How the Early Soviet State Turned Chess Into a Tool
A look inside the origins of Soviet chess culture. These articles trace how early USSR institutions and political leaders transformed chess into a tool for education, discipline, and national development, setting the foundation for decades of dominance in world chess.
Boris Gelfand (Барыс Гельфанд)
Boris Gelfand stands among the most durable and intellectually serious grandmasters of the modern era. Born in Minsk in 1968, trained in the late Soviet chess system, and later representing Israel, Gelfand built a career defined by depth, preparation, and remarkable longevity. He became a grandmaster in 1989, reached the world elite by the early 1990s, won the 2009 FIDE World Cup, captured the 2011 Candidates Matches, and challenged Viswanathan Anand for the World Championship in Moscow in 2012. His later books on decision-making have made him one of the most respected chess authors and teachers of his generation. FIDE lists Gelfand as an Israeli grandmaster born in 1968, and Chess.com notes his long elite standing, including nearly twenty-seven years in the world top thirty.