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Studying Soviet chess sets forces us to confront a good number of uncertainties. In many cases, direct evidence of a set’s provenance is simply lacking. Secondary information is scarce, even more so information that is available in English. So it is with these beautiful pieces and the board with which they came to me, which bears stamps that read: Leningrad Factory No. 8, 1943. Here is a close-up of the board’s stamps.

The Pieces

Here are the nicely turned and carved red and black pieces arrayed on the board.

I initially thought that the stamps signified that the pieces and board both originated in Nazi-besieged Leningrad, writing, “It is nothing short of miraculous that the set survived, as wood shortages doomed most wooden sets to the stoves to survive the brutal winters.” But evidence soon emerged that the board was paired with the pieces sometime after they were manufactured. Here are two photos that seem to show these same pieces being offered for sale in a different container.

The dropped jaw of the knights, the steeple rings of the bishops, and style of the stem and base suggest this is what we typically call a “Laughing Knight” set. At the same time, the pieces also incorporate a slender verticality and stem and base structure reminiscent of the Soviet Upright chessmen sometimes called “Averbakh II” pieces, mistakenly implying a stylistic relation to the set Averbakh is seen playing with in a well-known photo from the 1949 Moscow Championship.

All this said, the set is unweighted, which is a noted characteristic of sets manufactured while the Soviet Union was on a war footing, metal being needed for weapons and munitions production. And there is photographic evidence circumstantially linking sets like this one to Leningrad. Here is a photo of a like set being played with by then-future World Champion Lyudmila Rudenko (b. 1904).

Although this photo is undated, Rudenko’s first major success in chess was her victory in the 1928 Moscow Championship, and it is said that her style and form did not finally develop until she moved to Leningrad in 1929 and began studying under the likes of Romanovsky and Tolush. It is conceivable that she is twenty-five in the above photo.

Rudenko is not the only public figure circumstantially linking the set to Leningrad. Below is a photo of Mikhail Kalinin, who was born in 1875, moved to St. Petersburg 1n 1895, undertook revolutionary activity in 1905, and became one of the earliest members of the Bolshevik Party. In 1917 he became mayor of Petrograd, and in 1919 a member of the Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party. He ascended to full membership in the Politburo in 1926. Kalinin served as titular head of the Soviet state from 1917 until his retirement in 1946, a largely ceremonial role. Of him Khrushchev supposedly said, “I don’t know what practical work Kalinin carried out under Lenin. But under Stalin he was the nominal signatory of all decrees, while in reality he rarely took part in government business. Sometimes he was made a member of a commission, but people didn’t take his opinion into account very much. It was embarrassing for us to see this; one simply felt sorry for Mikhail Ivanovich.” One could not feel too sorry for him. It was very rare for any Bolshevik of consequence to have survived the Great Purges of the 1930s, and his signature could be found authorizing heinous acts like the murder of thousands of Polish prisoners, signed ceremoniously or not. If Kalinin is sixty in the following undated photo, then it was taken around 1935.

Further photographic evidence likely links pieces like these to the mid- to late-1930s. St. Petersburg collector and researcher Sergey Kovalenko dates the following photo to be from 1935.

The set also appeared in other finishes. Here is a dark red/brown and black specimen from Steven Kong’s collection. It originally was finished in a black and orange/red combination. It is unweighted.

And here is a magnificent specimen from Steve’s collection, in a natural finish. These pieces are weighted, perhaps signifying they are an early version of the design. The exquisite dental work seen in the knight on g1 supports an early dating.

The Board

We have seen the stamps inside the board above. The board itself is constructed from plywood. It is roughly 40 cm square. Its squares are irregular, ranging from 45-50 mm. The dark squares and sides are finished with a reddish-brown stain. The board seems to have gone through several generations of hooks and hinges. Notation was added to the borders after market.

Sergey Kovalenko assesses the board as follows: “Such simplifications are typical for boards of the 60s, but, in my opinion, this is also normal for wartime. The colors look early. In any case it is interesting board. Some of evacuated Leningrad factory could make this board, for example.”

