However, the Sports Committee felt Nei to be an extremely poor choice. After all, he had little to offer in terms of chess analysis; he was not in the same class as the others, and if Spassky required a physical trainer, then a real expert should have been found. The KGB also objected to the non-Party member Estonian; during the match, doubts about him would take a more menacing turn.
By August 1971, as Petrosian prepared to meet Fischer in the last of the Candidates matches, Spassky discussed the details of his preparation with the Sports Committee. Baturinskii had already informed Ivonin that the world champion had not worked much in the previous year. Ivonin told Spassky he should be playing more in the Soviet Union, where the competitors were stronger and fought more fiercely.
Since becoming world champion, Spassky had played ninety-two games, eighty-eight of them abroad. Ivonin suspected that Spassky did not want tough competition. He appeared to be suffering from post—world championship loss-of-form syndrome.
In July 1971, in a small tournament in the Swedish city of Göteborg, Spassky had managed eight points out of eleven (five wins, six draws). In the Alekhine Memorial tournament in Moscow in November/December 1971, he was placed only joint sixth, below the new prodigy, Anatoli Karpov, and ex-champions Smyslov and Petrosian. He had agreed a series of unimpressive short draws. But he was not the only champion to have avoided tough competition. In a later article in the chess magazine 64, Vasili Panov commented: “Not one of our world champions, with the exception of Botvinnik, played even once in the Championship of the USSR—the strongest contemporary tournament—while they held the title. That is why they lost their feel for hard-fought battles. Even in the competitions in which the world champions were magnanimous enough to appear, they didn’t throw themselves fully into it, didn’t crave first place, and often—oh, how often!—instead of passionately searching for paths to victory were satisfied with modest ‘grandmaster’ draws and now and then conceded first place to a braver and more ambitious competitor.”
If he were minded to make excuses, Spassky could point to personal preoccupations—private troubles that the Sports Committee tried to help him resolve. He was unsettled by the obligations that fell to him as the leader of Soviet chess. He had to ensure that Bondarevskii and Krogius had permits to live in Moscow and that Bondarevskii gained a much needed pay increase. He wanted to change his Moscow flat in Prospekt Mira; he described the Stalin-era apartment as noisy and claustrophobic, with nowhere to put his books or work. He wanted more money. He had to pay alimony to his first wife and provide for his mother. His second wife, Larisa, had come to Moscow with their child, and they too had to be taken care of—a suitable kindergarten found for the little boy, Vasili. With all these expenses, 300 roubles a month was not enough, he told Ivonin.
As a senior politician, a deputy minister, Ivonin also received 300 roubles a month. He initially told Spassky that the Sports Committee did not have sufficient money for chess as well as for other sports in the Soviet Union. Privately he thought that compared to other people, Spassky had a privileged enough life already; the real problem was that Spassky knew how sports stars lived abroad. However, Spassky’s demands could not be ignored, and when they met again in late November, Ivonin capitulated. Spassky was awarded an increase to 500 roubles a month—the same as a Soviet minister and the first Soviet sportsman to be remunerated at this level. The Council of Ministers—the government—had to approve the increase as an “exceptional personal salary.”
On 16 November, Viktor Baturinskii, director of the Central Chess Club, wrote a report to the Sports Committee on Spassky’s training, expressing the authorities’ disquiet at the champion’s attitude to the defense of his title. Clearly exasperated, he explained Spassky’s unsuitability to carry the Soviet flag and gave a merciless review of the world champion’s general readiness for the mission ahead:
As a result of his difficult childhood and gaps in his upbringing, he allows himself to make immature statements, infringes sporting procedures, and does not display the necessary level of industriousness. Certain individuals in our country and abroad try to aggravate these weaknesses, nurturing his delusions of grandeur, emphasizing his “exclusive role” as world champion in all sorts of ways and encouraging B. Spassky’s already unhealthy mercenary spirit. Two points cause particular anxiety:
a) He spends a great deal of time on improving his living conditions (exchanging his flat, buying a dacha, repairing his automobile), and this may in future influence his training, which demands the full devotion of his energy and time…
b) Thoughtlessness during public appearances; his attention has been drawn to this several times.
The very next day, the Sports Committee lost control of Spassky’s preparation.
Within the structure of government, the Sports Committee was answerable to the Council of Ministers. But the Soviet Union had two (unequal) sources of governing authority. Operating alongside the government, at this time led by Andrei Kosygin, was the real center of power, the Communist Party. At the top of the Party was the Central Committee. It had a cabinet, the Politburo, the pinnacle of the power structure. The Central Committee and its secretaries were at the heart of the political system, and the general secretary, Leonid Brezhnev, was the true leader of the country. (This caused puzzled head scratching in diplomatic circles: how could Brezhnev pay state visits abroad when he had no official governmental position?) Any issue with major ideological implications went to the Central Committee for discussion and decision. If the response was positive, the government ministry would act; if not, not.
