{"id":318745,"date":"2021-09-20T11:59:04","date_gmt":"2021-09-20T11:59:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/09\/netflix-the-queens-gambit-soviet-chess-grandmaster-nona-gaprindashvili-sue-lawsuit-champion\/"},"modified":"2021-09-20T12:23:39","modified_gmt":"2021-09-20T12:23:39","slug":"the-queens-gambit-created-a-fictional-female-chess-grandmaster-the-soviet-union-created-dozens-of-real-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2021\/09\/20\/the-queens-gambit-created-a-fictional-female-chess-grandmaster-the-soviet-union-created-dozens-of-real-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"<cite>The Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/cite> Created a Fictional Female Chess Grandmaster. The Soviet Union Created Dozens of Real Ones."},"content":{"rendered":"\n  \n\n\n\n<h3>Soviet chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili has announced that she is suing Netflix for belittling her achievements in <cite>The Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/cite>. Her career shows we don\u2019t need fictional rags-to-riches stories but welfare states that allow us to realize our true potential.<\/h3>\n<hr\/>\n\n<figure>\n  <img alt src=\"https:\/\/images.jacobinmag.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/09\/20115437\/2560px-Hoogovenschaaktoernooi_nr_34a_Russin_Gaprindashvili_heeft_leiding_bij_dames_Bestanddeelnr_927-7230-900x594.jpeg\"\/>\n  <figcaption>\n    Soviet Georgian champion Nona Gaprindashvili, who is suing Netflix, plays chess in 1975. (Hans Peters \/ Anefo)\n  <\/figcaption>   \n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n  \n  <p>Last week the Soviet Georgian chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili <a href=\"https:\/\/www.chess.com\/news\/view\/nona-gaprindashvili-sues-netflix-the-queens-gambit\">announced that she is suing Netflix<\/a>, claiming that the platform\u2019s wildly popular miniseries <a href=\"https:\/\/www.jacobinmag.com\/2021\/02\/queens-gambit-anti-communism-soviet-union\"><em>The Queen&#8217;s Gambit<\/em><\/a> belittles and undermines her achievements. In one of the later episodes, during a chess tournament held in the USSR, the narrator explains how the only unusual thing about the show\u2019s main character, Beth Harmon, a fictionalized American chess player,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>really, is her sex. And even that\u2019s not unique in Russia. There\u2019s Nona Gaprindashvili, but she\u2019s the female world champion and has never faced men.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>While the series kept most of the characters fictional, it leaves in Nona\u2019s real name and even changed the line from the book, which was adapted for the series. The reason this line sparked a lawsuit is simple \u2014 Gaprindashvili did face dozens of men during her decorated career, was awarded the International Chess Federation\u2019s (FIDE) first woman grandmaster title, and became Women\u2019s World Champion. The series erases not only Nona\u2019s incredible achievements but those of women in the USSR more widely \u2014 in the meantime, blanketly dismissing this multiethnic country as all so many \u201cRussians.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In truth, the USSR enjoyed a decades-long reign in the world of chess. There was a particular golden age for Soviet Georgian women, with the small Caucasus republic producing world champions for some thirty years. The first FIDE grandmaster title was given to Nona Gaprindashvili, and the second grandmaster title given was also to a Soviet Georgian, Maia Chiburdanidze. Nona held on to the Women\u2019s Championship for sixteen years. Maia held on to it for fourteen years and, until 2010, remained the youngest player to hold this accolade. These were the second- and third-longest reigns in the history of international women\u2019s chess; the woman who held the title for longest, Vera Menchik, was also from the USSR. For comparison\u2019s sake, there are only thirty-nine women out of 1,600 grandmasters, and the United States didn\u2019t have any women grandmasters until 2013. Most of the winners to this day are from either the USSR, ex-communist countries (including others from Georgia), or latter-day China.<\/p>\n<p>So, while Soviet women were winning tournaments on the global stage, the best the United States could do was produce a short <em>Netflix<\/em> series about a fictitious woman who beats the top men chess players. While in fiction there are no limitations to the writer\u2019s imagination, in the real world the Soviet Georgian women\u2019s triumphs owed not to chance but to effective social policies that cleared barriers from their path.