Bobby Fischer Goes to War

However, Spassky and Geller were not completely mistaken. Outsiders did try to influence the proceedings.

What we now know is that the KGB was active during the match—active in investigating possible attacks on the world champion, active in attempting a preemptive propaganda coup against the Americans, working with the connivance of the Moscow chess authorities, perhaps active too in spreading a rumor that Spassky was planning to defect.

Soviet grandmasters of the era assumed that the KGB was involved in chess, as in all pursuits deemed important by the state. Chess players sized up one another. Which of them had a role beyond chess? Which of them was receiving an extra stipend—had a so-called side job? Which of them was informing? Who was holding a chess position while actually a KGB officer?

To this day, many in the former Soviet Union will contend that the KGB’s work in defending the state was an honorable undertaking—so there was no dishonor in collaborating with them. The KGB was the real travel authority, lurking behind all the committees of Party faithful who had the task of initially vetting applications to travel. Through its informants, the KGB was tipped off as to what was going on in chess circles and would “suggest” to the authorities who should be encouraged, who should be discouraged, who should be banned from leaving the Soviet Union, who should be allowed to go abroad. It was a common practice to suggest to would-be travelers that their passports might be more readily available if they agreed to act as the eyes and ears of the organization.

Some even claim that the KGB had an office in the Central Chess Club in Moscow—though an officer is more likely. Yuri Averbakh professes ignorance of any such thing: “I had an office there, and if so, I did not know about it.” Nonetheless, he fully understood how the system operated, even if his deeply embedded instinct—or perhaps superstitious habit—is to avoid speaking directly of the KGB. “In the Stalin era, usually if a team were traveling, an obvious representative of this organization was sent along. This person would observe the participants. In 1952, I played in the Interzonal tournament, and there was such a person there. In 1953 at the Candidates tournament in Zurich, there was such a person. In 1955, when Spassky traveled to the World Junior Chess Championship —I was his coach at the time—there was also a representative of that organization with us. After 1956, for about three years, no one was sent. This was the time of the thaw. Then, at the beginning of the 1960s, such people began to appear again. In Curacao, for example, a KGB person accompanied us.”

“Such people” were scarcely secret. Garry Kasparov’s former coach Aleksandr Nikitin records, “From the first time Garry went abroad, he had a companion who was not a professional trainer. He was a KGB lieutenant colonel, Viktor Litvinov. Litvinov kept an eye on Garry and his mother wherever they went.” Even Karpov was “protected.” “From 1975, Vladimir Pichtchenko, a prominent KGB agent, followed Karpov like a shadow on all his foreign trips.”

Nikitin wrote that these agents fulfilled a useful role: “Today everyone is in the habit of condemning this organization. We should not, however, think that people who worked in the KGB were monsters. Those with whom we dealt were cordial and competent, and of high intellectual caliber. The organization operated within all the sport federations. Sport as an aspect of culture had to reflect the success of our system….” The high level of intellect is accurate: the KGB creamed off the brightest for its ranks.

Given the official view of Spassky’s political “immaturity,” given his earlier brushes with the KGB in Leningrad, given this was a U.S.-Soviet contest on an island with a major American air base, it would have been little short of a miracle if there had been no KGB operatives there. Nikolai Krogius allows the possibility: “As far as I know, official representatives of the KGB were not present. There were rumors that there were two or three KGB workers. But they simply watched, of course. Nothing more.” Nei thought there were many. Now only recently retired from the Russian Foreign Ministry, then second secretary in the Soviet embassy, Dmitri Vasil’iev remembers two or three such persons inside the hall in Reykjavik, watching the match: “I can’t be sure they were KGB, but they were a bit strange. You know, these people, CIA or KGB, they were always a bit strange.” Members of these secret organizations—whether CIA or KGB—were dissimilar, of course, but something about them made identification easy. To an observer, in the Russian idiom, they were “men with identical shoes.”

