In June 2016, Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi passed away in his eighty-sixth year. Victory over a chessboard is not the only thing he is known in the country for. A man of difficult fate, he became one of the “defectors” who challenged the entire Soviet system, which turned the struggle for the chess crown into a political battle. What is known about this man today?
Difficult childhood
The date of birth of Victor Korchnoi is March 23, 1931. Place of birth - the city of Leningrad. Parents divorced almost immediately after he was born, and during his life they tried 6 times about the place of residence of the child. Mother then tried to pick up her son, then returned to her father, citing a lack of funds. As a result, the young man spent his childhood in the family of his father, who died at the front in the very first year of the war. On the eve of Lev Merkuryevich tried to send his son to evacuate, but the mother took the child and brought back to Leningrad. He was brought up in the family of stepmother Rosa Abramovna, having learned all the horrors of the blockade. An eleven-year-old boy went to the Neva to get water, overcoming almost a kilometer of the way under bombing.
Victor L. Korchnoi, whose biography is described in detail in his books, had Polish-Jewish roots. Polish relatives on the part of his father failed to survive the severe blockade. He was helped by the fact that Roza Abramovna worked at a confectionery factory. Despite this, in 1942 he will be admitted to the hospital with a diagnosis of dystrophy.
Passion for chess
As a schoolboy, Viktor Korchnoi, whose biography is told in the article, became interested in chess. And in 1947 he already became the champion of the USSR in his age group. Success inspired, and in 1956, the young man received the title of Grandmaster. At the same time, he graduated from the History Department of Leningrad State University, but did not work a day in his specialty. Chess filled his whole life.
In 1957, in Gagra, he met Isabella Markaryan, a student at IISS. She had a similar fate: her parents divorced, after which she was brought up with her father. At first, the girl was a little ashamed of Korchnoi’s courtship, because at that time he was not very fashionably dressed, but he soon saw a smart and interesting person in him and agreed to get married. Soon, the couple had a son, Igor.
In 1960, Viktor Korchnoi became the champion of the USSR. It was the second most important title after the world champion, because in the international arena, the Soviet chess school dominated. This almost automatically gave the title of Honored Master of Sports of the USSR. Mikhail Botvinnik was the world leader at the time, but domestic competition was very strong. Korchnoi will become the winner of the USSR three more times - in 1962, 1964 and 1970.
The life of chess players in the USSR
At first, Victor Korchnoi was happy with everything: at 29, he already had a 2-room apartment, a car. True, at the age of 33, he had an accident with a traffic police car and did not drive anymore. He was financially secure, because since 1954 he was accrued a permanent salary. By the way, it was proved to the whole world that there was no professional sport in the country, therefore some profession was attributed to the grandmasters. For example, Petrosyan was considered a philosopher, and Anatoly Karpov an economist.
Korchnoi Victor Lvovich, together with Yefim Petrovich Geller, once after a team competition in West Germany (1965) went to one of the small towns to earn money. So they called their performances and sessions of the simultaneous game. During the voyage, the chess players met a Russian-speaking person who, in English, suggested that Korchnoi stay in Germany. But at that time the grandmaster did not even consider the possibility of leaving his homeland, so he gently declined the offer.
Reasons for emigration
There is a version voiced by Korchnoi himself that former world champion Tigran Petrosyan played a significant role in his expulsion from the country. During the applicants match in Odessa (1974), a serious incident occurred between them, because of which Petrosyan refused to continue the competition.
He had the habit of nervously twitching his leg, which Viktor Lvovich complained to the judge. Petrosyan, in turn, accused the former friend of allegedly kicking him under the table and refused to continue the fight when the account was outweighed in favor of Korchnoi. The conflict intensified after Viktor Lvovich’s refusal to go to the match against Fischer in Buenos Aires in the team of Petrosyan. Surprisingly, fate will bring them together more than once in tournaments, and all these matches will be the most difficult and unsuccessful for Tigran Vartanovich, as if he really felt his guilt.
Be that as it may, Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi, whose emigration in the 60s was still impossible, made the decision to leave the country in 1974 after a match with Anatoly Karpov. The winner was supposed to fight for the chess crown with Bobby Fischer. The USSR relied on the promising young Karpov, besides a Russian and from a working-class family. It was for him that all the main chess and bureaucratic forces worked. And those who agreed to help Korchnoi had real problems in the future. For example, in D. Bronstein, paid by position.
