ruthless efficiency, of a culture and political system that permitted no dissent or internal squabbling. The reality, at least in the buildup to Reykjavik, was the reverse.
Boris Spassky and the chess authorities had been bracing themselves for a duel with Fischer since the spring of 1971, before the American had even taken on Taimanov in the first of the Candidates matches.
Normally, grandmaster arrangements would be managed through the USSR Chess Federation, but because of his position as world champion, Spassky jumped a stage of the administrative hierarchy, discussing his plans directly with the State Sports Committee leadership. A significant first meeting took place on 1 March 1971, when Spassky and his trainer, grandmaster Igor Bondarevskii, met the deputy sports minister, Viktor Ivonin, to discuss the champion’s program for the year ahead. This meant a schedule that would cover both his personal training and the array of commitments incumbent upon him as world champion, the training he would carry out for the trade union chess club, his participation in matches, international tournaments, public chess duties, even rest and recreation. The world champion was ex officio the leader of Soviet chess.
Viktor Ivonin is a central figure in our story. His daily record of the meetings and talks he held offers a unique contemporaneous source for the Soviet side of the championship. Sports Minister Pavlov had taken personal charge of the USSR preparations for the Munich Olympics, so Deputy Minister Ivonin became the senior governmental point of reference for Fischer’s challenge.
Short, shrewd, jolly, and still full of energy in his seventies, Ivonin is evidently a survivor. His career opened on the floor of a Leningrad electric power station, where at fourteen he started as a metal worker during the siege. There he became a Party activist, beginning the ascent that has taken him through all political upheaval to the spacious office he now occupies as the executive director of Russian Lotteries. He progressed steadily through the ranks of the Komsomol, went briefly to the Sports Committee, and then, in 1962, moved to the CPSU Central Committee, working in the sports section (he was a sports enthusiast). In 1968, when Pavlov became chairman of the State Sports Committee, he asked Ivonin to become his deputy: they had known each other well in the Komsomol and the Central Committee. Ivonin thought highly of Pavlov, but he hesitated for a short while because Pavlov was notoriously difficult to work with. They ended up being colleagues for fourteen years.
Politically, there was more to the story. Pavlov was on his way down. A tough Stalinist who had gained entry to the highest echelons of the Party as head of the Komsomol, he was a professional propagandist and orator, skilled at brutal assaults on those he and the authorities regarded as “enemies of the state.” He was known for his violent temper—though, says Ivonin, “the whip was not his principal weapon.” In the mid-1960s, he backed the hard-line Aleksandr Shelepin, who mounted an unsuccessful challenge to Brezhnev’s leadership. Shelepin was ejected from the Party Secretariat, dispatched to the outer darkness of the trade union movement. Pavlov fell with his mentor, and when, in 1968, he accepted an offer he could not refuse to become head of the State Sports Committee, it was a substantial loss of rank, influence, and authority. As first secretary of the Komsomol, he was a full member of the Central Committee; as chairman of the Sports Committee, he was reduced to being a nonvoting (“candidate”) member. However, he made the best of it, coming to be seen as a fine statesman of sport.
When Spassky and Bondarevskii arrived at Ivonin’s office, the central question was the probable identity of the challenger for the title. Spassky and Bondarevskii said Fischer would certainly be a contender, and they predicted he would reach the final. Forecasting his challenger was vital. Chess players cannot train effectively in a vacuum; the training has to be tailored to the opponent they expect to confront.
Although the world championship cycle still had a long way to run, from this moment, Spassky’s preparation would be focused on the American. Ivonin held a further series of meetings to appraise Fischer’s chess qualities. The tone was one of respect, almost awe. His technique was exemplary. He looked after his physical fitness. The enigma of his personality was discussed with curiosity and apprehension. There was longstanding resentment at Fischer’s earlier claims that Soviet players were dishonest and sold victories to one another for money. But was Fischer a genius, or mad, or both? The question was raised with Sergei Pavlov at the Sports Committee in March.
