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Lev Khariton: IS CHESS HISTORY IN THE DOCK? - 2006/11/13 02:05
CHESSPRESS (April, 2004) www.pakchess.com
IS CHESS HISTORY IN THE DOCK?
By Lev Khariton
No one would argue that both Bronstein and Smyslov (and Botvinnik, most likely, more than anyone else) lived under the iron heel of
Stalin’s epoch. The time tested them, breaking and crushing their spirit - the same happened to scientists and writers, painters and actors. But chess in the hands of great masters seemed to resist the tyranny and violence. People were often broken down but chess pieces, by some inconceivable magic, resisted human laws.
Bronstein’s life was far from easy. Sometimes it seems that the grandmaster is even light-minded, but what is hiding behind this lightmindedness? Until recently we did not know that his father had been arrested and spent several years in Stalin’s GULAG. In 1951 when his son was playing the match with Botvinnik, he visited the event in secret leaving without permission the prison zone 101 kilometers away from Moscow! Just imagine: to play a world title match and to know that your father, a runaway convict, is watching your game in the playing hall!
Well, the match was a hard trial for Botvinnik and Bronstein. The time was particularly cruel, and they could not stand each other. Until recently I bought the book about their match which had been compiled by Igor Botvinnik, the nephew of the great champion. Understandably, the heir is trying to idealize his famous uncle. Obviously, Botvinnik never intended to publish this book! Years ago he wrote an article “Is Chess an Art?” in which he tried to prove that chess was an art. But in fact, for Botvinnik chess was primarily a science in which he was a surgeon opening up his patients, in other words, opponents.
Browsing the volume on the Botvinnik-Bronstein match, I was amazed:
the talented and most original Bronstein disappeared! Botvinnik described him as a cowardly player unable to calculate further than 2 or 3 moves in advance. With Black he was always ready for a draw, and his attacks were always provoked by his fear to lose. “To win half a point,-noted Botvinnik,- Bronstein is ready for anything”. I do not know whether Bronstein had read these words about himself before, but doubtless he felt Botvinnik’s attitude. So, why was Botvinnik, the Soviet chess patriarch, so surprised that Bronstein hated him all his life?
A few years ago I wrote the article “With Love and
Bitterness” about the match between Botvinnik and Bronstein. I regretted some of the opinions and interviews given by Bronstein when he was accusing Botvinnik of all possible sins, calling him a giftless player whose sole purpose in life was to win the World Crown. I also criticized Bronstein’s memoirs in the book “The
Sorcerer’s Apprentice” written by him in collaboration with the Belgian journalist T.Furstenberg. For example, while reminiscing the Soviet chess master Grigory Goldberg, Bronstein writes that in 1933 Goldberg, Botvinnik’s lifelong friend and chess second, took Salo Flohr to a shop where the grandmaster bought a fur coat. After this, Flohr in, so to say, token of gratitude, lost two games to Botvinnik and their match was drawn. Is it really nice to remember in such a way the people who are long gone, the people who devoted their lives to chess? I do not, of course, mention here that for such allegations one has to have definite proofs. Although, I repeat, if you read what Botvinnik wrote about Bronstein, you will understand this bitterness.
At any rate, in my article I criticized Bronstein. This criticism was obviously to the point, but when some time after the publication of my article I received from Moscow a letter from my friend who knows
Bronstein quite intimately, I remembered that in my anger I had probably gone too far. From my friend’s letter I came to know that the grandmaster was heavily depressed, I understood that he was regretting that he he had devoted his life to chess. What is more, he considered chess as a useless occupation!
Long before I had noticed Bronstein’s eccentricities. Whatever you are discussing with him, finally the conversation will boil down to Botvinnik and that tragic 23rd game of their match. It seems that the past is holding Bronstein in eternal captivity affecting detrimentally the whole of his subconscious. I do not think that my friend and I are the only people knowing Bronstein’s eccentricities. Doubtless, such people as Alexander Roshal so closely involved with chess and chess players know Bronstein very well. Roshal could have talked with Bronstein “tete a tete”, he could have shown him his sympathies. But why did he rush to publish
Bronstein’s memoirs on Zurich? If he had refused to publish
Bronstein, it would not have been censorship. Such materials that are not well documented should not necessarily be published.
All the time I hear the same question: what is Roshal’s fault?
The memoirs are Bronstein’s. Yes, that is true. But Roshal, being an extremely intelligent, I would rather say, smart man, understands the ‘welcome’ these memoirs will evoke in those readers who want to get, so to say, ‘hot stuff’.
Roshal anticipates how he would be praised as a truth-seeker by shallow and incompetent readers. I remember how somewhere in the middle of 1991 I read in Roshal’s magazine ’64-Chess
Review’ materials about Alekhine. The Russian champion was glorified as a noble aristocrat, he was so proud that he refused to shake hands with anyone who mispronounced his name! Well, the glory of all mankind!.. Quite soon, in September 1991 I met Roshal in Paris at the Immopar Cup Tournament. His face was beaming. The first thing he asked me was whether I had read the revelations in ‘64’ on
Alekhine’s anti-Semitic articles. “I was the first to publish this material!”- Roshal said proudly. Just a couple of weeks before the Soviet Union had been torn apart by the August putsch, the tide had turned, and Roshal, a seasoned opportunist, had gone with the new tide. The praise of Alekhine gave way to cursing his name! Alas, such people as Roshal are quite numerous. They are unsubmergable despite any social storms and political transformations!
