Boris Spassky, who loved chess but didn't like playing it

Boris Spassky enjoyed all the benefits during the preparations for the match with Bobby Fischer in 1972, which became the scene of a Cold War confrontation between two ideologically opposed worlds.

photo: ap photo

At the strong Mar del Plata tournament in Argentina in 1960, Bobby Fischer tied for first place with Boris Spassky who beat him. That was the beginning of their lifelong friendship and rivalry. He defeated him in Santa Monica in 1966 in a singles match and outplayed him again in the USSR–USA team match at the 1970 Olympics.

Despite Fischer's record 20-match winning streak in 1970/71, the Ministry of Sports and the CPSU believed that Spassky could win in Reykjavík in 1972.

He achieved his greatest success under the auspices and with significant support of the Soviet government. This time he got an apartment in Moscow and a good salary, and for his preparations a state dacha with a staff of seven members, and medical control. He personally chose his coaches, among whom were Igor Bondarevski, Yefim Geller, Nikolai Krogius and Yves Ney. Krogius was a psychologist, and Ney was an excellent tennis player. He was not a party member either. The KGB suspected him, but Spassky did not budge.

However, coaches and sports and party officials criticized the laxity of the champion in whom hopes of geostrategic importance were placed. Spassky spent his time playing tennis and swimming.

Chess master Barden writes in "The Guardian" that Spassky was an athletic type, versatile in sports. In college, he was a high jumper and volleyball halfback, and later an avid tennis player. "Pais'" chess commentator describes how Spassky sometimes came to chess games in tennis gear, would place his racket next to the board and start a fast-moving game, letting his opponent know that he was ready to sign a draw in a few minutes.

During the preparations for the match of the century, he relaxed his nerves - and tore the officials' nerves - because he devoted himself to everything else except chess. Who should report to whom Boris Spassky should keep "Playboy" and a bottle of whiskey on the table and half-drunk discussing ancient Greek myths.

Sergei Pavlov, the chairman of the Committee for Sports and Physical Culture in the Council of Ministers of the USSR, in the material he prepared for the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the CPSU, which was marked "secret" in the header, announcing that Spassky had already begun preparations for the decisive battle, described him as "a highly gifted man whose possibilities are far from exhausted." But he also says that Spassky also has negative traits: "As a result of a difficult childhood and problems in upbringing, he treats his behavior uncritically, allows himself immature actions, violates the sports regime, does not show the necessary diligence. Some in our country and abroad are trying to reinforce these shortcomings of Spassky even more by developing in him a mania for grandeur, underscoring his 'exceptional role' as a world champion, fueling Boris Spassky's unhealthy mercantilism."

At the end, Pavlov admits with civil concern that the "painful work" of influencing the behavior of Boris Spassky entrusted to him "yields insignificant results so far".

Jakov Damskyi, the commentator of the then Gostelradio, described Spassky like an Oblomov: smart, noble, talented - a lazy barin (gentleman).

During that time, Robert Fischer was preparing for the match at a ski center in the Southern Appalachian mountains, surrounded by chess literature and never leaving the chess board day or night.

Russian chess historian Isaac Lindr, prone to paradoxes, notes that the American Bobby Fischer is in a way "the best chess player of the Soviet chess school".

THE SAGA OF REYKJAVKU

Fischer requested that the match for the championship title in chess in 1972 be held in Belgrade (at the age of 14 he played chess in Yugoslavia, in Portorož), but after numerous disagreements, Belgrade's candidacy was withdrawn, and the match was still held in Reykjavík.

Fischer did not appear at the opening ceremonies, which caused a lot of media attention. US President Richard Nixon persuaded Fischer to appear at the match. This was followed by a call from "the worst chess player in the world" Henry Kissinger to "the best chess player in the world" Bobby Fischer: "America wants you to go and destroy those Russians."

