why are Russians so good at chess

https://www.chess.com/news/fide-statistics-chess-is-on-the-rise-3367 chess is on the rise likely

Title or gulag, comrade (unless Moskov will tell you to pull a draw).

That's actually quite fascinating, when you realize level of domination they have enjoyed.

"... I started living and working in Moscow in late 1992 ... an experienced chess trainer ... asked me to write out my whole opening repertoire, including which lines I played against each main black defence, etc. ... I was forced to confess that in all but one or two cases, I simply could not say! I would just make my mind up at the board, probably picking some line which I happened to have seen in a game in a recent magazine. After rolling his eyes in disbelief for a minute or two, he gave me a severe dose of the 'every Russian schoolboy knows better than that' routine, and then we started some serious opening work for the first time in my life. ... my confidence soared, and my results followed suit. ..." - FM Steve Giddins (2003)

Thank you for the objective data!

This excerpt is not true, I'd like to point out.

The Soviet Union was the worlds 2nd largest economy behind the United States, in 1991 their GDP was USD $3.1 trillion, and the American was USD $5.6 trillion. Their GDP/Capita was roughly 25th in the world as well as their HDI. Now Russia is 50th in HDI and GDP/Capita PPP, and 80th in GDP/Capita nominal. 

Economically the dissolution of the USSR was a disaster, Russia recovered it's pre-1991 GDP just a few years ago. 

You say living in "terrible poverty", in terms of GDP/Capita the USSR was to the US (1991), what Italy is to the US (2017). They're living standards were certainly below wealthy western (and western offshoots) countries like the US, UK, France, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Scandinavia, Belgium, Netherlands, Switzerland, and West Germany, but ahead of every other country in the world. 

Just felt like I had to point this out. Cheers.

For the same reason Jamaicans are so good at sprinting, Japanese are so good at Go, Brazilians are so good at soccer and South Koreans are so good at e-sports: culture. It often goes like this: a group of very strong sportsmen is formed in a country spontaneously. Then the government notices their success, sees the potential in supporting their endeavors and starts investing in training national teams, opening clubs, schools and camps. At the same time, the society is proud of their achievements and starts encouraging kids to take on the activity and follow their footsteps. In the end, you have a nation in which a given activity is much more popular and stronger supported than almost anywhere else, and it's only logical to expect this nation to be disproportionally successful at the given activity.

Almost no one in Soviet Union knew about Go, for example, even though it is a game quite similar in spirit to chess. Why? No particular reason, it just didn't really take off. It could very well have happened the other way around, with chess thriving in China/Korea/Japan and Russia enjoying the world domination in Go.

SovietAl #27,I visited my relations in Western Ukraine in the the last days of USSR and then again after Ukraine broke free of the shackles of the USSR.Th e contrast was quite remarkable.During the first trip the shops were empty and it was not allowed to speak openly,freely.On my second visit the freedom and happiness was quite palpable.Shops were full of quality western goods.Free enterprise quickly made a difference.

Don't they play in school?

In America, we never developed a strong chess culture and then, with our high standard of living and developing addition to electronic games, we've weakened our chess culture.

In general, we've developed an anti-math, anti-science attitude where we look at hard work in science as something done by strange people like the characters on The Big Bang Theory or Alex on Modern Family.  Consequently Japan, with 1/3 our population, produces twice as many engineers despite also having a high standard of living.  Our gifted and talented high school students are clearly behind exchange students from Germany, Korea, etc. I know, I taught them.

If we didn't get 50% of our scientists and engineers from other countries, our economy would collapse. We get away with being lazy because we still have the advantage of high-level colleges and an entrepreneurial system that attracts many.  But the rest of the world is catching up and we won't find those high-skilled foreigners so available in the future.

We will reach a point where we have to change our attitude about the necessity of hard preparation work to build skills in school.  When we do, greater love for things like chess will follow.

Right, the last months of the USSR were chaos, as the country was on the verge of breaking apart.

You speak as if Ukraine was being forced to stay in the Union. In 1991, they held a nation wide referendum that asked "Do you consider it necessary the preservation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics...? The result was over 75% voting in favor, whilst in Ukraine specifically was at 83.5%. 

