On the night of November 8, twelve hours before facing off in the inaugural match of the World Chess Championship in London, Magnus Carlsen and Fabiano Caruana, the world’s top grandmasters, were sipping drinks at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“We are all here to celebrate the wonderful game of chess!” a voice echoed over the speaker system as the opening ceremony got underway. The crowd busied itself with cocktails named after famous chess moves. The Sicilian Opening – a popular defence dating back to the 16th century – had been reinterpreted as a concoction of champagne and absinth.
But for some, the glitz of the opening ceremony, with its black tie dress code and plentiful champagne, was little more than an elaborate plaster for the shortcomings of a sport in crisis.
In October the World Chess Federation (FIDE) announced the election of its new president, Arkady Dvorkovich. And this was his first big showpiece event. On stage, Dvorkovich, wearing an impeccably neat bow tie and stern expression, delivered a few, sober words about how glad he was to be attending the event. Within two minutes, he disappeared off stage.
His ascent to the top of the game’s governing body follows the 23-year, seven-term reign of another Russian, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov who was suspended in July for allegedly violating the organisation's code of ethics. Despite the change, unease lingers over the global chess community. Dvorkovich may have won the election, but he is far from having won over the hearts of all FIDE members, many of whom are still asking themselves: how did chess become a pawn in Russia’s political power games?
Russia’s obsession with the game of chess is nothing new. Vladimir Lenin’s love of the sport contributed to it becoming a national pastime after the First World War, leading to the development of a national playing style called the Soviet Chess School. From the 1920s, chess was firmly established as a central tenet of Soviet society: chess programmes were introduced, with the first state-sponsored chess tournament held in Moscow in 1921.
For James Rodgers, the BBC’s former Moscow correspondent, the success of chess in Russia is a result of its intellectual prestigiousness. “Chess is particularly engrained in Russian culture,” he says. “Soviet poet Mayakovsky, for example, paid tribute to Lenin by praising his chess skills. It is a sport associated with great wisdom and leadership”.
One of chess’s most significant political moments occurred at the height of the Cold War. In 1972, the World Chess Championship was contested by the Boris Spassky from the Soviet Union and America’s Bobby Fischer. Fischer won; but the competition stood as a metaphor for the conflict between East and West. Between 1948 and 1993, the Soviet Union produced seven out of eight World Chess Champions. In White King and Red Queen, British journalist Daniel Johnson goes as far as to explain that Soviet control of the game was a matter of the utmost political importance. The Cold War, he argues, was one that was also fought on the chessboard.
In 1995, four years after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Russian businessman and politician Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was elected president of FIDE, starting a reign that would last over two decades. “Russia needs it. Raise the flag of Russia,” Boris Yeltsin, then president of the Russian Federation, reportedly said at the time.
Ilyumzhinov had been a member of parliament in the Soviet Union and later under the Russian Federation. And he’s made no secret of his support for Putin, through various blog posts praising the Russian leader’s “charisma” and “titanic work”. This has led various observers in the chess community to refer to him as a “Kremlin asset”.
Ilyumzhinov kept a tight grip on his place the top of FIDE for 23 years. Malcolm Pein, a British chess International Master, who ran for the position of deputy president against the Russian candidate in this year’s FIDE election, is adamant that Ilyumzhinov was instrumental in reinforcing Russian soft power through chess. According to him, this was done using the all-too familiar techniques of bribery and corruption. “It’s a commonly held view that elections were far from democratic,” he says. The standard practice, he explains, was for Ilyumzhinov’s delegate, Berik Balgabaev, to offer money to national federations via WhatsApp, in exchange for their votes.
Pein shows me a screenshot of a WhatsApp message that he claims was from Balgabaev. “Dear colleagues!” it starts, before asking the recipients to donate the appropriate sum of money and choose a kind of justification for it, such as a chess tournament, or school chess programme. For Pein, this was a smokescreens to hide what was in fact bribery. The message ends with a reminder not to forget the account number for international transactions, and a “thank you for your generous support”.
Balgabaev strongly rejects this accusation, describing it as “offensive”. The WhatsApp message was a sample sponsorship letter he sent to a colleague who asked him for one, he says, and donations from the former FIDE president were always legitimate. “Assistance from Mr Ilyumzhinov had nothing to do with bribery,” Balgabaev says. “For more than 20 years he tirelessly donated significant amounts of money to maximise the development of our wise game”.
Yet Pein is not alone in his view of former president Ilyumzhinov. “I am a veteran of various FIDE election campaigns, and I have seen the most extraordinary things happening,” says Nigel Short, an English chess Grandmaster who is now FIDE’s vice president. “To influence the outcome of elections, rigging and trickery were absolutely standard”.
