Does Communism Produce Better Chess Players? - By: Richard Stooker

On the face of it, the answer is obviously yes. Except for the brief period when Bobby Fischer held the title, the World Championship was in the hands of Soviet players from the first tournament following the end of World War 2 until the collapse of the Soviet Union.

After Fischer gave up the title without a fight to Anatoly Karpov in 1975, it has been in the hands of Russians or former Soviet empire citizens -- except for 2000-2002 when Viswanathan Anand of India held the title.

The current picture is unclear. The FIDE World Champion is Veselin Topalov of Bulgaria, which was technically not part of the old Soviet Union but certainly a part of its empire. The PCA World Champion is Vladimir Kramnik, a Russian.

In chess for only women, Xu Yuhua of China is the new Women`s World Champion. She beat out the Russian Alisa Galliamova. Two other Chinese women, Xu Jun and Zhu Chen, have held that title.

From the end of World War 2 until the end of the Soviet Union, the Women's World Championship title was held by a Soviet woman. Since then it's gone back and forth between Chinese women and Susan Polgar of Hungary (one of a famous family of 3 chess champion sisters) and Antoaneta Stefanova of Bulgaria.

America is represented by one loony tunes genius who defaulted his title.

This does tell us that communism decided soon after consolidating power in the Soviet Union in the early 1920s to use chess for propaganda.

First, it encouraged the widespread playing of chess among average people and their children. Before, it was not a game for the Russian workers and peasants.

The more people who play a game in a country, the greater depth of talent that trainers will have to choose from. American kids universally play baseball. 99.99% are not good enough to play in the major leagues, but the ones who do make it to the major leagues are outstanding.

In a country where every kid is encouraged to play chess, the ones with the most talent will stand out from the rest. Then the government can teach and coach them them to perform even better. Much the same system was done with athletes.

In America, really smart kids can become doctors, scientists, engineers, inventors, economists etc. All of these professions pay more money than chess champion -- and some of them offer the opportunity to become quite wealthy. Many such smart kids play chess, but as they grow older it normally remains a hobby.

In communist countries, really smart kids can become doctors, scientists and engineers, but those professions don't pay much and there's no chance to become wealthy. The privileged elite are the Communist Party members and successful athletes who bring propaganda victories to the country.

So if you live under communist and you're a really smart kid and not a natural athlete, what would you do if you wanted to live a life of privilege and respect?

Especially if you did exhibit any natural talent for the game of chess?

You'd concentrate on improving your game so you could have a nice apartment of your own, a government stipend to support your study of chess and the opportunity to travel outside your country.

If you're not smart enough to see the advantages of becoming a great chess player under such a system, you're too stupid to be successful at it anyway.

You get more of what you reward.

Reward the channeling of high intelligence into a board game, you get great board game players.

Reward the channeling of high intelligence into scientific research, applied engineering and entrepreneurship -- and you get a wealthy country.

Communists win World Chess Championships.

The free world won the Cold War.

About the Author

c 2006 by Richard Stooker Read more about the world's greatest game at Richard's Russian Chess Masters blog

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