Chess!.. Two adverse powers, sixteen pieces on each side, array their forces for silent combat on a 64-square board. They await the signal for battle to commence. And it is not some magician's wand, but the hand of Man, his controlling Reason, his deciding Will which sets them in motion.
As Man is
amazed by the interdependence and harmony he finds in Nature, in chess he is
struck by the unusually complex, yet at the same time coherent, system of the
game, which is achieved through the interaction of all its elements - the
pieces, their moves and the tactics of the battle. In the logic and
illogicality, the laws and the paradoxes, the mysteries of positions and
combinations there is a great attraction, and this is what makes chess an art
form.
A chess
combat is the most noble one mankind has ever known: bloodless, striking for
the depth of thought, the reflexion of human passions and the sense of beauty
it invokes.
One of the greatest boons is what Voltaire, the eighteenth-century French philosopher and enlightener, called the game of chess. In our times, the role of chess in the cultural life of society has grown to such an extent that it is rightly regarded as one of the important elements of modern civilization. Combining aspects of art, science and sport, this wise and ancient game has not only become a form of intellectual contest and a leisure pursuit, but also an acknowledged tool for the education of children and young people, a testing ground for experiments in computing and other scientific fields - and, of course, it serves to ease friendly contacts between all the peoples of our planet. Today about 130 countries are united by the International Chess Federation (FIDE).
Chess has
a rare appeal to man's aesthetic sense. "I am very fond of chess: it
combines art and science. It brings me relaxation and inspiration", the
great twentieth-century composer, Dmitry Shostakovich, said.
The
ability of human beings to perceive the world in an aesthetic way finds a
completely natural artistic expression in chess. There is no other game in the
history of mankind which has been so widely reflected in folk art and in
literature, in painting and drawing, and especially in applied art, which over
the many centuries has created a whole world of chessmen.
And this
world can tell us much, helping us discover the secrets of the origins of chess
and of its spread around the Earth. The game, as we know, appeared in its
earliest version in India in the first centuries after the birth of Christ;
then in Central Asia in the fifth or sixth century it took on a new form, the
one by which we know it today, as the symbolic representation of a military
encounter with a large number of different participants - from foot soldiers
and cavalry to generals and kings. As early as the Middle Ages, the game had
spread across the immense land-mass of Europe and Asia, adapting itself easily
to local conditions, with both the military standards and the general way of
life of a particular people finding reflection in the terminology and in the
appearance of chess pieces. Since the rules did not change, chess remained an
area of common ground between people of different ethnic backgrounds. This was
also assisted by the creation in the early Middle Ages in the Middle East of
new, more abstract, Arab pieces, which subsequently, with various
modifications, spread from the Middle East through Europe.
With the
advent of chess, people have always striven to make the chessmen, especially
the figurative ones which accord with the national names for the individual
pieces, reflect the fascination for the game that they themselves feel, and
they have demonstrated great imagination in doing so. This is reflected in the
depiction of the life of the age, in the personification of the pieces, in the
recreation of images from mythology or from well-known works of literature, in
the presentation of various events from world history and in other ways.
AH sorts
of materials have been used to make chess sets over the past one and a half
thousand years: elephant and walrus ivory, wood and ceramics, silver and gold,
steel and bronze, mother-of-pearl and amber, porcelain and glass, and, more
recently, various types of plastic.
Today
chess sets belonging to the people of various continents and various ages from
a part of the cultural riches of these nations and are kept in the great
museums and private collections of Moscow and St.Petersburg, London and Paris,
Munich and Nuremberg, Vienna and New York. The collectors try to make the valuable
objects they have acquired the subject of scholarly study and also to make them
known to wide circles of lovers of the game, by putting together exhibitions,
organizing seminars and so on. These were the motives which a few years ago, on
the initiative of American collectors, led enthusiasts to create an
international organization - Chess Collectors International (CCI).
Today it
is affiliated to FIDE and already has a membership representing over twenty
countries. These members are owners of collections of great artistic, cultural
and historical value. Historians of chess culture are also involved in the
activities of the organization. CCI regularly arranges international meetings
and congresses working in close co-operation with the main museums of the countries
where forums are organized. Exhibitions of chess pieces are arranged on the
basis of the collections of these museums and of private persons. In this way,
the Third Congress, held in Munich in 1988, had three major exhibitions and a
seminar on the history of chess pieces, as well as an exhibition for sale of
the works of contemporary painters on chess-related themes. The author of the
present volume, who presented papers on the ancient chess pieces at this forum
and at the subsequent congresses in New York in 1990 and in Paris in 1992, was
particularly impressed by the energetic activities of the first CCI President
Dr. George A.Dean (USA) and of the national organizing committees headed by Dr.
Thomas H.Thomsen (Germany), Gareth Williams (Great Britain) and Floyd Sarisohn
(USA), which turned the regular congresses of CCI into a notable landmark in
the development of present-day chess culture. The splendid exhibition
catalogues together with authoritative scholarly works on chess pieces, which
have appeared in the USA and a number of European countries in the last
decades, serve to give some idea of the unusual variety that is to be found in
the chess sets produced by many peoples from the Middle Ages through to the
twentieth century and, of course, of the ever-growing world interest in the
study of the links between chess culture and art with chess pieces as an
original trend in small-scale plastic art.
In
foreign art books and catalogues, it is possible to come across only few
isolated examples of chess pieces in Russia between the eighteenth century and
the beginning of the twentieth century, now kept in Western European museums or
private collections which in no way reflects the true development of the art of
chess pieces in Russia - a country known for a high level of chess culture and
chess traditions extending back over many centuries. Occupying a huge part of
Europe and Asia, Russia and some neighbouring countries include the region of
Central Asia, where the game of chess first appeared in the early Middle Ages,
and also the territory of the first Russian state, Rus, where the game
underwent a thousand years of development, in many ways similar to that which
took place in Western Europe. Thus, chess has become an inseparable part of
Russian national culture. Large-scale archaeological investigations have been
carried out in these areas in resent years and these have led to the discovery
of priceless articles of chess culture from the early and late Middle Ages, to
finds in Central Asia of the oldest known chess pieces, dating to the seventh
and eighth centuries, and of several hundred pieces from between the tenth and
the seventeenth centuries in the towns of Old Rus. They have permitted the
author of the present volume to trace the evolution of chess forms from the
mediaeval Arab pieces to the modem Staunton type.
While
abstract chess forms in Russia developed essentially in the same direction as
in the countries of the West, figurative pieces -made from ivory, wood,
porcelain, metal and plastic - retained much that was unique and linked to
national terminology and to the specific nature of the applied art of the
peoples of Russia. The tradition of producing figurative chess sets is one
which has survived here to the present day.
Russia,
the first country to pave man's way into space, was also a pioneer of chess in
outer space. To play the game under conditions of weightlessness demanded the
creation of a special "cosmic" chess set.
To tell
about chess pieces from the earliest days of the game's existence to the
present, and on into a distant future of interplanetary voyages, to show the
evolution of these pieces over the almost one and a half millennia of chess
history on the territory of Russia and the neighbouring countries - this is the
task which the author has set himself.
