For many years, chess players associated winning with the Soviet Union and afterward, with Russia. The Soviets had created a hegemony on chess and world champions – except for Cuba’s Jose Raul Capablanca and America’s Bobby Fischer – during the past century, were natives of the Soviet Union.
It was during the late 1950s that Fischer, at the age of 15, became a threat to the Soviets. If Fischer or Bent Larsen of Denmark were in a tournament, the Soviets were no longer automatically assured of sweeping it. These two players from the West began to threaten the Soviet monopoly.