Bronstein’s memoirs, Smyslov’s response ( and this response was like a forced move - who would keep silent after
Bronstein’s accusations?) brought back to my memory Boris
Pasternak’s famous words: “History is not what clothes we were wearing; history is how we were forced to go naked” Yes, the editor of ‘64’ drove the brilliant grandmaster out naked before numerous readers. Almost immediately, as if there were conspiracy between Roshal and other journalists, the internet site
www.chesscafe.com published Andy Soltys’ big article ‘Treachery at Zurich’ in which the author without any profound knowledge of Soviet history or Soviet chess passes his own verdict demanding Smyslov’s confession of guilt. Well, according to Soltys, Smyslov should plead guilty: well, I played in Zurich, and everything was done there to make me the winner of the tournament.
Well, my dear friends, nobody so far has cancelled the presumption of innocenceю Prove, please, that Smyslov’s wins were rigged, that his gem with Keres at the end of the tournament was a fake. And who would stand in the witness box today? Averbakh, Taimanov? But from them you would never hear anything except some evasive phrases.
Why did Bronstein only now, when most of the grandmasters, who participated in the Zurich tournament, passed away, begin to question the validity of the 1953 Candidates’? What should we think now about Bronstein’s masterpiece, his book on Zurich, if the most crucial games were, as he maintains today, fixed, and Smyslov was the winner ‘appointed’ by the Soviet government?
Let us get to Bronstein’s and Furstenberg’s book ‘The Sorcerer’s Apprentice’. It is in this book that
I read for the first time the assertion that Smyslov was a ‘protégé’ of the Soviet government/ Although, strange as it may seem, this book has a chapter written by Smyslov who glorifies
Bronstein’s talent and achievements. Possibly, Smyslov did not see what his friend had written about him in this book. Or, more likely, the authors of the book, without Smyslov’s knowledge, included his souvenirs of Bronstein in their book.
Or another absurdity from this book. Bronstein narrates how at the
Budapest Tournament in 1950 his trainer Boris Weinstein decided that
Boleslavsky who was leading the tournament should not win the event.
In the past he had always lost to Botvinnik and therefore Weinstein believed that he did not stand a chance of winning the World Title. It was decided that Bronstein would catch up with Boleslavsky, and later the Soviets would organize a match-tournament with the participation of Botvinnik, Bronstein and Boleslavsky and the latter two would topple Botvinnik. The whole story narrated by Bronstein and
Furstenberg is aimed at showing that the last round gem between
Bronstein and Keres was fixed. Smyslov also hints at this coercion in his response to Bronstein in ‘64’. But what are we to understand if this game is published as one of the best games in
Bronstein’s career in ‘The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice’?
It should be emphasized here that Bronstein’s book on the Zurich
Tournament is justly considered to be one of the greatest masterpieces of chess literature. Generations of chess players have been brought up on this book, Bronstein’s brilliant annotations and, more particularly, on the annotations to the game Keres-Smyslov in which
Bronstein sings praises to Smyslov’s inimitable intuition. What should chess enthusiasts expect from chess history? Should they be happy if it is presented as a pack of lies?
Below are the games that have been put in doubt today by Grandmaster
David Bronstein. My question to the readers: could such masterpieces have been rigged?
D.Bronstein - P.Keres (Candidates' Tournament, Budapest , 1950)
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0-0 8.d4 d6 9.c3 Bg4 10.h3 Bxf3 11.Qxf3 exd4 12.Qd1 dxc3 13.Nxc3 Na5 14.Bc2 Re8
15.f4 b4 16.Nd5 Nxd5 17.Qxd5 c6 18.Qd3 g6 19.Kh1 Bf8 20.Rf1 Bg7 21.Bd2 c5 22.Ba4 Rf8 23.Rab1 Qb6 24.f5 Bd4 25.Qg3 Nc4 26.Bh6 Bg7 27.Bxg7 Kxg7
28.f6+ Kh8 29.Qg5 b3 30.axb3 Qb4 31.bxc4 Qxa4 32.Rf4 Qc2
P.Keres - V.Smyslov (Candidates' Tournament Zurich ,1953)
1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 e6 3.Nf3 c5 4.e3 Be7 5.b3 0-0 6.Bb2 b6 7.d4 cxd4
8.exd4 d5 9.Bd3 Nc6 10.0-0 Bb7 11.Rc1 Rc8 12.Re1 Nb4 13.Bf1 Ne4 14.a3
Nxc3 15.Rxc3 Nc6 16.Ne5 Nxe5 17.Rxe5 Bf6 18.Rh5 g6
19.Rch3!? dxc4 20.Rxh7 c3 21.Qc1 Qxd4 22.Qh6 Rfd8 23.Bc1 Bg7 24.Qg5
Qf6 25.Qg4 c2 26.Be2 Rd4 27.f4 Rd1+ 28.Bxd1 Qd4+ 0-1
Y. Geller - D.Bronstein
Candidates' Tournament Zurich,1953 1.d4 e6 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.c4 d5 4.cxd5 exd5 5.Nc3 c6 6.Qc2 Bg4 7.Bg5 Nbd7
8.e3 Bd6 9.Bd3 Qc7 10.0-0-0 h6 11.Bh4 Bb4 12.Kb1 Bxc3 13.Qxc3 0-0
14.h3 Bh5 15.Qc2 Ne4 16.Bxe4 dxe4 17.g4 Bg6 18.Nd2 Nb6 19.Nc4 Nd5
20.Bg3 Qd7 21.Ne5 Qe6 22.Qb3 Bh7 23.Rc1 a5 24.Qxb7 Nb4 25.Nc4 c5
26.dxc5 Nd3 27.c6 f5 28.gxf5 Bxf5 29.Rhg1 Bg6 30.Rc2 Rac8 31.Bd6 Rfe8
38.Kc1 Qe7 39.Nd6 Nd3+ 40.Kd2 Rxc7 41.Qe8+ Qxe8 42.Nxe8 Rd7 43.Rc7 1-0.
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Last night I discovered a new form of oral contraceptive. I asked a girl to go to bed with me and she said no.
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