The
changes which took place in the form of pieces were not chance occurrences and
in many ways they are connected with the development of chess as a whole. This
obliges us to preface a discussion of the pieces themselves with an brief
excursion into the history of chess - to the extent that it will be of use in
better understanding the questions of the evolution of pieces.
Naturally
the presentation of all artistically and historically valuable chess sets in
their entirety would scarcely be possible. The present volume is a first
attempt to present chess pieces which belong to a number of Russian museums in
Moscow, StPetersburg, Novgorod and Suzdal, museums of the countries of the
"near abroad" in Kiev, Minsk, Vitebsk, Trakai, Samarkand, etc. and
also to various private collections.
The
history of culture is still full of mysteries, one of which is the origins of
chess. Its beginning has been assigned to the first centuries after the birth
of Christ and is shrouded in the mists of legends, which tell of the creation
in India of a game, capable of providing endless food for thought, the thrills
of a battle without blood, and comfort in the vicissitudes of human life-One
legend expounded in Firdausi's epic Shah Nameh (late 10th -early 11th century),
is especially beautiful. The heroes of the poem are Indian princes - the
brothers Gav and Talkand. After the death of their father, Jumhura, an
internecine war broke out between them for the throne, in the course of which
Talkhand's army was destroyed, and he himself died suddenly. The dowager-queen,
driven to despair by the death of her younger son, accused Gav of murdering his
brother. In his desire to calm his mother and to demonstrate that Talkhand had
not been killed in battle, Gav gathered together the sages from all parts of
the kingdom. One of them who was reputed to be "the most valiant of all in
India and wise, drew out the field of battle and showed the movement of the
troops and commanders." On a board divided into squares he placed figures
of foot and mounted soldiers and war chariots and elephants, carved out of
ivory, and depicted all the course of the battle, the dem ise of one of the arm
ies, but not of its commander
Now the
Shah retreated from his square
While he
still had ways to escape.
He was
pressed and surrounded on all sides
By the
tutor and the rookh, the horse, infantry and the elephant.
The young
king looked around anxiously and saw
That his
army was scattered and in great trouble.
There were
water and obstacles on all sides.
Enemies on
the right and on the left.
Checkmate
- the hero died from privations -
Such was
the decision of fate.
And in
this way of telling the story of Talkhand
Glorious
Gav ushered in the game of chess.
In the
East, there is another legendary version supporting an Indian origin for the
game, which was first expounded in the Pahlavi (Middle Persian) manuscript
Madayan-y-Chatrang (The Book of Chatrang), roughly dated to 600 A.D., the
earliest literary source to mention chess. According to this story, the
complicated game of chatrang (ancestor of chess) was sent by an Indian rajah to
the mighty Shah Khusrau I Anushirvan of Persia (531-579) as a puzzle to be
solved. Among the latter's retinue there was only one wise man, Buzurgmikhr,
who managed to guess what the rules of the game were. The Shah responded by
sending to India the game of nard. This version also found reflection in
Firdausi's poem, and later - in the fourteenth to fifteenth centuries -in
miniature illustrations of its text. Thus, a miniature in a Persian copy of
Firdausi's poem Shah Nameh, produced in 1333 and now kept in the StPetersburg
National Library, depicts the game of chess between the Indian envoy Kannuja
and Buzurgmikhr. The Shah and his retinue are watching them closely. The Shah
is depicted on an ivory throne, covered with a colourful, gold-brocaded canopy2.
To what
extend do these legends correspond to the real story of the origins and
development of chess? To cast light on this question, scholars have above all
turned their gaze to the distant past of India, to the history of Indian
literature, folklore and miniature sculpture.
"A
picture tells a thousand words" - the author was once again convinced of
the justness of this expression when visiting the exhibition "Indian
Classical Art from 3000 B.C. to the 19th Century", held in Moscow in the
summer of 1987 as part of the Festival of India in the USSR. The numerous
exhibits, including small-scale sculpture and arich display of colourful miniatures,
allowed the visitorto form an impression of the ancient and mediaeval life in
India, of the grandeur of its culture which endured for many centuries.
And there
was probably only one detail of life and art that was not reflected in the
exhibition - there was no trace in it of the ancient game of chess. Perhaps
this was an omission on the part of the museums and Archaeological Service of
India? Or do we have some secret in the cultural development of the Indian
people that science has not unveiled yet? As early as the eighteenth century, a
well-known English poet -author of the poem "Kaissa" and orientalist
with an excellent knowledge of Sanskrit literature - Sir William Jones wrote
that he failed to find any account of the game, so certainly invented in India,
in the classical writings of the Brahmins .
Two
hundred years have passed since those lines were written, but to this day there
is no firm agreement among scholars on when or where chess originated, nor on
the question of whether it appeared as the result of a single act of invention
or as the product of a long evolution from popular games. In our century these
arguments have flared up with renewed force. The most varied theories and
hypotheses continue to be put forward. Certain authors began looking for the
sources of the game in neighbouring countries, particularly in Iran or even in
China.
Conflicting
views came to light during the first International Conference of the Historians
of Chess, convened on the initiative of Dr. Thomas H.Thompsen in Konigstein (Germany)
in August 1991. It was fully devoted to the problems of the origins of chess.
This is not the place, bearing in mind the aim of the book, to examine all
these hypotheses, to list all their pros and cons. We shall just briefly
describe the initial stages in the history of the development of chess as they
appear in the light of our present-day knowledge. This permits us to speak with
more certainty of the long evolution of the game of chess, of the origin in
India of its initial form - chaturanga, of subsequent changes in the game which
took place in a wider area of Central Asia. Over the course of some fifteen
hundred years, the game passed through three stages of development: chaturanga
- shatrang (chatrang) - the modern game of chess. In other words the first
mention of chess in India is not of the game as we know it nowadays but of
chaturanga. This is precisely the name given to a troop formation in the early
Indian epic the Mahabharata, which was composed somewhere in the sixth or fifth
century B.C., and written down in Sanskrit in the first centuries of our era.
Here the reference is to four types of troops - elephants (khasti), chariots
(ratha), cavalry (ashva) and foot soldiers (padati), and also to their leader -
the king or rajah. The symbolic representation of this formation on a 64-square
checkerboard (ashtapada), most probably, gave the game its name. First to
mention it was the Indian writer Bana. In his novel Harshacharita (The Life of
Harsha, dating from the first half of the seventh century) he describes life
under King Harsha of Thanesar: "Under this king, only the bees quarrelled
as they gathered nectar [...] and it was the ashtapada alone that taught [men]
the positions of the chaturanga."4 By this the author meant
that during this king's reign battles were fought only on the chessboard.
From an
ethnographical description of this game based on the personal impressions of
Biruni, the noted scholar of Khwarezm, in his work India (early eleventh
century), it is possible to see that chaturanga of his time was still very
different from the modern game: the pieces were placed in the four corners of
the board and there was no queen. The game was for four players and continued
until all the pieces were eliminated. Moves were determined by throwing dice,
in other words it was to a large extent a game of chance. In this sense
chaturanga was little different from other games with dice which had been known
in India since early times.
