In Memory of Vasily Smyslov

Boris Dolmatovsky shares about commemoration activities devoted to the seventh World Champion 

On April 27, 1957 the Concert Hall named after Tchaikovsky saw the end of the World Chess Championship match between Mikhail Botvinnik, the then World Champion, and the candidate Vasily Smyslov. Vasily Smyslov won the match with a 12,5:9,5 score to become the seventh in the history of chess World Champion.

April 30 was an inauguration day of the new champion as Smyslov was crowned with a laurel wreath.

In honor of the 60th anniversary of this landmark event, the Center of Chess Culture and Information affiliated with the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology held a number of events.

In the morning of May 3 they paid a visit to the grave of Vasily Vasilevich at the Novodevichy Cemetery to place flowers. They also visited the columbarium with Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik’s ashes and placed flowers there as well. Our great world champions were honored by a minute of silence followed by kind words of remembrance.

A photo exhibition dedicated to the seventh World Champion and a television movie with Andrey Karaulov taking interview from Vasily Vasilevich were screened in the Russian National Public Library for Science and Technology in the afternoon. The spectators admired the studies composed by Smyslov for their beauty and depth... There were many memories shared of the seventh World Champion. It was with great interest that the audience listened to the world’s oldest grandmaster Yuri Lvovich Averbakh, Smyslov’s nephew Yuri Fominykh, an international master Sergey Rosenberg, a historian Vladimir Linder, a grandmaster Nikolai Kralin... Towards the end of the ceremony the audience honored the bright memory of Vasily Vasilevich Smyslov with a minute of silence.

The poem by Yuri Lubkin, which Vasily Vasilevich used as an epigraph to his 2000-year book "My Collected Studies", sprang to mind all by itself.

You heard a voice...

You heard a voice. It called but not to cookbook recipes and wine.

But rather to the chess studies divine

As soothing as the cool sea breezes,

Enchanted by the carved wooden pieces

As fathomless and bottomless as life.

Your heart and dreams belonged to a domain of rooks and bishops

Entwined together in a circle dance

Sidestepping stabs of pawns and traps by knights

To weave a web so magic and romance