The Factory

What was Leningrad Factory No. 8, and could it have made chessboards amidst the devastating siege?

According to Russian sources unearthed by Sergey, Leningrad Factory 8 was an electromechanical plant launched in 1934. It produced radio broadcasting equipment, charging stations, welding units, related boxes and coils. In July 1941, it merged with the Molotov Telephone plant into a single enterprise, and much of the plant’s equipment and personnel were shipped to Molotov, which was renamed Perm in 1957, a large industrial center on the Kama River and near the Ural Mountains. The joint plant in Molotov began operation in September 1941 located on the site of the former confectionary plant Red Ural, and was renumbered as Plant No. 629. In May 1942, a woodworking operation was added to the joint plant. Among its products were wood boxes for military telephones manufactured at the plant.

There is no evidence that either Sergey or I could find of what, if anything, any remnants of Plant No. 8 remaining in Leningrad may have produced. According to Wikipedia, “86 major strategic industries were evacuated from the city. Most industrial capacities, engines and power equipment, instruments and tools, were moved by the workers. Some defense industries, such as the LMZ, the Admiralty Shipyard, and the Kirov Plant, were left in the city, and were still producing armor and ammunition for the defenders.” According to the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad, “upon the outbreak of hostilities, the leading enterprises of Leningrad were reoriented to produce weapons and ammunition. In January 1942, at the most critical time of the blockade, 22 enterprises produced more than 100 types of military equipment, weapons, ammunition, communications equipment, instruments, and so on.”

Based on this information, two possibilities present themselves for the origins of the Leningrad Factory No. 8 board. The first is that it was manufactured in Leningrad by remnants of the plant remaining there after the bulk of its productive assets were evacuated to Molotov. It is conceivable that these remnants continued to manufacture military phones for use by the besieged defenders, and that scraps from the phone boxes were used to fashion some crude chess boards. Communications equipment is among that believed to have been made there during the siege. But there is no direct evidence of woodworking to have continued there, and it seems unlikely that scraps from the production of military phones were used to make luxury goods when thousands were freezing to death for lack of fuel, even under Stalin.

The second possibility is that the stamps from Leningrad Factory No. 8 traveled to Molotov with the bulk of the plant’s other assets, and were used to stamp chessboards made in the merged plant’s woodworking shop from scraps from the production of wooden boxes for military phones, even though the joint plant had been relocated and renumbered. I find this possibility more plausible than the first.

Finally, a third possibility must be considered. That is that the stamp inside my board is not from Factory No. 8, but Factory No. 3. Russian sources tell us that Leningrad Factory No. 3 began making gramophone records in the mid-1930s and children’s toys and radios in the late 1930s, but lacked its own woodworking shop. For this reason, as well as the circumstances of the siege outlined above, I find it unlikely to have been the manufacturer of my chessboard.

Conclusion

This slender, elegant set with wide bases incorporates a design that originated in the 1930s, but it is highly unlikely that it was turned and carved in besieged Leningrad, even though it has several discernable links to that city. The board that housed it when it came to me bears stampings literally telling us it was made by Leningrad Factory 8 during the siege, but there are good reasons not to interpret them literally. More plausibly, the stamps evacuated Leningrad in 1942 with the bulk of the plant’s productive assets, only to be used in Molotov, their new home near the Urals, and were affixed to a board made by the Molotov plant’s woodworking shop from scraps of plywood left in the production of boxes for military telephones. Many thanks to Sergey Kovalenko for sharing his research and thoughts on this curious case.

This set is fine specimen of a not uncommon design, characterized by 1) the open mouths of the knights, which suggests to many that they are laughing, and 2) the ring or ball perched atop its bishops’ onion-shaped miters, echoing the globus cruciger found on the spires of many onion-shaped Orthodox church domes.

The kings are 97 mm tall and the pieces are unweighted. Coupled with the modest bases lack of weighting renders them more unstable than other unweighted Soviet sets, which compensate for the lack of weighting with substantial bases.

