and passionate interest in computer science, Botvinnik feared baleful computer manipulation of Spassky and help to Fischer—presumably controlled by U.S. military intelligence facilities. When Reykjavik was confirmed as the match site, some Sports Committee officials even suggested a Soviet ship should be moored there, on which the Soviet team could live in a security cocoon. That idea did not progress beyond the committee’s offices, probably just as well for Spassky’s blood pressure.
Then, during the match itself, otherwise rational Soviets were alarmed by the way Spassky was prone to error and threw away promising positions. Were there sinister explanations, hypnotic rays, parapsychology, chemicals?
Once back in Moscow, Spassky himself questioned his mental state over the chessboard. “Can it really be that my chess powers fell so sharply only as the result of some small incidents and confusion? Can my psyche really have been so unstable? Either my psychology was made of glass or there were external influences.” Before we shrug our shoulders in amused disbelief, we should recall Soviet use of toxicology against opponents. When the KGB wanted to bug the apartment of Colonel Oleg Penkovskii, whom they suspected of spying for the British, they smeared a poison on his chair that sent him briefly to hospital. Why should others not have access to the same technology?
Of course, not all the Soviet insiders were disposed to blame Spassky’s apparent loss of form on American dirty tricks. But even those who dismissed the possibility of an “outside agency” charged Fischer with using non- chess tactics—that is, psychological warfare. Spassky’s trainer and second, Nikolai Krogius, was head of the Psychology Department in Saratov University as well as a grandmaster. Looking back, he gives this diagnosis:
The psychological war waged by Fischer against Spassky and his (Fischer’s) attempts at self-assertion (by crushing the will of the other player) were linked; they were two sides of a single process of struggle against Spassky…. Note that in the 1970s Fischer began to place great significance on the psychological aspects of the game. He would openly declare that he was trying to crush the will of his opponent. To this end, all means were justified. In Fischer’s opinion, the psychological subjugation of the opponent inevitably led to a reduction in the strength of the opponent’s game. Fischer carried out such a program consistently, both before and during the match.
In the Sports Committee, too, Fischer’s mind games were seen to be at the root of Spassky’s problems. The committee considered the possibility of hypnosis as early as the beginning of August but dismissed it. The former women’s world champion, Elizaveta Bykova, claimed to Viktor Ivonin that Fischer had a telepathist among his lawyers. This was not true. In any case, the committee did not believe in telepathy.
From Reykjavik, the Soviet ambassador had complained to the Sports Committee that the press, Soviet as well as Western, misrepresented Fischer when they wrote of his “eccentricities.” They were not such, he said, but deliberate, well-planned nonsporting techniques to undermine the champion. In Moscow, they analyzed Fischer and concluded that he was a psychopath, a personality for whom the norm was a conflict situation—something with which Spassky could not cope.
The crisis for Spassky was caused, they concluded, by his inability to manage the psychological pressure. This conveniently dovetailed with criticism of his refusal to accept a leader for the delegation. After the match, Viktor Baturinskii put his view roundly: “If we are talking seriously, then we should not regard external factors as the most important, especially since we have no proof.” However, driving home his point that Spassky was wrong not to have had a proper team (in other words, one that might have included a KGB translator or doctor), he hedged his bets: “The question of whether certain chemical components were introduced into the food is another matter. The delegation was warned about this. We sent Comrade Krogius especially to Reykjavik for several days to explore the security issues. We offered to send a cook, a doctor. But all this was refused by Spassky.”
Whatever the degree of incredulity in Moscow over external tampering, backs had to be guarded, appropriate action seen to be taken. For instance, to investigate possible interference with Spassky’s food, a sample of the juice the Icelanders supplied to Spassky was carried to the Soviet capital for laboratory analysis.
The charge that the Americans were deploying psychological warfare was also examined. Spassky’s refusal to take a doctor to Reykjavik did not stop the Sports Committee from deciding on 10 August that certain specialists should go anyway. The Health Ministry was asked for help. So, somewhat to his surprise, an eminent psychiatrist, Professor Vartanian, received a request to meet Ivonin on 21 August at the committee’s offices. He was invited to travel to Iceland with a colleague of his choosing, make observations, and then report back. Discretion was the order of the day: they would go as Ambassador Astavin’s guests. “We didn’t want to upset Spassky,” says Ivonin, “so we arranged for the psychiatrists to go as the ambassador’s friends.” Their mission was to assess the personalities of each player and whether Spassky was being “influenced.”
The late professor Vartanian was then general director of the Mental Health Center. He approached Professor Zharikov, a psychiatrist at the Medical Institute, where today he is dean of the Department of Psychological Medicine. The bait was the trip to Iceland, an exotic location they might otherwise never visit. Professor Zharikov is a survivor of the epic tank battle of Kursk, where he was wounded. Above the entrance to his office is a plaque recording his status as a veteran of the Great Patriotic War. Inside, a picture of Lenin dominates the room.
On arrival, Vartanian and Zharikov were immediately briefed by embassy staff; the allegations were repeated about hypnosis, parapsychology, and interference from a device in Fischer’s chair. They leafed through the press, looking at cartoons of the match. Professor Zharikov was in a skeptical mood. He did not believe in parapsychology, and rumors were to be expected with so much at stake. Amusement flickers in the professor’s eyes as he remembers sitting in the hall, observing the players through binoculars. He regarded the episode as a joyride. The trip made few professional demands. He had no opportunity to get to know the subjects of his studies, and given the stress of the situation, diagnosing their characters and distinguishing normal from abnormal behavior was nearly impossible. “Each person involved in such a difficult psychological situation would respond differently,” Zharikov says. “There were no standards. You wouldn’t say such-and-such behavior is a problem and such-and-such behavior is not.”
He considered the champion to be balanced. Their only meeting with Spassky came at an embassy reception, and Zharikov was impressed: “A very clever young man, maybe a bit solemn—a person in whom psychosis would not develop easily. He was very self-possessed and liked to show off, like to talk.” The professors assured Ambassador Astavin there was nothing to worry about. They repeated that view in the official document to the Sports Committee: “We wrote a short report dismissing the speculations and confirming that the participants in the match were in an absolutely proper condition.”
Soviet paranoia was by no means one-sided. The second secretary at the Soviet embassy, Dmitri Vasil’iev, has a recollection of Fischer complaining of KGB men in the hall trying to hypnotize him. It was the expression of what Victor Jackovich described as Fischer’s anti-Soviet mind-set.
Fischer was convinced the Soviets were listening in, were watching somehow. He thought they were playing with him in a variety of ways—that there were people sitting in the front rows of the audience somehow affecting his concentration, perhaps with electronic devices. His paranoia was pervasive. It was part of the reason why going to the U.S. base at Keflavik was such a comfort for Fischer—part of our trying to make him feel more comfortable in terms of “Look, this is a military U.S., NATO base. You’re safe here.” If someone would say something about the Russians, he would perk up immediately and would shoot a question about it. I just had the sense that if you really wanted to get his attention, you just mentioned the Russians.
The tension was such that it even got to the New York lawyer Paul Marshall. He recalls how his and his wife’s passports were missing from their hotel desk and then suddenly appeared back in their room. “And we started to feel the same pressures, thinking, ‘That’s odd.’ This and several other things made us believe that Bobby’s idea of Russian trickery may have some merit.” However, the atmosphere could also be used to provide some wholesome American fun. He and his wife, Bette, were in the public entrance to the hall when Nikolai Krogius was passing. Bette called out: “‘Grandmaster Krogius, friends and contacts in America wanted me to give you these papers.’ And Krogius turned and ran.”
With the probability of a KGB watcher loitering there, who could blame him?