Without informing the Sports Committee (in other words, the deputy minister, Viktor Ivonin, and the bureaucrats who would have to make all the practical arrangements and find the money for them), Spassky initiated a meeting with a senior functionary in the Central Committee and handed over his outline “Training Plan.” The unnamed functionary conveyed it to Piotr Demichev, the Central Committee secretary whose beat covered chess. Chess fell under “ideology,” and Demichev had been the secretary responsible for ideology since 1961—he was also a candidate, or nonvoting member, of the Politburo. Spassky himself says that he never met Demichev.
Why did Spassky take this radical step and give his schedule to the Central Committee, the control room of the Party? He says it was because of his growing friction with Baturinskii; he wanted to bypass him—and with him, presumably, the other Sports Committee apparatchiks.
Although this was a world championship, the Central Committee would not normally have intervened; usually such matters would have been left to the Sports Committee. Asked if he resented Spassky’s gambit, Ivonin simply says that such a move by a top sportsman with Party connections was not unknown (“a world champion is a world champion”), but that in this case Spassky had no need to go to Demichev. The Sports Committee, says Ivonin, was already implementing his wishes. Ivonin assumed that Spassky just wanted the Central Committee to put its authority behind his personal demands, including finding a new apartment.
In any case, two days later, the chairman of the Sports Committee, Sergei Pavlov, a man utterly familiar with Soviet ways of power, had his first sight of the world champion’s program to retain the title. As he read the cover letter, with at least surprise, and probably anger, he realized that Spassky now outgunned the chess bureaucrats. The initiative concerning Spassky was out of the ordinary, and the champion had generated it. This in itself would have irritated Pavlov, but perhaps his response would also have been tinged with personal bitterness and envy. He had been a Party boss. He had helped Brezhnev dispose of Khrushchev. Now here was a Central Committee secretary going over his head to meddle in his bailiwick.
To Comrade S. P. Pavlov
I ask you to examine closely the questions posed here and to report back to me.
P. Demichev
Attached was Spassky’s plan, now circulated to them via the second most powerful body in the country:
Preparations for the match: Spasskv-Fi
scher (in summary)
The main goal is victory. Our collective is responsible for the result. It consists of: grandmasters B. V. Spassky, I. Z. Bondarevskii, E. P. Geller, N. V. Krogius, I. P. Nei.
1. Everything connected with the match preparations must be secret. All those taking part in the preparations must sign a document stating that they will not reveal an official secret.
2. All members of the working community are at the disposal of B. V. Spassky until the end of the match.
3. A permanent base is needed for work and rest outside Moscow. A dacha for seven people.
4. Finances. Estimate of expenses for the entire preparation period.
5. A head of preparations is needed who will deal with organizational issues.
6. Supply of food and medical care.
7. Arrival for the match two weeks before the start. Aim—acclimatization and organization of a working routine.
8. Talks about the location and dates for the match are to be carried out directly by B. V. Spassky in consultation with the entire collective and other competent individuals.
Personal requests of B. V. Spassky: Exchange of flat (has been going on for two years)
The general plan of preparation consists of
1. Physical
2. Chess
3. Psychological
1. Physical. Aim: maximum professional capacity for work
2. Chess. Objective analysis of the strong and weak sides of Spassky and Fischer. Theoretical preparation.
3. Psychological—steadiness in the struggle.
B. Spassky
Moscow 17.11.71
Many of these points had already been raised with the Sports Committee, though two of Spassky’s demands—that everyone involved in his training should be sworn to secrecy and that the location of the match should be for him to decide—were new. The last worried the committee: they wanted Spassky to concentrate on chess and leave the rest to them.
Demichev’s one line was enough. His request to be kept informed raised the stakes for the Sports Committee. In Soviet culture, it stated “the Party views this match as ideologically important.” In other words, “Watch out!” Or, as Spassky expresses it in English, he had succeeded “in jumping through Pavlov’s head.”
After receiving it, the Sports Committee was, or at least saw itself as being, unusually complaisant toward Spassky, even when it became plain that he lacked faith in them. For example, the committee wanted to send a doctor, a translator, and its choice of journalist to Reykjavik. Spassky insisted that they send a grand master, Isaac Boleslavskii, rather than a professional chess writer. And he rejected a doctor and a translator, telling Ivonin, “We don’t need a translator, we can do everything ourselves. It’s a matter of trust.” Decoded—and of course Ivonin understood the code—that meant Spassky thought the translator would be a KGB officer, there to observe him. The committee would have had to approve these staff and arrange their passports. Ivonin’s note of the conversation gives Spassky’s remark three exclamation marks.
The balance of power had shifted to the chess champion. “Heads down” became the rule in the Sports Committee. “Why risk intervention?” muses Beilin. “Pavlov was no idiot. This was now Demichev’s and Spassky’s responsibility. Okay, so you guys take responsibility.”
Today, Spassky remembers that he was not given the team he wanted and denied the interpreter and cook of his choice—Karpov in 1978 had a squad of forty, he complains. He is also disdainful about his lineup: “Krogius was not much of a psychologist…. In Reykjavik, 1972, he was useless. Nei was a tennis partner, not much of a chess player. Geller was the only one who helped me.” But the truth is that the committee did its best to convince Spassky that a head of delegation and the other assistants were necessary. The limited chess team in Iceland was the team Spassky himself had assembled.
