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The grandmaster was an “independent spirit and true chess artist,” who was “the first genuinely universal player” and “not an opening specialist, but he excelled in complex and dynamic middlegame positions, where he was in his element,” according to the federation, FIDE, which regulates international chess competitions.
The 1972 championship against Fischer was “one of the most iconic matches in chess history,” according to FIDE, and “a symbol of rivalry between the United States and Soviet Union during the Cold War.”
Fischer’s victory “propelled chess into the mass media spotlight,” it added.
The American grandmaster was Jewish, although he later developed a penchant for antisemitic and anti-American comments. Spassky’s background is murkier. According to a 1992 Washington Post article, “Fischer’s mother, Regina, is Jewish, which makes him Jewish under Jewish law—automatically eligible for Israeli citizenship, for example” and “Spassky is also the son of a Jewish mother.”
Encyclopaedia Judaica also reported that Spassky’s mother was Jewish, as did books ranging from The Jewish World in Stamps (2002) to The Jewish Quiz Book (1979), although the latter incorrectly identifies Fischer’s father but not his mother as Jewish.
But David Edmonds and John Eidinow write in the 2004 book Bobby Fischer Goes to War that “Spassky has been widely described as half-Jewish. He told the present authors that there was no truth in this; he was mystified as to how it came to be reported.”
Whether Spassky was Jewish, he sparked outrage in Russia when he signed a petition “that demands the country’s state prosecutor bans a number of Jewish organizations,” the Independent reported.
“Spassky was among 5,000 Russians who put their name to a letter calling for a ban on all religious and national groups acting on the principles of the Shulchan Aruch, a repository of Jewish law originally written in the 1560s,” the paper reported on April 10, 2005. “The ‘Letter of 5,000,’ sent three weeks ago, branded Judaism ‘anti-Christian and inhumane’ and accused believers of ‘committing ritual murders.’” (The Jewish Press called him an “infamous Jewish antisemite.”)
The letter Spassky signed also referred to a “hidden campaign of genocide against the Russian people and their traditional society and values” and “was backed with quotes from antisemitic literature from the 19th century,” the Independent reported.
He “tried to distance himself from the campaign” shortly after signing the letter, per the paper. “He did not deny that he had signed it but said: ‘The appearance of my name was a mistake. As a ‘Chess King,’ I have always tried to fortify and unite the multinational kingdom of chess, and not to cause division within it. I will remain faithful to that principle in my old age.”
The half-Jewish Russian grandmaster and former world champion Garry Kasparov, a vocal supporter of Israel and critic of Russian President Vladimir Putin, posted about Spassky’s death.
“Boris was never above befriending and mentoring the next generation, especially those of us who, like him, didn’t fit comfortably into the Soviet machine. (He emigrated to France in 1976.),” Kasparov wrote. “It was a pleasure to tell my stories and those of others about him in the third volume of My Great Predecessors.”
“His rise as a prodigy, conquest of the crown against the invincible Petrosian on the second attempt and decades of elite play are too often lost in the shadow of his dramatic title loss to Bobby Fischer in 1972 and the circus Fischer turned it into,” Kasparov added. “But Spassky always wanted to play, and he handled the situation with impressive dignity. While his chess justified the ‘universal’ label that frequently follows his name, his aggressive gambiteering style produced countless masterpieces.”