Nevertheless it contained certain elements and peculiarities which led to the invention of shatrang (chatrang), a game with two adverse powers. These were the military symbolism of the game, and a rule -a rudimentary form of the idea of checkmate - that even after the game had been lost, as Biruni reports, the king did not have to be removed from the board. Apparently, this piece was associated with the monarch, who, by the traditional concepts of that time, might not be killed. It is curious too that the pieces in Biruni's diagram are depicted in two colours (with red and black ink) , and not four, as we come across in the game under its later name of chaturaji (fourteenth and fifteenth centuries): two colours for the pieces represent a preliminary stage on the way to combining them into two "armies" and transforming chaturanga into a game for two opponents.
However,
we do not know what the pieces looked like in this game at this original stage.
Chaturanga was possibly considered just one of the several varieties of dice
and as such not worth particular description. One of the epic heroes
Yudhishtkhira, because of an unbridled passion for playing, loses his kingdom
and dooms himself and those close to him to a hard, wandering existence. For
this reason dice, so highly popular among many young men in early India, were
thought to possess a magic power inimical to men:
They
tumble down, they spin up,
Handless
they conquer him who has hands,
Unearthly
coals, thrown in the trough —
They set
the heart alight, yet themselves are cold 6.
Recently,
thanks to the researches of Russian and foreign scholars who have been studying
the ancient culture of Central Asia, it has become possible to hope that we may
learn more about the games, which immediately preceded chaturanga, and about
chaturanga itself. In ancient times and in the early Middle Ages the art of
realistically depicting animals and people in the form of terracotta or ivory
statuettes had reached a high level in India, Central Asia, Iran and other
countries of the East. From this it is a logical step to games in which miniature
figures played a part. This was one substantial factor among the many
favourable to the creation and spread of the Indian game of chaturanga.
When, and
under what circumstances, did chaturanga turn into a game for two players -
shatrang (chatrang)? Apparently, shatrang came into being in the larger area of
the Kushan kingdom (second or first centuries B.C. to the third or fourth
centuries A.D.), or, as is more likely, of the Ephtalite state (fifth and sixth
centuries), which both covered Northern India, present-day Pakistan,
Afghanistan, the southern parts of Central Asia and Eastern Iran. At that time
the influence of Buddhism and of Indian art and culture predominated in this
area. Accordingly, many legends dating from that time name India as the place where
shatrang was created.
A
substantial role in the creation of the Kushan and Ephtalite states was played
by the Persian-speaking peoples of Central Asia, which explains why in
shatrang, besides those terms which are direct translations from the Sanskrit
(pil - elephant known in the West as bishop, shah - king, pieda - pawn) or
close in meaning to it (asp - horse or knight), there also appear terms and
types of pieces, which cannot be explained by reference to Indian troop
organization or indeed to Indian life in general. These include the term farzin
or vizier (adviser), which did not exist earlier, in chaturanga, and rukh,
which derived from ratha by phonetic association, but already had a different
meaning: now it referred not to a war chariot, but to a fantastic bird, the
guardian spirit of the warriors.
The
changes in the names of the pieces and the game itself shed a great deal of
light on the problems which exist in research into the origins of chess. They
allow us to trace ethnic and cultural links and the specific ways in which the
game was adopted by different peoples. But for all this, it is hardly possible
to precisely establish the date of its creation or the exact way in which it
penetrated into this or that country. In our view, only a multi-disciplinary
study of the problem, making use of historical, ethnographical, literary and
folklore sources with a decisive role being played by archaeological
discoveries, would be able to lift the veil on the age-old secret of the
origins of chess.
Having appeared
in the area of Central Asia, the game spread in a relatively short time, still
in the early Middle Ages, to many countries. The methods by which the game was
introduced to different peoples were many and varied. In some cases it was
Buddhism pilgrims who took it with them (Tibet, Mongolia, China, Japan, Burma
and Malaya), in others the spread of chess was facilitated by the formation of
the extensive Arab Caliphate (the countries of the Middle East, North-Western
India, Transcaucasia, North Africa, Spain and Sicily), in yet other countries
peoples learned of the game through trading and cultural links (Byzantium, the
Khazar Khaganate on the Lower Volga, and Kievan Rus).
The
spread of the game around the world, unparalleled in its rapidity and extent,
makes logical sense. The game turned out to be reasonably complicated,
providing people with an occasion for the mental competition they needed, and a
constant aesthetic attraction, bringing them the joy of creativity and the
opportunity to demonstrate strength of character.
In the
countries of the Moslem world (in Central Asia, Iran and the Arabian East)
chess became one of the favourite forms of popular entertainment. Making the
pieces into simplified, abstract symbols reduced the costs of producing them
and, thus, they became more readily available to all levels of the population.
They began to be made not only of wood and ivory, but frequently also from
fired clay. Rich families bought themselves chess sets made of ivory. They also
invited skilful players to give them instruction in the game. Women too were
playing chess. Stories and legends quite often include the attractive image of
Dilaram, a woman chess-player, who proves stronger at the game than the men who
oppose her. One of the Arabian Nights stories tells of Tavaddud a merchant's
slave-girl, who after being put to the test for her eloquence, knowledge of the
Koran, of medicine and of astrology, also displays her skill in the game of
chess.
On the other hand, the Arabs didn't practically change the rules and the terminology of the game. Probably they alone fully preserved the Persian-Tajik terminology. With their pronounciation shatrang became shatranj, pil - alfil (bishop), pieda - baydak (pawn), farzin,- firzan (queen), asp - faras (horse or knight). The names of two pieces remained unchanged - shah and rukh.
Much
evidence has survived of the flourishing of shatranj in the East, from tracts
by famous masters of the game (aliya) to works of art and literature.
In
describing the rich vein of chess imagery and similes in the folklore and
literary works of the peoples of the East, we inevitably notice that, due to
the abstract nature of the pieces, chess gradually ceased to be apprehended as
a symbol of military conflict. The dramatic struggle within a game of chess
becomes more and more associated with the turns and reverses of human life, and
this is reflected in the epics and in the classic works of literature produced
by Omar Khayyam, Sa'di, Nizami, Abu-1 Faraj, Jalal-ud-din Rumi, Navoi and many other
writers and poets. They stressed that the attraction of chess lies above all in
the beauty of thought, in the high morality of the game and in its
impartiality.
Another
Arabic poet of the ninth century, Ibn al Mu'tazz, produced a fiery defence of
the game in the face of its detractors - who existed in many countries and in
all ages - in these words:
O
thou, whose cynic sneers express
The
censure of our favourite chess.
Know
that its skill is science' self,
Its
play distraction from distress.
It
soothes the anxious lover'scare;
It
weans the drunkard from excess;
It
counsels warriors in their art,
When
dangers threat and perils press;
And
yields us, when we need them most.
Companions
in our loneliness.