My specimen, as are many others, is finished in black and Stalin Red. Yet other specimens are finished in black and brown varnish. Here is a brown and black version in Lokahi Antonio’s collection.

The late Nick Lanier of the Chess Museum has suggested that this design may be of Tsarist origin, but his suggestion is offered without supporting research. I know of no direct or circumstantial evidence and no morphological analysis supporting his suggestion. His specimen is brown and black. He describes the pieces as “very well finished” and the knights as “happy.”

The design is generally thought to arise in the thirties. This is the view expressed in Russian auction sites and by knowledgeable dealers in Soviet chessmen. The photographic record supports this view. Here is a photo from the 1939 Moscow-Leningrad Match for the Deaf.

Here is a 1943 photo from the Evacuation Hospital in Vologda, which, according to chess historian Jorge Njegovic Drndak, specialized in infectious diseases that and treated the victims of the Great Patriotic War. The set appears to be a black and red version.

And here is a photo of what seems to be another black and red version of the set being used by schoolchildren in Udmurt Autonomous SSR in 1947, provided by Sergey Kovalenko.

The Laughing Knight set is thought to have been produced by Artel Kultsport in Moscow. Two dealers in the chain of title of my set represented that it originated with Kultsport. Although my set came in a box/board that had only remnants of a paper label, the board itself was nearly identical to another from the mid-1940s that bears an Artel Kultsport ink stamp. Moreover, Kultsport is known to have affixed paper labels prior to 1941, further supporting the pre-war Kultsport inferences of the set’s origins.

One of the interesting design elements in these chessmen is the almost spherical ring near the top of the peak of the bishop miter, echoing those on the spires of the onion domes of St. Basil’s Cathedral in Moscow.

But the defining characteristic of this set is the knight’s gaping mouth, which makes it appear to be heartily laughing. To be sure, some horses, like the American TV star, the late Mr. Ed, played by the palomino gelding Bamboo Harvester (1949-1971), have exhibited a sense of humor. Mr. Ed, America’s first “Stable Genius,” elsewhere has been described as “an obnoxious and inconsiderate troublemaker.”

As gaping mouths are a recurring theme in knight design, Soviet and otherwise, I did some cursory research into what it means when a horse opens its mouth. Here are some of the explanations offered:

• The horse has colic (who would send sick horses to war?);
• It has detected an unusual odor, as a mare in heat, and curls his lip in what’s called a “Flehmen Response” to get a better whiff (it would seem inappropriate to call them “Horny Knights”);
• It is relaxed in contentment (unlikely for a warhorse headed into battle);
• It indicates aggression (befitting a warrior steed); and
• It is vocalizing, as in neighing, opening the mouth and exposing the teeth to allow the sound to resonate, typically an expression of anxiety or excitement (largely consistent with our “laughing” interpretation).

Conclusion

The popular Laughing Knight design originated prior to the Great Patriotic War. It is named for the gaping mouth of its knights, which appears to be caught in mid-laugh. It seems to have been made by Artel Kultsport in Moscow, though the evidence for this is circumstantial and inferential.

An interesting set that adopts a good number of Staunton design elements. I call it the “Proto-Tal” set because it is so similar to the Tal set in a pre-Annexation photo of Keres and Mikenas playing in an Estonia-Lithuania Friendship Match in Tallinn in Spring 1940 that the two must be related. We already have examined the development of the Tal chessmen here in From Tallinn to Tbilisi: the Evolution of the Tal Chess Pieces.

The Prot0-Tal set is tournament-sized but unweighted. My specimen retains its original black cloth bottoms. The king’s cross is decidedly non-Soviet, evidence of its origin in Estonia or another Baltic state prior to their Annexation by the Soviet Union late in 1940. Here are the proto-Tal pieces:

For comparison sake, here are the 1940 Tal pieces in Mike Ladzinski’s collection. The knight is better developed and carved. The bishop’s miter is cut. The pieces are weighted and are covered with red rather than black cloth.

