Spies, Defectors, and Chess Players Under KGB Watch
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.
Figure Skating Was a KGB Playground
You might think chess was the KGB’s main obsession in sports. But figure skating got plenty of attention too. A KGB officer named Vladimir Lavrov, nicknamed “Little Vermin” by his colleagues, filed constant reports about the Soviet figure skating team. Every coach drama, every friendship, every conflict went into top secret files.
One coach, Stanislav Zhuk, who trained Irina Rodnina (24 gold medals), was also a KGB agent. But Zhuk gave honest reports that contradicted Lavrov. So Lavrov tried to push him out. The KGB also recruited ice dancers Natalia Linichuk and Gennady Karponosov as agents. Olympic-level performers, reporting to the secret police. Normal life in the USSR.
Even Katarina Witt Was an Agent
Here’s a detail that surprised me when I first read it. The KGB sent an encrypted telegram to the East German Stasi, asking them to expand their spy network inside the East German figure skating team. The Stasi recruited Katarina Witt. Yes, that Katarina Witt. The Olympic champion.
Witt took part in joint KGB-Stasi intelligence operations during the Winter Olympics in Sarajevo (1984) and Calgary (1988). At the same time, the Stasi kept her under constant surveillance. They tapped her phone, read her mail, followed her daily. Her Stasi file had thousands of pages, including photographs and video of her private life.
So she was both a tool and a target. The system used people and watched them at the same time. Growing up in the USSR, I saw this pattern everywhere. Trust nobody. Everyone watches everyone.
The KGB Officer Who Controlled Chess
Now we get to chess specifically. A man named Vladimir Kuleshov, nicknamed “Cigarette Butt” by his KGB colleagues, was put in charge of overseeing Soviet chess. His background? He was bad at school, graduated at 21, went to a physical education institute, worked as a bursar at a Soviet embassy. He got recruited into the KGB while working in Sweden.
The book makes this point very clearly. The most intellectual sport in the world, dominated by some of the greatest minds of the 20th century, was supervised by a man who could barely write a simple document. His colleagues had to write his reports for him. But he had the right connections, so he rose to lieutenant colonel.
His boss, Colonel Boris Tarasov, nicknamed “Grandpa,” had spent 20 years in Magadan near the Arctic Circle. He was mixed up in illegal gold trafficking. When prosecutors started asking questions, his friend General Bobkov transferred him to Moscow. These were the people controlling Soviet chess.
The Hunt for Igor Kortschnoi
This is one of the most disturbing stories in the chapter. Viktor Kortschnoi, a four-time USSR champion, defected to the West. The KGB couldn’t touch him anymore. So they went after his son, Igor.
They drafted Igor into the army. But here’s the trick. Once you served, you were classified as having access to state secrets. You couldn’t leave the USSR for five more years. And for the son of a “traitor,” that waiting period would never really end.
Igor tried to avoid the draft. The KGB opened a file on him for “anti-Soviet agitation,” which was illegal even by Soviet standards. Igor’s only crime was being his father’s son.
For two years, Igor hid. He bounced between friends’ apartments, avoiding his home address, which the KGB knew. The police had him on wanted lists across the country. Then he made a fatal mistake. He called home to Leningrad from a friend’s apartment in Moscow.
The KGB recorded the call immediately, tracked the apartment, put it under surveillance. Days later, Igor went out to buy food and was photographed. The photo was sent to Leningrad for identification.
One early morning in June 1978, a KGB snatch squad rang the doorbell pretending to be police. They found Igor hiding in a ceiling cabinet in the hallway. After two years of running, the KGB had their hostage.
The timing was deliberate. The Karpov-Kortschnoi world championship match was months away. Igor was now a hostage to pressure his father.
The Campaign Against Kortschnoi
The KGB did not stop with kidnapping Igor. They organized a media campaign. A sports newspaper editor named Semyon Bliznyuk, code name “Lvov,” wrote attack articles against Kortschnoi on KGB orders. Another agent, Alexander Roshal, published similar pieces in his own magazine.
Soviet grandmasters were pressured to sign a collective letter condemning Kortschnoi. This was standard practice. The KGB had done it before with writers like Solzhenitsyn and Aksyonov. If you signed, you became a conformist forever. If you didn’t sign, your career was over.
Three grandmasters refused to sign: Mikhail Botvinnik, David Bronstein, and Boris Gulko. The book calls them “unsigners.” Botvinnik had retired, so the KGB couldn’t do much to him. But Bronstein was banned from international competitions for fifteen years. His career was destroyed.
Gulko’s punishment was even more creative. He wasn’t allowed to travel abroad or play in international tournaments inside the USSR. When he won the 1977 USSR championship anyway, officials forced a playoff match that ended in a draw. They declared the championship title vacant rather than give it to him.
Baguio 1978: Two Teams Playing for Karpov
The world championship in Baguio, Philippines, was not just Karpov vs. Kortschnoi. It was the entire Soviet state apparatus vs. one man.
KGB officers checked Karpov’s food daily, bugged the delegation’s quarters, and sent encrypted messages to Moscow about chess positions. Two teams in Moscow analyzed games for Karpov. Leading grandmasters were recruited as consultants, their move suggestions sent back in encrypted telegrams.
Karpov’s team included a psychologist named Zukhar from the Cosmonaut Training Center. His job? Use “parapsychological techniques” against Kortschnoi. He sat in the front row at every game, staring.
The KGB also recruited FIDE vice president Florencio Campomanes. He wanted to become president. The Soviets promised him the socialist bloc’s votes. The book says the same approach worked on IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch, recruited after being caught smuggling Russian antiques.
Gulko vs. General Abramov
Boris Gulko applied to emigrate to Israel. The chess establishment panicked. If Gulko left, he could coach Kortschnoi against Karpov. His wife, Anna Akhsharumova, had won the 1976 USSR Women’s Championship. Even Botvinnik thought her departure could cost the USSR the women’s chess crown.
When KGB agents couldn’t convince Gulko to stay, Major General Abramov summoned him to the Lubyanka for a “prophylactic conversation.” Soviet citizens remembered when people went into that building and never came out.
But Gulko didn’t break. The general who had crushed dissidents for decades could not change one chess player’s mind. Embarrassed, Abramov introduced himself as “Colonel Abramov” rather than reveal that a general had personally failed.
After that, the Gulkos lost their stipends, were erased from tournament lists, left almost without income with a newborn child. When another player, Lev Alburt, defected to the US in 1979, the Gulkos were punished even more. Letting them go would mean every grandmaster might try to leave.
What This Section Shows
What hits me is how personal and petty much of this was. These weren’t operations protecting the country from real threats. Bureaucrats with power destroyed people’s lives over chess games and skating competitions.
The system turned everyone into potential informers. Olympic champions, coaches, journalists, heads of international sports organizations. If you had something to lose, you could be recruited. If you had nothing to lose, you could be destroyed.
And through it all, people like Gulko and Bronstein refused to play along. That took real courage. The kind where you know exactly what they can do to you, and you say no anyway.
This retelling is based on “The KGB Plays Chess” by Boris Gulko, Vladimir Popov, Yuri Felshtinsky, and Viktor Kortschnoi (Russell Enterprises, ISBN: 978-1-888690-75-0). All facts and claims come from the book.
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