The Soviet embassy was already swollen beyond normal requirements for a sparsely populated island; during the two months of the match, there were an unusual number of Russian “tourists.” Some reports name an embassy official, Viktor Bubnov, as the head of the KGB in Reykjavik. But he was actually from Soviet military intelligence, the GRU, and so had quite different priorities. We can assume no shortage of KGB officers and informants in Reykjavik. And we now have reason to believe that some among them were not there simply, as Nikolai Krogius would have it, “to observe.”

In Moscow, at the end of July, apprehension over Spassky’s performance was running at a high level.

On 27 July, when the champion played his worst game to date, game eight, Viktor Baturinskii was summoned to the Central Committee to explain what was going on and in particular why Spassky did not react to Fischer’s late appearances at games. Present were the acting head of the Propaganda Department, Aleksandr Yakovlev; his deputy head, Yuri Skliarov; and the head of sports, Boris Goncharov—who apparently had not the least interest in sports. They discussed how they might help Spassky and how they might identify and neutralize the psychological pressures on him.

It was the beginning of a period that finds an array of senior KGB figures passing through Ivonin’s office. (Of course, this was also the run-up to the Olympics.) They included Viktor Chebrikov, deputy chairman of the KGB and a protege of Brezhnev’s. Brezhnev had appointed him in 1968 under Yuri Andropov, following the Kremlin power struggle that saw Pavlov go to GosKomSport. Chebrikov would go on to become KGB chairman in 1982. Even more senior, the first deputy chairman of the KGB, appointed in the same reshuffle as Chebrikov, Semion Tsvigun, also turned up. There were visits from the deputy head of the KGB’s Fifth Directorate (which dealt with ideology and so covered sports), Major General Valentin Nikashkin. One of his staff, KGB agent Viktor Gostiev, will come into the story. He too worked in the Fifth Directorate of the KGB. Later, while remaining a KGB officer, Gostiev became deputy chairman of the Dynamo Sports Society, which provided physical training for the KGB and those employed in the Interior Ministry.

The senior rank of the KGB participants has probably more to do with Ivonin’s ministerial status than with the importance accorded Reykjavik. Viktor Ivonin is unable to recall anything of these visits. His normally unfailing memory for people and events lets him down when confronted with these KGB names. While his tone becomes decidedly more guarded, his mind is a blank.

What might they have discussed?

The theme of these comings and goings is less how to undermine Fischer and more how to prop up a rattled Spassky. (In this period, there is a proposal to send the champion Kogitum—a medicine against nervous tension—and some exasperation at his refusal to take it.) First, this requires investigating stories of possible interference with his playing. One report to have reached the KGB was that Fischer was being assisted by a computer (in Russian called an IBM—a Soviet tribute to American big business) and a device in his chair. (Whether the two are linked, a computer in Fischer’s chair, is unclear.) There have already been reports in the Western press of Fischer being computer aided, reports derisively dismissed in Reykjavik by Spassky, Geller, and Krogius. Back in Moscow, the KGB does not believe silicon-based shenanigans are any more practical. A Comrade Lvov, a KGB technical officer and a constant caller on Ivonin at this time, explains to the deputy minister that Fischer would have needed a full year to develop the requisite computer program and would have to have a portable receiver and a membrane in his ear to receive the signals.

Lvov is also the bearer of other shadowy news: he reports the possibility that Spassky has had a letter threatening his family if he returns to Moscow a winner. This is investigated, and no proof of its existence is found. The provenance of this letter is unclear; today, Spassky says he had no knowledge of it.

Other means of defending Spassky are afoot. As July turns into August, an unnamed forensic psychiatrist takes part in a meeting with Lvov and Gostiev. Lvov is all set to organize a check for radiation from radio waves and X-rays “on the spot”—presumably in the hall.

Throughout this period, the possibility of Spassky’s being the target of hypnosis and telepathy is being discussed. There is a hint that sending a psychiatrist to Reykjavik is Gostiev’s brainchild. The psychiatrists Vartanian and Zharikov are primed, and Gostiev arranges the logistics of their visit.