I believe the Proto-Tal set preceded the 1940 Tal set because the knight of the Keres-Mikenas photo is a mature Tal knight, very similar to those appearing in photos of events from 1940 to 1979, whereas the Proto-Tal knight is barely pubescent. I also believe it to be of Baltic, possibly of Estonian origin. We know that Tal sets appeared in the Baltic region as early as 1940 from the Keres-Mikenas photo. We also know that Mike Ladzinski’s c. 1940 Tal set came to him from Lithuania, and that Ron Harrison’s Proto-Tal set like this one came to him from Estonia. These facts support an inference of the set’s Baltic origins.

Alternatively, it is also possible that rather than being the source of the Tal set, the Proto-Tal set is a simplified version of the early Tal set manufactured for popular rather than tournament use. This would explain the greatly simplified knights, the lack of weighting, and the absence of a miter cuts on the bishops.

The Proto-Tal set appears to have originated in the Baltic region prior to its annexation by the Soviet Union, and to be the progenitor of the widely loved Tal chess pieces.

This photo of young Kamsky came across my Facebook feed recently. The set he and his father are using reminds me very much of the set used in the 1941 Leningrad Championship, a variation of the venerable Botvinnik-Flohr II pieces first introduced at the 1934 Leningrad Masters Tournament.

According to Wikipedia, “The [1941 Leningrad] championship continued to be played, in spite of tremendous difficulties, during the siege of Leningrad in the Second World War, though the tournament of 1941 could not be finished…”

Here is a discussion of chess in besieged Leningrad by Dmitry Oleinikov, Director of the Moscow Chess Museum, who begins by referring to chessmen printed on paper cubes for the city’s beleaguered citizens:

The spirit, enclosed in weak flesh-this is what these lightest, hollow inside, cardboard cubes, painted with red and black ink, remind of. This is the chess of besieged Leningrad.

Instead of the boards and figures that burned down in the stoves of the insatiable bourgeoisie in the terrible winter of 1941-1942, the Leningrad Industrial Complex launched the production of the most simple and cheap chess. And all because in the besieged city thousands of people played and wanted to play chess.

Just as the citizens of Leningrad continued to play chess through the siege, the city championship went on. Writes Oleinikov:

Already in November 1941, the strongest chess players of Leningrad (among those who were not evacuated or drafted into the active army) announced: “Today, in a difficult and tense situation in the city of Leningrad, we are opening the next chess championship. <…> We are in good spirits, and no blockade, no hardships can hinder us.”

The newspapers of December 1941 became smaller, appeared less frequently, and nevertheless found space for messages: “The unfinished games were played out in the chess championship of Leningrad. Before the fifth round, Novotelnov is ahead … Today the next round will take place in the N hospital “. In the hospital – because the chess players came to their spectators and fans, and the further, the more the chess proved its healing effect.

The siege lasted almost three years, and up to a million and a half Soviets died from it. Among them were many chess organizers and highly ranked players. Oleinikov continues:

The organizer of the tournament was Samuel Weinstein, an active figure in the Soviet chess movement from its very first years. The 1941 championship will be Weinstein’s last chess brainchild: he will die in that terrible winter. The blockade will take away many famous and not famous chess players from Leningrad. Among them are Vsevolod Rauser, a renowned theorist who proclaimed: “e2 – e4, and White wins!” composers brothers Kubbeli … On the way to evacuation, Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky will die under bombing; having already reached Perm, the master and author of popular books Ilya Rabinovich will die of exhaustion. Many young chess players of Leningrad, who were predicted to have great achievements before the war, will die at the front, and remain as candidates for the master… having already reached Perm, the master and author of popular books I.L. Rabinovich.

But despite the hunger and the cold, the hard labor and the death, organized competition went on. Oleinikov writes:

And yet, … participants [in the Leningrad Championship] recalled that even getting to the site of the tournament was not easy: they had to reckon not only with enemy shells, but also with police squads and military patrols that directed pedestrians to bomb shelters during shelling. 16-year-old Aron Reshko, the future foreman, and then the youngest participant in the 1943 and 1944 championships, was sent out of town for agricultural work and walked tens of kilometers every day to participate in the championship. One of the tournament participants, Vasily Sokov, spent the whole night on the eve of the next round on duty, extinguished seven incendiary bombs, and the next day he was offered to postpone the game. He replied: “At the front, they are fighting day and night, and there is no need to arrange a resort for me here!”