After more than two decades, Ilyumzhinov’s presidency was turning into an embarrassment for Russia – not only because of his reputation for unscrupulous leadership, but also because of his reportedly erratic behaviour. In 2015, he was added to the US Treasury Department’s sanctions list over accusations that he materially assisted the government of Bashar al-Assad in Syria. This ultimately led to the closure of FIDE’s Swiss bank accounts on suspicion that the money was used to facilitate business deals with the Syrian regime.
Undeterred, Ilyumzhinov tried to run for president again in this year’s election, only for his campaign to receive a substantial blow when it was revealed that his vice presidential pick, an American chess player named Glen Stark, did not exist. Ilyumzhinov had even created a fake online CV with a stock photo for his imaginary associate. The scandal ripped through the chess world.
The FIDE ethics commission ultimately suspended him last summer on the grounds that he had “acted in a manner incompatible with his duty to put the interests of FIDE above his own personal interests”. This put an end to his presidential career, and his campaign for reelection, leaving the game of chess to try and work out its next move.
Enter another Russian politician. As Ilyumzhinov departed, Arkady Dvorkovich’s name was put forward by the Russian Chess Federation to replace him in the race. With a Duke University education, Dvorkovich has served in several different positions in the Russian government since Vladimir Putin started his first presidential term in 2000, and became deputy prime minister in 2012. He comes from the highest ranks of the Kremlin and, crucially, has reportedly never been involved in Russian military interests in Ukraine or Syria, meaning he is safe from potential sanctions.
Standing against Dvorkovich was Georgios Makropoulos, who served as chief deputy under former president Ilyumzhinov. Makropoulos chose Malcolm Pein as deputy president. Given Pein’s dedication to fighting corruption in FIDE, his accepting to serve under the former president’s right-hand man raised eyebrows. Pein’s justification? He joined the Makropoulos campaign to campaign against Dvorkovich and stop FIDE from continuing to be a Russian political toy.
Another British candidate who ran for the presidency was Nigel Short. Upon realising he did not have sufficient backing, Short eventually joined Dvorkovich’s campaign as his vice president – a last-minute move following a series of tweets that hinted towards a pact with the Russian candidate. “Makropoulos was part of the former president’s government for years,” says Short. “Voting for him is voting for Ilyumzhinov all over again. I would much rather have a Russian-led government that is run well”.
Aligning with the Russian candidate, however, cost Short the support of the English Chess Federation (ECF). In a statement published at the end of September, the ECF clarified its support for Makropoulos, whom it felt would be more successful in developing an “independent sports organisation free of political influence”, mostly because of Pein’s position on Makropoulos’ ticket. The statement highlighted “the threat of the FIDE presidency continuing as an adjunct of Russian foreign policy, as it has been under Kirsan Ilyumzhinov”.
An unimpressed Short describes this as “the most incredibly stupid decision” by the ECF. “President Putin has better things to do than to be involved with chess,” he says.
Or does he? When Dvorkovich was elected president of FIDE in October, there were reports that the election – as it often happens these days – had been tainted by Russian interference. Except this time, Moscow’s presumed agent of influence had not been online trolls or hackers, but Vladimir Putin himself.
The most egregious example of meddling came from a meeting between Putin and Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, last July. According to a leaked letter sent from the Israeli foreign ministry to the Israeli Chess Federation, Putin allegedly asked his counterpart to ensure the Israel Chess Federation voted for Dvorkovich in exchange for Russian support for Israel’s candidacy in the next championship.
“I think that Russians have been influencing the FIDE presidential elections for many years now,” says Zurab Azmaiparashvili, who sits on the presidential board of the Georgian Chess Federation. “Dvorkovich deserved his victory because he led a great campaign. But what is not acceptable is when influence is taken to higher political levels, and the vote becomes a matter of state relations, instead of candidates”.
A request coming from such high political circles would have placed huge pressure on the Israeli federation to vote in favour of Dvorkovich. Pein recalls the consternation the leaked note caused in the chess community. “Putin and Netanyahu were originally meeting to discuss foreign policy strategies over Syria,” he says. “It is absolutely absurd that the meeting turned to discussing chess matters”.
Onlookers hoped that the removal of Ilyumzhinov would help clean up the game of chess, but recent events suggest this is far from the case. Last September, Dusan Cogoljevic, the president of the Serbian federation, was excluded from the presidential vote after he was accused of accepting bribes. Cogoljevic had previously signed a sponsorship program with a local organisation called the Faculty of Business Economy and Entrepreneurship (PEP). The FIDE ethics commission ruled that the sponsorship was an electoral irregularity, as Cogoljevic might be casting his vote “at his discretion” in exchange for the contract.
