A good post from Tim.
Tim Harding wrote:While we are on propaganda, I believe that the Ukrainians finally intend to bring out something new on Bogatyrchuk (Bohatirchuk when he was in Canada) which may include an English translation of his notorious memoir which has up to now only been available in English as a brief abstract. There was a previous attempt to publish this in Canada or the USA which came to nothing many years ago.
The first two Russian language volumes have recently been published. They are largely devoted to chess. The third, which will be far and away the hardest, will deal with Bohatirchuk's politics and radiology. Bohatirchuk was considered world class in radiology, having won the
Barclay Medal in 1955. The notoriety, as Tim hints, relates to the politics. I am hopeful of receiving copies shortly. A friend of mine already has the first two volumes, he has greatly enjoyed what he's seen.
Chess historian Sergey Voronkov, who lives in Moscow and is the author of the "Zhivago of Russian Chess", as the books are titled, has received a great deal of help from many people, including Yakov Zusmanovich (he has done an awful lot of chasing), a Muscovite now resident in California. Sergey was encouraged by Bohatirchuk's daughter, the late Dr Tamara Fyodorovna Eletskaya. She wanted an anti-Soviet Russian, which is certainly true of Sergey, to write the biography. Sergey was given a lot of material by Dr Eletskaya, including private correspondence, photographs and sundry documentation. It's possible that Tim's source was aware that Sergey was in Kyiv in July, hence the suggestion that the biography is of Ukrainian origin, it's not. Both Sergey and Yakov have devoted years to this work.
Incidentally, Sergey co-authored the
Russians verses Fischer. I like this book, but, given I could be accused of partiality, I'll leave it to others to express a more considered opinion.
From memory, one émigré wrote that it's not certain whether Russian or Ukrainian was Bohatirchuk's mother tongue. I suspect the former. If so, then his family in Ukraine would ordinarily have used Bogatyrchuk (there being no "h" in Russian). However, given he was Ukrainian, Bohatirchuk is the neutral term. He certainly envisaged a future for Ukraine as being a part of Russia. Bearing in mind the sensitivity of this topic, I don't propose to discuss this here.
I know that Sergey and Yakov are considering an English translation. The difficulty is finding a translator who understands chess, both its history and how to play, in a sense its culture, and who also has a good knowledge of Russian and Ukrainian history. I don't know how technical Sergey is going to be when it comes to discussing the radiology, that potentially would make the translation harder still. ("To write about Fyodor Parfyonovich as first of all a chess player is, in my opinion, the equivalent to writing about Mikhail Yuryevich Lermontov as primarily a painter, or Leonard da Vinci as an engineer" - Roman Dneprov {1924 – 1995}, real name Rurik Dudin, was active in the post-WWII Vlasovite movement.) Note, too, that an English edition is more likely to appeal in Canada than elsewhere in the Anglophone world, for that was where Bohatirchuk eventually settled (an ancient joke runs that Ukraine is the most widespread country in the world. Its rulers are in Moscow, its best men in Siberia and its churches ... in Canada). I can't envisage many copies being sold in the West, which would undermine its commercial potential (the two existing Russian texts already total more than 900 pages).
To give the reader an idea of some of the difficulties facing the author. After the Nazis occupied Kyiv in September 1941, Bahazii became the mayor. He was from the Melnykite wing of the OUN, the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists, that wing was wiped out by the rival Banderites later in the war. Bahazii was executed by the Nazis in February 1942. As an ethnic Russian, Sergey will be unable to approach Ukrainian nationalist organisations directly with much prospect of success. (To illustrate this, one reason the nationalists never obtained much purchase amongst Dnieper Ukrainians was due to the intense nationalist hatred of Russians.) The interest in Bahazii is because the Melnykites provided the seed money for the Red Cross organisation that Bohatirchuk was persuaded to head. If any reader can provide additional, reliable information about Bahazii and similar topics, I'm fairly confident that Sergey would be delighted to hear from them. Nationalism is a minefield in eastern Europe, and that goes for many historians, academic or otherwise.
Incidentally, Sergey is a friend of Averbakh's, having worked with him for years. They are still in contact. My belief is that the 91 year old Averbakh's mind is as clear as a bell. Averbakh could have revealed more in his autobiography, however, my impression is that he's innately cautious (even so, it's come out that he was a childhood friend of Romanov, the post-war chief of the NTS, an émigré organisation), unlike Sergey; furthermore, given the enduring popularity of Stalin (see, for instance, Anton Antonov-Ovseyenko's obituary in the print edition of Thursday's
Daily Telegraph, available online
here), going too far would not necessarily appeal to a Russian audience.
Some of the stories about Soviet chess are absurd, such as Botvinnik defying Stalin. Averbakh was quite right to ignore such.
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<edit>The noun "biography" has been changed to "autobiography", to eliminate a potential misunderstanding.</edit>