Winning starts with what you know
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For the first time in my life I had seen a girl whose pet name Asja matched so perfectlly her maiden name Zinovjeva – although, you need to know Russian very well to understand that strange feeling. She became my wife Anastasia. She possessed unique personality traits and everyone could appreciate it, most of all I, her husband and our two daughters.
Anastasia Golubenko (Asja Zinovjeva), 1966–2012
The first time I saw Anastasia was exactly a quarter-century ago, on May 12th, 1987. She was about to finish her studies at the Moscow State Institute of Physical Culture with its famous chess department headed by IM Boris Zlotnik. She visited our local chess club in Kohtla-Järve in Estonia for several hours, to explore the possibility of employment as a graduate. It was a special system in the USSR: all higher education graduates had to follow a prescribed placement plan. Only those in possession of the so-called red diploma, – one earned with distinction, an honours diploma – in higher education (or HNC in the UK, DEC in French-speaking countries), like Anastasia, could choose from two or three places to work. I say she came to “our” club, but I myself had come to Estonia just three years earlier, after graduating from another Moscow institute, now the National Research Nuclear University.
Why do I know this date, 12th May 1987, precisely? Certainly, I remember those times like yesterday, but I know this specific date thanks to chess. When Anastasia entered our club, the first all-Estonian Individual Olympiad was in the full progress, and I was playing a game against my teammate Alexander Schmidt. So the date is on our scoresheet, very simple. Yes, I remember like yesterday. Suddenly I felt there was a light shining on my back and watching our game. I couldn't find a win, and instinctively turned round. Better I hadn't. I forget everything for a while, and the only thought left in my head was: I must win this game, through thick and thin, by hook or by crook, for love or money. For money or love...
Blushing, I rose from the table. Anastasia was still there. “You shouldn’t have won,” she said, “you tricked him.”
From Sep 1987 Anastasia started her career as a chess teacher and coach in the local Kohtla-Järve sport school and chess club Diagonaal. It was her first and the last working place – the only entry in her workbook during a quarter-century. We became friends and very soon I’ve a got a chess pass to her. It wasn’t difficult: I just showed my game against her former teacher:
Two months later, in Nov 1987, I got a chance to continue my studies as a post-graduate student, and returned to Moscow. It was just a night train between us, and standard mail. I played again in the Moscow university championship and Moscow men’s quarterfinals. In 1986 Anastasia played in the women’s final of Moscow championship, and I tried to duplicate her success. However hard I might try, I only reached the semi-final in 1988. Anyway, from time to time I dedicated little combinations to her.
I already had a chess pass to Anastasia, but I didn’t have a pass to her heart. And one summer day I said to her: “Do you want me to become the world champion?” I was serious. I felt so much energy from her presence that I was game for anything. She replied seriously: “You’ll never be the world champion, you haven’t nature of killer.” It was our first summer together. We played chess and didn’t play chess. And we decided to make a match of it. We were happy. We made plans.
Anastasia in Alajõe, Lake Peipus, Estonia, Aug 1989
This photo is from that summer. It was the first time we had invited players from the German Norderstedt, the partner city of Kohtla-Järve. In the background you see Natalie Lüth, now an air controller at Hamburg Airport, and Ralf Bohnsack, now civil engineering adviser in the Norderstedt Rathaus. Anastasia’s play was simple and strong, her trademark not only in chess.
It was clear that Anastasia was one of the strongest woman players of Estonia. In 1989 she had won the bronze medal in the Estonian Championship. But nobody in Tallinn offered her a Zonal tournament or the like, for her chess development. Certainly, she was very disappointed, but then again she had come to Estonia not to play chess but teach chess. And that is what she did. It was her mission, and she was a real professional, as we say: born and bred. And as a professional she didn’t like this perestroika, uskorenie, glasnost, etc. – the politics and orgy of speechmaking, which simply distracted her and her students from studying chess.
After this summer tournament in 1989 the players from Norderstedt asked us to repay the visit in the next summer, 1990, and invited Anastasia to join the team. She couldn’t, as she was expecting our first child. Anastasia was alone in Estonia (I was in Moscow, as you know), and to avoid any risks we decided she must go to Volgograd, where her parents lived.