Earlier that month, Cogoljevic met with representatives of Dvorkovich’s campaign. During that meeting, an initial agreement was discussed for sponsorship of the Serbian federation by a Russian company – an agreement that Cogoljevic later claimed had been “dropped” because he had found a local sponsor, PEP, instead.
Makropoulos took the case before FIDE’s ethics commission, based on the assumption that the Russian candidate’s campaign was behind the PEP sponsorship. He initially asked that Dvorkovich be barred from running for the presidency. Because of insufficient proof of his involvement with the sponsor, however, Dvorkovich was not sanctioned by FIDE.
But parallels between the contract and the initial meeting with representatives of the Russian candidate’s campaign were quickly drawn. Short plays down the controversy: “Even if this were true it pales in comparison with the previous things that have happened,” he says.
Ahead of the World Chess Championship, the competitors were staying in the Rosewood Hotel in London. In the breakfast hall, Ilya Merenzon sits in a black turtleneck and casual suit jacket, his voice barely overriding the noisy bustle of the morning rush. Merenzon is the CEO of World Chess, the company contracted by FIDE to organise the tournament since 2012 when his company was given exclusive rights to organise a number of events, including the World Chess Championship, until at least 2021. At the time of the deal, World Chess was owned by Andrew Paulson, an American entrepreneur who had become a media mogul in Moscow before dying of lung cancer last year.
Doubts about the contract emerged in 2014, when a memo leaked to The Sunday Times revealed initial plans, on Ilyumzhinov’s part, to acquire stakes in the company. The FIDE ethics commission ruled that the Code of Ethics hadn’t been violated, since the plan had never gone into effect.
“He was a personality that I admired greatly,” says Merenzon of his friend Paulson. And it is in similar terms that he speaks Ilyumzhinov – a man whom he found both “extremely adventurous” and “really wise”.
Merenzon was already working as World Chess’ chief executive when Paulson sold it to him for £1 in 2014. He shrugs off accusations contained in the memo as “lies”. Paulson’s suggestions to bring in sponsors to organise events, he continues, were long-term sustainable plans that would help develop the sport as a business, and make it more popular.
World Chess has certainly been successful in bringing in sponsors – albeit ones that are strongly linked to Moscow. This year’s championship, for instance, was sponsored by Russian Railways, PhosAgro and Kaspersky Labs, amongst others. But Merenzon maintains that his company is far removed from politics. The only purpose of World Chess, he says, and the reason the contract was signed, is to develop the sport. “In racing, you have the International Automobile Federation making the rules and Formula One marketing the sport,” he says. “It is the same here. We are the Formula One of chess”.
For all the added glitz and glamour, questions remain as to whether chess can ever escape malign Russian influence. “I have covered chess championships for a few years now, and the level of organisation has been pretty poor,” says Austrian chess journalist Anatol Vitouch. “The opening gala of the Candidates Tournament in Berlin last March, which was also organised by World Chess, was embarrassing. No effort was put in.” But this time, Vitouch says of the glitzy opening ceremony at the Victoria and Albert Museum, World Chess has upped its game. “This is a lot better and more professional”.
With approximately 605 million regular players, the chess community is one of the largest in the world. But the sport is plagued by an image problem. Outsiders see it as old-fashioned, while many in the chess community are dismayed at the levels of corruption. Merenzon’s plan? A rebrand. To illustrate, he shows me his latest project, which he excitedly calls “Tinder for chess”. The concept repurposes the technology used in dating apps to help players find partners in their geographical area they can meet up with to play – whether romantically or not. “This is revolutionary for chess,” says Merenzon. “We are using new technologies in an unorthodox way, to appeal to a new generation of chess players”.
Then there’s the World Championship’s new logo, which was commissioned by Merenzon. It shows two chess players placing their pieces as their limbs merge in a chequered tangle. Its vaguely erotic vibe has caused some people to crack jokes about the its “pawnographic” nature.
A dating app, a new logo and a glitzy opening ceremony. For critics, it’s a hasty rebrand that will do little to resolve issues created by years of corruption. But, for all the backroom skullduggery, chess retains its allure. Magnus Carlsen, the current World Champion, is just 27 years old; Fabiano Caruana is younger still at 26. All 12 of the games played so far at this year’s World Chess Championship have been draws, setting up a tense, winner-takes-all showdown on November 28. But as the eyes of the global chess community are fixed on the year’s showpiece event, behind-the-scenes, concerns linger about what game is really being played.
Updated 01.12.2018, 15.21 GMT: This article has been amended to correct the outcome of the 1972 World Chess Championship.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