V.L. Korchnoi lost, but in an interview did not recognize Karpov’s superiority, for which he was subjected to collective condemnation of Soviet grandmasters. An open letter was initiated by Petrosyan and was not signed by only four chess players, which became very indicative for Korchnoi.
Problems of the Korchnoi family
The opportunity to leave the country appeared in 1976. Korchnoi Victor Lvovich remained in Holland after the tournament in Amsterdam. It was unlikely that he then guessed what kind of problem he had created for his family. After moving to Switzerland (the city of Volen), he organized a call from Israel for his wife and son. But they were not only not let out of the country, but Igor was arrested for not wanting to serve in the army after leaving the institute. The guy had to sit 2.5 years. Harassment in the press turned his family into enemies of the people. Isabella Egishevna, in need of money, sold a puppy from a house poodle. A day later, they returned with the words that they did not know what they were buying from the enemies of the people.
V.L. Korchnoi wrote his first scandalous book, Anti-Chess, at that time. In a letter to A. Karpov, a copy of which will be sent to K. U. Chernenko, he will inform that he agrees not to publish materials in exchange for allowing his family to go abroad. Later, he admits that he even contacted the representatives of the Soviet mafia, who after 1982 sought him out to demand money for his family’s departure, although they hardly made any efforts to do so.
Personal life
What was Viktor Korchnoi criticized the most for, whose personal life has become the public domain? After receiving permission to leave the country, in Switzerland, Isabella Egishevna was expected by no means a happy husband, but a lawyer with documents on a divorce. The fact that marriage no longer exists, she knew for several years.
Back in Holland, at one of the simultaneous game sessions, her husband met with Austria's native Petra Leeverick. Seeing the book of the Resurrection in Russian by L. Tolstoy’s book on a foreigner's table, he spread a few phrases with her. Later he learns that his acquaintance owes to a good Russian that she spent 10 years in camps in the Soviet Union. A good chess player, she will attend all his sessions until one day he invites Petra to his home. And for the applicants match in Baguio (1978), she will already go as the head of his delegation.
Korchnoi Viktor Lvovich, whose wife and her son arrived in Lausanne, until the last days will provide her with financial support. Isabella Egishevna gladly worked as a guide for Russian-speaking groups and died in 1995 from multiple sclerosis. Igor, until his mother’s death, will be in a state of conflict with his father, starting communication only after her death. He is engaged in computers, marrying his school friend from Russia.
Creative portrait: uncrowned winner
Viktor Korchnoi has written several books where he analyzes in detail his entire professional career. In addition to Anti-Chess, he published six more works, of which the most interesting are: “My 55 victories with white” and “My 55 victories with black”.
It so happened that as a five-time European champion and winner of about a hundred international tournaments, he twice fought for the right to be considered the best chess player on the planet, but he never won the upper hand (in 1978 and in 1981). In both cases, his opponent was A. Karpov, whom he hated, to whom he denied outstanding abilities. In numerous interviews, he calls only geniuses of chess G. Kasparov and R. Fisher, paying tribute to T. Petrosyan, who passed away too early.
He considered his best match to be the 21st game of the first match (1978), when A. Karpov surrendered on the 19th move, but its outcome was already predetermined on the 13th. That confrontation ended with the score 5: 6 and was of such fundamental importance for the USSR that not only a massive professional, but also a political machine was launched against V. L. Korchnoi. A refuser could not become a world champion, therefore, the book speaks of direct threats to his physical destruction if A. Karpov loses.
The 1981 match was not so stubborn and ended with a score of 2: 6, which can be explained by the fact that V.L. Korchnoi found it difficult to get in shape, for for almost seven years he had not received invitations to important tournaments, content with minor ones.
The main victory of Viktor Lvovich is that with his whole life he proved true devotion to chess. He played more than 4, 500 games, being in great shape, and at 80, being the oldest age grandmaster in the world. He was not afraid to challenge the system, which deprived him of citizenship and homeland. In the 90s he was restored to his rights, but preferred to obtain Swiss citizenship.
