Ludek Pachman

Keen Communist who dominated Czech chess

Ludek Pachman, chess player: born Bela pod Bezdezem, Czechoslovakia 11 May 1924; married; died Passau, Germany 6 March 2003

Chess players do not, in general, make very effective politicians. With its clear rules, all the pieces in the open, and the playing area limited to 64 squares, the game of chess demands a far more precise and concentrated logic than the real world. The grandmaster Ludek Pachman was an exception to this rule – a chess player whose life was shaped by his political beliefs.

Born in 1924, in Bela pod Bezdezem near the city of Mlada Boleslav in Czechoslovakia, he became his country's leading chess player, winning the national championship seven times between 1946 and 1966. During that period, world chess was dominated by the Soviet Union. The lunacy of a Stalinist Five-Year Plan for chess, combined with the genius of men such as Mikhail Botvinnik, Vassily Smyslov and David Bronstein, had lifted the Russians to a level that could only be envied by the rest of the world. Pachman, however, was one of the handful of grandmasters who was able to live with the best Soviet players.

With a deep understanding of chess strategy and a disciplined, professional approach to the game, Pachman displayed ruthlessly efficiency in disposing of opponents below the highest level. He won three European Zonal tournaments in the world championship qualifying cycle. At the Interzonal stage, when he was competing against the Russians, Pachman's results were consistently good rather than spectacular.

His tournament results outside the world championship include many first places in minor events, but perhaps his best achievement was at Havana 1963, where he shared second place with the Soviet grandmasters Mikhail Tal and Yefim Geller, half a point behind Viktor Korchnoi.

In his home country, Pachman dominated the chess scene. Apart from being their best player, he took a leading role in the organisation of chess in Czechoslovakia. A fervent supporter of Communism since his student days, he gained the approval of the sports authorities and must have been instrumental in securing good state support for chess. His strong political beliefs and good connections, however, sometimes led to severely strained relations with compatriots. At least one other leading Czech player fled the country for Western Europe for fear of Pachman's reporting him for airing unacceptable political views.

That all changed with the Prague Spring of 1968. When the Soviet Union invaded to overthrow Alexander Dubcek, Pachman re- examined his political beliefs and completely reversed his opinions. From being an ardent supporter of Communism, he became a fervent anti-Communist. He even converted to Christianity. Determined to make his new views be heard, he edited an underground newspaper. In the early months of the Russian occupation, Pachman's position as a folk hero and leader of the protest movement was perhaps surpassed only by the Olympic champion Emil Zátopek.

Unsurprisingly, this led to Pachman's arrest. He was twice imprisoned in 1969 and 1970, and on one occasion was even reduced to registering his desperate protest by throwing himself headfirst on to a concrete floor from his prison bed. He was finally allowed – indeed encouraged – to emigrate to West Germany in 1972 and it was in his new homeland that he wrote his political autobiography Checkmate in Prague (1975).

In Germany, Pachman found himself welcomed on two fronts. In chess, he was quickly incorporated into the West German team and won their national championship in 1978. Only when he started criticising his fellow team members for their lack of professionalism did he start to develop a lack of popularity similar to that he had enjoyed in Czechoslovakia.

On the political front, however, the anti-Communists in Germany eagerly embraced Pachman as a hero. This was in no small part due to the efforts of the Soviet chess authorities to freeze him out of the world game. From 1972 to 1976, Pachman was the subject of a boycott by Russian players. It was never official, of course, but every tournament organiser knew that, if Pachman (or Pachmann as he was now spelling his name in the German fashion) was invited to their event, the Russians would refuse to take part.

In 1976, however, Pachman forced a change of policy. By qualifying, yet again, for the Interzonal stage of the world championship, he was able to face the Russians with a stark choice: play me, or give up your world-title hopes. The Russians played. Sadly, Pachman finished in last place in the Interzonal, but the important victory had been won.

Besides his playing career and incursions into politics, Pachman was the author of around 80 chess books, including the three-volume Complete Chess Strategy and a two-volume Modern Chess Tactics, which established him as one of the game's clearest thinkers.

William Hartston