The conditions were abysmal:

They played to the accompaniment of exploding shells, bomb explosions and antiaircraft artillery shots; frozen over a difficult position, they forgot about the bomb shelter – even when one day the blast wave knocked out all the glass in the room! To maintain the strength of the participants – and to fight scurvy – they were given nettle soup and pine compote…

Surviving specimens of the set used in the 1941 Leningrad City Championship are exceedingly rare, but one is held in the collection of Steven Kong of Singapore.

The pieces incorporate the architecture and detail of the original mid-1930s BFII pieces, but for three aspects. Instead of the angular miter of the earliest versions, the miter of the 1941 Bishop is ovoid. Unlike the earliest miters, the 1941 miters lack cuts. And, finally, the 1941 Rook towers are carved with mortar work not found in the earlier versions.

The knights are exceptionally beautiful, and bear a striking resemblance to the Novgorod Knight of the 15th Century.

The set of the 1941 Leningrad Championship, held under the horrendous conditions of the Siege of Leningrad, was a fascinating evolution of the venerable Botvinnik-Flohr II design. Surviving examples of this beautiful and historic set are extremely rare.

The 13th USSR Championship was held in Moscow in May and June 1944 by which time tide of the Great Patriotic War had turned against the Nazi invaders. Mikhail Botvinnik won the tournament over a field of seventeen players. It was the first Championship played since 1941. Breaking from the practice of using Botvinnik-Flohr II pieces, which were heavily influenced by Modernist design concepts, the 1944 Championship pieces were much more traditionally Staunton in their design, an evolution of the Barrel Rook set we previously have examined.

Here are several photos of the 1944 event.

The pieces are very similar in structure to those of the Barrel Rook set, except for the angled walls of the Rooks, which are straight in the Barrel Rook set, and the smooth spine of the knight, which bears a toothed mane upon its spine. In addition, there is a faintly discernible shadow pattern on the side of the 1944 knight, which I believe to be the product of mane carvings on the side of the horse’s neck.

The following pieces are like those in the photographs from the 1944 Championship.

The pieces reject the concave and dendriformic stems so typical of sets of the late 1920s and the 1930s, and instead employ the long, narrow stems resembling neoclassical columns and in proportions like those found in Staunton pieces. As with Staunton pieces, the joint between the stems and the pedestals of the royals, clerics, and pawns are perpendicular; and the crowns and miters of the royals and clerics are connected by cylinders bordered top and bottom with distinct rings, which together with the pedestals comprise the “three collars” common to Staunton sets.

The design abstracts away the step-up base of Staunton sets, replacing the step with a carved ring which defines the boundary between base and stem, but, as in Soviet designs of the earlier two decades, maintains the curved flow from base to stem. The set also retains the Soviet CV structure of the knight’s torso, and the use of finials rather than crosses atop the kings, a practice that hearkens back to ancient Rus.

Although the bishop miters lack the typical Staunton cut, like Staunton pieces, the rook turrets bear clearly carved merlons and the queen’s coronet contains crenel cuts. The royals follow the Eastern European practice of opposite-colored finials.

The pieces came housed in a customary veneered Soviet board/box that is of better than average quality and larger than average 50 mm squares. Still, the pieces, with 100 mm kings, are more appropriate for at board with at least 55 mm squares.

The board bears a stamp indicating the manufacturer to be Artel Kultsport, with a Moscow address, and that the item is 1st Sort, or highest quality.

Unlike the Ladzinski and Adamski Kultsport stamps we examined in our review of the Barrel Rook set, this box does not contain a separate stamp indicating the item to be a chess board, or what type of chess board the item is. I interpret this as evidence that the stamp applies to the pieces as well as the board. At the same time, there is extrinsic evidence suggesting that the pieces were made by an entity other than Artel Kultsport.

