alexpgp | LJ Idol 9.17: Scare quotes...

My first visit to the venerable Moscow Chess Club took place in November 1975. After depositing my coat in the ample lobby cloakroom, I went upstairs into what, were I baseball fan, would represent Fenway Park, Yankee Stadium, and the Cooperstown Hall of Fame all rolled into one. I peeked in through the door of an auditorium and saw former World Champions Spassky, Petrosian, and Tal playing at tables set up on the stage of the main auditorium. They and their opponents were participating in a tournament organized in memory of an earlier World Champion who had fled the USSR in 1921 and never looked back, but whose name had since been co-opted by the State either out of respect, a desire for prestige, or perhaps both.

As I walked around the other club rooms, I could not help but notice the dark, polished wood paneling, decorated with photographs, caricatures, and various artwork. (If memory serves, there was even an oil painting of Lenin—playing chess, naturally!) In those rooms, those who could not find their way into the auditorium were either analyzing the positions shown on the giant chess diagrams that hung above each table on the stage, or playing their own informal games. I ended up sitting across the board from an intense, dark-haired woman several years my senior.

I learned that her name was Natalia Konopleva, and we struck up a quick acquaintance while setting up the pieces for an offhand game. It turned out I was one of the few Americans she'd ever actually met, and very likely the only one that played chess. I lost that first game, but only after dogged resistance on my part, I can assure you.

As we set up the pieces for a rematch, I asked Natalia a question about something that had been bothering me. You see, a few days previously, I had visited the "House of Books," a ginormous store situated on one of the main boulevards of the city. I had made my way to the "Physical Culture and Sports" department—where the chess books would be, based on what I had learned at the Four Continents Bookshop in New York, which sold select Soviet books and periodicals and was officially registered as a foreign, i.e., Soviet, agent—but upon looking at the books on display there in Moscow, I was surprised to find there were no chess books on sale! Not one!

"How can this be?" I asked. "Chess is so popular here!"

In response, Natalia leaned over to borrow a book from the players at another table and opened it to the back.

"You see this information?" she asked, pointing to some print at the bottom of the last page of the volume. It looked like a bunch of numbers and arcane abbreviations. "It summarizes the typographical information about the book that is required by state regulations. This information includes the number of copies that were printed of the book. Here, take a look." And here she held the book out to me, with her index finger pressed against the page. I leaned forward to look at the number at which her finger was pointing; it was "10,000."

"Do you know how many chess players there are in the Soviet Union?" she asked when I leaned back in my chair.

"I recall reading an article that said there are 3 million members of the official Soviet chess body. I would imagine there are many more who play chess but are not members," I said, as the light dawned. "You mean to tell me that only ten thousand copies of…" I began, and here I leaned forward, took the book from Natalia, and looked at the cover, "Bobby Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games was printed for the whole country?"

"So it would appear," she said, as she took the book from me and returned it to our neighbors at the adjacent board.

"So how does one acquire a chess book in this country?" I said, with a little laugh.

"Well, in most bookstores," replied Natalia, in all seriousness, "the clerks put such books aside for 'good' customers, which means customers who pay extra to get the book. Or sometimes, you'll see a book on sale as a 'secondhand' book at a news kiosk, since such books can be sold at whatever price the buyer is willing to pay over the official price printed on the back cover."

Our conversation was one of my earliest eye-opening lessons on how things worked in "the land of the Soviets." We then played another game of chess, and I lost that one, too.

As my job made great demands on my time for what remained of my stay in Moscow that year, I did not see Natalia again until the following year, when we met over lunch at my hotel, the Rossiya (new then, now demolished), which stood not far from Red Square. Since our first meeting, I'd learned (completely by accident, from reading an item in the weekly chess newspaper "64") that Konopleva hailed from Murmansk, up above the Arctic Circle, had been an All-Union Girls Champion in the late 50s, and had earned the title of "Woman International Master."

After lunch, we played what turned out to be our last chess game. I managed to draw that one, but only by the skin of my teeth.