The nation was dissolved against the will of the people by a drunk (Yeltsin) and 2 politicians from Belarus and Ukraine respectively. 

On the referendum: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_referendum,_1991

Also the majority of people in Russia and post-soviet states either claim life in the USSR was better or outright want it ressurected, here are polls from Russia specificaly:  

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Poll-Most-Russians-Prefer-Return-of-Soviet-Union-and-Socialism-20160420-0051.html

It's hard to blame them, back then Russia/USSR was great. They beat back the germans, sent rockets into space, stuck a big one to the US, dominated the olympics, scientific research, even chess, and did all sorts of cool things Superpowers do. Now they are for the most part, shadows of their former self.

I hate the relatively authoritarian bureaucracy in the USSR was much as anyone, too much top down bulls**t, not enough workers democracy as Lenin has envisioned. But I still think the dissolution was harmful, by Gorbachev's era, the people were as free as they are now, what ensued after the collapse was nothing but chaos, life expectancy crashed (has only recovered very recently), alcoholism, crime, corruption rose, the economy absolutely collapsed, wealth inequality soared etc., and of course it left a massive power vacuum and thus the United States was left as the World's Sole Superpower.

I think Soviet dominance in chess really started to take hold around 1936-7.  One of the factors was that employers would let master players take time off from work to compete in tournaments.  The Soviet trade unions each had their own chess teams.  Botvinnik played for the metal workers, Levinfish for the chemists.  Large factories would also have a chess team associated with it.

In Botvinnik's case, he read a lot of books starting with Chigorin's and Capablanca's, and soon started writing books of his own.  He believed it was important to publish your annotations, and get feedback on them.

Some people speculate on the role of the Pioneer Palaces.  They were sort of like the boy scouts, but offering chess and other games and sports.

There was also a fair number of chess magazines - Shakhmaty v. SSSR and 64, later Shakhmatny Byulletin and Shakhmatnaya Moskva with contributions from the many world champions.

Soviet textbooks (eg. Slavin, Golenishchev) are often released in series starting from 4th category 1200-1400 Elo with separate volumes for each rating band up to expert or master.  If people study books at their own level, they won't be bothered by the book being too easy or hard.  (There is now a couple of similar series' available in English - Brunia/Wijgerden and Yusupov, but in the Brunia/Wijgerden series, they were complaining that no one buys their advanced books.)

One of the things I notice about the Russian players in Canada is even after their own games finish, they will sometimes stick around, and analyze other players' games as they finish.

Re. the US, lately they seem to be undergoing a bit of a renaissance what with Wesley So immigrating, Caruana choosing to live in the States, and Rex Sinquefield sponsoring the Chess Club and Scholastic Center of Saint Louis and the Sinquefield Cup tournaments.  The chess programs at University of Maryland Baltimore, University of Texas Dallas, and Webster University seem to be having a positive effect as well.

A lot like chess.

A lot like pretty much any game, really.

Agreed. Baseball at the the major league level is all about trying to out think the opponents that are trying to out think you. There are so many subtle details to a ballgame and if you're not a fan, you probably have no idea it's happening. In that case, I guess baseball could seem boring, but it's far from it. 

Any intellectual or physical activity in general, even. Smithing, for example, may sound extremely boring to people who don't know much about it: all you do is swing a hammer repeatedly, right? Well, I knew a professional smith who could read you a 3 hour lecture on smithing, should you get him going by asking, "What is smithing like?" It was clear he had a real passion for his profession and found each of its elements worthy of studying, practicing and enjoying.

Yeah... and the best players from those "very strong teams" put together would get clobbered by the 20-62 Brooklyn Nets.

Things aren't like they used to be though... 

Interesting list considering where the players are today.  Kasparov and Karpov mostly retired from top level chess, Gelfand playing for ISR, Ivanchuk for UKR, Bareev (coaching, I think, or did) for RUS, Gurevich (IDK what country he is playing for, think I know but not sure), Ehlvest, Yudasin both in US, Salov retired fairly young, and Beliavsky plays for (IDK who) but he still plays well at an advanced age.