Huffington: The Adventures of Mikhail Botvinnik (1)

The Adventures of Soviet Chess Patriarch Mikhail Botvinnik

By GM Lubomir Kavalek

Chess players around him had disappeared, having been executed or sent to gulags, but he lived. Mikhail Botvinnik (1911-1995) survived because he made himself indispensable. Even the architect of Soviet chess, Nikolai Krylenko, became a victim of Stalin's purges in the late 1930s, having been accused of spending too much time climbing mountains and playing chess. His goal was to export chess as part of Soviet culture and to dominate the chess world. He did not live to see it happen. Botvinnik was the most important chess player of Krylenko's legacy.

In his new book Mikhail Botvinnik, The Life and Games of a World Chess Champion, published by McFarland, Andrew Soltis writes:

"[Botvinnik] was born under a monarchy, lived through a revolution, a civil war, the brutal collectivization and famine, the Terror, a second world war and a cold war, the end of Stalin and a 'thaw', the malaise of the 1960s and 1970s, the Gorbachev reforms of glasnost and perestroika and, at the age of 80, the end of the Soviet Union and the beginning of an uncertain new Russia that is still trying to define itself."

Soltis tells a fascinating story of a man who seemed cold, unapproachable, and rather boring. Botvinnik was a devoted and convinced communist with ties to highest Soviet officials, including Stalin. He was the world champion for a span of 15 years and the leading Soviet player for more than 30 years. Generations of talented players, such as the world champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik, learned from him how to play the game.

The great mentor with an early, young student and friend

Botvinnik proposed playing rules to FIDE and defined the Soviet School of Chess. Its influence is still seen today: six of the eight participants in the Candidates tournament to establish the challenger to the world champion Magnus Carlsen, underway in Khanty-Mansiysk, Russia, were born in the Soviet Union. In his youth, Vishy Anand visited the Tal Chess Club at the Soviet Cultural Center in Chennai, India. And Veselin Topalov, no doubt, studied Soviet sources.

But not everything was rosy in Moscow. Boris Spassky once compared the lives of Soviet grandmasters to the lives of spiders in a bottle.

Soltis says his book is an attempt to explain Botvinnik in the context of today. It is a brilliant account, the best book written on Botvinnik by far. Soltis did extensive research, using mainly Soviet sources. Both Botvinnik's friends and critics have a voice in the book.

The games are an important part of the book and Soltis uses mostly Botvinnik's notes. I have included some of them in my commentaries. Botvinnik's game against the Austrian attacker and the author of the classic The Art of Sacrifice in Chess Rudolf Spielmann, played in the first round of the 1935 Moscow tournament, is his most celebrated miniature victory, lasting only 12 moves.

There was a controversy in this tournament concerning the game Botvinnik needed to win to share first place with with Salo Flohr of Czechoslovakia. Soviet master Nikolai Ryumin, known for creating brilliant attacks, allegedly composed the 22-move mating combination for the game Botvinnik-Chekhover. These things are difficult to prove but Soltis shows that Botvinnik never really denied it outright. It remained a mystery as did his 4-1 score against the Estonian hero Paul Keres in the 1948 World Championship tournament.

Soltis does not overburden the reader with long variations. His notes are guiding the games gracefully. Here and there he could have revealed more. For example, he does not mention a major discovery by the late Richard Cantwell, an American dentist and a strong chess amateur, who found a more precise continuation in Botvinnik's most famous encounter.

A postage stamp from the Republic of Central Africa celebrating Mikhail Botvinnik and one of the most celebrated combinations in chess history. Botvinnik himself dedicated a good part of his retired life trying to program a computer to understand chess dynamics and strategy to the extent that it would find the key move of this combination. He did not succeed. It is a sobering to discover that today's chess engines – Fritz, Rybka – find it in a matter of seconds.

– Part two to follow soon –

Original column here – Copyright Huffington Post

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