petr Lekko, India’s Vishvanand Anand and Bulgaria’s Veselin Topalov.    

Interestingly, while Russia is suffering from a deficit of chess prodigies, other former Soviet republics which have retained the Soviet system of nurturing young talent have achieved tangible results. Ukraine is first among them, counting in its ranks such rising stars as Sergei Kariakin and Yekaterina Lagno.

Meanwhile, Kasparov, who contributed to the introduction of chess education in U.S. schools,  was staunched from similar efforts by Russian bureaucracy. “Even at the secondary school level, chess is no longer encouraged,” said Sergei Zarubin, the parent of a chess prodigy from Moscow’s School #1251. “When I grew up, we played chess against each other at school even during class breaks – or at least when vacationing in Pioneer Camps. Now I have to teach my son Sasha and be his ‘sparring partner’ all by myself. His school mates play mentally-debilitating computer games or smoke and drink beer after school, which hardly serves to raise their IQs.”

Chess is also no longer a favored pastime in families. In Soviet times, a father would teach his son how to swim, read and play chess. Slavka, the fatherless child in a story by Vasily Shukshin was given this bit of advice from one of his mother’s suitors: “Learn how to play chess, Slavka. That will earn you a totally different attitude. Imagine yourself in a group. Some will pick-up the bottle, some will play games with the fair sex, and you say, ‘Chess anyone?’ That will make people understand – this is quite a smart guy to deal with – he stays tuned to culture.” Today’s Slavkas ignore the chessboard and flock to bowling clubs or spend hours in online chat rooms.

In fact, computers could be being used instead to attract youth back to chess. In the West, computers have long been an integral part of chess training. “Even chess coaches of the old school admit it is much more user-friendly to study chess theory and learn openings from a computer than to sift through tons of chess books,” said chess observer Semyon Leikin. “But in Russia, only Moscow chess schools have computers. In the provinces, where a lot of Russian chess talents were born, computers are still far and few between.”

Legendary Russian chess player Boris Spassky (10th world champion; he lost his title to Bobby Fischer in 1972), who recently returned to Russia after living for many years in France, summarized the situation well:

“The place taken by our teams at the European championships to some extent reflects the real situation with chess in Russia – above all the situation with children’s chess. Indeed, we now have fewer talented chess players. It is especially true of boys. With girls the situation is slightly better. Why? Of course, one can say it is all about shortage of money. But one should not give up in any case. There is only one way out: the older generation, like it used to be in Soviet times, must pass on its expertise to the youth. For example, I have a chess school in the Urals, I am also working on a project in Oryol… It is just that chess must be elevated back to its former level by all those interested in it – rather than single-handedly…”

The alternative is easy to see. Russian chess, for now in check, will find itself in checkmate.  RL