In an exclusive interview to Komsomolskaya Pravda, 12th World Chess Champion Anatoly Yevgenyevich Karpov opened the doors of his penthouse apartment and of his heart, sharing with the interviewers memories and secrets about his life.
The whole interview is permeated by a melancholic nostalgia for the golden times of the Soviet chess school, of which he, alongside with Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, was one of the most prominent ambassadors.
One of Karpov’s deepest regrets is that after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the new Russian Federation was no longer so involved in funding the national chess machine, with the result that China and India can now claim the primacy of elite chess. “Our school has become practically extinct”, Karpov said. “The State is no longer involved, and if so only nominally”.
As a man from the Urals, he went a long way before getting to the chess throne, and owes much of his successes to his family. An exemplary Soviet family. “Yes, after all, both my father and mother were from working-class families. My father worked as a chief engineer at a major plant in Tula. And my father actually participated in the invention of the BM-21 Grad”, Karpov said. “He is also one of the inventors of antipersonnel ball-bombs. I remember him coming home one day with a grenade in hand. I asked what it was, and he said, ‘It’s a new ball-bomb. It will be used in Vietnam against the Americans’. It’s one of the inventions that inspired the Americans to end the Vietnam war”.
And finally, lastly, but not leastly, the sirens of the West sung to him, too. He was offered to leave the Soviet Union for a foreign land. When and where? “Well, I don’t remember. I remember it was at the 1974 Olympiad in France, when I was preparing for the match against Fischer”. Guess what his answer was. “I don’t even think about it”.
The whole interview is permeated by a melancholic nostalgia for the golden times of the Soviet chess school, of which he, alongside with Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, was one of the most prominent ambassadors.
One of Karpov’s deepest regrets is that after the Soviet Union’s dissolution, the new Russian Federation was no longer so involved in funding the national chess machine, with the result that China and India can now claim the primacy of elite chess. “Our school has become practically extinct”, Karpov said. “The State is no longer involved, and if so only nominally”.
As a man from the Urals, he went a long way before getting to the chess throne, and owes much of his successes to his family. An exemplary Soviet family. “Yes, after all, both my father and mother were from working-class families. My father worked as a chief engineer at a major plant in Tula. And my father actually participated in the invention of the BM-21 Grad”, Karpov said. “He is also one of the inventors of antipersonnel ball-bombs. I remember him coming home one day with a grenade in hand. I asked what it was, and he said, ‘It’s a new ball-bomb. It will be used in Vietnam against the Americans’. It’s one of the inventions that inspired the Americans to end the Vietnam war”.
And finally, lastly, but not leastly, the sirens of the West sung to him, too. He was offered to leave the Soviet Union for a foreign land. When and where? “Well, I don’t remember. I remember it was at the 1974 Olympiad in France, when I was preparing for the match against Fischer”. Guess what his answer was. “I don’t even think about it”.
Karpov speaks out on his life and times. Photo: Ivan Igorevich Makeev/Komsomolskaya Pravda. |
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