Quite a
number of similes and aphorisms relating to chess can be found in the poems
Khusrau and Shirin and Iskander-nama by Nizami of Ganja, an Azerbaijani poet
and philosopher of the twelfth century who wrote in Farsi.
In
one of the parables of his poem The Language of the Birds the fifteenth-century
Uzbek poet, Alisher Navoi, describes an impressive encounter between two strong
chess players ("you will not find anything more beautiful", the poet
assures us). The account is completed in profound couplets:
This
battle - whether it take one or the other end -
From the
field, sooner or later, will be swept by a hand...
All has
collapsed, that these two wise men did, — .
All their
thought, the product of limitless wit...
All
thrown in the bag with a single sweep,
The
Padishah below, the pawns atop the heap.
Already
in the early Middle Ages, the eighth and ninth centuries, some European
countries adopted chess from the Arabs. In Western Europe these were Spain and
Italy. Later, between the tenth and the twelfth centuries, the game became
known in France, England, Germany, Scandanavia and other parts of Europe. Only
Byzantium, Russia, Bulgaria and Hungary adopted chess directly from the East,
apparently at the same time as it reached Spain and Italy.
Although
little is known about the initial stage of chess development in Europe, taken
as a whole, this fragmentary information gives an idea of the extent to which
the game spread and of its degree of popularity in the Middle Ages.
At that
time the fascination with chess was confined mainly to representatives of
various spheres of mental labour, the feudal elite and the royal courts. Chess
took its place alongside horse-riding, archery and fencing as one of the
favourite pastimes of the knights. Troubadours and minstrels composed songs
about chess; it is mentioned frequently in mediaeval romances and legends of
the deeds of the knights.
Until
recently a lack of written sources made it difficult to trace the early history
of chess among the Eastern Slavs. Of the pre-revolutionary researchers, it was
Ivan Savenkov (1846-1914), a Siberian scholar and chessman, who came closest to
the truth.
A study
of chess terminology and of cultural and trade links between the Slavs and the
Arabs led him to conclude that chess arrived in Rus in the eighth or ninth
century by way of the Caspian-Volga trade route. This is how he pictured it to
himself: "A curious merchant, with an eye for any kind of wares and
searching for goods 'for his own country', could not help but notice the
various types of chess set. In the streets and by the shops, he could not help
noticing people playing chess too. Once he had taken an interest in the game,
it would not have been difficult for a quick-witted
merchant to master its rules and to take it back to his distant .
homeland."
Today our
conception of chess in the state of Kievan Rus has been enhanced by new facts
provided by archaeology, ethnography, the study of folklore and other branches
of knowledge. Thus, comparing chess terminology in Eastern and Western
countries, it was possible to reconstruct the original names and forms of early
Russian chess pieces. Four of the terms - tsar for the king, slon (elephant)
for the bishop, kon (horse) for the knight and peshka for the pawn - were
simply translated from the Eastern languages, the names of the two other types
of pieces - ferz for the queen and ladya for the castle, or rook - reflected
the peculiarities of early Russian life. In a similar way to that in which the
Europeans found the presence of an elephant among the army of chess pieces
strange and incomprehensible so that they produced new and varied
interpretations of the piece, it was difficult for the Slavs of Kievan Rus to
comprehend the existence alongside the tsar, caesar (king) of a second piece
(notably, in the West it came to be known as the queen), almost equal in rank
and - at that time - in power (though we should remember that in shatrang the
farzin was not yet able to move across the whole board). The Russian princes,
whether in peace or in war; had no such powerful advisers or commanders-in-chief,
as the viziers were for the Persians, and later for the Arabs. For this reason,
the Eastern term in this case remained untranslated and was simply adopted
directly into Russian.
As far as
the term ladya is concerned, it is even more difficult to divine its origins.
As we have already noted, the rukh denoted a gigantic bird, endowed with
exceptional strength, which, like the fire-bird of Russian legend, helped the
heroes in their fights with enemies. But the term rukh itself, foreign to the
peoples of Europe, underwent in their hands new and interesting changes,
explainable partially by the laws of phonetic association. In Spain the piece
acquired the name roque, in Italy - rocco, in France - roc, all of which mean a
rock or cliff. From a rock it was but a single step to a military
interpretation of the term in keeping with the other names in the game of chess
and with mediaeval European military technology. This is why subsequently many
European peoples accepted a new shape for the piece - in the form of a fortress
tower, for which new terms were duly introduced: in Spanish and Italian -
torre, in French - tour, in English - roc (which later became rook), in German
- turm, in Czech - vez and in Polish - wieza.
A
completely different interpretation was given to this piece in Early Russia.
Here the pieces, which at the beginning of game are set in corner squares,
acquired the name ladya, which means "boat". This can be explained by
the superficial resemblance of the abstract figure of the rukh to a Russian boat,
the type of vessel on which the Slav merchants and their guards would sail
along the Dneiper, the Don and the Volga, and
around the Black Sea and the Caspian. In adopting shatrang, the Slavs, who
thought in realistic, concrete terms, quickly changed the alien rukh for ladya,
the boat, which was to hand and generally understandable. Thus it was the shape
of the rukh which suggested to the Slavs the new name for the piece - ladya.
If we now
make a general comparison between the original names of the pieces in Early
Russia and in the West, taking Spain and Italy as an example, then we find that
in Russia four terms turn out to have been direct translations, while in the
West there are three (king, knight and pawn); the Eastern Slavs adopted one
term without translation - ferz (vizier), in the West they took two - al-fil
(elephant) and rukh. Besides radical changes occurred in respect to one term -
in the West ferz was replaced by a word meaning queen or lady, while instead of
rukh in Russia they used ladya (boat). Naturally, this led to differences in
the shape of chess pieces: one of them, rukh, began to resemble a boat in
Russia, and a fortress tower in the West.
Archaeology
has provided conclusive evidence of the Eastern Slavs' early acquaintance with
the game of chess. Chess sets "with faces", as figurative chess
pieces were called in Russia from early times, and large numbers of more
abstract pieces, both with the original Eastern symbolism and with a new
symbolism of later date, have been discovered during excavations of almost all
the large towns of Kievan Rus.
By the
eleventh and twelfth centuries chess was already common in Russia. However,
neither the chronicles, nor other early works of literature, make any mention
whatsoever of the game - the first mention, and a negative one at that, dates
from the thirteenth century. The explanation in that under the influence of
Byzantium the Church in Russia came out in fervent opposition to chess. Chess
was banned on a par with dice-playing and other "devilish delusions."
The fate
of chess, after it reached Byzantium, reminds that of a plant which fell on
stony ground and withered before it had time to flower. Evidence of the
negative attitude towards chess in the ninth century can be found in the
Nomocanon, a collection of canon laws compiled by Patriarch Photius. In the
eyes of the clergy the game of chess was comparable with dice-playing, which
had already been banned by the Sixth Ecumenical Council held in Constantinople
on punishment of excommunication.
