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The Courier-Journal,Louisville, Kentucky, Sunday, March 06, 1960
Russians, Losing Face, Start Training Center
By Merrill Dowden
If there's one thing the Russians hate to lose even more than a chess game, match, tournament, or title, it is “face”.
And face they did lose with the dropping in recent months of the Junior World Chess Championship and the Students Team Championship.
This deep and double humiliation is said to be the reason for a decree issued in the U.S.S.R. for the immediate recruitment of 1,000 boys and girls, for a new chess-training school, and an additional 1,300 for chess-training centers.
The program also orders physical-education teachers to undergo courses in chess instruction and special trainers to supervise what the New York Times calls “the great farm system” in Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and Minsk.
In view of these developments, Chess Review suggests:
“It is impossible to resist the thought that, perhaps, the advent of Bobby Fischer has unsettled Russian convictions.”
(Teen-ager Fischer is the reigning American champion)
