A match billed as “The Soviet Union Versus the Rest of the World”. Another Cold slogan? You may be partially correct to think so, but even while the communist and the capitalist camps were strongly opposing each other, there were some areas of life that were more or less independent from the political conflicts. Sport is one such area. You can argue with this of course: boycotting the Olympics, countries “medal counting”; but there still was one sport — chess — in which the contest between the Soviet Union and the rest of the world had no hidden motives — it was all about sport and nothing else. The number of Soviet players in the world-rating’s list of the best players was so great that the idea of arranging a “Match of the Century” became valid and well justified. Tal, Botvinnik, Spassky are only several amongst them.

There was no doubt that the ideological aspects of the event contributed much more to the excitement than any big names in the list of participants — but does it make sense to concentrate on this now? What really deserves our attention and what’s really important is the tournament itself, it’s participants and it’s history.