The KGB Plays Chess: The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown

277 Pages·2010·1.77 MB·English

by  Boris Gulko

The
KGB Plays Chess
The Soviet Secret Police and the
Fight for the World Chess Crown
Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov,
Yuri Felshtinsky & Viktor Kortschnoi
2010
Russell Enterprises, Inc.
Milford, CT USA
The KGB Plays Chess
The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown by Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov, Yuri
Felshtinsky & Viktor Kortschnoi ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0
© Copyright 2010
Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov, Yuri Felshtinsky & Viktor Kortschnoi All Rights Reserved No part of this
book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form
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without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
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Published by:
Russell Enterprises, Inc.
P.O. Box 5460
Milford, CT 06460 USA
http://www.russell-enterprises.com
[email protected]
Cover design by Janel Lowrance Printed in the United States of America
Table of Contents
About the Authors
Foreword
Boris Gulko
The KGB Plays Chess
Vladimir Popov and Yuri Felshtinksy
The Letter “Lahmed” Problem
Boris Gulko
1. First Encounters
2. The Weekdays of a Grandmaster
3. Our Game Against the KGB: The Opening
4. The World of a Refusenik
5. The First Battles
6. Lost Battles
7. Years Without Time
8. Games around the Chessboard
9. Moscow Dissidents
10. Storming the Castle
11. Breakthrough
12. Freedom
Afterword
Viktor Kortschnoi
Letter from Vladimir Popov
Vladimir Popov
Index
List of Other eBooks
About the Authors
Boris Gulko, born in Germany in 1947, grew up in Moscow. Gulko graduated
from Moscow State University with a major in psychology and worked as a
research associate for four years.
In 1975, Gulko became an international master and a professional chess player,
and in 1976, a grandmaster. Gulko was USSR chess champion in 1977 and twice
champion of Moscow.
For seven years, from 1979 to 1986, Gulko was a “refusenik.” After a difficult
struggle, which included three hunger strikes and a month of daily
demonstrations and arrests, Gulko and his family emigrated to the United States.
Gulko won the U.S. chess championship in 1994 and 1999. In 1994, he was one
of eight candidates for a match for the world championship, and in 2000, one of
16 participants in the 1/8 final for the world championship. Gulko has won
numerous international and national chess tournaments, and he has a plus record
against Garry Kasparov (three wins, one loss, four draws).
Gulko’s articles and essays, both on chess-related and non-chess-related topics,
have been published in the United States, Israel, and Russia.
Vladimir Popov was born on August 8, 1947 in Moscow. In 1966, he was
drafted into the Soviet Army, serving in East Germany until 1969. From 1969 to
1972, he worked as a test engineer in Ilyushin’s design office.
From 1972 to 1974, Popov worked in the Tenth Department of the KGB, as a
clerk in the Secretariat and junior operative in the Second Division (background
checks on individuals traveling abroad). In 1974, he graduated from the All-
Union Correspondence Law Institute (now the Law Academy of Russia). From
1974 to 1977, he served as junior operative and then operative in the Second
Division of the First Department of the Fifth Directorate of the KGB (this
division oversaw all associations of creative professionals). In 1975, he
completed a special course of study at the KGB’s Higher Education School
(while continuing to work as an operative).
Between 1977 and 1989, Popov served as operative and then senior operative in
the Third Division of the Eleventh Department of the Fifth Directorate of the
KGB (this division oversaw international sports exchange channels). In 1986, he
graduated from the International Department of the University of Marxism-
Leninism, where he had been enrolled as a correspondence student, while
continuing to work as an operative.
In 1989 and 1990, Popov served as deputy head of the Twelfth Group of the
Fifth Directorate of the KGB (coordinating work with “friends” – the state
security services of the Warsaw Pact countries).
In January 1990, Popov tendered his resignation, but was not dismissed
immediately. From the beginning of 1990 until October 1991, he served as a
consultant for the KGB’s Center of Public Relations (the KGB’s former press
office).
During the attempted August Putsch in 1991, Popov refused to go along with the
KGB’s activities on the very first day of the putsch, August 19. He was
dismissed in October 1991 with the rank of lieutenant colonel. In 1996, he
immigrated to Canada, where he lives at the present time.
Yuri Felshtinsky was born in Moscow in 1956. In 1974, he began studying
history at the Moscow Pedagogical Institute. In 1978, he immigrated to the
United States and continued studying history, first at Brandeis University, then at
Rutgers, where he received a Ph.D. in history in 1988. In 1993, he defended a
doctoral dissertation at the History Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences,
becoming the first foreign citizen to receive a doctoral degree in Russia.
Felshtinsky has compiled, edited, and annotated several dozen volumes of
archival documents in Russian history. His own books include The Bolsheviks
and the Left SRs (1985), Towards a History of Our Isolation (1988); The Failure
of the World Revolution (1991); Lenin and His Comrades (2010); Blowing up
Russia (with Alexander Litvinenko, 2007); The Corporation: Russia and the
KGB in the Age of President Putin (with Vladimir Pribylovsky, 2008).
Viktor Kortschnoi was born in 1931 in Leningrad. Kortschnoi graduated from
Leningrad State University with a major in history. He became first a Soviet,
then a Swiss chess player. A grandmaster, Kortschnoi first qualified as a
candidate for the world championship in 1962.
Kortschnoi was a four-time USSR chess champion (1960, 1962, 1964, 1970), a
two-time winner of interzonal tournaments (1973, 1987) and candidates
tournaments (1977, 1980), and a five-time European champion. Kortschnoi
participated in world chess matches in 1978 and 1981 (both times against
Anatoly Karpov), and in a candidates final in 1974 (also against Karpov).
Because of restrictions placed on him by the KGB and the Soviet government,
he defected from the Soviet Union after a tournament in Amsterdam in the
summer of 1976, settled in Switzerland, and obtained a Swiss citizenship in
1994. Kortschnoi plays for Switzerland in international competitions.