Bobby Fischer Goes to War

by David Edmonds

  That was his perspective in 2002. Thirty years earlier, things looked rather different. On the morning of 2 February 1972, Bondarevskii told Ivonin that he and Spassky could no longer work together and they had come to an amicable agreement to part. There was no real communication between them, said Bondarevskii, so they accomplished little. Since he became champion, Spassky had practically ceased to listen to his recommendations. Nor was Bondarevskii satisfied with Spassky’s work rate. Before he saw Ivonin, he visited Baturinskii. Baturinskii remembered the conversation thus: “‘Viktor Davidovich, I’m stepping down from this job’—How can you refuse to work only three or four months before the beginning of the match? You are his chief trainer—you’re putting him in a very difficult situation. ‘It’s impossible to work with him, impossible. I am standing down. He doesn’t follow my instructions: he gets on with all sorts of other things. With so little time before the match he can’t concentrate.’”

  Nikolai Krogius draws a distinction between the old Spassky and the new, between the aspiring world champion and the title holder. “Previously (for example, during the preparations for his 1969 match against Petrosian), Boris might initially disagree with a proposal, but later, having thought about it, he would often (usually on the following day) admit that it was sound. Bondarevskii and I would joke that Spassky must be persuaded in two stages: first a refusal, then a yes. But now, having said no, Boris stubbornly maintained his position—frequently without foundation.”

  Some believe that Bondarevskii abandoned the team because he feared his trainee was heading for defeat and was apprehensive of being associated with failure.

  The same reason may explain the simultaneous resignation of V. I. Postnikov, then president of the USSR Chess Federation and a friend of Bondarevskii’s. Postnikov was succeeded by his deputy, Yuri Averbakh—no one else, according to Averbakh, was willing to take on the risk. Averbakh says that from this moment on, he grew pessimistic about Boris’s prospects. Only Bondarevskii’s force of personality could induce Spassky to keep slogging away—to work up the necessary mental sweat. Yes, Spassky labored, “but in a light style, let’s say.”

  But plenty of people are inclined to side with Spassky in the dispute. According to Yevgeni Bebchuk, the former president of the Chess Federation of the Russian Federation, the coach was a very difficult person. “He was an ingenious coach, a prince among coaches, but his rudeness was quite impossible. When he became Spassky’s coach several years earlier, Spassky had needed his skills as a trainer, irrespective of his character. But when Spassky was at the height of his profession and Bondarevskii swore at him—he had always sworn at him—Spassky would no longer put up with it.”

  Vera Tikhomirova also knew Bondarevskii from their hometown, Rostov on Don. An expansive, formidable woman, she had survived Stalin’s famine and terror to become the Russian Federation’s women’s chess champion, though at this point she taught chess for the Federation’s sports committee. Vera retains a maternal love for Spassky. In return, he loves her as would a son. Her verdict on Bondarevskii: “He was said to be strong-willed. But he wasn’t. He definitely didn’t like taking responsibility.”

  The day of Bondarevskii’s departure, Spassky, Geller, and Krogius arrived in Ivonin’s office to give their side of the story. Bondarevskii did not believe in their success; he was not completely committed. Spassky would no longer put up with being treated like a child, spoken to in harsh language. What is more, Bondarevskii had not kept up with theoretical advances in openings: now that Geller was in the team, Bondarevskii was of no real value. Spassky added that he, Spassky, had been the first to declare they had to part.

  To sweeten the pill, the group gave Ivonin a reassuring summary of their labor to date. Thanks to the Sports Committee, their personal problems, the dacha, flats, salaries, and living permits, had been resolved. The group was conducting its studies in a businesslike fashion, the creative work was going well, and the preparation plan had been successfully fulfilled. In groundwork they were probably ahead of Fischer. Ivonin noted: “They said Spassky would have a significant edge against Fischer in the opening because Fischer would not have time to rework his very limited repertoire.”

  Whatever the basis for Bondarevskii’s departure, the original group had been working and living closely together; the loss of a member was inevitably unsettling. If there had been a driving force in the group, it was Bondarevskii. With Spassky as the new leader, the team simply performed what he wanted of them. An independent leader could have forced Spassky to do what he needed but did not care to do. Geller filled Bondarevskii’s place, but he was not at all suited to it. Unwilling to confront Spassky himself, he would quietly take Nei to one side. Could Nei cajole the champion to work?