The decision
of this Council then served as the main trump card in the struggle against
chess not only for the clergy of Byzantium itself. It was also cited by the
Church of Rome, which displayed a similar intolerance towards the game from the
East in the early period. The oldest Italian document to mention chess, a
letter written by Cardinal Damiani (1061), contains a reference to the
canonical ban on dice-games. This curious document begins with the words:
"I halt my pen, for I am red with shame that I must make mention of still
more people held chess is also reflected in the bylinas,
popular epics passed down from generation to generation in oral form.
In
Russian heroic epics chess is considered on a par with such contests as archery
and wrestling. It is significant that the bylinas rich in chess-playing
episodes, these mental trials of strength, are those which date from the early
feudal period: such epics as Mikhailo Potyk, Stavr Godinovich, Ilya of Murom
and Kalin the Tsar, and Vasily Kazimirovich were first created while the state
of Kievan Rus still existed, although later they came to reflect the
aspirations of the people in their struggle against the Tatar-Mongol yoke which
had destroyed it.
Chess
matches in the bylinas are usually depicted during the feasts of Prince
Vladimir of Kiev or on the occasion of the arrival of an embassy in a foreign
state, when the outcome decides which of the two rulers should pay tribute to
the other. Thus, the legendary hero Mikhailo Potyk, by beating the rascally
King Vakhramey, "won an immeasurable fortune in gold" and forced him
"to pay tribute to the great city of Kiev."
There is
another interesting episode involving chess in the bylina entitled Stavr
Godinovich. Strong and courageous heroes have gathered at a feast given by
"gentle Prince Vladimir". Here one of the guests, Stavr Godinovich
from Chernigov, boasts about his young wife, who has no equal for beauty or
brains. And she also plays chess, "amazing all good people, Russia's great
heroes". This bragging angers Vladimir and he orders Stavr to be locked in
the vaults. His wife Vasilisa Mikulichna, when she learns of the trouble,
gathers a force for an expedition to rescue her husband. In Kiev she pretends
to be a foreign envoy. This is when her trials begin - trials which include a
game of chess. She defeats Prince Vladimir and he releases Stavr.
The
descriptions of chess matches in the popular epics are remarkable for the
originality of certain details of everyday life and, of course, for the
perception of the game itself. The following extract from the bylina Mikhailo
Potyk is of particular interest:
As soon as
they had set up the board for chess. They began to walk and stroll around the
board}'
Walk and
stroll around the board... Such a clear, graphic expression can only have come
from a man, who had watched the game and sensed its poetic fascination.
In the
thirteenth century historical events of great importance took place - the
invasion of Russia by the Tatar-Mongols of the Golden Horde and the new
conditions under which early Russian society had to live -to one extent or
another left their mark too on the development of chess. And if, under these
extremely unfavourable cercumstances of foreign invasion and persecution on the
part of the Church, chess continued its spread among the various classes of
society, it can only be explained by the fact that the game had down deep roots
in Russia while the state of Kievan Rus still existed. An extremely small
number of written sources mentioning chess have survived from the thirteenth
to the fifteenth 3 century but now each year sees an increase in the number of
archaeological finds from this period, which demonstrate that chess continued
to develop in Early Russia.
There is
far more surviving evidence about chess from the sixteenth and seventeenth
century. As before, chess was still under an official ban in the sixteenth
century. In many ecclesiastical epistles and instructions the game is
condemned, along with singing, dancing and music. Thus, the domestic manual
Domostroi, written by Archpriest Sylvester in about 1550, threatened those who
broke the precepts of the Church and played chess: "they shall be all
together straightways in hell and forever damned". The Council of a
Hundred Chapters of 1551 included chess among "games of hellish
possession". However changes in life itself gradually altered this
resolution of the Council. In the Council Code of 1649 there was no longer any
mention of chess.
In the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, travellers in Russia were struck by the
popularity of chess and high standards of play. Thus, Turberville, an
Englishman who spent time in Moscow together with the envoy, sir Thomas
Randolph, in 1568 and wrote a series of letters in verse back to London, which
were later turned into a book entitled An Account of Russia, confirmed that:
The common
game is chess, almost the simplest will Both give a check and eke a mate, By
practiclal comes their skill'.
A century
later, Jakob Reutenfels, the Papal Envoy to Moscow in 1670-1673, wrote of the
interest in chess among various classes of society: "At this game nowadays
both old men and children spend all their time on all the streets and squares
of Moscow."1
Are these
accounts exaggerated? Archaeological excavations in the old Moscow district of
Zariadye in the years since the war of 1941 -1945 confirm their statements.
Numerous chess pieces were discovered on islands in the Bay of Faddei close to
the Taimyr Peninsula in the Kara Sea, in the Russian settlement on Spitsbergen
in the Barents Sea, in the Russian town of Mangazeya in Western Siberia and in
other Siberian towns.
At the
turn of the seventeenth century, closer contacts between Russia and the central
European countries led to the appearance of new names for the chess pieces
which came into use alongside the old Russian names - the rook is now sometimes
tura or bashnia (tower) instead of ladya (boat), the bishop an ofitser
(officer) as well as slon (elephant); ferz is often replaced by koroleva
(queen) and tsar by korol (king). Incidentally there was another reason for the
adoption of this last term. The use of the term tsar could be risky as shows
the 1685 "treason case" against the serviceman Khomiakov, who while
playing chess with a certain Andriushka Volynshchik, snatched a piece from the
board and shouted: "I thought this was the ferz, but it's the tsar!"
and then proceeded to address a few strong words to the "tsar". Since
there were witnesses to the game, the governor of the Yenisei Territiiy came to
know of it. The culprit was brought to trial and obliged to prove that there
was no evil intent in his words. It is true that a decree ordering Khomiakov's
release arrived from Moscow, but the very fact that the incident occurred
probably explains why Russian chess-players subsequently took to calling this
piece korol, or king.
Researchers
into the history of chess, including such a well-known authority as Murray,
author of the fundamental work A History of Chess (1913), have noted mutual
influences between the cultures of East and West in the sphere of chess during
this period. At the turn of the seventeenth century, a process of modifying the
rules make chess into a faster game can be observed almost simultaneously
throughout the countries of Europe.
It is
interesting too that the earliest-known records of occasional encounters
between Russian chess-players and foreigners date back to this time.
Particularly noteworthy among them are two reports about the enthusiasm for
chess of the Russians, who arrived in Italy and France as part of embassies. A
certain A. Serristori informed the government of the Republic of Venice, that
the ambassador who had arrived from Moscow in 1656 and the persons accompanying
him did not go to Mass on holidays, but remained at home and played chess
"in which consists the best of their achievements; and indeed they play
this game, as is said, to perfection"1 . This report is the
more significant for the fact that at the time of the Renaissance the Italians
had no small number of strong chess-players and they were then considered the
best in Europe.
A French
chronicle reports along much the same lines about the pastimes of the members
of the Muscovite embassy, which arrived in Paris to see Louis XIV in May 1685:
"Marshal Humieres, having collected the Muscovite envoys from Saint-Denis,
brought them today in the court carriages for an audience; there are two of
them, and their retinue consists of some fifty men. His majesty received them
at noon, seated on the throne... These Russians play chess magnificently; our
best players are schoolboys beside them."
