The Soviet School of Chess Revisited (Part One)
The Soviet School of Chess by Alexander Kotov and Mikhail Yudovich (Dover, 1961) is one of my favourite chess books. Published in the West during the dark days of the Cold War, it came with an anonymous introductory warning about the "highly energetic propaganda machine" at work within. But it seems almost charming today, in an Ostalgie kind of way.
All the same, re-reading the book in chronological order, one acquires a good impression of the context and evolution of chess knowledge at that time. Without the Soviet Union, chess would look very different today. For the first time, players were employed by the state and the methodology of teaching and coaching chess at a high level became formalized.
From 1948, when Mikhail Botvinnik won the match tournament for the world title, until 2008, when Vishwanathan Anand became the undisputed world champion after decisively beating Vladimir Kramnik in Bonn - with a minor "blip" when Fischer held the title between 1972-75 - Soviet or Soviet-trained players held the world championship title. (Even so, Boris Spassky told Botvinnik that the greatest product of the Soviet School of Chess was... Bobby Fischer. The Patriarch was not amused by this remark.)
Bobby Fischer: The greatest product of the Soviet School?
The tone of the book may seem boastful but it can also be seen as being of a defensive nature. It's also probably the first chess book to feature a selection of games by women players, something that would be practically unthinkable in the West at that time.
Taking their cue from Chigorin and Alekhine, Soviet coaches emphasized a concrete, dynamic approach to chess; they created methodologies for approaches to studying the openings, middle game and endgame in a systematic fashion, seeing them as organically connected rather than artificially discrete stages of the game. This led to some extraordinarily deep analyses, honed to a fine art by the scientific approach of Mikhail Botvinnik.
An example given in the book is this analysis of a sharp line of the Nimzo-Indian Defence by Vsevolod Rauzer:
Rauzer's analysis continues with 9.cxd5
I thought 9.f3!? was a suggestion of Ivan Sokolov until I saw the game Vidmar-Alekhine, San Remo 1930 (!) in Vladimir Tukmakov's book Modern Chess Preparation (New in Chess, 2012): Alekhine gave this move a question mark, Tukmakov gives it an exclamation mark. After 9...Nf6 (9...Qh4+ 10.g3 Nxg3 11.Qf2 Nf5 12.Qxh4 Nxh4 13,cxd5 is nice for White) 10.dxe5 Nxe5 11.cxd5 Qxd5 12.e4 Black encounters "serious problems" according to Tukmakov. White's Bishops and central control give him a serious edge. Vidmar played 10.cxd5?! and after 10... Qxd5 11.Bc4 Qd6 continued with 12.dxe5?! when 12.Ne2! gives equality, L.Grigorian-Maslov, Tashkent 1974.
After 9...Qxd5 10.Bc4 Qa5+ 11.b4 Nxb4 12.Qxe4 Nc2+ 13.Ke2 Qe1+ 14.Kf3 Nxa1 15.Bb2 0-0 we arrive at this position:
What would you play as White? Can you find Rauzer's plan?
16.Kg3!
An attacking move! The idea is Nf3-g5. If 16.Nh3 Qxh1 17.Ng5 Qxh2 defends h7.
16...Bd7
Rauzer's analysis stems from 1934 - more than sixty years later, the Hungarian grandmaster Gyula Sax tried to improve on this against Atalik in Szeged 1997 with 16...Kh8, but after 17.dxe5! the game didn't last long: 17...Be6 18.Nf3 Qxh1 19.Ng5 g6 20.Nxf7+! Rxf7 21.Bxe6 Rg7 22.Bf7! Rxf7 23.e6+ Kg8 24.Qd4 Kf8 25.exf7 Kxf7 26.Qd7+ 1-0 After 26...Kf8 27.Qg7+ Ke8 28.Bf6 it's over. It seems odd that a sharp player like Sax wasn't familiar with Rauzer's analysis; perhaps he was just caught in a variation he'd forgotten.
White continues with his plan: 17.Nf3 Qxh1 18.Ng5 g6 19.Qe5 Rae8 20.Qf6 Re3+
Black returns the material to avoid the attack, forcing the queens off the board:
And with 24.Bb3! White would seem to be better after 24...Nxe3 25.Kxe3. With the benefit of modern technology, we know that after e.g. 25...h6 26.Nf3 Re8+ 27.Ne5 the position is objectively level, although slightly more pleasant for White (see diagram below).
Of course, Rauzer's analysis isn't the last word; in such a sharp line, there are bound to be improvements - thus, on move 22, the program suggests 22.Kf3 Qd1+ 23.Be2 Qb1 24.d5 Qf5+ 25.Qxf5 Bxf5 26.Bxa1 with a big advantage for White - he gets to keep the Pe3 and, as Tukmakov says, "Black's a very long way from a draw". An improvement for Black (also suggested by the program) is, instead of 19...Rae8, 19...Qd1 20.h3 Bxh3! when after 21.Nxh3 Qh5 22.Qxh5 gxh5 23.Bxa1 White has a slight advantage.
None of this detracts from Rauzer's original analysis - it simply shows how chess evolves, and new assessments and improvements are part of the scientific approach endorsed by the Soviet School.
One can see a direct link between Rauzer's analytical approach, via Botvinnik, through to the fantastically deep opening preparation of Kasparov and Kramnik. As Kotov and Yudovich explain, far from exhausting chess, these profound studies enriched the game and raised it to new levels of sophistication and complexity.
Capablanca: Materialist Endgame Player?
In his book Bobby Fischer Rediscovered Andrew Soltis considers the origins of the Soviet School: they sought an approach to counter "the dominant style of the 1930s -the material-driven, endgame-oriented strategies that had served Capablanca and Flohr so well". As Soltis points out, the initiative became a crucial concept in the development of the 'Soviet style'. Instead of "just" trying to equalize, Black had the right to fight for the initiative - to this end, openings such as the King's Indian and the Semi-Slav were intensively analyzed, and against 1.e4 the Najdorf and Dragon variations of the Sicilian became major weapons.
Siegbert Tarrasch: Dogmatist Extraordinaire?
It could be argued that this style evolved partly from the theories of Tarrasch, who modified Steinitz's inflexible rule of cramped positions with no weaknesses to an advocacy of positions that accepted weaknesses in return for mobility. This is quite a sophisticated concept, but the Soviet School (and, naturally, Kotov and Yudovich) treat Tarrasch (as did Nimzowitsch) as a sort of chess Anti-Christ, forever berating his "dogmatism" (contrasted with the flexibility and creative approach of the Russian chess school founder, Chigorin) - although Tarrasch was far less doctrinaire than Soviet chess propaganda would have us believe. (In this regard, it's amusing to recall that one of the young Karpov's favourite chess books was Tarrasch's My Best Games.)
Mikhail Chigorin: The Spiritual Father of Soviet Chess?
Bent Larsen once said that he didn't believe in the Soviet School, and asked how players with such radically different styles as Tal and Petrosian could belong to the same school. One can speak of the 'Soviet style' not as "positional" or "tactical" but rather as a creative approach. The Soviet methodology - rigorous, concrete, and dynamic - allowed of numerous different ways of playing chess.
Part Two will follow shortly!