<\/p>\n\n  \n\n    \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Talent Realized<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>The evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould once famously grasped the importance of this distinction, commenting that<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein&#8217;s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The present writer (full disclosure: I am Georgian) knows that the USSR was far from perfect. But it also gave people working in factories and fields better working conditions, as well as a welter of clubs and centers to discover their talents. This provided what the liberals love to promise but never create \u2014 \u201can equal playing field.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--left\"><q>While Soviet women were winning tournaments on the global stage, the best the US could do was produce a short <em>Netflix<\/em> series about a fictitious woman who beats the top men chess players.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p><em>The<\/em> <em>Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em> may be compelling TV, but ultimately it\u2019s still interested in \u201cEinstein\u2019s brain.\u201d Beth triumphs in the show because of her incredible genius. Her marvelous God-given talent is often referred to in the show despite severe hardships like having a dead mother, living in an orphanage, and not owning a chess set. But what\u2019s even worse is that the world of <em>The Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em> explicitly undercuts the real woman, Nona (and others like her), who had both the brains and the social, economic, and moral support to help her become the world\u2019s best player. There is a reason one is real and the other one is fiction.<\/p>\n<p>After the Russian Revolution in 1917, Georgia\u2019s Social Democrats expropriated the most magnificent palace in Tiflis (Georgia\u2019s capital, now called Tbilisi) on the city\u2019s main thoroughfare, Golovinskii Prospect. The palace had been built in the nineteenth century by the tsarist authorities and functioned as imperial Russia\u2019s seat of power in the Caucasus up until 1917. From 1921 to 1937, it was the seat of Soviet Georgia\u2019s government, before it was transformed into the Pioneer Palace for children. Hence this building went from being the seat of imperial Russian power and subjugation in the Caucasus to producing the world\u2019s most extraordinary scientists, sportsmen, artists, and chess grandmasters.\u00a0More such palaces were built across Soviet Georgia and elsewhere.<\/p>\n<p>The Youth Palace, as it is now called, today has a display of its past and present students. There is a whole room devoted to chess, with a large set donated by Nona Gaprindashvili herself. The palace is filled with minerals, rocks, and artifacts extracted by kids, and photos of bygone excursions. Then there are artworks and sculptures and films made by the former students. Most of the works displayed are from the USSR, but there are more recent ones, too. When I commented how the Soviet figurines looked so professional, my guide told me that\u2019s because they had expensive materials to work with back then. The \u201ctalent is the same, the materials are just less now.\u201d I inquire more about what they offer now. She tells me they have a fraction of the programs they used to offer \u2014 and summer camps or trips haven\u2019t been happening for a while. As she talks, I look at the crumbling, stained walls.<\/p>\n<p>Since the release of <em>The Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em>, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.calvertjournal.com\/features\/show\/12351\/real-life-queens-gambit-nona-gaprindashvili-georgian-women-chess-beth-harmon-netflix\">a couple of articles<\/a> appeared drawing connections with the career of Nona Gaprindashvili and Georgian women\u2019s dominance in Soviet chess. Yet, with a typical glib erasure of the Soviet past, the story is told starting in the twelfth century, when \u201cGeorgian\u201d brides were given chess sets as a dowry. But the noble origins of these brides are never discussed. Throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, chess existed, just as theater, books, and seaside resort vacations existed \u2014 but these luxuries were reserved for the nobles and the burgeoning capitalist class in the cities, not for the serfs or workers who made up most of the population.<\/p>\n<p>It was a later period \u2014 when the Soviet Union provided the material, time, places, and expertise for chess to take off en masse among the working class \u2014 that the platform for these women\u2019s success was created. There was an inversion of the hierarchy of who was at the top both morally and politically \u2014 no longer the upper classes and clergy but the working classes. The broad access to art and sport defined Soviet social development from the very beginning. Lenin was himself concerned with these trends in the youth. As he wrote to Clara Zetkin,<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Young people, particularly, need the joy and force of life. Healthy sport, swimming, racing, walking, bodily exercises of every kind, and many-sided intellectual interests. Learning, studying, inquiry, as far as possible in common.