  “Obstinate, with a dimpled chin and a slow waddle, Geller looked more like a former boxer or elderly boatswain who had come on shore than the world-class grandmaster he was,” is the portrait drawn by Genna Sosonko in Russian Silhouettes. Spassky praised him as “a very complete player…. His diligence was extraordinary. He developed his talent by sitting on his backside, and his backside developed in turn thanks to his talent.” He belonged to a very elite club of those having a plus record against Fischer; over the course of his career, he had beaten the American five times.

  Geller came from the most cosmopolitan city in the Soviet Union, the southern port of Odessa, and outwardly had the familiarity and warmth of the Jewish neighborhood where he grew up. However, Spassky once said the good nature was on the surface; underneath, Geller was envious and hostile. He was also wholly Soviet in outlook, deeply suspicious of the West and what he saw as its corrupt and devious ways. In his book Soviet Chess, Andrew Soltis quotes Geller as saying that success in chess awaited only those players of deep morality and high intellect who were “free from the flaws and evils rotting through the capitalist system.” Bondarevskii’s departure put this problematic character at the champion’s right hand in training and at the match.

  With all these distractions, how effective and concentrated was Spassky’s preparation?

  There are many gossipy tales of slackness; some might well come under the heading of vranyo—the Russian weakness for exaggerated, often preposterous untruth. Given Spassky’s insistence on complete secrecy, only a select few were granted any real insight into his training. One engaging story that seems short of genuine eyewitnesses recounts how Bondarevskii made his exit after Spassky was given a weekend off and came back a fortnight later. Another tells how visitors saw Spassky whiling away the time with whiskey and copies of Playboy magazine.

  Still, that Spassky had a considerably more relaxed schedule than his opponent is unquestionable. Yuri Averbakh recalls that his first action when he took over as acting president of the USSR Chess Federation after Postnikov’s sudden resignation was to visit the camp for himself: “Spassky was sitting there with Geller and Krogius…. On the table were cards and dominoes, and when lunchtime came Spassky pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Everything became apparent to me immediately.”

  Boris Spassky insists that he worked and worked hard. Ivo Nei agrees but adds, not enough. Spassky maintained then and maintains now that he operates best with a clear mind, that physical fitness was crucial. Hence the tennis, skiing, and swimming. It is also true that the champion, in Mikhail Beilin’s warm assessment, “loved life, loved to relax, to talk and spend time with friends, to repose. He wasn’t like Korchnoi, for instance, grinding away for eight hours.” A typical day would begin with Spassky regaling his team over breakfast with the Greek myths he had read the night before and would later include his ration of sport, leisurely meals—and five hours for chess.

  “The main deficiency in our schedule was Spassky’s flippant attitude,” says Krogius. “He believed that he understood Fischer well, and that he, Spassky, would ‘find the key’ to Bobby’s chess during the match. He was encouraged to hold this view by those leading Soviet chess players who had written accounts of Fischer’s and Spassky’s styl
es of play. Keres, Smyslov, Petrosian, Tal, and also Botvinnik (who expressed his views orally) unanimously dismissed the possibility of any fundamental changes in the American’s game, especially in the opening. Only Korchnoi identified fresh features in Fischer’s chess evolution. But since Korchnoi’s opinion was directed at Spassky in personal and harsh terms, Boris did not pay it much attention.”

  In May, when another grandmaster, Isaac Boleslavskii, came to assist, the work rate was stepped up. Spassky’s play, it was reported back to Ivonin, was becoming more imaginative as well as more accurate. This coincided with the date being fixed for the match—no doubt concentrating the title holder’s mind. On a visit, Baturinskii noted the improvement: “Each day, six to seven hours are dedicated to chess analysis, and three hours to physical training (tennis and swimming in the pool).”

  Whatever the regime, Vera Tikhomirova was struck by the good health radiated by the champion and his team. “I remember when they visited me in my office for a photograph, they looked so healthy and so ‘plume-y’—bright eyed and bushy tailed—that I asked myself, ‘Did they really work or just enjoy themselves?’”

