How Soviet Russia Turned Chess Into a State-Backed Tool of Power and Education
Indian Grandmaster Aarav Dengla examines in his latest Grandmaster View column how the Bolsheviks systematically transformed chess from a pursuit of Russian aristocrats into a state-sponsored instrument. The Soviet regime promoted the game as a means of mass education, military training, and cultural revolution following the Bolshevik rise to power. Dengla traces the journey from early figures like Ilyin-Zhenevsky and the Red Army's chess programmes to world champions such as Botvinnik, Tal, Karpov, and Kasparov. This century-long state-backed initiative gave rise to the formidable Soviet chess machine that dominated global competition for decades. The column argues that the legacy of that experiment continues to influence the structure and culture of competitive chess worldwide.
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