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Nikolai Krylenko: Part I

by kevinspraggettonchess · Published June 18, 2018 · Updated June 19, 2018

The bastard who created Modern Chess

When FIDE elects a new president on October 3rd in Batumi, Georgia the chess world will likely enter an entirely new era in its history. For this reason I think it appropriate to remind the readers of how much our chess world has been manipulated, shaped and controlled by political forces. And will continue to be.

The Soviet School of Chess, which would emerge as the dominant force in Modern Chess after WWII, was created virtually single handedly by the force of character of one of the most remarkable, brutal and notorious individuals to have emerged from the Russian Revolution of 1917. Nikolai Krylenko.

His story is compelling. I first published this two part article back in 2009 on my old blog.

PART I

KRYLENKO. THE MAN, HIS LIFE AND HIS DEATH

Modern chess is the result of the contributions of many people spanning numerous generations and from every corner of the world. Players, organizers, patrons, politicians and journalists. Famous people and not so famous people, but all with a story to tell. Some of their stories are colourful, others are less interesting but still relevant. Most are everyday stories, more often boring than not.

A few , however, have spectacular stories about remarkable contributions. This is the story of one of the most notorious chessplayers of modern times, and how his life’s work had an incredible impact not only on his own people, but on the chess world as we know.

Nikolai Vasilyevich Krylenko (Russia, 1885-1938). Krylenko would later become known as the founder of Soviet chess. A british Sir Bruce Lockhart, once described him as ‘an epileptic degenerate…and the most repulsive type I came across in all my connections with the Bolsheviks.’

Krylenko was a devout Bolshevik by the age of 17, and became a close friend of Lenin. Brilliant and utterly ruthless, he was entrusted to smuggle into pre-revolutionary Russia literature and revolutionaries ready to fight for the cause.

He studied law at the St.Petersburg University during the day, and mobilized students for the cause. Krylenko was arrested several times, exiled twice, and for a brief time imprisoned. His oratory skills were legendary, capable of wooing even the most hostile crowds, for hours on end if need be. These same skills he put to good use during the Moscow show trials of the late 20’s, sending thousands of innocent political prisoners to their deaths.

Lenin playing chess

Krylenko and Lenin (an avid chessplayer since a boy) occasionally played chess together. Andy Soltis, in his Soviet Chess 1917-1991 recounts a story:

Krylenko and Lenin were relaxing in a small town near Moscow when they decided to play a few games. But Lenin set three conditions: no taking moves back, no getting upset by the loser, and no exulting by the winner. Krylenko had the edge in the first game but eventually lost and became angry. ”What’s with you, Nikolai Vasilyevich?” Lenin teased. ”You’re breaking the agreement?”

The Bolsheviks quickly took power, thrusting Krylenko into a position of power.

”After the tsar’s fall, Krylenko served on the Military Revolutionary Committee, with Ilyin-Genevsky, and in November 1917 was ordered to the general staff headquarters at Mogilev to replace General N.N.Dukhonin, who had refused to open peace negotiations with the Germans.

In a sweeping promotion, Krylenko went from ensign, the lowest commissioned rank, to Supreme Commander in Chief of the world’s largest army.”–Andy Soltis (Soviet Chess)

Soltis neglects to mention that Krylenko ordered General Dukhonin to be immediately infront of him and trampled on by horses, tearing him to pieces.

Sharing a love for chess and a fervent belief in the need for revolution were the bonds that united Lenin and Krylenko

In the chaos that followed the Bolshevik victory, Krylenko showed great loyalty to the Revolution.

Nikolai Krylenko’s name soon became synonymous with state terror and political repression

Krylenko’s next career move was that of chief prosecutor for the state. Political repression and terror were soon firmly established in his firm hands.

He served in a number of official positions (sometimes simultaneously), and became a key figure in the ‘Show Trials’ of the late 20’s and extending into the 30’s, personally handling the highest profile cases.

The Moscow show trials served many purposes, apart from getting rid of political opponents and enemies of the state. Primarily these trials were a propaganda tool, orchestrated to enhance the prestige of the new Soviet government and to strike terror in the minds of any among the general population who might have had any thoughts of criticizing the new communist state

Under Krylenko’s supervision, detailed daily written reports were sent to every corner of the Soviet Union. The use of cartoons was incorporated because so few of the peasants could read. Films of the daily show trials appeared in the cinemas just hours afterwards. The Soviet people became obssessed with the trials. Foreign correspondents were welcome.

Krylenko was at his most eloquent and ruthless. An eye witness account appeared in the New York Times: ” Day after day the 3,000 constantly changing auditors have sat breathless under the spell of Krylenko, as he brought son to implicate father, blandished brother into betraying brother, and lashed an old technician who was accused of accomplishing the death of his housemaid until the wench suddenly turned up last week. ”

Every person on trial was first beaten and tortured ,for weeks if necessary, in order to get a confession that would later be used to condemn them at the public show trials.

Torture was a busy profession in those days

Mikhail Yakubovich, a defendant in one of these show trials, described meeting with Krylenko after weeks of torture by the secret police to discuss his upcoming trial:

”Offering me a seat, Krylenko said: “I have no doubt that you personally are not guilty of anything. We are both performing our duty to the Party—I have considered and consider you a Communist. I will be the prosecutor at the trial; you will confirm the testimony given during the investigation. This is our duty to the Party, yours and mine. Unforeseen complications may arise at the trial. I will count on you. If the need should arise, I will ask the presiding judge to call on you. And you will find the right words.“

Nothing was left to chance. The trials were orchestrated like theatrical plays.

