AThe Richmond News Leader, Richmond, Virginia, Thursday, October 20, 1960
Of Bishops, Kings and Things
The handwriting looms upon the wall. A new impasse appears imminent. An East German woodcarver, simple soul with rough hewn hands, has designed a chess set composed exclusively of figures representing the proletariat in place of the aristocracy.
It has been a wonderful thing, all these years, to contemplate the efficiency of communism's devoted minions. Its zealots' cannot rest until all areas of life are remade. God must go; church buildings must be secular; individual aspirations must be forgotten; private property must be destroyed. Now bishops, queens and kings must make way on the chess board for the glorified pawn.
In the new set, the king is a dethroned economic planner. Castles are factory workers in defense uniforms. Bishops are athletes, pawns the workers of various trades. And, most fitting symbol of the new age, knights are completely transformed: They are horses without riders.
George Orwell, alas, died just too soon. He would have, delighted in this added detail for his 1984 — the new dimension in chess: A queen who doffs her crown, becomes plain woman, and depicts the “progressive intelligentsia.”
A Hero's medal, quickly, for the East German woodcarver! This honest toiler has risen to the aid of the party. He has done his work well. He has, by the way, also provided a headache for the rules committee of the next international chess tourney involving players from different sides of the Iron Curtain. To ask our Bobby Fischer to trap a dethroned economic planner instead of the black king is a bit, too much. We predict a stalemate before a single piece is moved.