On 4 January 1972, in a secret memo to Demichev covering every aspect of Spassky’s training, including his diet, Pavlov tried to reassure the Central Committee that everything was in hand.
Scientific workers and specialists from the Academy of Medical Sciences and the All-Union Scientific Research Institute for Physical Training have been brought in to provide thorough medical care, organize the appropriate nourishment, and devise recommendations for quickly reestablishing the ability to work after major mental, nervous, and psychological labors.
The issue of providing high-calorie foods is being decided jointly with the RSFSR Ministry of Trade.
In the ensuing months, with the world champion’s family finally settled into a newly built, plush four-room apartment in Vesnin Street in the elite diplomatic quarter, Spassky and his team moved from handpicked dacha to handpicked dacha—Krasnaia Pakhra thirty-five kilometers from Moscow (where he was billeted during his championship match with Petrosian), Arkhys in the North Caucasus, Sochi on the Black Sea, and finally Ozera near Moscow. In Ozera they lived in a sanatorium where defeated German field marshal Friedrich von Paulus had been held after the war. The Sports Committee kept an eye on the facilities and living conditions—and tried, as discretely as it could, to establish how hard Spassky was working.
Unhappily, the training paradise now created contained a number of serpents.
By the time he arrived in Reykjavik, Spassky was feeling the strain caused by the breakdown of two key relationships during his training period, one with the director of the Central Chess Club, Viktor Baturinskii, the other with the champion’s personal coach, Igor Bondarevskii. There was also a quarrel with Mikhail Botvinnik, opening a rift sufficiently wide for Botvinnik to refuse to sign a petition to save the struggling magazine Moscow Chess from closure simply because Spassky’s signature was also on it.
The consequences of the breach with Baturinskii, in particular, were to be serious. Spassky put at arm’s length the man who had direct responsibility for chess and chess players, who led the negotiations with the Americans and with FIDE over the location of the match, and who might have been a highly effective team leader in Iceland.
The immediate cause of this dispute appears trivial. Spassky wanted to lend his car to a friend. To do this, he needed a duly notarized letter of authority (as is still the case in Russia today). In late November 1971, Spassky drafted such a letter and asked Baturinskii to affix the Central Chess Club seal and countersign it. Baturinskii refused. He was not qualified to sign, he told Spassky. (Actually, he thought there was something suspect about the document and believed Spassky would do better to take it to a lawyer.) The champion took this as a personal slight and made it plain that as far as he was concerned, Baturinskii was no longer to be trusted. From this point on, Baturinskii was effectively excluded from close contact with the preparations.
Colonel Viktor Baturinskii, former military prosecutor and director of the Central Chess Club. Preparing his moves? OLGA BATURINSKAIA
Even in his final years, as a blind, hard of hearing, apartment-bound pensioner, Baturinskii’s memory of Spassky’s attitude revived an indignant anger. As a Soviet, he desperately wanted Spassky to triumph. Equally, as a Stalinist by upbringing, he had little time for the free-spirited Spassky, who felt that when the world champion spoke, the chess world should follow.
In terms of personality and politics, there was an inevitability about his break with the champion. Some surmise that Spassky created the car issue to confront Baturinskii and distance him from the match.
Spassky informed the authorities that he objected to Baturinskii representing him at FIDE in negotiations over the match conditions. Ivonin tried dissuading Spassky. Strictly speaking, he said, Baturinskii had been correct not to sign the letter of authorization. But Spassky’s mind had been made up. In any case, at that point, Baturinskii drew the line. “I told Ivonin that I refused to go. He said that my passport and all the documents were ready. I said that’s not important—if someone who ought to trust me doesn’t trust me, I just won’t go.”
The row undoubtedly upset Spassky and drained his energy. In practical
terms, the negotiations for the match were left in the hands of Geller, who understood chess, and Aleksandra Ivushkina, the deputy head of the Sports Committee’s International Department, whose work covered relations with international sports federations. She spoke excellent English, had wide experience in working with other federations, and knew the Sports Committee’s position. In terms of legal acumen, though, it was hardly the sharpest team.
Spassky’s breakup with Baturinskii affected the conduct of the match. The other breakup—with Bondarevskii, his longtime coach—affected his preparation. Bondarevskii and Spassky had begun to work together in 1961, as the future champion’s career and personal life ran aground. Intriguingly, he was later to part from Bondarevskii as his second marriage was also foundering. Spassky’s winning the title had changed both relationships. Bondarevskii had not been trainer to the world champion. Suddenly he was. Similarly, Larisa had not married a world champion. She complained that when Boris took the title, he began to dominate all aspects of life—he even gave her advice on how to cook soup.
For several years, there had been hints of trouble to come. According to Spassky’s autobiographical section of Grand Strategy, during the 1969 title match with Petrosian, the Bondarevskii-Spassky relationship had broken down over the living arrangements Bondarevskii had made (too far out of town, Spassky thought). However, they eventually made up. Spassky respected Bondarevskii and acknowledged that he had to accept him as he was. Looking back at the dawn of his relationship with his third and last trainer, Spassky remembered, “He knew how to stimulate me and make me work. That was his secret.”
Bobby Fischer Goes to War Page 12