Storming Fortresses A Political History Of Chess In The Soviet Union 19171948 Michael Andrew Hudson by Michael Andrew Hudson instant download after payment.

From the end of the Second World War through the demise of USSR, Soviet chess players dominated world chess. Not only did they control the world champion title after 1948 (except for the Fischer interlude), they also monopolized all other areas of international chess competition. When the Soviets captured the world title in 1948, this was the culmination of a long, carefully cultivated program to foster a chess community in the Soviet Union. The rationale for this initiative, which engaged the attention of the highest levels of the Soviet state, had deep ideological roots. This dissertation explores the social/political history of chess in the Soviet Union, particularly its utility to Party and State. The story of Soviet chess begins in the Civil War, when chess was enlisted as a training tool for military recruits. After the Bolshevik victory, a very similar rationale was used to promote chess as an instrument for training Party cadre in the burgeoning Communist Party. The same attributes desired in soldiers were also desired in Party activists, and chess was seen as a tool for nurturing these attributes. In the early 1920s, the state-sponsored chess program was greatly enlarged, and at the same time its ideological rationale shifted. Faced with the reality of building socialism in a backward country, the Party believed that chess could be of great utility in raising the cultural level of the laboring masses. A culturally developed proletariat was one of several prerequisites for socialism that the Soviet Union lacked. Chess became closely tied to the State labor organizations, although officially attached to the government's sport and physical education bureaucracy. Whether chess refashioned Soviet society is debatable, but official encouragement refashioned chess, which became a significant cultural component in the lives of Soviet citizens. Chess achieved a stature in Soviet society that was entirely without precedent."