And we
should note two more features of chess in the Muscovite state at that time.
Only a great demand for chess sets among the Russian population can explain the
fact that craftsmen appeared who specialized only in creating chess pieces.
They were then called shakhmachiki (chess dealers). They sold their wares on
the markets of Moscow and other towns. It is also known that skilful ivory -
and wood-carvers worked in the Armoury Chamber, the great royal workship in the
Kremlin, where they produced chess sets for the court.
From the
time when the grand princes of Moscow began to be styled tsars (1547), chess,
where the main piece was called the tsar, came to be regarded as a royal game.
The cult of chess, which arose at court as early as the sixteenth century,
during the reign of Ivan the Terrible - who, according to contemporary reports,
died while playing - became particularly intense at the time of Alexei
Mikhailovich (1645-1676).
Impressed
by what he had seen Jakob Reutenfels wrote about the method of educating the
royal children: "Dancing, fist-fighting and other noble exercises common
with us are not permitted at all among the Russians. Shakhmaty, as they call
it, the celebrated Persian game of chess, royal in both its name and in its
laws, they play every day, developing their minds by this to an amazing
degree."
While
still small, a tsarevich was provided with chess sets in his apartments.
Surviving manuscript documents from the Armoury Chamber in Moscow, for example,
tell us that on the 4th of January 1636 a wooden chess set and board were
bought for three altyns (three-kopeck pieces) and two dengas (half-kopecks) in
the Vegetable Market for Alexei Mikhailovich, who was then not yet seven years
old, while on the 13th of January that same year three ivory chess sets were
bought for 24 altyns and 6 dengas; it was also stated there that in 1676 the
artist Ivan Saltanov decorated some small chess pieces with gold, silver and
paints for the four-year-old Tsarevich Peter Alexeyevich (the future Peter the
Great).
It is
interesting to note that it was not uncommon to spend time over the chessboard
in the female apartments of the royal court. Here is a typical instruction:
"In the year 194 (1686) on the 18th day of January, by command of their
majesties, Mikhailo Timofeyevich Likhachev, the nobleman of the Boyars'
Council, gave orders to purchase for the apartments of Her Highness, the
High-Born Tsarevna and Grand Princess Martha Alexeyevna, a chessboard and chess
set of fish or elephant ivory of good workmanship."
It was a
well-known fact not only in Russia that chess was the favourite pastime of Tsar
Alexei Mikhailovich. It was not by chance, therefore, that Joachim Skultet, the
ambassador of Brandenburg, on the second journey to Moscow, where he arrived on
the 16th of August 1675, included among the gifts to the tsar a valuable chess
set. This comprised silver chess pieces and a table, which four men could
barely carry. This chess set has survived well down to the present day as an example
of fine jewellery work. All the pieces are depicted in motion: a warrior
running with a club, a galloping horse with a rider, an elephant with a warrior
seated on it, the king in chain-mail, the queen, and, finally, soldiers with
muskets.
Casting a
glance over the course of development of chess in Russia over the following
hundred years, the eighteenth century, it is possible to note new phenomena
arising from quite a number of causes, above all from immense changes in
Russian life and from the progress of chess as such. We can observe a narrowing
of the social milieu in which chess was cultivated. Craftsmen were by
now already specializing in the ' production of expensive chess sets
from ivory, porcelain etc., which were intended for the well-to-do members of
society.
At the
beginning of the century Peter the Great did much for the spread of chess in
court circles and among the nobility. Chess was Peter's favourite leisure-time
pursuit throughout the whole of his b'fe. He did not forget his chess even during
his military campaigns, for which he had special soft chessboards made of
leather. One of these has survived and is now on display together with other
items belonging to Peter the Great in the Hermitage in St.Petersburg.
Peter
also taught the game to his son, as he considered chess an indispensable
element of a child's education. At his command, on the 28th of October 1697
chessboards were painted in gold for his son Alexei "in size one arshin
(71 cm) wide, of good workmanship".
Under
Peter the Great in winter assemblies - gatherings of nobles, held in rotation
at the homes of high officials - chess had a prominent place. Among the
officials, who organized assemblies where Peter himself played chess, were
Generalissimo Prince Alexander Menshikov, Admiral Count Fiodor Apraksin, and
the diplomats, Senator Andrei Matveyev and Prince Boris Kurakin.
A curious
report has also survived of one of such assemblies organized in Moscow by the
former vice-president of the Holy Synod and Archbishop of Novgorod, Theodosius
of Yanovo (nicknamed Frantsishka). In 1731 Silvester of Holm, Metropolitan of
Kazan, wrote in indignation about him: "He, Frantsishka, when in Moscow,
left the service of the church and the rules prescribed for a monk, and
organized assemblies at his house with music and entertained himself with cards
and chess, and in this he is insatiable for amusement; instead of singing of
the night-time offices, they say, he enjoyed himself and obliged others to do
it. And he, Frantsishka, ordered his servant, Taras, to sell the old bells from
the bell-tower of his Moscow chapel, so that they did not disturb him playing
chess all night and then having enough sleep."17
In the
mid-eighteenth century and later chess ceased to be so popular, and people
frequently amused themselves at assemblies by playing card-games for money.
Nevertheless, at this time too, there were isolated passionate lovers of the
game in court circles, including Count Cyril Razumovsky, the favourite of
Empress Elizabeth, Peter the Great's daughter. But it was not these who
determined the standard of play. There were in Russia chess-players, who,
lacking grand titles, displayed a profound interest in the game and played it
well. It was possible to find such enthusiasts as Vasily Tatishev, the famous
Russian historian and stateman, who for a number of years was in charge of the
state factories in the Urals. Sources inform us that, when in 1734 he arrived
to examine the Yegoshikhinsky Copper Works (on the site of present-day Perm),
he started to teach the workers the game of chess.
Catherine
the Great too was a chess-player. At her orders tables were set with
chessboards at the royal residence in Tsarskoye Selo, and in the Palace at
Pokrovskoye near Moscow: she brought elements of ostentation to the game.
Evidence has also survived of her favourite Grigory Potemkin's love for the
game. At the time a quatrain was going around, which jeered at his military
"achievements" and was composed, presumably, by the great Russian
general, Alexander Suvorov:
Chess he
plays with his one hand,
The other
conquers peoples and land.
One fool
of his strikes foe and friend
The other
tramps the coasts from end to end'.
Suvurov
himself also loved playing chess. One of his contemporaries told of an episode
which demonstrates the unusual self-control of the general. It took place
during the capture of Ochakov from the Turks in the summer of 1788. Suvorov was
wounded in the storming of the fortress. The French surgeon, Masseau, was
summoned to him. On entering the tent, the doctor found him covered in blood,
but playing chess with his adjutant, and only after much persistence could the
general be persuaded to let his would be dressed.
Already
by the eighteenth century, word of the mastery of Russian chess-players had
spread far beyond the bounds of the country itself. The English historian
William Coxe wrote in 1772: "The Russians are
19
esteemed
great proficients in chess." These words were written at a time when there
were famous chess-players in a number of European countries, when in France and
Italy the noted theoretical works of Philador and the Masters of Modena were
appearing, which attracted attention in many countries of Europe.