When he appeared at the match after the vicissitudes, Fischer lost the first game, and did not come to the second. In Moscow, they were then thinking how to order Spassky, and have him obey them, to stop the match and thus remain the champion through Fischer's fault. Spassky decided to save the match after all.

Then, in front of 150 million viewers of that spectacle, there were disputes over the noise of television cameras, over the audience, over the play in a darkened hall, over suspicions about the activities of Russian parapsychologists and ultrasound waves from the nearby American base, etc. A series of Fischer's scandals and protests probably upset Spassky, although, as "Pais" notes, the world champion seemed bored and calm. When he finally got into the match, Fischer won five of the next eight games, effectively deciding the outcome. After the 21st game, he became the world champion with a score of 12,5 : 8,5.

Spassky was stunned, but joined the applause at the end and was friendly towards his rival at the closing ceremony.

After the defeat, the mood of the people from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok Vladimir Vysotsky sang like this:

He screamed: «Vy что ж там, obaldeli?!

They lost chess prestige!»

And they told me in our sports department

"Yes, it's beautiful - you will protect it!"

I shouted, "What are you doing there, are you crazy?! You have lost your prestige in chess!" And they told me in our sports department: "Yes, great - you will protect him!"

At the end of the song he says, "Oh, we'll bring the crown! I go to bed like a pawn, but I wake up like a queen!"

A PAWN WITHOUT A QUEEN

Those pawns that don't wake up like a queen haven't fared well before. When in Vancouver, in the quarter-final match of candidates for the world champion, Bobby Fischer defeated the Soviet chess player Taymanov 6:0, already at customs at the Sheremetyevo airport, which he had previously passed without any difficulties, undeclared foreign currency was found in his luggage - a fee of 1.100 guilders that he had given to the Czechoslovak-Soviet grandmaster Salomon Mikhailovich Flore for articles in a Dutch chess magazine - and foreign edition of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's novel In the first round.

After that, Taimanov wrote a penitential note, but it didn't help. Soviet Minister of Sports Sergei Pavlov wrote to the Central Committee of the Communist Party about the "unprecedented defeat of the Soviet grandmaster". Taimanov was excluded from the national team, prevented from leaving the country, lost his state scholarship and title of "meritorious athlete", and was forbidden to publish in chess magazines. Boris Spassky was the only one who sided with Taimanov, concluding his presentation at the consultation at the Ministry of Sports with the question: "If we lose, will we all go to jail?"

One of Spassky's coaches, Nikolai Krogius, called him "the last Don Quixote of the chess world."

FORD MUSTANG AND OTHERS

Spassky himself said that the defeat in Reykjavik did not disturb him. A few hours after losing a historic match to his greatest opponent, he declared that he was not disappointed: "I don't know exactly why, but I think my life will be better after this match. It was very difficult for me when I won the title of chess champion in 1969. Perhaps the main difficulty is that I had great responsibilities in chess life, not only in my country but all over the world. I had to do many things for chess, but not for myself as a world champion."

He said that chess genius never made anyone happy: "The only exception was Misha Talj, who took his talent lightly. Maybe it could also be Capablanca, шахматный баловень (chess maza). The title of world champion did not bring me happiness. Yes, I managed to improve my financial situation a little. But if you look at photos from that time, I have such a sour muzzle. It's not even physiognomy, but muzzle (đićŕ)".

After that match, it was said that there are few people in the world who, when they sit down at the board, frown as much and make such a sour face as Boris Vasilievich, the grandmaster who loved chess, but did not like to play it.

And Botvinnik explained that Spassky lost because he was greedy: "I think he lost the match to Fischer out of stupidity. He overestimated himself. Creativity and money go hand in hand. The question is what is more important: money to play chess or chess to make money? Well, he switched to another system and lost interest in chess."

Spassky, too, was pragmatic – he deposited his share of the prize money in a Western bank in defiance of the edict to hand over the winnings to the USSR Sports Federation.

