Valedictorians of the Soviet School: Chess, Nationalism and the Cold War

This paper argues that chess was more than a pawn in the conflict between the USSR and the United States. The valedictorians were the outstanding class of young chess players who emerged from state-run programs to promote chess among the Soviet people in the 1930s. Virtually unknown to the world of international chess before World War II, they dominated American players, previously considered the best chess players in the world. For the next half-century, these players and their pupils held the world chess title for all but three years. Soviet leaders and journalists did not just celebrate these victories as the payoff of a successful system of chess education. Rather, they asserted that Soviet chess masters played a certain style of chess—the Soviet school of chess—that stretched back long before the Russian Revolution. Masters of the Soviet school used daring sacrifices and attacks to win matches and this style, chess journalists claimed, was emblematic of an eternal Soviet-Russian spirit. They contrasted this style to that of American players, who they said used a “decadent” positional style that relied on small gains to eke out a victory in the end. Chess in the Soviet Union became emblematic of the difference between East and West. The victories of Soviet players signified the righteousness and inevitable victory of communism over capitalism