Checkmate: russian chess, between education and revolution (1917-1924)

o xadrez russo, entre a educação e a revolução (1917-1924)

Abstract

The present article, initially developed as part of a monograph for the conclusion of the History Degree course, has as its main objective the analysis of the importance that chess, as a sport, had in the educational process of the first years of the October Revolution (1917-1924). To this end, we will proceed using the following methodologies: bibliographical review based on authors such as Nadezhda Krupskaya, Marisa Bittar, Amarílio Ferreira Junior, Anatoli Lunatcharsky, Anton Makarenko and István Mészáros; bibliographical translation of works not yet translated into Portuguese, by authors such as Alexander Kotov, Mikhail Yudovich and Michael Hudson; in addition to analyzing the Constitution of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic of 1918, with the aim of identifying and understanding excerpts from this document that can clarify the importance of education in the new insurgent society, as well as its construction and constant maintenance when developing the necessary socialist consciousness for the success of the Soviet enterprise. It is noted that not only socialist education, but the alliance between this new education and the game of chess, provided an important change in the nascent socialist society, giving rise and fundamental basis to the most successful period of chess throughout the USSR, during the period known as the “Cold War”.