1988. Young participants in an open-air chess festival in Moscow.
Igor Utkin, Alexander Yakovlev/TASSNormally a quite exclusive club, chess is in the spotlight this November as Russia's leading grandmaster Sergey Karyakin strives to bring the chess crown back to Russia as he competes in New York at the World Chess Championship with the reigning champion Magnus Carlsen of Norway. But irrespective of the outcome of the battle, chess will still be played at the grassroots level as it was before. // 1890s. A chess game at Duke Trubetskoy’s mansion at Menshovo (65 km south of Moscow). The mansion, owned by one of Russia's most prominent gentry families, was destroyed after the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.
Multimedia Art Museum Moscow / Moscow House of Photography1914-1918. Two men play chess in a wooden country house.
Multimedia Art Museum Moscow / Moscow House of Photography1937. A chess club evening at the House of Steelworkers in Magnitogorsk, 1700km south-east of Moscow.
Multimedia Art Museum Moscow / Moscow House of Photography1963-1964. Moscow. Students play pocket chess between classes.
Multimedia Art Museum Moscow / Moscow House of Photography1972. Sakhalin Region, Russian Far East. Sailors relax playing chess on a rare day off.
Multimedia Art Museum Moscow / Moscow House of Photography1927. An outdoor chess corner at the Maynaki health resort in Yevpatoria, Crimea.
RIA Novosti1964. A women analyzes a chess game during a TV show.
TASS1973. Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov takes a look at Leo Tolstoy's chess table in the writer's mansion at Yasnaya Polyana, 200 km south of Moscow.
Vladimir Savostyanov/TASS1973. Passengers on board a cruise from Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to New York relax on the top deck of the ship.
Alexander Katkov/TASS1977. A collective farm in present-day Turkmenistan. Peasant Khidyr Orusov sits at the chessboard during a local chess tournament
Vladimir Zlenko/TASS1985. Soviet Army soldiers deployed in Afghanistan during the Soviet-Afghan War play chess at their camp in Nangarhar Province.
V.Kiselev/RIA Novosti1990. A patient of Moscow Infectious Disease Clinic №2 pictured in his ward.
Valery Khristoforov/TASSSubscribe
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