Red Pawns, Red Soldiers: How the Bolsheviks built a chess superpower

In his latest Grandmaster View column, India’s young GM Aarav Dengla looks back at how the Bolsheviks transformed chess from a pastime of Russia’s aristocracy into an instrument of mass education, military training and cultural revolution.

From Ilyin-Zhenevsky and the Red Army to Botvinnik, Tal, Kar