  Spassky’s troubled relationships, the negotiations over the match, the aggravation over his apartment, his incapacity for hard grind—these combined to ensure that he arrived in Reykjavik in less than a settled state and underprepared. But his conviction that there would be a feast of chess in Reykjavik and that he would win at the table in a historic victory was undiminished. “He really wanted to go down in history,” says Mikhail Beilin. “He always denies it: I’ve asked him that ten times, and he always says, ‘What do you mean?’ But I’m confident he really wanted to go down in history.” And he did—his name forever being associated with the staging of an extraordinary event in a small island state in the North Atlantic.

  9. BIG CONTEST, LITTLE ISLAND

  Islands are places apart where Europe is absent.

  — W. H. AUDEN AND LOUIS MACNEICE, LETTERS FROM ICELAND

  Fischer had already made his views on Iceland devastatingly clear. For the U.S. forces, it qualified as a “hardship posting,” he claimed, and GIs had to be paid a special extra allowance to compensate them for serving there. This was untrue. It was also unfair. Upon arrival in 874 C.E., the Norwegian Ingolfur Arnarson, the first settler in what is now the nation’s capital, must have gasped at the spectacular scenery: in the distance a towering snow-capped volcano, in the foreground white steam blowing off the shore. He named this area Reykjavik, meaning “Smoky Bay.” The land runs alongside a sea inlet, bordered on three sides by water. There is a whiff of sulfur in the air.

  This bleak, windy, isolated island has a magnificent, if austere, beauty. It is a country of glaciers and geysers, of marsh and wild, hardy grass. In winter, night lasts all day; in summer, day lasts all night. Appropriately for the match, this volcanic country sits across a great subterranean divide, the Mid-Atlantic Ridge.

  In 1972, Iceland was inhabited by only 210,775 people and had barely fifty miles of paved road outside the capital (nowadays, the most common vehicle is a four-wheel drive). Nearly half the population lived in Reykjavik.

  In support of Fischer’s prejudice, the city’s modern urban planners certainly had a great deal to answer for. Despite its stunning landscape, Reykjavik has been transformed into an aesthetic shambles. Part of the explanation is too rapid expansion. At the end of World War II, the city was barely more than a fishing village. In the subsequent quarter of a century, it grew dramatically but in an ad hoc fashion, with housing developments dotted haphazardly around the grandly desolate landscape. The shops and office buildings were often in gray concrete, while the houses were white with brightly colored roofs. In 1972, there were few modern hotels, and communication with the outside world was poor. Then as now, there were almost no imposing buildings to dignify the capital’s center.

  At first sight, Iceland did not seem a plausible candidate to host a match that was arousing worldwide interest. Could this remote island cope logistically? The country had no history of putting on events of this scale; indeed, it had never bothered to compete in such international auctions.

  How did the World Chess Championship arrive in Reyjkavik?

  Fischer had played all three of his Candidates matches in the Americas, at Vancouver, Denver, and Buenos Aires. He proposed to Max Euwe, via Ed Edmondson, that the final be held in the United States—even though playing on American soil would have given him a clear advantage. He flatly refused to consider the USSR as an option. Among other things, he feared for his safety there. Spassky, for his part, had security concerns about the United States. But nor did he want the match to be held in the USSR: he suspected some of his colleagues would support Fischer, and that would unsettle him.

  If not the United States or the USSR, then where? At the start of the process, FIDE had announced that any city in the world could bid to host the championship, their sealed envelopes to be received by 1 January 1972. Several would tender sums that, for a chess match, were unprecedented.

  When Spassky beat Tigran Petrosian in Moscow in 1969, the prize was $1,400. This time, from the outset, the award was to be of a different magnitude. Belgrade, the capital of chess-mad Yugoslavia, offered a hundred times more, an astounding $152,000. A second Yugoslav city, Sarajevo, sealed a bid of $120,000. Buenos Aires proposed $100,000, as did a third Yugoslav city, Bled. There were bids from the Netherlands, Rio de Janeiro, Montreal, Zagreb (the fourth Yugoslav city), Zurich, Athens, Dortmund, Paris, Bogotá, and Chicago (this last being disqualified for late arrival). Reykjavik pledged $125,000, the equivalent of fifty cents for every man, woman, and child in Iceland, the entire amount to be underwritten by the government, although the organizers hoped to more than recoup the outlay through the sale of TV rights.

