On Nov 10, 2:03 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
Taylor Kingston wrote:
On Nov 10, 12:13 pm, "J.D. Walker" wrote:
Dear Mr. Innes,
I may not be one of the aforesaid scholars, but I am curious to know
what the Russian GMs you cited have to say about this incident... If
you have the time, the inclination and their comments are available in
English.
snip
Rev. Walker, in this matter the two most relevant GMs are Keres and
Botvinnik themselves, and you can read what I consider to be their
most relevant comments he
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles165.pdf
Thank you for the link. I gave it a quick read. I am not a scholar,
just a common everyday consumer of chess information. Part of the
audience that reads articles such as those by Mr. Parr and yourself. So
the disclaimer: my opinions on this matter have less weight than either
of yours. Even so, curiosity tends to lead me where angels fear to
tread... :^)
snip
Various Russian and/or Soviet GMs
may know various things and have various opinions, and should by all
means be heard, but it seems unlikely that anything they might say
will carry more weight than the testimony of the two principals.
My instincts suggest to me that in cases of heavily oppressive
environments that people closest to the coercion may be the last to
admit the truth due to ingrained fear.
A very good point, and in this case all the more reason to accept
Botvinnik's and Keres' statements, since they _were_ among the
closest. I suppose in Keres' case one might argue he was trying to
excuse his failure, but I find it very hard to imagine why Botvinnik
would have said what he did about "orders from Stalin" unless it
actually happened.
If this applies here, then I
would look for more information from people close to the events, but not
too close! And, the proximity should be measured in both time and space.
snip
So even
Soviet contemporaries of Keres and Botvinnik have expressed
conflicting views.
That is not surprising. I am curious though. Did Reshevsky ever
comment on it? He surely was an interested party.
I believe so, though I can't give you a relevant example off the top
of my head. If you read about Bronstein's allegations he
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles171.pdf
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/skittles173.pdf
you will see that Reshevsky was definitely targeted by the Soviets in
1953.
Other people I would
be curious about are Korchnoi, Karpov, and Kasparov.
Korchnoi because he has been around a long time and now has the freedom
of some temporal distance from the Soviet phenomena.
Korchnoi has definitely been the target of much Soviet machination,
especially in his matches with Karpov, but he is not always a good
source about other people, or even about his own situation. As Bernard
Hepton said in Smiley's People, "He thinks the butterflies are spying
on him." He sees almost everything in conspiratorial terms, with or
without evidence. Sometimes he's right, sometimes not.
The other two may have insights simply because of their former proximity
to the Soviet chess bureaucracy.
The second part of my first article (
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/
kb2.txt) mentions something Karpov told a journalist, Bernd Nielsen-
Stokkeby, about Botvinnik trying to get Keres arrested. The journalist
could find no evidence for Karpov's claim.
Kasparov discusses the question of coercion on Keres in the second
volume of his "My Great Predecessors" series, but his handling of the
subject is surprisingly sketchy and unsatisfying, as I noted in my
review of the book, he
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review413.pdf
So unless they have some secret information they have yet not
revealed, I don't look to Karpov or Kasparov to contribute much to
this historical issue.