"J.D. Walker" wrote in message
. ..
Chess One wrote:

This thread has been all over the place. I am interested in the
Keres-Botvinnik controversy. I did note the message earlier by
'social_justice' with interest. He claims that KGB people had information
on the controversy, and that he interviewed them. The message in not
documented. I imagine almost every KGB agent of that era is dead by now.
But just the same it suggests an avenue of research that could be
revealing. Is it possible to access old KGB files and look for related
information?

Yes indeed: two ways at least - one is from Taimanov's record in his 'I was
Fischer's victim' to which he added in a subsequent edition his own KGB
file. Since this is a specific on a chess-player, it is exactly on topic. In
our interview together he also suggested it was 'normal'. The pretext for
intial arrest, btw, was a copy of a Solzenhytzen [see below] which I think
was 'First Circle'.

The second is a memorandum which I have just requested of Boris Gulko
permissions to publish thereof [Boris has been playing in Texas], but this
at least is in English. It is a document concerning his own repression,
naming names! including those of two prominent chess players in the Soviet
hierarchy, and who they worked with.

Given the history of the thread, and the ongoing flame war, I do not hold
out a lot of hope for a civil discussion of the topic you prefer. Just the
same I offer this much in support of the idea.

But you are very good!

I might add that there are other references, some avowable but hard to
access, and others less avowable [there is a particularly interesting
Russian GM and historian who is not /quite/ on the record.] Should you ever
encounter Ray Keene [who not incidentally played Botvinnik, even won] you
might ask him how he smuggled out Refusenik materials under the very nose of
the KGB - I think he has some specifics on Gulko, but also broader
materials.

At the time those suffering oppression could not understand why we in the
West refused to report it. I think the issue of human rights had not then
grown into a cause celebre, or actually, that anyone knew what could be
done. And midst cold-war, at least in Harold Wilson's England, everyone's
propaganda seemed of about the same weight.

On the whole; I think for //Russians// there is a disinclination for them to
make their history available to us, since, in their view, we are
insufficiently generous about our /own/ secret history. To inquire more on
this subject, ask Larry Parr! Furthermore, at least as much as I understand
their perspective, we [the West] rather use the 'revelations' about Soviet
era manipulations to, at least implicitly, suggest a superiority or
triumphing attitude to their own scene.

Whereas, they did then, and do now [often by importing it for closer
appreciation] consider that we are morally depraved people, reliant on cheap
and self-satisfied rhetoricism, rather than anything more 'robust'.

From a spiritual point of view it is a sardonic fact that the Godless state
should now view the West as the materialists.

Two endpoints: other references to these issues is from Korchnoi, who spoke
of East /and/ West corruption in chess. How interesting that when my fellow
Vermonter Solzenhytsyn came to the West he said rather the same about the
bigger picture - and while it had become intolerable for him to stay in his
own country and still have any voice, he said, at the same time, that we in
the West were destroying ourselves by our lack of standard to anything but
materialismus.

Cordially, Phil Innes





Cheers,
Rev. J.D. Walker, U.C.