Old habits die hard. Not long after this committee meeting, an article entitled “The Subject Is Fischer” appeared in the magazine 64. This served up 1,400 words of acidic anti-Fischer vituperation. A non—chess journalist, Anatoli Golobev, wrote the piece under Pavlov’s instructions. This extract gives the flavor: “A difficult childhood predetermined his place in the chess world as well as his ignorance in most spheres of social life, unthinkable for a contemporary cultured person”—presumably a broad hint that Fischer was
It may have been their minister’s style, but several other members of the committee regarded this heavy- handed mauling as a hugely embarrassing mistake. When all was said and done, they knew Fischer as an exceptional player. The grandmasters also despised the item as the political journalism of a chess nonentity. Mikhail Beilin was head of the Sports Committee’s Chess Department from 1967 to 1971. He recalls, “Many in the chess world were sympathetic to Fischer: when you look at his games, you’re not interested if he attended school or not.”
The committee members resolved that henceforth only serious and objective articles on Fischer as a chess player should appear in Soviet chess magazines—personal criticism was to be outlawed. It was a decree they stuck to in the face of a number of provocative Fischer outbursts—such as at the time of the Larsen match, when he bragged that he would destroy any Russian he faced. Pavlov had to be restrained from demanding a tough rejoinder in the Soviet press.
Nevertheless, even articles praising Fischer’s chess tended to remind Soviet readers of his less laudable characteristics. He caused genuine umbrage in the Soviet official breast. No doubt bound up with this hostility was the Soviet sense of inferiority. In an internal report, the Director of the Central Chess Club, Viktor Baturinskii, complained angrily and inaccurately: “Fischer is provided with considerable moral and material support, and for these purposes the U.S. Chess Federation has received around $200,000 from various organizations.” He went on, “Appearances by Fischer are organized in the press, on the radio and on television, during which he gives assurances that he will become world champion in 1972 and makes insulting remarks about Soviet chess players.”
The pattern of approbation followed by condemnation was repeated in an article by international master Vasili Panov. Comparing Fischer and Spassky, the author noted: “Both are masters of the art of fine maneuvering and of combinational attack, both have the ability to squeeze out the smallest positional advantages, and both have perfect endgame technique… the creativity of Spassky and Fischer represents the culmination of all the achievements of the second half of the twentieth century.” But in the same article, he homed in on another aspect of Fischer’s character, quoting the American: “‘Chess provides me with happiness and money…. I follow what happens to my capital closely. I want to have a magnificent villa and an expensive car of my own….’” Panov seemed horrified. “American patrons of the arts, now paying generously for Fischer’s appearances, do not know much about chess. But they understand success! For them there are only winners and losers. And only success pays!”
Evaluating Fischer as both a man and a player became a high priority. In June, after Taimanov’s defeat, a bruised Taimanov and his now abject team manager, Aleksandr Kotov, gave an assessment of Fischer to the Sports Committee. What was remarkable about Fischer, they said, was his “demonic influence over his opponent when he sits at the table.” The long-held view of Soviet grandmasters that Fischer was a tournament player, not a match player, was inaccurate. Kotov and Taimanov blamed themselves for underestimating Fischer. They were struck by his habit of continuing to study chess even over dinner.
It was not all gloom. They thought their experience showed that Fischer was slow to get into a match; in the first three games he was sweating. A potential Achilles heel for the American was his narrow opening repertoire. Finally, said Taimanov, there was only one player who could beat him: Boris Spassky.
Together with a note from several other Soviet grandmasters, this review of Fischer was passed on to Spassky, though Fischer’s matches against Larsen and Petrosian were still to be played. At the beginning of June, Spassky’s team was assembled. It consisted of three grandmasters: his longtime coach, “Father” Igor Bondarevskii; Nikolai Krogius, a psychologist; and Efim Geller. Krogius had been part of Spassky’s training team, with Bondarevskii, since the autumn of 1967 and was to continue working with him until 1974.