  Gudmundur Thorarinsson, president of the Icelandic Chess Federation (ICF), coordinated the bid. Gudmundur had been elected to the ICF post (in his absence) two years earlier: the nomination had come from his brother, Johann, a much better player, one of the best in Iceland. Johann also first suggested the Icelanders tender for the match. Thorarinsson says he only reluctantly agreed to spearhead the effort: after all, he had a full-time job as a consultant civil engineer. But he also nursed political ambitions, and the campaign was one way to be noticed. It helped that he belonged to the center-left Progressive Party, then in the coalition government, and was on good terms with Prime Minister Olafur Johannesson.

  Both Spassky and Fischer were asked to list their preferences. At this stage, Spassky’s two chief desires were to play on neutral ground and not to split the match between two cities. He was also anxious about the weather. Holland was his preference. The Icelanders could point out that Reykjavik had a climate similar to Spassky’s home city, Leningrad.

  The climate, in contrast, never seemed to trouble Fischer much. “Money, money, money,” was what he cared about, or so he said. His preference was always likely to be the highest bidder, Belgrade, where he had been widely admired since competing in the Interzonal in Yugoslavia as a fifteen-year-old. This admiration for Fischer was an obvious drawback for Spassky.

  How, then, to decide? For the Soviets, the necessity of thrashing out a deal, of seeking the middle ground, was the beginning of a painful awakening. They had held a monopoly of the championship since the war. Details of any squabbling remained behind closed doors. Behind those doors they had been able to determine the site, the conditions, the prize. Now the authorities had to learn the art of compromise and to do so in doubly difficult circumstances, dealing with the Americans and dealing with Spassky.

  Disarray and vacillation reigned. The possibility of playing half in the United States and half in Leningrad was canvassed. When this idea was abandoned, the list of preferences became Amsterdam, Iceland, Bled—or, if not in Europe, then Argentina. Later the order read Reykjavik, Dortmund, Paris, and Amsterdam. There was a further shuffling before the final list was produced. Interestingly, the money on offer seems to have been ir
relevant to the Soviets’ decision-making process.

  Small wonder, then, that in this confused atmosphere the first major row between the Soviets and FIDE occurred through what might have been a simple misunderstanding over the deadline for submitting lists of preferences. This had initially been set for 31 January 1972, but the Soviets believed Euwe had then brought it forward to 27 January: he maintained that the new date had merely been a FIDE request to speed the process along. The Soviets handed in their list on 27 January. The Americans handed in theirs four days later, when, to Moscow’s great annoyance and consternation, Euwe accepted it as arriving in time.

  The price Euwe paid for his management of the location issue was that the Soviets would never again fully trust him to be impartial. Internal Soviet documents impugn his integrity, accusing him of being “indulgent” toward Fischer. The Soviets were further incensed when, during a trip to the United States, Euwe publicly predicted that Fischer would be victorious. In Euwe’s defense, it should perhaps be said that rather than being on Fischer’s side, he was on the side of the match taking place—but for the Soviets, in the light of Fischer’s behavior, this amounted to much the same thing.

  Fischer and Spassky eventually submitted four locations each. The Americans chose Belgrade, Sarajevo, Buenos Aires, and Montreal; the Soviets chose Reykjavik, Amsterdam, Dortmund, and Paris. Thus the Soviets’ favorite city was capitalist, the Americans’ communist (though Yugoslavia was not within the Soviet sphere of influence). To put it another way, for both contestants, climate and cash superseded politics.

  Negotiations stretched out over the next two months. On 7 February, Edmondson arrived in Moscow to hammer out a deal. He was both liked and respected there, knowing how to get on with his hosts (for instance, confiding in them his reservations on Fischer’s personality and behavior). Because there was little between the financial inducements offered by Belgrade and Reykjavik (especially given an explicit commitment from Iceland to pay the players 30 percent of the TV revenue), and because Spassky was adamant that he would find a Yugoslav summer insufferable, Edmondson signed an agreement for the match to be staged in Iceland.