Spassky actually received $93, which was an astronomical amount by Soviet standards. According to his own words, he always parted with money easily and spent the entire amount in four years.

After the defeat, he drove on Soviet roads in an American Ford Mustang. There were only two such cars in Moscow, the second one belonged to tennis player Alexander Metreveli.

Rumors circulated among chess players at that time, one more incredible than the other. Some believed that Spassky was almost a KGB colonel, others insisted that he was anti-Semitic and that he enjoyed the support of high-ranking anti-Semites in the leadership of the USSR. Spassky later blamed his Estonian assistant Ivo Nei for the defeat on being an American spy and leaking important information to Fischer's camp. Be that as it may, two years later the Estonian was officially forbidden to leave the USSR.

THIRD MARRIAGE AND DEPARTURE TO FRANCE

Spassky later said that that song by Vladimir Vysotsky did not touch him much. After all, it sings about how well Fischer plays chess. And he didn't meet Vysotsky either in Russia or in France - although both of them married French women of Russian origin.

In 1975, Boris Spassky married - for the third time - Marina Shcherbacheva, the granddaughter of Dmitri Shcherbachev, a general of the tsarist army and an active participant in the White Movement.

They met in 1974 when Marina was working at the French trade representative office. It seems that the KGB suspected that she was working for French intelligence.

The sensationalist press in the post-Soviet period also wrote that the KGB was working to break up the love relationship between Boris Spassky and Marina Šćerbachova, that he broke into her apartment, and even planted pubic lice in the sheets in order to make the lovers quarrel. If so, it failed.

They married in 1975 and Spassky moved to France in 1976.

The divorce from the country was quiet - he proposed the following agreement to the Soviet authorities: "If you allow me to emigrate to Paris, I promise you two things: that I will never speak against the USSR and that I will be available to play for the national team whenever I am called."

The Kremlin agreed. Boris Spassky retained the citizenship of the USSR. He took French citizenship in 1976 after the Soviet Sports Committee stopped paying me a scholarship. When he was abroad, he decided on which tournament he would play. He played under the USSR flag until 1983 in major tournaments. After that, he played for France in three chess Olympiads.

He was nicknamed the "one-legged dissident" by his colleague Viktor Korchnoi, who hated him because he always said that Anatoly Karpov's talent was much greater than that of the implacable Korchnoi.

Unlike Spassky who claimed he couldn't play against a chess player he hated, they say Viktor Korchnoi, who never became a world champion, had to hate his opponent in order to play normally. That is why, they say, he hung a portrait of Karpov on the wall and spat on it.

In 1974, when the 43-year-old Korchnoi lost the candidate match to his 23-year-old opponent, he told Yugoslav journalists something too harsh for Moscow's ears, and he was banned from traveling abroad. He claimed that he was "punished for his free-thinking, and in general for trying to outplay the favorite of the Soviet people". After his travel ban was lifted, thanks also to the fact that Spassky defended him, Korchnoi fled to the Netherlands...

When in 1978 two chess players born in the USSR met in a match surrounded by scandals - Karpov, who represented the Soviet Union, and Korchnoi, who had escaped from it - Spassky watched the clash between the new world champion Anatoly Karpov and the escaped challenger Viktor Korchnoi from the shadows.

photo: ap photo

REVENGE OF THE CENTURY IN THE GAZDA JEZDE ORGANIZATION

And his rival Fischer retired from chess life shortly after Reykjavik. He lost the world championship title to Anatoly Karpov without a fight. He donated a large part of his prize from Reykjavik, which he certainly increased with his scandals, to the Christian sect to which he belonged.

After decades spent as a recluse, in 1992 Fischer agreed to a rematch with Spassky in Belgrade and St. Stephen's, with a colossal prize fund of five million dollars.

Fischer did not play for 20 years, and Spassky was then already ranked outside the top 100 world grandmasters, but their rematch carried the title of "revenge match of the 20th century".