Moscow collector Alexander Chelnokov believes this line of sets was produced by the Red Combine, located near Zvenigorod, roughly 65 km west of Moscow, whereas Artel Kultsport was located in central Moscow. Chelnokov administers a Facebook group titled Russian Chess Sets (Tsarist, Soviet, and Modern) that features his magnificent collection of Tsarist and Soviet sets, and which I heartily commend to your viewing. It is ironic that this rare instance of a relative abundance of information about the production of a set provides us conflicting data, but such is the enigma of Soviet chess sets.

Conclusion

The set used in the 1944 Soviet Championship continued to steer chess set design away from the Modernist elements of earlier Soviet sets and towards the incorporation of more traditionally Staunton elements. The source of production for the set remains a mystery despite an unusually large amount of relevant evidence.

The looming world war had its impact on Soviet Chess design. Sets began to appear without metal weights, as metals were reallocated to the production of instruments of war. And from a visual perspective, designs began to retreat from the Constructivist and Modernist influences of the late 1920s and 1930s, adopting more traditional Staunton elements, following a trend towards Neoclassicism we already have noted in Soviet architecture.

I use the term “Barrel Rook” to describe this set because of the barrel-like shape of its rooks, perhaps the set’s most notable visual attribute. The kings are 98 mm tall, a typical size for a tournament set, and the pieces are unweighted. Nevertheless, the pieces remain fairly stable because of the solid bases and conical bottom of the stems.

Gone are the sweeping concave stem curves of the Voronezh Pattern. But at the same time, so is the stepped up base characteristic of the Staunton design and found in the Late 1930s Grandmaster and the phenol resin Soviet Stauntons of the same period. Instead, the stem flows organically from the base in accordance with Soviet design precepts, the only demarcation a shallow turned ring.

The beautiful knights incorporate the typically Soviet CV structure of the back (C-shaped) and chest (V-shaped) and are nicely carved. Perhaps their most prominent feature are what Berlin collector and artist Porat Jacobson Chagall eyes, because they whimsically resemble those seen in so many of the Belarussian’s images of horses and other paintings.

The photographic record shows the set in use at high levels in what appears to be some time in the 1940s, but the date, location, and name of the event have as yet not been established.

The set probably was made by Artel Kultsport, though Moscow collector Alexander Chelnokov suggests Artel Sila may have been the maker. I infer the date and manufacturer from stamps included in the boxes of similar sets in the collections of Mike Ladzinski and Tom Adamski.

The top stamp from the Ladzinski set tells us that Artel Kultsport is the maker, with an address in Moscow. The next stamp identifies the item as Chess Board no 4-a, which according to Kyiv collector and dealer Mykhailo Kovalenko, may indicate squares of 4 cm. The second stamp also tells us that the item was inspected by Controller No. 1, who in the third stamp has indicated it to be of “1 Sort,” or first quality. The final stamp provides the year of manufacture to be 1941.

Tom Adamski’s set provides similar information. His set also originated at Artel Kultsport, and comprised or included Chess Board No. 3. Like Ladzinski’s it is of first quality and was produced in 1945. Many thanks to Mykhailo Kovalenko and Eduardo Bauza for their help in translating the stamps.

Even if the stamps apply only to the boards but not to the pieces found inside them, they are evidence as to when and where the pieces were produced, absent any evidence that they were not. This inference is strengthened by the fact that the pieces in the boxes are very similar, suggesting that both sets of pieces are of similar origin. If the pieces were placed in these boxes randomly, it is far more likely that these two examples would be different than as similar as they are.

Conclusion

The c. 1940 Barrel Rook set, characterized by its stout rooks and Chagall-eyed knights, was used at high levels of Soviet chess. Incorporating more elements of Staunton design than most Soviet sets of the late 1920s and 1930s, it was part of the general repudiation of the Constructivist and Modernist ideas that had helped shape them.