21. ADVERSARY PARTNERS
On the whole, in 1972 U.S.-Soviet relations were at their best in many years.
Seen from the vantage point of the twenty-first century, was Fischer’s triumph a cold war victory—at least symbolically—for the United States over its long-term adversary the USSR?
One flaw with a cold war interpretation of the match is immediately apparent. Fischer and Spassky had in common their sheer unsuitability to represent their countries’ political systems. Spassky was not a Soviet patriot—and he made no secret of it. Fischer’s idiosyncratic and asocial behavior marked him as un-American for many of his compatriots.
In the London Sunday Times on 2 July, Arthur Koestler, the author of the terrifying study of Stalinism, Darkness at Noon, understatedly warned, “Bobby is a genius, but as a propagandist for the free world he is rather counter-productive.” The Washington Post ruminated that Fischer’s behavior had caused the match to escalate “from a sport into a revival of the Cold War.” One of the Post’s readers wrote that “Fischer is the only American who can make everyone in the U.S. root for the Russians.” In an article written in late July and passed around the Soviet embassy in Reykjavik, causing much merriment, Washington Post humorist Art Buchwald mused over a presidential dilemma: Would Nixon place a telephone call to Iceland if Fischer won? He foresaw the conversation:
“Hello, Bobby, this is President Nixon. I just wanted to call and congratulate you on your victory in Iceland.”
“Make it short, will you? I’m tired.”
“This is a great day for America, Bobby.”
“It’s a greater day for me. I won $150,000 and I showed these Icelandic creeps a thing or two.”
Eventually the president hangs up and calls Richard Helms, the director of the CIA.
“Dick. I’m sending the presidential plane to Iceland to pick up Bobby Fischer. Do me a favor. After he’s on board, will you see to it that he’s hijacked to Cuba?”
Victor Jackovich remembers the qualified rapture in the embassy when the match ended:
When he won the crown for America, pride was not the first reaction in the embassy: our first reaction was one of relief that it was over. Our second reaction: we won. The U.S. has won. Our guy has won. An American born and bred winning—that was something. But our first reaction was one of great relief. This was quite an ordeal.
However, incontrovertibly, the common view was that the confrontation was an episode of the cold war. The new champion had certainly seen it this way. In April, the London Times noted: “Fischer believes that in some sense he is doing battle for the free world against the Soviet Union, in an atmosphere akin to the Berlin blockade of twenty years ago.” Fischer would have deleted the phrase in some sense. He told a BBC interviewer, James Burke:
It is really the free world against the lying, cheating, hypocritical Russians…. This little thing between me and Spassky. It’s a microcosm of the whole world political situation. They always suggest that the world leaders should fight it out hand to hand. And this is the kind of thing that we are doing—not with bombs, but battling it out over the board.
The Western public too was convinced of the geopolitical significance of the battle, and there were letters to the local and national press to this effect. Donald Kurtis, from Connecticut, wrote to The New York Times to point out that “chess is far more important to millions of people abroad than in the United States. A victory by Mr. Fischer can be more positively impressive to these people than all the trade, aid, and arms treaties.” A New York Times editorial makes a similar point, referring to the Soviets’ space achievement, with relish: “Unquestionably, Spassky’s loss of the title would be regarded as a major national setback; a Sputnik in reverse.” Just before the first game, The Washington Post claimed, “A Fischer victory would strike at a basic claim of Soviet ideology.” Decades later, many of the characters in our story concurred. For Icelandic cameraman Gissli Gestsson, this was not simply a chess match: “It was a battle for the minds of people all over the world; it was about the superpowers. I think it was a bit sad for chess, that it was used in this way.”
Stereotyped contrasts between “us” and “them” abounded in articles and contemporary books by writers projecting the period through which they lived. The Soviet embassy interpreter Valeri Chamanin was used as an example of the Soviet lack of humanity. Francis Wyndham, coauthor of an instant account of the match, saw Chamanin as dummylike. (How animated should a professional interpreter be? In private life, Chamanin is warmly ebullient.)
According to Brad Darrach, Chamanin was “one of many quasi-official Russian bureaucrats of the island whose faces appeared to have been restored to almost human form after a fatal accident.” The Soviet delegation, he noted, walked in single file, expressionless and uncommunicative, “like finalists in a self-effacement contest.” All except Spassky, that is, and Krogius, who was expressive enough to Westerners to seem sinister and who was accorded the character of a horror movie psychologist plotting the hero’s downfall through his cruel insights. However, to his Soviet contemporaries, let alone to Western reporters, Efim Geller seemed unusually paranoid about the West, and TASS correspondent Aleksandr Yermakov called him “Mr. No” for his unwillingness to share anything even with the Soviet agency. (In Icelandic, “no” was pronounced like “Nei,” so to the local population another Spassky aide was Mr. No.)
The London Sunday Times perception of the two protagonists in Iceland revealed how, seen through the prism of ideological confrontation, reality was distorted: “Both are wonderfully cast for their roles. Fischer the rugged individualist, adventurous and occasionally reckless both in his life-style and chess style; Spassky the more benign type of Soviet bureaucrat, cautious, noncommittal, evasive.”
GosKomSport officials would have greeted with incredulity the idea of Spassky as the benign bureaucrat. But for Moscow and the Soviet bloc, Fischer-Spassky was demonstrably a clash of systems. Naturally, red-clawed capitalism was held responsible for the American’s undesirable obsession with money, though it is not difficult to discern a note of envy over the way in which Fischer grasped riches from the game. But there was worry, too, about how this could transform the financial weather for Soviet players, making them less amenable to state control, diverting them from socialist priorities.
Even so, once the match got under way, ideology vanished from the coverage. The turning point was Spassky’s disastrous third game, when the Soviet press settled down into straightforward chess analysis, with increasing hints that the champion was the author of his own misfortune. The match itself took second place to the Olympics in the use of limited hard currency and journalistic resources. Aleksandr Yermakov’s living expenses were severely restricted; he survived by finding student accommodations and cooking for himself. The TASS man’s task was to send the moves to Moscow. His editors had next to no interest in the anecdotes, drama, and human stories preoccupying Western journalists, though the facts were reported.