I recently read this interview with  David Bronstein.
I always suspected that my own view of chess is somewhat different than that of most people.  I was not just surprised but in a way relieved to see that Bronstein expressed a similar view (on a much higher level).

Wow! He was so negative about the state of affairs in chess! 

Bronstein and Tal were a class apart.

Shoot the messenger! He was that negative, he gave us such a gloomy picture...

I like the way Bronstein played chess. 200 Open Games is a good book and Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953 is one of the best chess books ever written.

An interesting interview that gives a glimpse into the mind of a genius.  Thanks, BG.

Thanks for posting. I found it to be quite interesting.

Batgirl, great to see you back. And thanks immensely for bringing out the forgotten 2003 Bronstein interview to the spotlight. The legendary Devik (that's how the family called him) got us to face up some unpleasant truths about modern chess.

I was quite suprised when I couldn't find any trace of it online after running across it simply by chance on the Russian Ogoniek site. So I decided to give it my best shot at translating it to English for the benefit of the Western readership. Please excuse imperfectness of my translation as I thought it was more important to get out with it before the readers of my www.iplayoochess.com blog and wider chess public.

Thanks again for letting more people see the harsh chess truths. As Somebodysson put it, it might help get us out of the dungeons of the current chess System; the one giving few to profit and cash in, while the rest of us are watching utterly boring and unappealing "chess." 

And one more thing, we all would like to hear from you m-o-r-e! 

thanks batgirl. Its a beautiful interview, not gloomy. Its optimistic, about the possibility of chess being taken by chessplayers to a new heyday of romantic creativity. Not by the professionals; but the amateurs.

This interview also helps me articulate why I hated a recent conversation on chess forums about how chess improves intellect; I could only tell jokes on the forum; I couldn't take any of it seriously. As if people should play chess because its 'good for them' like a vitamin. Take some vitamin C, walk twenty minutes, and do a half hour of chess a day and you won't get Alzheimers. Oh bother!

batgirl, keep pushing your romantic chess agenda. You have good company, and you know who your company is better than I do, the 19th century romantics and a few 20th c. romantics and dissidents. 

Many thanks; interesting article.

beautiful Momir. Thank you for translating it. Don't worry about the translation; its excellent. Remember, we're not going for perfection; we're interested in the spirit, and you captured it beautifully. 

Guy sounds like an oddball.

He wants romance - looks for it in chess - and can't find it?  (Except, conceivably, in his own play.)

I suspect he would have found no romance in to-day's World Championship game. Sad.

Wonderful, entertaining book full of lively, sharp games. 

Glad you have not gone away completely, Bats! 

You are nuts. He married a wife that was 30 years younger and stayed loyal to his beliefs and character against the tide. It is normal to get the help of a real writer and that is not relevant at all.

This video is a must watch for Bronstein fans. Yasser Seirawan recounts a story about Bronstein that gives some very interesting insights into how Bronstein approaches his game

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SAymAaV92qk

fantastic vid of Seirawan talking about Bronstein.  Just precious. Thanks QueenTakesKnightOops. 

Should we mention that Boris Vainstein, pres. of the Soviet Chess Fed., was also a high ranking KGB officer and that, while Bronstein later revealed (unprovoked) that Vainstein wrote much of the text, Bronstein himself completed all the analysis? 

Yes, you should, BG, because no literary writer could have come up with the final note to the Petrosian-Gligoric game.  That was pure Bronstein.

Now i know why he made that fatal blunder which could have given him the title.