Viktor Korchnoi — chess with roots in the USSR
He was born in Leningrad in March 1931 and was a child in the city through the siege, which he survived and most of his neighbours did not. He became a Soviet master at twenty, an international grandmaster at twenty-five, and won the USSR championship four times between 1960 and 1970 - at a period when that title was the hardest in world chess to win, harder in most years than the world championship itself.
In 1974 he played Anatoly Karpov in the Candidates final and lost by a single game. When Bobby Fischer declined to defend his title, Karpov became world champion without playing a match, and the Soviet chess authorities settled on him as the man to support. Korchnoi, who was twenty years older, awkward, and publicly unwilling to pretend otherwise, found his foreign travel restricted and his stipend cut.
He was allowed out to the IBM tournament in Amsterdam in 1976, in part to demonstrate that the new champion had beaten a real opponent. He won it jointly with Tony Miles, asked Miles how to spell the phrase political asylum, and walked into a police station. He had already moved his chess library out of the country in two stages, on that trip and the previous year's visit to England. He was the first leading Soviet grandmaster to leave for good, and he was stateless until Switzerland gave him citizenship in 1980.
His first wife Bella and his son Igor were left behind, and were refused permission to follow for six years. Igor was imprisoned after attempting to emigrate. In 1982 Korchnoi went to Washington to lobby publicly, describing his wife and son as hostages of Soviet policy; they were allowed out later that year.
He played two world championship matches in that period. In 1978 at Baguio he came from behind to level the match at five games each and lost the last one. In 1981 at Merano he lost heavily. Soviet newspapers reported both without using his name, calling him the challenger or the opponent. The harassment only subsided when Moscow agreed to let Garry Kasparov play him in the 1983 Candidates.
He kept playing for another thirty years. He won the World Senior Championship in 2006 at seventy-five, stayed inside the world's top hundred into his seventies, and remained the most combative player of his generation, drawing fewer games than almost anyone at his level. He is generally reckoned the strongest player never to become world champion.
He said afterwards that he had defected over chess rather than politics - that what he wanted was to be a free man. He died in Switzerland in June 2016, aged eighty-five.
"Defected in the Netherlands, 1976; Switzerland from 1978, Swiss citizen 1980"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Leningrad (St. Pete)
He defected at Amsterdam in 1976, the first leading Soviet grandmaster to leave permanently, and was stateless until Switzerland naturalised him in 1980. His wife and son were refused exit for six years and his son was imprisoned after trying to emigrate; they joined him in 1982.
Born in Leningrad in 1931 and a child in the city throughout the siege. Four times champion of the USSR between 1960 and 1970 and a member of six gold-medal Soviet Olympiad teams.
Leningrad (St. Pete). At the time, this region was one of the fifteen republics of the Soviet Union.