Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov, Yuri Felshtinsky, and Viktor Kortschnoi reveal how the Soviet secret police controlled the world of chess during the Cold War.
The KGB Plays Chess is not your typical chess book. It tells the story of how the Soviet Union’s secret police, the KGB, infiltrated and manipulated the chess world for decades. What makes this book unique is that it brings together four very different perspectives: a chess grandmaster who was banned from competing, an actual KGB officer who oversaw sports operations, a historian who documented it all, and a legendary player who defected to the West.
The book covers how the KGB embedded agents in sports delegations, rigged tournament outcomes, prevented defections, and turned chess into a political weapon. The most dramatic chapters focus on the world championship battles between Anatoly Karpov (the Soviet regime’s chosen champion) and Viktor Kortschnoi (who defected in 1976). Boris Gulko’s personal memoir of spending seven years as a “refusenik” - denied permission to leave the USSR while being stripped of his chess career - is one of the most powerful sections.
This is for anyone interested in Cold War history, the politics behind sports, or just a good spy story. Chess knowledge is not required. The human stories of courage, betrayal, and survival make this book relevant far beyond the 64 squares of a chessboard.
I just finished reading one of the wildest books about chess I have ever come across. It is called “The KGB Plays Chess: The Soviet Secret Police and the Fight for the World Chess Crown” (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0, Russell Enterprises, 2010). And I want to walk you through it.
The foreword of The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0) is written by Boris Gulko. He’s one of the very few people who held both the USSR and US chess championships. And he spent seven years as a “refusenik,” trapped in the Soviet Union, fighting the KGB just for the right to leave. So when he writes about chess and Soviet power, he knows exactly what he’s talking about.
Chapter 1 of The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0) is written by Vladimir Popov, a former KGB officer, and Yuri Felshtinsky, a historian. And it starts with a bang. No slow warm-up. Just a blunt description of how the Soviet secret police turned sports into a branch of intelligence operations.
Continuing my retelling of The KGB Plays Chess by Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov, Yuri Felshtinsky, and Viktor Kortschnoi (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0). This part covers the KGB’s grip on individual athletes, the hunt for defectors, and how chess became a battlefield for Soviet intelligence.
This section of the book shows what the KGB was willing to do when they felt threatened. And the threat was not some foreign spy or military secret. The threat was a chess player and his wife who wanted to leave the country.
Chapter 2 of “The KGB Plays Chess” is where Boris Gulko takes over the storytelling. The previous chapter was the insider account from the KGB officer. This one is deeply personal. Gulko titles it “The Letter Lahmed Problem” and dedicates it to his sister Bella, “my loyal companion on the road to freedom.”
Continuing the retelling of The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0), Chapter 2 by Boris Gulko. Last time, Gulko described his early career and the decision to apply for emigration. Now comes the hard part. What happens when the Soviet Union says “no” but won’t let you live a normal life either.
Continuing the retelling of The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0). Boris Gulko describes the long, empty years of being stuck in the Soviet Union. Years when time stopped. And the strange games the KGB played off the chessboard.
This is the final part of Boris Gulko’s chapter in The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0). After seven years as a refusenik, Gulko and his wife Anya decided to stop waiting and start fighting. What follows is one of the most intense stretches of the entire book.
Viktor Kortschnoi opens his afterword with a quote from Radishchev’s Journey from St. Petersburg to Moscow: “A monster horrid, hideous, huge, hundred-mouthed, and barking!” That line was originally about Russian autocracy in the 1700s. Kortschnoi uses it for the KGB. Same country, different century, same monster.
Most of The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0) is written from the outside looking in. Players telling you what the KGB did to them. Historians connecting the dots. But Chapter 4 is different. It’s a letter. Written by Vladimir Popov, a retired KGB lieutenant colonel, addressed directly to the historian Yuri Felshtinsky. And it reads like nothing else in the book.
This is the twelfth and final post in my series retelling The KGB Plays Chess (ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0, Russell Enterprises, 2010). Over the past eleven posts we covered every chapter, every author, every story in this book. Now I want to step back, take a breath, and talk about what all of it means.