March 23, 1931
В Leningrad was born Виктор Корчной — an outstanding chess player, four-time USSR champion, and a long-standing contender for the world chess crown. "The Great Second."
All grandmasters are crazy. They differ only in the degree of their insanity.
The family was Polish-Jewish. His parents divorced when he was very young. He initially lived with his mother, then with his father from the age of four. After his father died at the front, he was raised by his stepmother.
He survived the siege. He recalled how, as an 11-year-old boy, he carried the bodies of relatives who had died of starvation on a sled to Volkovskoye Cemetery.
He played his first game of chess in January 1942, in a bomb shelter. He wasn't particularly gifted as a child, but he was distinguished by his tenacity. He was also straightforward and had a keen sense of justice. He made his first "political" statement at 16, saying in history class that the USSR "stabbed Poland in the back" in 1939.
The history teacher was in a state of utter terror for several days: I was her favorite student—she didn’t want to report me, and although she was one of the favorite teachers in the class, Pavlik Morozov could have been found among the 26 students… The scumbag wasn’t found.
From the age of 13, he attended the Palace of Pioneers, participating in literature, music, and chess clubs. However, he was not allowed to recite poetry on stage due to a speech impediment, and he was unable to master the piano due to the lack of a personal instrument. He excelled at chess and quickly developed as a player—at 16, he became the USSR schoolboy champion.
Chess is like an infection, it's hard to escape
After school, I entered the history department of Leningrad University. And regretted it.
I loved history very much; I saw in it the truth of life refracted in historical events... Quite quickly I realized that history education at university had little in common with the truth of life—it was necessary to study, or better yet, cram, what Lenin and Stalin had written.
In 1956, at 25, he became a grandmaster. He received a stipend from the Sports Committee as a chess player. This "special salary" was paid on the condition that he not work anywhere else and achieve success in his sport.
With such hypocrisy, hiding behind the word "scholarship," Soviet sports officials assured the West that they had no professionals, only amateurs. And so it was that the world was buzzing with names like "journalist Tal," "engineer Polugaevsky," "psychologist Krogius," "philosopher Petrosyan," and "economist Karpov."
In 1960, he won the USSR Championship. He then won three more times – in 1962, 1964, and 1970. After his first victory, he received two invitations from teams preparing for a rematch for the world chess crown. Talia и Botvinnik. He refused both, considering it unethical to delve into the secrets of his potential rivals’ training.
I'm not brave, I'm desperate.
He was a proactive player and a brilliant defender. In the early 1960s, the term "zakorchnit" (to make a surprise counterattack, a move of rare beauty) was coined.
He defeated nine world champions at least once. He competed successfully in the USSR until 1974, when he lost the Candidates Match for the chess crown. To Anatoly Karpov. In an interview with foreign media, he made it clear that his loss was the result of pressure: the Soviet authorities had placed their bets on the young and loyal Karpov, depriving them of support for the abrupt and intractable Korchnoi.
In 1976, fearing he would be banned from leaving the country, he requested political asylum in Netherlands. Later settled in Switzerland. But he did not consider himself a dissident.
I just wanted to play chess… By fighting against the USSR, I was fighting for myself
They were stripped of their Soviet citizenship in 1978. The family was not immediately allowed to leave the Union, their son was expelled from university, and they were sentenced to two and a half years in a labor camp for evading military service.
After his escape, he competed successfully and placed high in tournaments. He faced Karpov twice more for the world championship title—in 1978 and 1981—but remained the "Great Second."
In 1990, his Soviet citizenship was restored. He refused to return.
In my opinion, the final victory of democracy in Russia is possible only with the complete withdrawal from active (political, social, economic, cultural) life of the generations raised under Stalin.
He died in 2016, at 85.