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Rags to Riches<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>So, between Netflix and the USSR, we have two contrasting ideas of class politics: in the first, fictional case, a working-class girl \u201cmakes it big\u201d through hard work against the odds and even against elite opposition; in Soviet historical reality, a platform is provided so that it doesn\u2019t have to be an individual struggle.<\/p>\n<p>This contrast is fundamental to the feel-good story <em>The<\/em> <em>Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em> wants to tell. The narrative begins with the fictional Beth moving to a Christian orphanage, where she begs a reluctant janitor in a basement to let her play chess, against his initial resistance owing to her gender. When this working-class man realizes the young girl has talent, he tries to connect her to someone who can develop her skills as a player. But Beth is addicted to psychotropic drugs, with the orphanages routinely administering the children pills to keep them well-behaved.\u00a0As punishment, the headmistress \u2014 already uncomfortable with Beth\u2019s lack of ladylike manners \u2014 forbids her from playing chess for what looks like the next six years of her stay.<\/p>\n<p>When Beth is finally adopted, her mother doesn\u2019t support her at first \u2014 it\u2019s the working-class janitor who sends her the entrance fee for her first proper chess tournament. The mother only starts supporting her when she realizes she\u2019s broke and needs her to make money.<\/p>\n<p>This fictional story contrasts starkly with the history of a real-life woman player like Nona Gaprindashvili. Growing up in Soviet Georgia, chess was widespread and common. And there\u2019s a reason: a concerted effort by the Soviet state to disseminate sports and arts widely. Her brothers and she played all the time, and one day her brother asked her to join him in a tournament because they were missing a girl for the team.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"pq pq--right\"><q>The very things that the bourgeoisie enjoyed in imperial Russia were given to the proletariat to be enjoyed as well.<\/q><\/aside>\n<p>After she showed great talent, she was begged by renowned chess master Vakhtang Karsadze to come to Tbilisi, where he trained her at the Pioneer Palace. She went on to win the Women\u2019s World Chess Championship in 1961, only losing her title to the other leading Soviet Georgian player, Maia Chiburdanidze, in 1978. Nona\u2019s success and a huge concentration of state resources inspired many women to go into chess. Yes, there was sexism in the Soviet Union, and from early on Nona had to navigate problems like many men refusing to honorably resign in the face of impending defeat, forcing her to play longer. But unlike the success of her Netflix counterpart, Beth, hers wasn\u2019t the stuff of fiction.<\/p>\n\n        \n      \n        <hr\/>\n        <h2>Cold War Tropes<\/h2>\n        \n          <p>There are clear swipes at the Soviet Union and its citizens (referred to as\u00a0Russians) in <em>The<\/em> <em>Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em>, like when we hear how \u201cbureaucratically\u201d the Soviet grandmaster played against Beth when he defeated her the first time. There\u2019s also an embarrassing lack of attention to detail \u2014 like when the young\u00a0Russian player introduces himself as \u201cJiorgi,\u201d pronounced with a <em>j<\/em> sound when it should\u2019ve been a hard <em>g<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>That said, there is <em>some<\/em> divergence from braindead Hollywood anti-communism \u2014 including a discussion about the \u201cRussians\u201d being good at chess because \u201cthey work as a team, unlike individualist Americans.\u201d Ultimately, Beth winning is the work of a collective of chess masters helping her out. She is not some typical bourgeois girl \u2014 she has suffered tragically. Her success also rests on a janitor, a chess player turned grocer, and a black woman who was an orphan with her who didn\u2019t get adopted and wasn\u2019t a prodigy. All of this helps establish moral authority when Beth defeats her Soviet opponent.<\/p>\n<p>The class politics, founded on an idealization of making it from rags to riches, also sit rather oddly with some of the Cold War tropes at work here. Beth is constantly spending time trying to find funds to attend tournaments, especially the one in Moscow. Only an anti-communist church organization is willing to send her there in exchange for publicly announcing her Christian beliefs and anti-communism, whereas the State Department won\u2019t fund her but wants to surveil her.