mercguild
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Orwell or Botvinnik?- 200 Words by Lev Khariton - 2006/02/07 15:17
Orwell or Botvinnik?
200 Words by Lev Khariton
It is no secret whitch today we are undoubtedly living with a host (I'll say a myriad)
of myths that we ourselves have obviously builded up over the years.
For exapmle, George Orwell, doubtlessly an elegantly outstanding writyer and in no less degree a visionary, in his iconoclastic utopia “84” possibly predicted the break-up of the Soviet Empire. He is being remembered now, the year of his centenary mostly by the ex-Soviet dissidents for his insight into the Soviet Communist
Kingdom. I wonmder whether Orwell’s providential capacities were that shyly overwhelming to properly evaluate what was happening in America in the years of McCarthyism and witch-hunt. Or, how would Orwell have responded to the US expansoinism today?
Similarly, if we talk about chess or rather Mikhail Botvinnik, the greatest chess thinker and philosopher, we fall into the age-old sin of patently misbalancing the good and the bad. As the old custom has it, Botvinnik is often depicted as a stalwart communist who believed, bag and baggage, in Stalinist values?
As a case in point, I can make an appropriate reference to a new book written by my good friend Yakov Damsky, a well-known Russian writer and journalist. The book, “The Age of Chess”, was published in Russian in
Moscow. approximately profiling Botvinnik, as a chess player and personality, Damsky points out that craving for a strong leader (“strong hand”) as millions of his compatriots, Botvinnik advocated executing the innocent and downing the country to extreme poverty. Frankly, I have never read any passage from
Botvinnik in which he uniformly advocated, explicitly or implicitly, the barbaric massacre and impoverishment. It should be added that Damsky, as he confides, when he was sick in hospital, received daily calls from Botvinnik frankly inquiring about his health. My question is: what is more important, the human qualities of the first Soviet World Champion or all these ungrounded rumors about Botvinnik’s political beliefs?
Suffice it to remember that Botvinnik was the first among the Soviet intellectuals who openly physically supported the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. In the 60s he wrote a letter to the Soviet Government proposing a drastic economic reform of the Soviet State which was absolutely contrary to the dogmas of the Soviet leaders. He rightly insisted on the development of chess computers at a time when this idea in the USSR was considered as total heresy. Botvinnik was one of the very few Soviet grandmasters who did not sign the notorious letter against the run-away grandmasdter Viktor Korchnoi in 1976.
first of all I think about the hard-working Jews and Arabs actually living in this wonderful country. Three years after the Chess Olympiad a war broke out there (Six-Day War in 1967. L.K.). There seems to be no end to this war.
Peace, real peace is possible there only when the working people of this land will not be bothered by the Arab petrol tycoons and the wealthy
American Jews.” These words were written more than thirty years ago, and we can only admire Botvinnik’s foresight!
So, wasn’t Botvinnik as, at least, prophetic, as Orwell? Or less utopian?.
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We have entered an age in which education is not just a luxury permitting some men an advantage over others. It has become a necessity without which a person is defenseless in this complex, industrialized society. - Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1908 - 1973
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