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January 05, 2004

SEARCHING FOR BOBBY FISCHER

The Independent reviews a new, and by their account, definitive re-telling of the famous 1972 chess championship match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky. The book delves behind the scene, focussing less on the particulars of each game (there are numerous published volumes on the games theselves) than on the manuevering that led up them. It also puts paid to some longstanding rumours, including the idea that Spassky was a tool of the monolithic Russian chess machine.

Fischer has descended into madness, anti-Semitism and vitriolic America-bashing, so it's easy to forget what he once was, and how for a brief period in the early 70s, chess was white hot with popularity. The book sounds fascinating.

But were some of Fischer's histrionics a deliberate tactic? Not long before the match, Richard Nixon explained his Madman Theory: the best way to get the North Vietnamese to negotiate was to convince them that he, the man with his finger on the nuclear button, was so obsessed with communism that he would do anything to stop the war. Fischer had acquired a similarly irrational reputation for "inflicting financial and career damage on himself on failing to win concessions". This put him in a very strong negotiating position with the Icelanders who, once they had decided to host the match, had too much money and prestige invested even to consider a cancellation.

Edmonds and Eidinow make good use of research in Iceland, but the real revelations come from their insight into the Soviet camp. The press saw Spassky as a "benign bureaucrat", part of a "Soviet chess machine" notable for its "ruthless efficiency... a culture and political system that permitted no dissent or internal squabbling". All this proves hopelessly inaccurate. The system was so suspicious and inefficient that Spassky had to seek permission to buy and have translated foreign chess journals in order to carry out the most basic preparation. He was in no way a model Soviet citizen but a traditional "Russian patriot, the inheritor of Russian Orthodox religious culture".

He understandably admired Fischer and was looking forward to "a feast of chess". Yet, as the American delayed yet again his arrival in Reykjavik or made yet another unreasonable demand, the Party bosses in Moscow wanted the humiliated Spassky to come home. As defeat loomed, they debated every possible means of stiffening his resolve. The monolithic "Soviet chess machine" was in reality torn apart by back-biting and infighting.

If you know how to read chess notation and are interested in some recommendations of books containing the Fischer/Spassky games, drop me a line.

Posted by TEV at 11:27 AM |

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