Шахматы
Chess
C1 · Advanced · non-fiction · 10 scenes · Premium story
An advanced non-fiction piece on chess in Russia. The game arrived from Persia along the Volga before it reached most of Europe, and the Russian names of the pieces still prove it: the vizier never became a queen, and the chariot became a boat. Three centuries of church bans that nobody obeyed, a state that decided in the 1920s to fund a game costing nothing but a board and a chair, Reykjavik in 1972, and then a machine that could not be beaten.
Characters
- Mikhail Botvinnik (Михаил Ботвинник) — The first Soviet world champion
- Boris Spassky (Борис Спасский) — World champion, 1969–1972
- Anatoly Karpov (Анатолий Карпов) — World champion, 1975–1985
- Garry Kasparov (Гарри Каспаров) — World champion, 1985–2000
Vocabulary from this story
- шахматы — chess
- доска — board
- фигура — piece
- пешка — pawn
- ферзь — queen (chess)
- ладья — rook
- король — king
- ход — move
- партия — game
- ничья — draw
- восток — the east
- путь — route