A Century of Chess: Botvinnik-Flohr 1933

Actually one of the most significant events in chess history.

Here was the state of play in Soviet chess at the time. Chess was a mania in the Soviet Union. Visitors to the 1925 Moscow tournament were astonished at the crowds that spilled out into the streets outside playing halls and blocked entrances, but it was also clear that the Soviet masters were a step behind the Western stars and official sponsorship of international chess was far from certain. The plan of sending a team to the 1933 Olympiad was canceled at the last minute. Everything hinged on finding a winner, and the Soviet chess apparatus — which at the time was essentially the Prosecutor General Nikolai Krylenko — came to settle on Mikhail Botvinnik as the knight errant for the entire system.

The prequel for the Flohr match was the 1933 USSR chess championship, which Botvinnik won easily, cementing his place at the top of the Soviet chess hierarchy. It was something of a bitter tournament — the older generation was less than pleased at being shunted aside, and the irascible Fyodor Duz-Khotimirsky made a point of playing well past move 100 in a completely drawn rook endgame just to spite Botvinnik. Botvinnik faltered towards the finish line, losing twice, but he was so far ahead that it didn’t matter and won by a clear point. After the tournament, a group of players pestered an apparatchik for the opportunity to play internationally, and the apparatchik remarked, “Now this has some point, we will back you" — a portentous statement that would launch the Soviet chess juggernaut. 

Salo Flohr was invited into the Soviet Union for a twelve game match with Botvinnik, half in Moscow, half in Leningrad. It was an astonishing test for Botvinnik and avidly followed in the USSR — "We have to know our real strength," Krylenko declared of it. Flohr was very much on his way up. He had had a dizzying year in 1932 and emerged as the likeliest challenger to Alekhine. In the first half of the match, he showed his class, winning twice. His two wins — in Games 1 and 6 — are basically exactly the same thing. He reached a quiet ending where he had a very slight, steady advantage and nursed it until Botvinnik’s position cracked. Botvinnik seemed to find himself facing a level of chess he didn’t understand — "It seemed to be all over. Flohr was impregnable, and the chess commentators buried me,“ Botvinnik wrote — and the entire Soviet chess project was suddenly in jeopardy. 

But in the Leningrad leg, everything worked out. Botvinnik won Game 9 in 33 moves and the applause lasted fifteen minutes. He won Game 10 in 30 moves and then the players took two short draws to finish off the match. The tied match secured Botvinnik’s reputation as being among the world’s best. Krylenko declared that he "displayed the qualities of a real Bolshevik" and Botvinnik reflected that "the task set by Krylenko in the '20s had been carried out, a new generation of Soviet masters had grown up." As late as 1983, when young Garry Kasparov was struggling in a match with the defector Korchnoi, Botvinnik psyched him up by reminding him of the Flohr match. 

But there is a wrinkle to the story of the match. In his memoir The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, David Bronstein explained the outcome in the following way: "Flohr, who used to lose on average one game a year, suddenly lost two in one week! There must have been a reason for this and indeed there was! Grisha Goldberg's help was instrumental in finding a shop where Flohr could 'buy' a beautiful coat very cheaply!" 

t’s hard to know what to make of this allegation. On the one hand, Bronstein detested Botvinnik and was hardly a neutral party. Flohr was in a wonderful place in his career and angling for a world championship match. It’s hard to believe he would have taken such a significant hit to his reputation as a drawn (and thrown) match for the sake of a fur coat. On the other hand, the two games in question really are suspicious — with Flohr, one of the toughest players in the world, just collapsing. Afterwards, he said of Game 10, "I can't give any explanation of my level of play in that game." For Soviet chess, the stakes of a lost match would have been immense, and it’s not inconceivable that they would have been able to communicate to Flohr that a draw really would be the best outcome for everyone involved. It’s unlikely that, as early as 1933, Flohr was thinking about emigration, but maybe it occurred to him that he shouldn’t close doors for himself in the Soviet Union. 

In any case, this is one of these chess mysteries that is likely to never be solved, and the result couldn’t have been more important. If it looked for a moment like Botvinnik was about to have his career capsized, the ship righted in the nick of time, he earned his international reputation, and found himself on track for being sent abroad. Sources: Botvinnik discusses the tournament and match at length in Achieving the Aim and analyzes games in 100 Selected Games. Andy Soltis discusses the match in Soviet Chess and Mikhail Botvinnik: Life and Games. David Bronstein gives his version in The Sorcerer's Apprentice. There's video of the match here.