A Cold War Curiosity

Note Tschigorin is often spelled Chigorin.  In Andy Soltis's 2013 Marshall Biography with 220 games, he repeats the 8 move game claim as an aside while describing the Mason-Marshall game at the same 1902 Monte Carlo tournament, won by Marshall in 25 moves: the only game from that tournament Marshall includes in his "50 Years..."

 21 Newba

1.       Do you think every chess player at that time had wills of a political involvement?

YES

IN FACT in USSR THEY HAD NO CHOICE their individual will was not taken into account, to get money and authorization of taking part outside, russia was afraid of those not coming back from foreign countries; all was politics, including chess, olympic games, etc ...

outside USSR, the moment u playedat top level, you had to face USSR player, there was no serious event without russian school representative.

nb Kortchnoi, one of the biggest player of all times, left EAST for West in 1976, it was quite an earthquake in USSR, in politics too.

2.  "I mean, from your words it sounds like Tal was aware and participant around Cold War's content affairs. I just wanted to know if they really were so aware;

actually 99% of chess players, sportsmen, east german people, wanted to leave, quit the system thus were aware . everybody IQ 101 was aware. It is like we ask if today in north Korea , population is aware;

COLD WAR  = nuc' after 1945-1949, everyone aged five years and more was aware about nuc's world end possibility (see above in schools, training to survive everywhere, nuc' russian missiles in Cuba (looks like today crisis with nuc in Iran, with a small difference: Cuba is 300 miles from FLA!), terrific spot TV ad democrats vs Barry goldwater 196x, etc .

.thus everybody, from Tal to 16th candle bobby soccer maid in Nowhereland NDakota or Troucity , F, EU, was aware of cold war.

3.   "     plus, concerning Kasparov, I am really unaware of his personal life, beliefs and ideas, is he discordant to his motherland social system?

                                             YES AND NO

1987 : he is head of komsomol (youth organiztion in soviet system), thus apparatchik

1990 ...after Berlin 1989 wall's end, he left the communist party, his values, thus refuznik, with a good cautious tempo

2005 retired from chess game , he does a political career as Putin's enemy. He did good surfin' on the waves of the changes from Ussr to Russia.

his background is various : mother armenian (haut karabagh, country  in war because wanted by two enemies, azeris with turkish background and culture, and armenians, christians), father jewish, born in Azerbaidjan, nationality russian, and .....  croatian too since 2014,

creating some organizations outside FIDE, then candidate to FIDE praesidency,  opposition in politics to putin's system,

Kasparov burns a lot of energy as a rebel with various causes with the same purpose: freedom. Fascinating, not only on the board.

Re:  duck and cover.  I believe it was The Reader's Digest  that reported that a popular joke in the Soviet Union went like this:

Q.  What should you do in case of a nuclear attack?

A.   Cover yourself with a white sheet and crawl slowly to the nearest cemetery. 

Q.  Why slowly?

A.   To avoid panic.  

Curiously, it was the mercurial Mason who won the Brilliancy Prize -donated by Prince Andrei Dadian  the chief patron of the tournament (although there were many others)-  for his win over Janowsky.
I've seen Чиго́рин  transliterated as  Tschigorinm Tchigorin and Chigorin,.  The first form was very popular in the late 19th century, then during the middle 20th century the less ornate middle form became common and finally the simple Chigorin has taken over in general usage.

I once read about the Fischer-Spassky match and was very impressed.

The Cold War is a rather ambiguous period in world history. And no one knows what would have happened if the Soviet Union had not disintegrated. I read a lot of information about this period, and I did not find an unambiguous conclusion. At https://papersowl.com/examples/cold-war/, you can read a little more information about this event and learn a lot of interesting facts. Everything was actually much more serious than you think.
If we find more interesting facts about this period, be sure to share, because I'm interested

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