<\/p>\n<p>In contrast, the Soviet chess players didn\u2019t have to fundraise. They are portrayed as a society of suit-wearing poshos honing their craft in gorgeous buildings \u2014 we are also told that these players had been learning since they were four, thus framing chess as an elite pastime. This is counterposed to an American queer orphan who had been fighting her whole life to get to that table. The show thus weaponizes disenfranchised identities in the United States to cast the Soviet players as having had it easy.<\/p>\n<p>In a way, they did, but only insofar as the awesome surroundings put on display here reflect the original experiment in \u201cluxury communism.\u201d Far from Soviet players being aristocratic, here the very things that the bourgeoisie enjoyed in imperial Russia were given to the proletariat to be enjoyed as well. For the USSR also insisted on the importance of bringing high culture to the masses \u2014 including opera, ballet, literature, sports, health resorts, chess, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>One of the American chess players comments to Beth, \u201cYou should see where the Russians play, while we have to play in this small college.\u201d Well, there was a reason for that. Those beautiful buildings used for chess were either palaces expropriated from the nobility or newly built halls.<\/p>\n<p>In the final scene, the show tells us the real workers are outside playing chess in the streets \u2014 and the final episode even ends with Beth escaping her State Department chaperone to play with them. So, it seems that she is quitting the Cold War, and joining chess players outside who seem a lot like her janitor friend, Shaibel.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, if Beth is unwilling to be part of the Cold War, in many ways the entire show perpetuates it. All these details set up the moral authority of the American girl over the Soviets. Though the barbs against the Soviet Union are usually more or less subtle, the swipe at Nona Gaprindashvili as being a woman chess player who never faced men was not. Once again, the real progress for women in the Soviet Union is simply ignored or derided in favor of \u201cgirlboss\u201d feminism from the United States. Tellingly, there are no Russian or Georgian women in the show, and even the actress who plays Nona Gaprindashvili is barely visible. For <em>The<\/em> <em>Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em>, the glamorous American Beth is the first woman \u201cto beat the Russians at their own game.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>We need more than fake histories that absolve the system and lay blame on individuals\u2019 gumption or lack of it. Women and working people generally need real social programs and policies that value them and allow them to realize their talents. The makers of <em>The Queen\u2019s Gambit<\/em> claim that interest in chess has gone up after the series debuted \u2014 highlighting the show\u2019s influence. Yet a documentary on Soviet Georgian women chess players that appeared around the same time, <em>Glory to the Queen<\/em>, won\u2019t have a fraction of the views Netflix has.<\/p>\n<p>It is distressing that when most people think of trailblazing woman chess players, they\u2019ll think of fictional Beth \u2014 and never know of Nona Gaprindashvili or Maia Chiburdanidze, or the fact they, along with two other Georgian chess players, were called Druzina, meaning \u201ccombat unit.\u201d Such viewers will know little of the social platforms that gave women a chance to succeed, that didn\u2019t just rely on them battling against the odds. We can only hope Nona Gaprindashvili wins her lawsuit against Netflix \u2014 and puts that money toward supporting more women like her.<\/p>\n\n        \n           \n    \n\n   \n  <hr\/>\n  \n\n\n<p class=\"syndicated-attribution\">This post was originally published on <a href=\"https:\/\/jacobinmag.com\/2021\/09\/netflix-the-queens-gambit-soviet-chess-grandmaster-nona-gaprindashvili-sue-lawsuit-champion\/\">Jacobin<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last week the Soviet Georgian chess grandmaster Nona Gaprindashvili announced that she is suing Netflix, claiming that the platform\u2019s wildly popular miniseries The Queen\u2019s Gambit belittles and undermines her achievements. In one of the later episodes, during a chess tournament held in the USSR, the narrator explains how the only unusual thing about the show\u2019s [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2031,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318745"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2031"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318745"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":319050,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318745\/revisions\/319050"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}