Although this was a world championship, the Central Committee would not normally have intervened; usually such matters would have been left to the Sports Committee. Asked if he resented Spassky’s gambit, Ivonin simply says that such a move by a top sportsman with Party connections was not unknown (“a world champion is a world champion”), but that in this case Spassky had no need to go to Demichev. The Sports Committee, says Ivonin, was already implementing his wishes. Ivonin assumed that Spassky just wanted the Central Committee to put its authority behind his personal demands, including finding a new apartment.
In any case, two days later, the chairman of the Sports Committee, Sergei Pavlov, a man utterly familiar with Soviet ways of power, had his first sight of the world champion’s program to retain the title. As he read the cover letter, with at least surprise, and probably anger, he realized that Spassky now outgunned the chess bureaucrats. The initiative concerning Spassky was out of the ordinary, and the champion had generated it. This in itself would have irritated Pavlov, but perhaps his response would also have been tinged with personal bitterness and envy. He had been a Party boss. He had helped Brezhnev dispose of Khrushchev. Now here was a Central Committee secretary going over his head to meddle in his bailiwick.
To Comrade S. P. Pavlov
I ask you to examine closely the questions posed here and to report back to me.
Attached was Spassky’s plan, now circulated to them via the second most powerful body in the country:
The main goal is victory. Our collective is responsible for the result. It consists of: grandmasters B. V. Spassky, I. Z. Bondarevskii, E. P. Geller, N. V. Krogius, I. P. Nei.
1. Everything connected with the match preparations must be secret. All those taking part in the preparations must sign a document stating that they will not reveal an official secret.
2. All members of the working community are at the disposal of B. V. Spassky until the end of the match.
3. A permanent base is needed for work and rest outside Moscow. A dacha for seven people.
4. Finances. Estimate of expenses for the entire preparation period.
5. A head of preparations is needed who will deal with organizational issues.
6. Supply of food and medical care.
7. Arrival for the match two weeks before the start. Aim—acclimatization and organization of a working routine.
8. Talks about the location and dates for the match are to be carried out directly by B. V. Spassky in consultation with the entire collective and other competent individuals.
The general plan of preparation consists of
1. Physical
2. Chess
3. Psychological
1. Physical. Aim: maximum professional capacity for work
2. Chess. Objective analysis of the strong and weak sides of Spassky and Fischer. Theoretical preparation.
3. Psychological—steadiness in the struggle.
Many of these points had already been raised with the Sports Committee, though two of Spassky’s demands—that everyone involved in his training should be sworn to secrecy and that the location of the match should be for him to decide—were new. The last worried the committee: they wanted Spassky to concentrate on chess and leave the rest to them.
Demichev’s one line was enough. His request to be kept informed raised the stakes for the Sports Committee. In Soviet culture, it stated “the Party views this match as ideologically important.” In other words, “Watch out!” Or, as Spassky expresses it in English, he had succeeded “in jumping through Pavlov’s head.”
After receiving it, the Sports Committee was, or at least saw itself as being, unusually complaisant toward Spassky, even when it became plain that he lacked faith in them. For example, the committee wanted to send a doctor, a translator, and its choice of journalist to Reykjavik. Spassky insisted that they send a grand master, Isaac Boleslavskii, rather than a professional chess writer. And he rejected a doctor and a translator, telling Ivonin, “We don’t need a translator, we can do everything ourselves. It’s a matter of trust.” Decoded—and of course Ivonin understood the code—that meant Spassky thought the translator would be a KGB officer, there to observe him. The committee would have had to approve these staff and arrange their passports. Ivonin’s note of the conversation gives Spassky’s remark three exclamation marks.
The balance of power had shifted to the chess champion. “Heads down” became the rule in the Sports Committee. “Why risk intervention?” muses Beilin. “Pavlov was no idiot. This was now Demichev’s and Spassky’s responsibility. Okay, so you guys take responsibility.”
Today, Spassky remembers that he was not given the team he wanted and denied the interpreter and cook of his choice—Karpov in 1978 had a squad of forty, he complains. He is also disdainful about his lineup: “Krogius was not much of a psychologist…. In Reykjavik, 1972, he was useless. Nei was a tennis partner, not much of a chess player. Geller was the only one who helped me.” But the truth is that the committee did its best to convince Spassky that a head of delegation and the other assistants were necessary. The limited chess team in Iceland was the team Spassky himself had assembled.
On 4 January 1972, in a secret memo to Demichev covering every aspect of Spassky’s training, including his diet, Pavlov tried to reassure the Central Committee that everything was in hand.
Scientific workers and specialists from the Academy of Medical Sciences and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Physical Training have been brought in to provide thorough medical care, organize the appropriate nourishment, and devise recommendations for quickly reestablishing the ability to work after major mental, nervous, and psychological labors.
The issue of providing high-calorie foods is being decided jointly with the RSFSR Ministry of Trade.
In the ensuing months, with the world champion’s family finally settled into a newly built, plush four-room apartment in Vesnin Street in the elite diplomatic quarter, Spassky and his team moved from handpicked dacha to handpicked dacha—Krasnaia Pakhra thirty-five kilometers from Moscow (where he was billeted during his championship match with Petrosian), Arkhys in the North Caucasus, Sochi on the Black Sea, and finally Ozera near Moscow. In Ozera they lived in a sanatorium where defeated German field marshal Friedrich von Paulus had been held after the war. The Sports Committee kept an eye on the facilities and living conditions—and tried, as discretely as it could, to establish how hard Spassky was working.
Unhappily, the training paradise now created contained a number of serpents.
By the time he arrived in Reykjavik, Spassky was feeling the strain caused by the breakdown of two key relationships during his training period, one with the director of the Central Chess Club, Viktor Baturinskii, the other with the champion’s personal coach, Igor Bondarevskii. There was also a quarrel with Mikhail Botvinnik, opening a rift sufficiently wide for Botvinnik to refuse to sign a petition to save the struggling magazine
The consequences of the breach with Baturinskii, in particular, were to be serious. Spassky put at arm’s length the man who had direct responsibility for chess and chess players, who led the negotiations with the Americans and with FIDE over the location of the match, and who might have been a highly effective team leader in
