why are Russians so good at chess

Because it is their national sport? Over here it's soccer, and we usually beat them at that.

Canada is the best in hockey, US best in basketball. Just so happens Russia is the best in chess. I would rather be a strong Russian chess player than an Indian import.

A joke surely? Chess isn't their "national sport" - soccer (football) is. Like pretty much every nation other than the US. 

Then sports like tennis, ice hockey, basketball and all those ones. Especially nowadays as the mystique of chess in the Soviet days is gone and they become more westernized but it was never one of the big, actual sports.     

Chess comes very, very far down the list, something like darts. Now of course it is popular in Russia in comparison to the west but that's not meaning that it's some huge thing there, let's not go crazy. It's not on pay tv with big matches every weekend like popular sports... lol.   

Are you sure it ain't Bandy, also called "Russian hockey"? Any source to back up your claim? After doing some online research, Bandy is the national sport of Russia. I can't find any info that suggests football is lol.

Yes, I found the same thing after making my post. I think it comes down to he is using the term "national sport" wrong, the national sport is more like a sport that has been produced in and mainly confined to a country, and I was led into assuming it meant most popular sport also. However football is by many times the most popular sport there.   

In early Soviet Russia, chess was closely associated with sagacious leadership. Now today, Russians do not dominate world chess, but they formerly were very much successful. The underlying reason for such lies in the great institutional support for chess Soviets formerly had. Many state entities sponsored chess. You'll notice that many of the Warsaw countries also appreciate chess.

“We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula "chess for the sake of chess", like the formula "art for art's sake". - Nikolai Krylenko

@DifferentialGalois What is today? Please tell what you just said to Vladimir Kramnik.

Yeah, you probably don't want to go out to the shops on a winter night in Siberia. 

#130
Many countries have a few sports they excel at. That particular sport is popular in that country. Those who practice it are respected and sustained. The environment nourishes it.

Russian (Soviet) government promoted a chess culture. Chess is a popular extra curricular activity in schools. Promising young players are recruited to trained in chess centers by masters. 

#132
It has nothing to do with the Soviet Union. It was already like that in Tsarist Russia. It is still the case now.

ikr

My history knowledge of Russia isn't that far   Base on the information from an IM who went to the Moscow Chess Olympics, even people playing in the parks played like 2000 FIDE elo.

Mikhail Chigorin of Russia played William Steinitz for the world championship in 1889 and 1892, losing both matches, but winning a fair number of games.

Alexander Alekhine and Aron Nimzowitsch shared first place at the All Russian Masters tournament of 1913, and then Alekhine came in 3rd at St. Petersburg 1914 after Lasker and Capablanca.  Alekhine was outside Russia when World War I started in 1914, and eventually emigrated to France.  Nimzowitsch was in the Baltic states during the war, but in 1917, he moved to Germany, and later Denmark.

Mikhail Botvinnik of the USSR shared 1st ahead of Lasker and Capablanca at Moscow 1935.  Paul Keres of Estonia came in first at AVRO 1938 ahead of Reuben Fine of the US, Botvinnik, Samuel Reshevsky of the US, Alekhine and Capablanca.  In 1940, Vassily Smyslov came in 3rd ahead of Botvinnik in the USSR championship.

I think 1945 was the year when Soviet dominance became apparent with Botvinnik, Keres, Smyslov, Isaac Boleslavsky and Alexander Kotov all playing for the USSR.

Russia still has more GMs than other countries, but it is no longer the case that Russian players make up the majority of players in the Candidates tournaments or top 10.

     Chess has been popular in Russia for centuries. The game reached Russia from Persia as early as the eighth century and "modernizations" made by Arabs and West Europeans filtered in through the trade routes with the Byzantine Empire. Tsar Ivan IV (the Terrible) banned chess--ineffectively--but was a chess player himself, just sitting down for a game when he collapsed and died (1584). Peter I (the Great) always took his set with him when he travelled--late 17th, early 18th century. The St. Petersburg tournament in 1914, where the term "grandmaster" originated, is one of the most famous in the game's history.

     Chess was a favorite pastime for the intelligentsia and gradually filtered down to the mass of the population, so by 1917 it was common to see people playing in parks, taverns, tea rooms, etc. Lenin, a strong player in his youth who quit the game because it took up too much of the time he needed to spend on his political activities, decided to provide chess clubs, magazines, tournaments, lessons for Young Pioneers and more because it was an inexpensive way to provide leisure activity for the public and make the new government more popular.

     One result of this policy was that many young Soviet citizens were exposed to the game and had a chance to learn, practice, and become good at chess. It also meant that there was a need for teachers, coaches, writers, and other PAID chess "workers". Very strong players were awarded the title Master of Sport that guaranteed them a salary, sometimes just for playing top boards in club or regional competitions.

     Once there  was a substantial group of strong professional players, tournaments in the Soviet Union became highly competitive. This keen competition elevated the level of play. Where Reshevsky or Fischer in the US, Olafsson in Iceland, Carlsen in Norway, Anand in India, and the like could count on finishing at or near the top of any national competition players like Smyslov, Keres, Spassky, Polugaevsky, Petrosian, Tal, Taimanov, Korchnoi, Karpov and Botvinnik had a tougher time because there were so  many other world-class players in the tournaments. The USSR team could beat the "rest of the world" team. Soviet players, with one brief exception, held the world championship from just after WWII until the end of the 20th century.

     The Soviet government enjoyed the propaganda value of their success in chess (and the Olympics, and space exploration and any area where they could claim superiority over the capitalists) so chess was taught in schools and fine facilities and competitions were universally available. The Russian (and Armenia and Ukrainian and Azerbaijani and Belorussian and Georgian) mass of GMs in the world today is just a continuation of this long trend.

Chess fits well with the Russian collective personality (you may call it culture). The typical chess player is a person apparently calm, exterior seen as such, but his mind is in a permanent storm. A person calm and quiet when seen from the outside but disquiet when seen from the inside. And then you have the chess player quietly seat down for hours for days, while having his mind in a permanent storm. For cultural reasons you have more people like that in Russia than elsewhere.