The United States threatened Fischer with a fine of $250.000 and/or ten years in prison for "trading with the enemy". Fisher then tore up a US Treasury Department decision barring him from playing in the sanctioned country.

Spassky lost again with 5:10 with 15 draws, but he was not worried. He believed he had put Fischer back in check.

And he liked to compare his $1,65 million loser's purse to the $250 he got in 1968 for a Candidates semifinal against Bent Larsen.

He and Fischer pragmatically raised their prize fund from the bank Jugoskandik Gazda Jezde, a Ponzi scheme that collapsed a few months later.

FR Yugoslavia, where their last match was played, disintegrated. The USSR also collapsed.

The US has issued an arrest warrant and revoked the passport of its Cold War hero.

Fischer ended his life as an exile. He even praised the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, saying that America "should be wiped out."

Spassky was one of only a handful of people to attend the funeral of his rival and friend Bobby Fischer, who died aged 65 in Reykjavik - and reportedly asked loudly if there was a seat next to him.

The best chess days were behind Boris Spassky, but he was satisfied with life in France. He said that everything is going as it should: the family, taking care of the vanity plot near Grenoble... The son of Boris and Marina, born in Clamart in 1980 and named after his father Boris Spassky Jr. (full name Boris Alexander George), graduated from the law faculty of the University of St. Petersburg. He started a family with a French woman, giving his parents three grandchildren.

In an interview for "Express Gazeta", the sister of Boris Spassky, the four-time champion of the USSR among ladies (checkers) Iraid Spasskaya, spoke warmly about her French daughter-in-law, showing in photographs how Shcherbachova remained a beauty even in her old age.

But after Boris suffered a series of strokes, the 2012 idyll collapsed. The Spanish "Pais" writes that although several witnesses indicate that Spassky was looked after very well by Marina in Paris, he asked his Russian friends to organize some kind of kidnapping: they took him out of the house without Marina knowing, he got a one-time passport at the Russian embassy and flew to Moscow.

I'M DIVORCEING FROM A FRENCH GIRL, I'M LOSSING ALL MY PROPERTY.

"A further stay in France is dangerous for me. Let it be on their conscience. I am in a divorce war with my French ex-wife. My relatives are selling our property in France. And today it is important for me to save my archive from being sold. There are rare documents, unique books, materials that are interesting for the history of chess. For example, a letter from an American of Russian origin that I received before the match with Fischer. He told me about the official ultrasound radiation used by secret and warned me to be more careful. If I managed to move my archive to Moscow, then I would probably give it to the Russian Chess Federation," Spassky said in Moscow.

At the time he was on trial with Marina and his son - he was living on the outskirts of Moscow with his new partner, Valentina Alekseevna Kuznetsova, as "Pais" writes, a steel-faced woman with love in her heart.

And his sister Iraida Vasilievna said that her brother's third marriage was destroyed by that fashion magazine journalist Valentina Kuznetsova. First, she became an agent of a senior grandmaster in Russia, then a very close friend, and then she literally kidnapped him from France.

Boris Spassky did not accept the version of his Iraida Vasiliyevna, no matter how dear she was to him. About the second woman, Valentina Alekseyevna, from a wheelchair, he said: "Thanks to my guardian angel - she gives me water, food and laundry."

At the beginning of September 2012, Spassky divorced in France, and in 2016 the Moscow court confirmed the decision to dissolve the marriage of Boris Vasilevich and Marina Yuryevna Shcherbachova.

They say that Russian chess players have a habit of crooning over a black and white board, humming: "I'm divorcing my French wife and getting away with it. I'm losing all my property!".

Boris Spassky's life ended in Moscow on February 27, 2025, four weeks after his 88th birthday, a month before the death of his only sister Iraida, three and a half months after the death of his eldest son from his second marriage, Vasily Solovyov-Spassky, a music journalist and member of the Union of Writers of the Russian Federation, who lived for 57 years.