And
although little evidence has reached us about Russian chess-players of the end
of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, taken
together as a whole it gives us some idea of their creative aspirations, and
also of the peculiarities of chess life at that time. Contemporary memoirs make
mention of the names of the strongest in the Russian capital - the lawyer Ivan
Sokolov, the writer and official Nikolai Brusilov, the poet and senator Dmitry
Baranov, and the dramatist Alexander Kopyev. Their homes attracted many lovers
of the game. They made a serious study of chess, held their own opinions on
various problems and were not only strong players but also connoisseurs of the
theory of the game.
At the
end of the eighteenth century Russian chess-players, promoting a serious
attitude to the game, published in St.Petersburg (1791) a small work by the
outstanding American public figure and philosopher, Benjamin Franklin: The
Morals of Chess. It was printed in Russian under the title: Rules for the game
of draughts, compiled by Franklin*.
The game of chess, Franklin noted, "should not be considered a squandering
of one's free time, from it is possible to derive many spiritual qualities,
which, being useful, deserve respect throughout a man's life."
With
their profound investigations into the game Russian chess-players kept pace
with their age, while in practical strength, judging by the contemporary
opinions of foreign experts, they were considered some of the best in Europe.
Only the fact that chess in Russia had already reached a fairly high level at
the end of the eighteenth century, can explain the emergence in the following
century of a galaxy of Russian masters, whose activities received world
recognition and enabled a national school of chess to form.
The study
of the thousand-year history of chess in Russia demonstrates that in the course
of many centuries of development the ancient Eastern game turned into one of
the elements of national culture, closely bound up with other aspects of the
intellectual life of the people.
In many
ways it is possible to consider the emergence of the first Russian masters in
the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth century as a
natural consequence of the millennial history of development of chess in
Russia. Petrov, Chigorin, Alekhin - the names of these great players are each linked
with an important stage in the development of the art of chess in Russia, and
in the creation of a national school of chess, the best traditions of which are
today being developed by Russian players.
As early
as the 1820s, Alexander Petrov (1794-1867) was acknowledged as the best
chess-player in Russia, and his name stood out among those of other luminaries
of the age. From that time to the end of his life, he never met an opponent in
the country to match him at the board.
Petrov
was also a theoretician of the game, the creator of a number of openings. One
opening still bears his name - "Petrov's Defence, or the Russian
Game" (1. e4 e5 2. Kf3 Kf6). His book, The Game of Chess, systematized,
with the addition of Philador's games and commentaries on these, which appeared
in the five volumes totalling 500 pages in StPetersburg in 1824, became a
classic work. Three years earlier a book of instruction for beginners, On the
Game of Chess written by Ivan Butrimov, had appeared in the Russian capital.
Petrov's book introduced a number of ideas - on active defence, on the
significance of the first moves in a game, on the role of precise calculation
in evaluating positions etc., and represented a new word in the literature of
chess.
Petrov's
work also played an important role in the popularizing of chess. This game, the
first Russian chess master wrote, "through its great demands on
understanding and calculation, can, by all rights, be called learned, profound
and extremely engaging? In the scope of the questions it raised and the
seriousness and accessibility of its explanations the book was one of the best
chess manuals of its time. It was highly esteemed by contemporaries and became
a handbook for several generations of Russian players.
Petrov
did much to encourage public interest in chess in the country and for the
emergence in Russia of a whole galaxy of masters - Karl Vanish (1813-1872), an
outstanding theoretician of the game, Ilya Shumov (1819-1881), a remarkable
player and chess remantic, the brothers Sergei and Dmitry Urusov, and others.
There are
only a handful of masters in the history of chess who, like Petrov, have
happily combined the gift of an outstanding practitioner of the game with the
talents of a theoretician, composer, man of letters, popularizer and organizer
of chess.
Petrov,
together with his pupils and contemporaries, believed in the inexhaustibility
of the game of chess and regarded it as an art. It was they who introduced the
expression "the art of chess". As early as 1840 Petrov wrote in the
Literary Gazette in a review of La Bourdonnais's book The Latest Outline of the
Game of Chess published in Moscow in 1839: "Books enable one to perfect
one's game and therefore they are indispensable for those who want to grasp all
the secrets of the art of chess."22 Subsequently Vanish,
Kroneberg, Shumov and other players wrote in their works that there is much in
chess - and, above all, inspiration, the creative aspect of the game - which
links it to art. We know, too, that later Chigorin and Alekhin perceived the
game in the same way. "The goal as I see it", Alekhin wrote, "is
to be found in scientific and artistic achievements, which places chess
alongside other art forms."
The
beginning and middle of the last century also saw the organization of the first
Russian chess clubs, the appearance of the first monthly magazine, Shakhmatny
Listok (The Chess Bulletin; 1859-63), and the emergence of Russian chess
composition. As a part of cultural life chess began to attract more and more
attention from writers, scholars, musicians and artists. The greatest geniuses
of Russian literature -Alexander Pushkin, Leo Tolstoy, Ivan Turgenev and Fiodor
Dostoyevsky - had a high regard for the game and spent hours of their leisure
time on it, as did the chemist Dmitry Mendeleyev and many others. Here are a
few typical examples.
On the
30th of September (12th of October) 1832, Pushkin wrote in a letter to his
wife: "I thank you, my dear, that you are learning to play chess. It is
indispensable in any well-organized family: I will prove it to you later."24
From his
Spasskoye estate Turgenev wrote to his friend, the writer Sergei Aksakov, on
the 29th of June (11th of July) 1853: "Do you know how I chiefly occupy
myself? I play chess with the neighbours, or even alone, taking games out of
books. Through exercises I have acquired some skill. I also spend much time on
music". Typical of him too is another declaration made in a letter to the
literary critic Pavel Annenkov at the end of the same year on the 25th of
November (17th of December): "In St.Petersburg I shall live for my
literary work, my circle of friends, music - and for chess. I should say that I
have made a fervent chess-player of myself."
While
working on War and Peace Tolstoy wrote in a letter from Yasnaya Poliana to his
wife's elder brother, Alexander Bers, on the 28th of October (9th of November)
1864: "Do you play chess? I cannot imagine this life without chess, books
and hunting."26
The
contemporaries were very much impressed by I. Shumov's work "A Collection
of Scachographic*
and Other Chess Problems, Incl. a Full chess Primer, Polytical, Humorous and
Fantastic Checkmates", published in St. Petersburg in 1867. It was the
firstRussian book on chess composition. The chess magazines of the time
published enthusiastic reviews of this work and announced competitions to solve
Shumov's chess compositions. The French Strategic wrote that "this book of
the Russian chess composer has a fairly long name under which a truly happy
fate of chess is hidden. On opening the book, one can see a huge sword of
arrayed chess pieces over the black king. This tells of Shumov's deep knowledge
of the chess battle field and of the lofty game of chess, unbounded joy reigns
here."
