5/4/15

Was Robert J. Fischer Right to Play Chess in Serbia After All?


As I understand it, Poland did not exist before the First World War. It belong to three empires that fell during the war. The Poles used the Imperial conflict as an opportunity to lever land in exchange for troops. When the short lived King of Poland gave way in 1920 a newly independent Poland warred upon Lithuania. The Polish-Ukrainian war came to an end. Poland took more land from Prussia via the League of Nations. Poland was an expanding nation annexing Central Lithuania soon after. Upper Silesia went to Poland from Germany too, and some of that Polish increase and Germany decrease set the stage for revenge from Germany without a doubt. 

Other issues were German veterans that thought they could have won without the armistice (they were wrong), other vast reparations were put on Germany and the Jewish radicals were perceived as leading the revolution that forced the Kaiser and aristocracy from power. In Munich Hitler would have his beer hall putsch from the same beer hall where a Jewish political organizer led a revolt to depose the Prince of Bavaria with an 800 year history. Many a deep troubles existed. Maybe one could blame it all on the Hanseatic League and the failure of the Vikings to develop better ship design a little earlier. 

Poland was swell. yet how could the small Red Army in conflict with an expansive Poland and with America at war on the Red Army (we sent 2000 soldiers to help the White Army) and after Lenin's earlier surrender of much of Ukraine to Germany at the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ( a model for Yeltsin later) deal with Poland in the aftermath of the First World war. Russia was in an uneasy situation, challenged on all fronts even in peace, and the people had no ability to deal with their own corrupt government. Lenin had three strokes and was out of existence with Stalin the dictator taking power and killing most all of the old Soviet Bolshevik leaders. Russian chess was probably challenged in this era to lead much. 

Russia had its troubles from Revolution obviously; how were ordinary people to deal with either the Tsar or a Dictatorship led by the Reds. Evolving out the Stalinist apparatus following the Second World War would take decades. When it finally faded away in January 1989 stability might have resumed if Bill Clinton had not blundered into taking the Ukraine from Russia. 

In the United States some have speculated that if we had not entered the first world war and had instead let the parties involved reach their own natural balance the aftermath would have been better. The United States throughout the 20th century was interventionist and often with dubious result with questionably well informed leaders making decisions to visit war upon some place for some reason that occasionally appeared to primarily benefit the military-industrial complex. The present American policy regarding Ukraine is based on greed and ignorance stimulated by the British drive to have power over more land and global economics to replace their lost empire. It is not in N.A.T.O.'s interest to create long term enmity with Russia over the issue of taking its historical heartland and denying it Dnepr River frontage. Bobby Fischer was perhaps right to visit Serbia to play chess in 1992. Fischer was a native English language speaker, yet his father was Russian and lived in Russia. Perhaps he was subconsciously loyal to his father's land, rather than that of the nation opposed to his earning a living playing chess for millions of bucks.

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