On Nov 17, 8:20 am, "J.D. Walker" 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?

This avenue has certainly been tried, but as far as I know, whatever
files the NKVD (as it was known circa 1948) and/or KGB may have had on
Paul Keres have never been released to the public. To my knowledge,
the man most involved the effort to unearth them has been Kere's
friend and fellow Estonian Valter Heuer, author of a very important
article on Keres in New In Chess magazine (#4, 1995). In that article
he wrote:

[[T]he Keres dossiers must be made available. This is the demand
made by his honor and dignity as well as Botvinnik's, the honor and
dignity of the chess world."

So as of that writing he had not been successful in getting
anything. Last I heard from him, circa 2002, he had still not.
I recall GM Hans Ree, in one of his Dutch Treat columns at www.chesscafe.com,
reporting that Viktor Korchnoi had somehow arranged to purchase his
own KGB file some time in the 1990s. Whether it was authentic or not,
I don't know. Supposedly, since the fall of the Communist government,
the forging of such documents has been a popular cottage industry.
If any genuine documents on Keres still exist, their uncovering
still seems unlikely to me, unless the Russian government changes its
habits of many decades (if not centuries). And even with official
cooperation, actually finding them after all these years could be a
Herculean task. But, one may still hope.

I am not interested in the flame wars between the various authors. I
find it deadly boring. I suspect that Mr. Parr can keep on doing what
he is doing forever if need be. And his critics seem determined as
well. Apparently we agree that that is an unappealing future... :^)

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.

Rev. Walker, while I have occasionally defended myself here against
Parr's smears, I hope you have noticed that I have been responding to
most of your historical queries with relevant and substantive
information. I much prefer such exchanges to "flame wars," and am
quite happy to engage in such a dialogue with you.

Taylor Kingston