Italian
The Soviet chess legend Boris Spassky passed away at the age of 88
The news was announced yesterday, February 27, by the Russian Chess Federation. He had been living in a nursing home for some time.
It was 1972 and it lasted all summer. It was the challenge of the century, that of the two worlds in “cold” war. A Russian player against an American one challenged each other for the title of world chess champion.
During the Cold War, the Soviet world champion Boris Spassky lost a chess match against the American Bobby Fischer. It was as if the communist world had lost.
Born in Leningrad on January 30, 1937, he moved to Moscow during the war, and then to St. Petersburg. He started playing chess at the age of 5.In 1961 Boris won the Soviet Championship for the first time. Then in 1964 he finished first in the Interzonal Tournament in Amsterdam, and in 1965 he won the World Championship title.
He contested the “match of the century” in Reykjavik, Iceland, in the summer of 1972 against Bobby Fischer. And he lost.
Like Bobby Fischer, he too was Jewish on his mother’s side. He was passionate about music and Dostoevsky. He played tennis.
The Chess War
The whole world, for an entire summer, followed the moves of the two contenders. It seemed as if the victory of one of the two opposing worlds, the Western, democratic, and capitalist one, and the Soviet, communist one, was at stake. However, Spassky did not fully represent it: he had never joined the Communist Party.
In 1976 Boris emigrated to France, but returned to Russia in 2012. After the death of Vasilij Smyslov (2010), Spassky had become the oldest living world chess champion.
Bobby Fischer
Robert James “Bobby” Fischer was a child prodigy, already a champion by the age of 13. At just 15, he became the youngest Grandmaster and the youngest candidate for the world champion title ever. He won the 1963-64 U.S. Championship with a perfect 11-0 score, the only perfect score in the tournament’s history.
In 1972 Fischer challenges the reigning world champion Boris Spassky. The match takes place in Reykjavík, Iceland, and generates more worldwide interest than any other chess match played before or since. And Fischer wins.
Glory leaves him after a few years of victories and defeats, even cultural and political ones. After various ups and downs, he lives in different countries in Europe. He dies from degenerative renal failure at the hospital in Reykjavík in 2008, at the age of 64.
