The KGB Plays Chess - A Book Retelling Series About Soviet Spies and Chess

What This Series Is About

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.

This is not a normal chess book. There are no opening theory chapters. No endgame puzzles. This book is about how the Soviet secret police, the KGB, treated chess as a front in the Cold War. They controlled who became champion. They decided who could travel abroad. They pressured players to lose games on purpose. And they made life miserable for anyone who did not cooperate.

I grew up in a former USSR country. So when I read stories like this, they hit different. This is not some abstract history for me. I know what it felt like to live in a system where the state had its fingers in everything. Even chess.

Why This Book Is Special

Here is the thing that makes this book stand out from every other Cold War chess story. One of the four authors is a former KGB officer.

Vladimir Popov worked in the KGB from 1972 to 1991. He reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. He served in the Fifth Directorate, which was the department that watched over athletes, artists, and other creative professionals. He is not some outsider guessing about what the KGB did. He was there. He did the work. And then he moved to Canada and decided to tell his story.

That alone would make this book worth reading. But there is more.

Four Authors, Four Perspectives

The book brings together four people who experienced Soviet chess from completely different angles.

Boris Gulko

Gulko was the USSR chess champion in 1977 and later the US champion in 1994 and 1999. He has a plus record against Garry Kasparov, which is something very few players can say. But for seven years, from 1979 to 1986, he was a “refusenik.” He applied to emigrate to Israel and the Soviet government said no. For seven years they kept him trapped, unable to leave, unable to play in tournaments. He went on hunger strikes. He got arrested during demonstrations. He writes about what it was like to be a top chess player fighting the system from inside.

Vladimir Popov

The KGB insider. He was watching chess players from the other side. He knows what reports were written. What orders were given. What the KGB actually thought about the people they were controlling. After the failed August Putsch in 1991, he refused to go along with the KGB’s plans and was dismissed. His perspective is something you simply cannot get anywhere else.

Yuri Felshtinsky

A historian who co-authored “Blowing up Russia” with Alexander Litvinenko. Yes, that Litvinenko, the former FSB officer who was poisoned in London with polonium-210. Felshtinsky knows how to work with KGB-related sources and he helped Popov put the intelligence side of the story into proper historical context.

Viktor Kortschnoi

One of the greatest chess players who ever lived. Four-time USSR champion. He defected from the Soviet Union in 1976 and then played two world championship matches against Anatoly Karpov, in 1978 and 1981. Those matches were not just chess. They were political events where the full weight of the Soviet state was thrown behind Karpov. Kortschnoi writes about what it was like to play against not just a strong opponent, but an entire government.

What the Series Will Cover

The book has a clear structure and I will follow it in this series. Here is what is coming:

• The Foreword by Boris Gulko, where he sets the stage with the history of Soviet chess and government control
• “The KGB Plays Chess”, the main chapter by Popov and Felshtinsky, which is the insider account of KGB operations in the chess world
• “The Letter Lahmed Problem” by Boris Gulko, a long personal account of his battles with the system, covering his career, his years as a refusenik, his encounters with dissidents, and his eventual escape to freedom
• The Afterword by Viktor Kortschnoi, his personal take on everything
• A Letter from Vladimir Popov, a personal statement from the KGB officer himself

Some of these sections are long, so I will split them into multiple posts.

What to Expect

This is a story where espionage, politics, and chess all mix together. You will read about KGB officers sitting in the audience during world championship matches. About chess players being recruited as informants. About entire tournaments being rigged for political purposes. And about the people who fought back.

If you think chess is just a quiet board game, this book will change your mind.

Let’s get started.

Next in the series: The Foreword - Chess and Soviet Power