This photo was taken in May 1990 by an unknown street photographer in Moscow, on Krymsky Bridge. It shows Anastasia with her old friends, classmate Marina Dobrinkova from Volgograd and Tatiana Gladisheva. Which reminds me of an incredible coincidence. One time, in 1988, Anastasia came to Moscow to visit her best friend Tatiana Gladisheva and to meet me (I even remember the movie we saw in the cinema, it was Ballad of Narayama). Tatiana lived half hour from Moscow, in Krasnogorsk, and as it turned out, just a hundred meters from my own best friend, Andranik (we have know each other since 1978, over a third of a century now). But this is not the last story about our friends…
So, I substituted for Anastasia for the trip to Germany, more specifically to the BRD (the DDR existed until 03.10.1990). All documents were made in Estonia, so my scientific supervisor in Moscow didn’t knew about my trip from USSR to “one of the most capitalist counties” on Soviet doorstep. It was my first trip abroad, and surely it was unforgettable. We flew from Leningrad to Berlin, we saw the Berlin Wall, the separation of the two states…
Our daughter Valentina was born in three weeks after my return from Germany. The next year I finished my post-graduate studies in Moscow and we all returned to Estonia. It was August 1991, the time of the ominous GKChP (“Gang of Eight”, a group of eight high-level officials within the Soviet government, the Communist party and the KGB who attempted a coup against Mikhail Gorbachev on 18 August 1991).
1996: five-year-old Valentina plays her first game against Kasparov – actually
the Kasparov chess computer of Saitek
Valentina grew up in a chess atmosphere, and like a child grows in a home environment and begins to speak a native tongue, in four years she began to understand the language of chess. We never forced her learn or play the game, she just grew up in this atmosphere.
The Language of Chess – this was a life project of Anastasia, our common project. We didn’t get around to publishing it, because we were fighting for Anastasia’s health. But all materials are safely in my possession. We treat chess as a language, with its own lexical units. We catalogued all the different chess notions (or think we got them all), and wanted to make this “dictionary” available to everybody. Anastasia also wanted that, I know this for sure. She never kept her chess understanding from her students. They were like her own children.
When Valentina entered a kindergarten, Anastasia went back to playing in the Estonian Championships. She was still strong as ever.
Graduates from different years: Mikhail Perelshteyn (now USA), Mikhail Kobalija (Moscow), Tõnu Truus (Tallinn), Evgeny Eletsky (Moscow), Vladimir Shishkin (worked in Poland), Danko Bokan (Serbia), Liga Ungure (Riga), Boris Zlotnik (Spain), Vladimir Vulfson (Moscow), Anastasia Golubenko (Kohtla-Järve), Aksel Rei (Tartu), Vladimir Hayrapetyan (Yerevan)
In Jan 1997 our Valentina, now six, still in kindergarten, played in her first Estonian Championship for girls under ten (G8 wasn’t held in those times). She became the vice-champion. Anastasia stopped playing and turned to coaching full time. Not only our daughter, but many other chess students around the same age. She had achieved her first big success as a coach in 1996, when her pupil Ksenia Starceva, nine, became the Estonian champion G10 and then participated in the World Championship on the Menorca Island, Spain. That was also a debut for Anastasia.
Valentina playing in her first European Youth Championship, Girls' Under
10
in Tallinn, Estonia in 1997. She came second in that event.
1999: Valentina shares third place in the European Girls' Under 10 championship
in Greece. The winners on the stage are: Scarcea Raluca (ROM), Muzychuk Anna
(UKR), Gakhokidze Tamar (GEO), Marinina Tatiana (RUS), Golubenko Valentina (EST),
Atnilov Bella (ISR).
1999: Valentina sharing the sixth place amongst 100 boys at the World Youth
Festival for Boys
Under 10 in Spain B10. In the picture she is facing Tulay Berkay from Turkey.
Valentina won the game in the Kalashnikov Variation.
Our path from then until the end of 2004 was presented in the first ChessBase story about Valentina and Anastasia:
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The talented Miss Golubenko 28.12.2004 – She is 14 years old and 16-time champion of Estonia in various age categories. Valentina's trainers are her parents, both strong players. But the three Golubenkos, who live in Kohtla-Jarve, Estonia, are Russian citizens, and so Valentina cannot play in Youth World Championships. We bring you the story and a picture album of Valentina's chess career. |
– Part two to follow –
