Orwell or Botvinnik?

200 Words by Lev Khariton

It is no secret that today we are living with a host (I would say a myriad)
of myths that we ourselves have built up over the years.

For example, George Orwell, doubtless an outstanding writer and in no less
degree a visionary, in his iconoclastic utopia “84” predicted the break-up
of the Soviet Empire. He is being remembered now, the year of his centenary
mostly by the ex-Soviet dissidents for his insight into the Soviet Communist
Kingdom. I wonder whether Orwell’s providential capacities were that
overwhelming to properly evaluate what was happening in America in the years
of McCarthyism and witch-hunt. Or, how would Orwell have responded to the US
expansionism today?

Similarly, if we talk about chess or rather Mikhail Botvinnik, the greatest
chess thinker and philosopher, we fall into the age-old sin of misbalancing
the good and the bad. As the old custom has it, Botvinnik is often depicted
as a stalwart communist who believed, bag and baggage, in Stalinist values?

As a case in point, I can make an appropriate reference to a new book
written by my good friend Yakov Damsky, a well-known Russian writer and
journalist. The book, “The Age of Chess”, was published in Russian in
Moscow. Profiling Botvinnik, as a chess player and personality, Damsky
points out that craving for a strong leader (“strong hand”) as millions of
his compatriots, Botvinnik advocated executing the innocent and downing the
country to extreme poverty. Frankly, I have never read any passage from
Botvinnik in which he advocated, explicitly or implicitly, the barbaric
massacre and impoverishment. It should be added that Damsky, as he
confides, when he was sick in hospital, received daily calls from Botvinnik
inquiring about his health. My question is: what is more important, the
human qualities of the first Soviet World Champion or all these ungrounded
rumors about Botvinnik’s political beliefs?

Suffice it to remember that Botvinnik was the first among the Soviet
intellectuals who openly supported the establishment of the State of Israel
in 1948. In the 60s he wrote a letter to the Soviet Government proposing a
drastic economic reform of the Soviet State which was absolutely contrary to
the dogmas of the Soviet leaders. He insisted on the development of chess
computers at a time when this idea in the USSR was considered as total
heresy. Botvinnik was one of the very few Soviet grandmasters who did not
sign the notorious letter against the run-away grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi
in 1976.

In his book “Achieving the Aim” Botvinnik wrote: “When I remember Palestine,
first of all I think about the hard-working Jews and Arabs living in this
wonderful country. Three years after the Chess Olympiad a war broke out
there (Six-Day War in 1967. L.K.). There seems to be no end to this war.
Peace, real peace is possible there only when the working people of this
land will not be bothered by the Arab petrol tycoons and the wealthy
American Jews.” These words were written more than thirty years ago, and we
can only admire Botvinnik’s foresight!

So, wasn’t Botvinnik as, at least, prophetic, as Orwell? Or less utopian?

Lev Khariton
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Any comments?

Goran Tomic