In Soviet times, the winged definition of an ancient game signed by the leader of the world proletariat could be seen in almost any editions of chess. We checked whether Vladimir Ilyich said that.

Among the publications where this phrase was associated with Lenin, magazines can be highlighted "Change" (1951), "Neva" (1965), "Science and Life" (1984), "Socialist work" (1987), books of famous chess figures - "Successes of Soviet chess culture" Yakova Rokhlin (1954), "Where is the king going" Viktor Henkin (1979), as well as an article of world champion Mikhail Botvinnik "Is the art of chess?" (1960). As noted Sources, the corresponding poster adorned almost all the chess clubs of the USSR. The writer and captain of the Odessa team of KVN Valery Khait assertedthat near the chess-step club in his hometown for many years there was a “improved” phrase: “Chess and checkers are gymnastics of the mind. Lenin. " But the portal diletant.media attributes This quote to another revolutionary figure - Felix Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky.

The beginning of the heyday of chess in the Soviet country was given during the life of Lenin. In 1920, during the civil war and universal devastation, an active participant in the assault on the Winter Palace Alexander Ilyin-Genevsky managed to organize All -Russian chess Olympiad With the participation of the future world champion Alekhin, then still a Soviet chess player. In 1924, after the death of Ilyich, the former Supreme Commander of the Red Army Nikolai Krylenko He founded the All-Union Chess and Seck Section, which he headed before his arrest and execution in 1938. Even before the war, it began to find out that Lenin was fond of huge quantities Sports, and these addictions in the future played an important role in justifying the need to develop each specific species.

However, Lenin had a special passion for chess. The leader of the leader Dmitry Ulyanov in his memoirs in detail Described Volodya’s fascination with the game when he was by a teenager and student. The future revolutionary even won the amateur tournament, among the participants of which was one of the strongest Russian chess players of that time - Andrey Hardin.

About another period of Lenin’s life - a link in the village of Shushenskoye - it is known that Ilyich himself Cut it out figures from birch bark, and then, according to one of letters N.K. Krupskaya, "from morning till night, fought in chess and ... won everyone, of course."

Well, one of the most famous references to the leader of the leader in literature is connected with the party, played in 1908 on Villa Kruppa on the Italian island of Capri, where Lenin arrived Set up At the invitation of Gorky. The rival of Vladimir Ilyich was another prominent Bolshevik - Alexander Bogdanov. The book of Istwan Oros is even dedicated to this party "Chess on the island", whose author admits that Lenin’s painful defeat could affect real policy and the further exclusion of Bogdanov from the Bolshevik center.

Bogdanov and Lenin play chess in the presence of Gorky

You can’t also mention the scandalous The appearance In 2009, at an auction in London, the paintings by Emma Leuvenstamm “Game of Chess: Lenin and Hitler - Vienna 1909”, allegedly written on the basis of a real meeting of two figures at the artist of the house. However, the picture was not sold then, and its whole story raises great doubts.

As for our phrase, if we try to find it in the multi -volume collections of Lenin's works or the memoirs of the close leader of the proletariat of the “chess - gymnastics of the mind”, then we will find ourselves with nothing. Not even suggesting the presence of an accurate quote a phrase from a magazine "Under the banner of Leninism" (1985): “As Dmitry Ilyich Ulyanov recalled, chess was for Lenin a kind of“ gymnastics of the mind ”” - he does not find confirmation; The leader of the leader did not write about anything like that. Then what is the matter?

The famous quotation researcher Konstantin Dushenko in his article “Gymnastics of the mind, or about the benefits of lies” WritesThat the corresponding slogan in the country of Soviets appeared in the 1950s-at first was anonymous, but 10-15 years later, for the sake of coming conviction, he began to be attributed to Lenin. Here Dushenko is mistaken, because in the aforementioned journal "Change" attribution happened Back in 1951. However, it should still be highlighted a little later by the mention of the quote in the book of Yakov Rokhlin "Successes of Soviet chess culture" (1954), since the figure of the author, a prominent popularizer of chess in the USSR, seems key in the history of quotes.

How It is said On the website of the Russian chess Federation, “trying to promote chess, Yakov Gerasimovich was not particularly shy in ways to achieve his goal. So, with his light hand, we had Leninist aphorism “Chess - Gymnastics of the Mind”, which could be seen on the wall of any chess club from Moscow to the very outskirts: it was repeatedly reproduced in all Soviet chess editions. Leninist words produced a magical action on officials of any rank, who did not even mean anything in chess: they helped to open new chess clubs, organize various competitions. However, you will not find such a statement either in the writings of Lenin or in the memoirs of contemporaries of the leader. ”

Indeed, the first more or less detailed description of the history of the appearance of the phrase appears only in 1980, in an article by the same Rochlin in the magazine "Chess in the USSR". In it, the author claims that Lenin pronounced these words at a meeting with the revolutionary Nikolai Podvoysky in October 1920, and many years later the revolutionary Panteleimon Lepeshinsky allegedly confirmed this opinion of Lenin in an interview with Rokhlin himself. However, the lack of such a story in other sources, including those related to the people mentioned, makes Rohlin simply composed a confirmation of that duck, one of the first authors (if not the first author) of which he became many years ago.

In the end, it should be noted that the phrase “gymnastics of the mind” during the time of Lenin was far from a new invention. In Germany, so since the end of the 18th century called Logic, mathematics and ancient languages, that is, the basis of classical gymnasium education. In tsarist Russia, the expression began to symbolize the cable, which was reflected in one of the poems Merezhkovsky. And already in Soviet times, the phrase “Mathematics is the gymnastics of the mind” similar to the “Leninist” phrase, supposedly Pronounced Another prominent communist Mikhail Kalinin played a certain role in the popularization of this discipline.

Thus, with a high degree of probability, it can be assumed that Vladimir Ilyich Lenin never pronounced the phrase "chess - gymnastics of the mind."