Genna Sosonko, Smyslov on the Couch (Elk & Ruby, 2018). 199 pp. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.
For almost as long as there have been people, there have been dead people. Some of those people have been chess players, and if they were prominent chess players living in the time of the Soviet Union, there's a good chance Genna Sosonko has something to say about them. In 2011 Vasily Smyslov, the World Chess Champion from 1957 to 1958, passed away, and that meant that his memorialization by Sosonko was just a matter of time. That time is here.
Actually, it was back in 2016, in Russian, and now the translation (which is also an expansion of the original), called Smyslov on the Couch, is available to us in English. The title suggests something Freudian, as if Sosonko is going to psychoanalyze Smyslov, but if so the book doesn't live up to this portent. It seems instead to connote that what we'll see is a relaxed Smyslov in the context of a long friendship with the author. Indeed, one of the three photos on the cover shows author and subject sitting on a couch in a relaxed, happy conversation.
The book is itself a pleasant read, because Sosonko clearly liked and respected Smyslov. This is not at all like his rather poisonous memoir of David Bronstein, which left me (and others) dismayed by Bronstein's pervasive bitterness and Sosonko's unfortunate desire to share his need for catharsis with the rest of the chess world. This book won't leave you with those feelings at all.
That's not to say that this is a hagiography. He pokes a bit of fun at Smyslov in the beginning for his superstitiousness, and there are other places where Smyslov comes in for mild critique or is shown with a few warts. But it's only very mild: it's clear that he has a great deal of love and respect for the former world champion, and he is gentle with him.
The book divides into three sections: "The Real Smyslov", "Match Fixing in Zurich and the Soviet Chess School", and "The Final Years". For those of you who are unfamilar with Sosonko and his biographical style, he is a 75-year-old Dutch GM who emigrated from the USSR back in 1972. He didn't become a grandmaster until after he emigrated - few Soviet players had the chance to fight for norms - but he was respected enough to work as a second for players like Mikhail Tal and Viktor Korchnoi. For the past two decades he has written dozens of articles and several books memorializing (primarily, maybe exclusively) players he knew from the Soviet Union. These are not biographies per se - there's usually very little about the person's childhood or chess career. They are pen portraits, offering a picture of what the person was like, the environment they had to cope with, how he himself interacted with them, and depending on the person profiled some critical moment or moments in their life would come under the microscope.
And that's what you get here. The first part of the book gives the reader a sense of what he's like, much more than it gives details about his chess career or his hobby and semi-career as a singer. The second part of the book is a reflection on Bronstein's charge that both he and Paul Keres were pressured to achieve certain results during the 1953 Candidates to make sure that American Samuel Reshevsky wouldn't finish ahead of the Soviets and qualify for a World Championship match with Mikhail Botvinnik. Finally, the last section is largely a series of excerpts from their phone conversations, relaying Smyslov's comments on varied, mostly mundane matters. (Some of part three reads a bit off-puttingly, as Sosonko's part of the conversation is typically omitted. So it reads as if Smyslov is just randomly remarking on this and that, as if complaining to no one in particular and without any prompting. This probably isn't the case - it's quite possible that Sosonko would ask questions during their conversation to which Smyslov gave relevant replies, but the reader can't know this.)
Anyway, Smyslov is probably the least well-known of the Soviet world champions, both in terms of his chess and his personality. You won't learn much about his chess from the book (only one game is given - and that's one game more than you'll find in most of Sosonko's memorializations - and it's a game Smyslov played when he was 14), but you will spend a few pleasant hours with one of the nicer, more humane figures of the Soviet era. Warmly recommended for those who are interested in the history of the game.