In 1984 Garry Kasparov, the last Soviet and the first post-Soviet world
champion, made his mark by challenging Anatoly Karpov, the personification
of the Soviet school of chess, in a match that began in September. Six
months later, on March 10, 1985, a leader emerged who would preside over the
dismantling of the Soviet political system: Mikhail Gorbachev, the last
Soviet head of state.
Seven years and four more Karpov-Kasparov matches later, the Soviet Union was
history. Kasparov was the first Soviet world champion who refused to obey
the USSR Chess Federation and the Sports Committee, first by appealing over
their heads to his allies in the Kremlin, later by openly defying the regime
itself. Nurtured to be a Hero of the Soviet Union, he became one of its
gravediggers. After the Cold War symbolism of the Bobby Fischer-Boris
Spassky match in 1972, when the American broke the Soviet monopoly, no chess
duel has had the political resonance of the Karpov-Kasparov matches.
The ascendancy of the brash, pro-Western Kasparov anticipated the collapse of
communism. He was born Garik Kimovich Weinstein in 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan.
His Armenian-Jewish background made it more likely that he would grow up to
be a champion not only of chess but of dissidents, too. The young Garry
Weinstein listened to Radio Liberty and Voice of America, then argued about
politics with his communist grandfather. At the age of 12 he adopted a
Russified version of the name of his Armenian mother, Klara Kasparyan, in
lieu of his Jewish father’s. His talent was recognised early; he won the
USSR junior championship at the age of 12 without losing a single game. At
13 he was sent to France to play in the 1976 world junior championship. Once
he began to travel to tournaments in the West, he soon noticed the contrast
between the culture of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness abroad and
the culture of death, tyranny and corruption at home. “It was a shocking
revelation,” he told The Sunday Times in 2005. “By 16, I had no illusions.”
By the time he was 20 his rating (2,715) had already overtaken Karpov’s
(2,705). But Karpov was still the favourite; in his decade as world
champion, he had won or shared first prize in all but two major tournaments
in which he took part, some 25 victories.
The first Karpov-Kasparov world championship match began on September 19,
1984, in Moscow, amid feverish publicity. It began disastrously for
Kasparov, whose aggression made no impression on Karpov. After two weeks
Karpov led 4-0 with five draws. The next 16 games were drawn, many without a
fight. The organisers were regretting the open-ended format. On November 24,
in the 27th game, the champion struck again. It was a classic Karpov win;
Kasparov seemed to make no mistakes, yet was imperceptibly outplayed. The
score was 5-0 and Karpov was on the verge of a third successful defence of
his title, which would have made him one of the greatest champions of all.
He had to win only once more. It was not to be.
New year 1985 came and went, yet the deadlock continued. Behind the scenes,
the president of the World Chess Federation, Florencio Campomanes, was
trying to broker an end to a match that had become an embarrassment.
Karpov’s doctors said that his health would not stand any more; he looked
like a ghost. Finally, in February 1985, Kasparov achieved the breakthrough
for which he had waited so patiently. First he won the 47th game, his first
victory with Black. Then, in the 48th, he beat Karpov again, a massacre that
left the champion visibly demoralised. Karpov had not won a game for more
than two months, while Kasparov had come back from the dead. At 21, he had
made history. Although Karpov still led by 5-3, the odds favoured Kasparov.
What happened next still remains controversial. After the 48th game, by
agreement with the Soviet officials, Campomanes halted play again. The match
had continued for 159 days, in only 58 of which had any chess been played.
After six days of frenzied talks, on February 15 Campomanes summoned a press
conference at which he announced that “the match is ended without decision”.
A new one would begin in September with the score 0-0.
By the time the return match took place, the new men in the Kremlin had
concluded that the game was up. Neither the West nor the dissidents could be
defeated. The Soviet system must adapt or die. The man chosen to succeed the
geriatric Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko was Gorbachev. Kasparov quickly
forged good relations with the new people around Gorbachev. The changing of
the guard in the Kremlin was symbolised at the second Karpov-Kasparov match
by the appearance at the opening ceremony, again in Moscow, of the new
Foreign Minister, Eduard Shevardnadze. He greeted Kasparov warmly, while
ignoring Karpov. This time the duration of the match was limited to 24
games; the winner would no longer be the first to win six games, draws not
counting. Kasparov won the first game. After a couple of draws, Karpov
struck back, winning the fourth and fifth games to take the lead. A run of
draws followed. Everything hung on the last game. If Karpov won, the match
would be drawn and he would retain his title. Kasparov had only to draw to
win. In desperate time trouble, Karpov passed up a last chance to draw
(which would have been tantamount to renouncing his title) and went down to
defeat: 5-3, with 16 draws. Kasparov had become world champion at the age of
22, the youngest in history. But his real achievement was not just to have
eclipsed his predecessors; it was to have taken on the Soviet chess
establishment and won.
