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“Bronstein was very nearly world champion. In 1951 he played a match that was drawn, and because he was the challenger, the titleholder Botvinnik kept the title. It was very controversial because Bronstein was one game ahead with two to play, and lost the penultimate game in rather strange circumstances. This was during the Stalinist period, and it was said that because he was distantly related to Trotsky, and his father had been in a gulag, the Soviet system didn’t want him to win. I don’t think he deliberately threw it, but he was under certain unusual pressures. Bronstein is a marvellous writer. He wrote the best books of the era, and this is by no means his only great book.” Read more...
Dominic Lawson, Journalist