Stalin wrote: ” A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”

Krylenko was an exponent of socialist legality and the theory that political considerations, rather than criminal guilt or innocence, should guide the application of punishment.

One of his most famous quotations was ”We must not only execute the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the mass even more.” He had a marked propensity for cold bloodedly executing prisoners without due process. It is unknown exactly how many were killed at his orders, or his own hands.

Once, when it was pointed out to Krylenko that the death penalty was supposed to have been abolished when the Bolesheviks took power and yet his own work seemed to not comply with this, Krylenko repied ”I order the guilty only to be shot; I don’t order their deaths.”

Krylenko : ‘‘We must not only execute the guilty. Execution of the innocent will impress the mass even more.” He was unapolagetic: ”We admit the fact of ‘terror’ ”

Lenin and Stalin were able to trust Krylenko’s loyalty

With the death of Lenin in 1924, Krylenko’s influence and reach was greatly extended. Instead of things getting better, things got much worse.

Establishing the Soviet state had a very heavy price: the people paid very dearly. Henchmen like Krylenko displayed great enthusiasm to please their masters. They realized that if they refused to perform what was asked of them, then others would take their place. Millions were executed or disappeared in the night. Millions were exiled to the gulags. Millions more died of forced starvation.

In 1931 Krylenko was appointed Commissar of Justice, and he personally presided over the prosecution of members of the Communist Party in the Great Purge. Terror reigned, and no one was exempt from Stalin’s increasing paranoia. In 1933 Krylenko was awarded the Order of Lenin. This was the peak of his career.

But time was running out for Krylenko. ”He who lives by he sword, dies by the sword.”

With the assassination of in 1934, and the subsequent bloodshed and disappearances in what became known as The Terror , Krylenko found his career starting to go downhill. Perhaps he simply had reached the point where he had too many skeletons in the closet and too many enemies.

In January 1938, during a meeting of the Supreme Soviet, Krylenko was targetted by his political enemies, and before the end of the same month he was stripped of most of his power. Among other accusations, it was said that he played too much chess!

It is now believed that Stalin himself was behind the death of Kirov, whose murder was taken as the justification for unleashing an unprecedented epidemic of fear and suspicion that poisoned every aspect of Soviet life, including chess.
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Retreating to his dacha outside Moscow with his family on the 31st of January, he received a phone call from his friend , Josef Stalin, telling him not to worry and to continue to work on some legal project that had been in the pipeline for some time now.

The irony is that several hours later his dacha was surrounded by the secret police and Krylenko and his family were arrested.

Towards the end, Krylenko was often found in his Moscow offices drinking heavily and playing chess. His enemies accused him of wrecking the government. His sister, Elena (by then an American) reacted stoicly: ”I suppose chessplaying is now considered wrecking the government.”

After 3 days in prision, enduring the same type of interrogation and torture that his many victims had been subjected to , Krylenko confessed to wrecking the government, subversion and anti-Soviet agitation.

Six months later, on July 29, he was put on trial. The trial lasted all of 20 minutes(!). He denied the confession, was predictably declared guilty and immediately executed. Curiously, the person responsible for getting him to confess met with the same fate soon enough afterwards.

Despite such an illustrious career serving his masters, Krylenko was given a fair trial that lasted all of 20 minutes

Not many shed tears for Krylenko, but the news of his arrest and execution shocked a good many. If a powerful man like Nikolai Krylenko could not save himself, then what hope was there for mere mortals?

Soviet-era records show that in the two year period 1937-1938 a total of 681,692 people were executed as a result of the terror, almost certainly all of them innocent of the charges that were brought upon them.

Some were executed simply for knowing foreign languages. The secret police had been given -by Stalin himself- weekly quotas of how many had to be arrested and executed.

Krylenko then suffered the fate so common of many of that time of repression: he disappeared, officially, for decades. His name was taken off important documents and books. Photos were destroyed or altered.

Even an introduction that he written for the 1935 Moscow International Chess Tournament was eliminated! History was re-written to serve the purposes of the state. (Ironically, Krylenko would have approved!)

It was not uncommon at that time to simply disappear into thin air: Where did he go?

Fyodor Bohatyrchuk

F.Bohatyrchuk , a Ukranian chessplayer and radiologist, who personally knew Krylenko, had the good sense (luck) to escape the Soviet Union at just the right time. He fled to Canada, where he lived and worked for the rest of his long life. But he still disappeared : his name vanished from official records of Soviet chess tournaments! Just like he never existed.

Once, during the terror, Bohatyrchuk was arrested by the secret police for interrogation, but was soon after released. He was accused ,among other things, of having tried too hard to defeat Botvinnik in their individual encounters (Misha was a Soviet hero and was personally being groomed by Krylenko himself, as will be discussed in Part II) and having succeeded! (He had a plus score! )

With the death of Stalin in 1953, came a period of sober reflection over the excesses of the Revolution. Much was denounced and a process of righting some of the wrongs began.

Nikolai Krylenko’s guilty verdict (1938) was annulled by the Soviet government in the first wave of destalinization in 1955. By the early 1960’s his enormous contributions to Soviet chess earned him the reputation of being the father of Soviet chess.

Nikolai Krylenko achieved respectability long after this death .LINK

Today Krylenko’s rightful place in the Bolshevik revolution is offically recognized. In 1989 the Soviet government produced a commemorative coin in honour of Nikolai . Two years later, in 1991, the Soviet state disappeared.