Much was
done by Petrov, Yashin, Shumov and other players of the mid-nineteenth century
to develop international links. Their games, problems and theoretical
researches were published in the chess periodicals of the time - the French
Palamede, Regence and Strategic, the English Chess Player's Chronicle and Chess
Player's Magazine, the German Schachzeitung and the American Chess Monthly.
They corresponded with the greatest foreign masters - La Bourdonnais,
Saint-Amant, Staunton, Leventhal, von der Lasa and others. In 1867 the English
periodical Chess Player's Magazine in an article devoted to Petrov acknowledged
that he and his pupils had already begun to show their influence on the game of
chess in Europe.
This
influence and the international links were strengthened later thanks to the
international appearances of Mikhail Chigorin (1850-1908). He was the first
Russian chess-player to compete for the title of world champion. His matches
against Wilhelm (William) Steinitz, which took place in the Cuban capital,
Havana, in 1889 and 1892, and their two-game telegram-match in 1891 and 1892
attracted the attention of chess-lovers around the world, not only for their
sporting tension, but also for their high creative achievements.
Due to
the many-sided activities of Chigorin and his associates in organizing clubs,
the first Ail-Russian tournaments and other competitions, at the turn of the
twentieth century Russia had become one of the leading countries in the world
for its level of chess play. Important international tournaments and matches
were also organized here. Already at that time World Champion Emmanuel Lasker
called Moscow the El Dorado of Chess, and Ex-Champion Steinitz, congratulating
Chigorin on a splendid victory in an international tournament in Budapest in
1896, wrote: "Your victory has brought great glory to Russia, which has
done most recently to facilitate the development of chess, for which it
undoubtedly has your genius and authority to thank."28
At the
beginning of this century under the beneficial influence of Chigorin's
activities a new generation of chess talents emerged in Russia, including the
future world champion Alexander Alekhin (1892-1946).
The
development of chess continued in Russia after the Revolution of 1917. "A
cultural explosion" is how the first post-revolutionary period in the life
of Russia was described abroad. One area of culture in which the powerful
influence of the Revolution was felt was the world of chess.
Chess's
exceptional position with regard to all games and the necessity of popularizing
it amongst the broad masses were things V.I. Lenin pointed out more than once.
Knowing of this, the students of the All-Russia Artistic and Technical
Workshops produced specially for Lenin a chess-table and a set of pieces, which
they presented to him on the fifth anniversary of the Revolution, together with
membership card No. 1 of the Moscow Chess Society and a document about his
election to the post of Honorary President of the society.
Some of
the most eminent figures in the new state, were also lovers of chess: Mikhail
Frunze, Valerian Kuibyshev, Nikolai Krylenko, Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Anatoly
Lunacharsky and others. Lunacharsky spoke of the beneficial role of chess in
the education of the young in his report "Art and Youth": "Chess
is an educational game, an extremely useful one. When you achieve great art in
this game, then it is real art."
Soviet
players raised the prestige of the country still further in the realm of chess
culture. Three international tournaments held in Moscow in the 1920s and 1930s,
to which outstanding foreign players were invited to participate created a
great impression in the world of chess. The competitions took place in splendid
surroundings - the House of Soviets (now the Hotel Metropol) in 1925, the
Museum of Fine Arts (now the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts) in 1935 and in the
Hall of Columns of the House of Unions in 1936. The role these competitions
played in the development of chess in this country is demonstrated, for
example, by the real "chess fever" which gripped the entire country
in 1925. Nikolai Krylenko wrote of this: "For the USSR the tournament
above all acted as a push, raising to unprecedented heights the interest of the
broad working masses of our country in chess, as a cultural tool, capable of
seizing and directing the broadest masses on that road of culture of the
intellect, to which chess points. In particular, as a definite source of
rational leisure, producing at the same time extremely rich experiences of a
purely artistic nature, chess from this moment is in the foreground.'
Many
years have gone by since. The regard for chess as one of the leading forms of
sport and a very high art form contributed to the fact that for several decades
our country has led the world in chess, its players holding the highest
individual and team titles in the world.
As early as the 1930s the leading foreign chess-players declared that chess had become a people's game in the USSR. "The Soviet Union", ex-world champion Emmanuel Lasker wrote in November 1937, "has made chess, which was previously only available to the few, available to the broad masses. The cultural value of this thousand-year game has been enriched by the creative powers which were hidden in the people. Never and nowhere before has such an experiment taken place." '
Statements
in the same vein came from the famous British chess-player George Thomas, the
Dutch Grand Master and World Champion Max Euwe, and the Austrian Grand Master
Rudolf Spielmann. "I am impressed", Spielmann wrote, "not so
much by the colossal number of chess-players in the USSR, approaching two
million, but by the high standard of their game. In a mass chess-match, played
on, let us say, one thousand boards, between players from the Soviet Union and
players from all other countries the Soviet Union would be guaranteed
victory."
The
famous American Grand Master Frank Marshall, calling the Soviet Union "the
greatest chess country on Earth", wrote that he dreamed of organizing a
telegram-match between the USSR and the USA, since the young masters of the two
countries were the strongest in the world. As we know, this match was arranged
in 1945 - soon after the Allied victory in the Second World War. The wireless
chess-match between the USSR and the USA ended in triumph for the Soviet
players, who won with a score of 14 1/2 :4 1/2. This match marked the start of
a whole series of snorting and creative achievements for Soviet masters in
international events. They were victorious again in the next matches between
teams from the Soviet Union and the United States, and in meetings with the
strongest national teams from Britain, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary,
West Germany, Argentina and many other countries, as well as in a number of
post-war tournaments. Soviet grand masters have taken first place in almost all
world-wide Olympics in which they have taken part since 1952.
Eight
players have received the laurels of world champion since the war, seven of
them were grand masters from the USSR: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov,
Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.
Soviet players have also become women's world champions - Liudmila Rudenko,
Yelizaveta Bykova, Olga Rubtsova, Nona Gaprindashvili and MayaChiburdanidze.
Chess
does not only have an interesting past and brilliant present -the prospects for
future development seem no less attractive. The game will continue to be a
companion in man's life, developing the personality and a sense of aesthetics.
And however great the technological developments in chess-playing computers,
they will never be able to compete with humans in the creation of works of
chess art bearing the stamp of imagination and beauty.
It is
common knowledge that one of the aesthetic attractions of the game of chess is
its great number of paradoxes. There is yet one more, seemingly superficial paradox,
which is, though, probably chess's most surprising and most beautiful paradox:
having originated as a depiction of war, the greatest tragedy in human life,
over the course of the centuries it has been in existence the game has turned
into the embodiment of human wisdom and brotherhood, a means of strengthening
friendship between nations, who inscribed on the banner of the International
Chess Federation: Gens una sumus - we are one family. And this is what gives
chess its immortality!
* In Russia from early times pieces used for
playing chess and other board game were generally called shashki - draughts.
* It was how I. Shumov called depictive
problems. This adjective is formed of two Greec words: scacho
("chess") and grapho ("write'). According to I. Shumov
scachography is the art of depicting on a chessboard various objects and
abstract notions.