One sign that times were changing was that the third match opened in the Park
Lane Hotel in London on July 28, the first time that two Soviet world
champions had contested the title outside their own country. Having outbid
Leningrad, the London organisers had agreed to share the match: 12 games in
each city. The opening ceremony was dominated by Margaret Thatcher, the
first Western leader to establish a close relationship with Gorbachev and
Shevardnadze. Along with Pope John Paul II and President Reagan, she was one
of the three conservative revolutionaries who would lead the West to its
bloodless victory over communism.
Once again, chess provided the perfect symbol. The third match began with
three draws, but Karpov’s resistance crumbled in the fourth game and it
turned into a rout. Both players agreed to donate their prize money to the
fund for the recent Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which had such an impact on
the Soviet system that Gorbachev later saw it as the single biggest cause of
communism’s demise.
The denouement has become a classic: Karpov avoided an ending in which he
would have had practical chances in favour of a continuation that allowed
Kasparov to win with an elegant combination. With two games left, Kasparov
was a point ahead, and Karpov had shot his bolt. The last two were quiet
draws.
Kasparov had retained his title by the narrowest of margins, but he had little
time to prepare before Round IV, which began in Seville in October 1987.
This match was expected to be an easy victory for him, but proved to be the
narrowest squeak of all. The last two games, at Lyons, mattered to both men.
Karpov won the 23rd, setting up a grand finale in the last game. Kasparov
played to win. His pieces dominated the board. Just as he seemed poised for
the coup de grâce, however, the champion offered a draw, which Karpov
gratefully accepted. He had lost by the slimmest of margins: 12.5–11.5.
Why did Kasparov show such magnanimity? “It showed strength and fair play,” he
said afterwards. It also showed that both men knew that they would never
play again for the world championship, and that with them the Soviet era in
chess had passed into history. The Kasparov-Karpov duel was the climax of
the story of chess and the Cold War. That story is also a hitherto untold
chapter in the history of liberty. Kasparov’s confrontation with Karpov was
different. By the mid1980s the battle between East and West had become
internalised by the USSR. The power struggle had also been a battle between
ideology and truth. Karpov v Kasparov gave dramatic form to this struggle
within the Soviet system during its last decade, as its people awoke from
their long trance and came to terms with the truth. Kasparov was a quick
learner; he was among the first to realise that the system could survive
only if it adapted. But he was also among the first to grasp that the system
was too sclerotic to adapt. And he was among the first to comprehend that
only revolution – the peaceful overthrow of communism – would suffice.
— This is an edited extract from White King and Red Queen , published by
Atlantic Books on November 8, £22. Available from Times BooksFirst at
£19.80, free p&p. 0870 1608080, timesonline.co.uk/booksfirst
© Daniel Johnson 2007
Grandmasters exit
Long before the Communist Party of the Soviet Union lost its monopoly of power
in politics, it had been forced to give up its monopoly over chess, as
players followed the money to the West. For many chess masters living under
communism, the pressure to conform had been intolerable. The exodus of those
who moved to the West after the Berlin Wall fell was proof that the Soviet
experiment in using chess as an instrument of social engineering and
ideological warfare had failed.
It was no accident that the capital of chess during the last quarter of the
20th century was not Moscow but London. Thanks to a sustained economic boom,
the City survived the worst that Irish terrorism and municipal socialism
could throw at it. One beneficiary was chess. Financial institutions drew
the elite of the communist bloc to take part in events that inspired a
British renaissance; by the end of the century there were dozens of British
grandmasters, including Nigel Short and Michael Adams.
But when the frisson of a proxy war between superpowers vanished, so did the
market for chess. The present world champion, Vladimir Kramnik, is
relatively unknown even in his native Russia. Still, the chess heroes of the
Cold War can still make headlines. The irony is that while the last Soviet
world champion became passionately anticommunist, the last US champion,
Bobby Fischer, became virulently anti-American.
