White King and Red Queen is the story of chess, and how it was inexorably connected to the rise and fall of Soviet Communism. Daniel Johnson's landmark book begins with the early days of revolutionary activity in central Europe, when the chessboard was the province of exiled intellectuals and games were confined to coffee houses. When the Bolsheviks moved to the Kremlin after the 1917 revolution, they took chess with them. Although Lenin himself was a keen player, it was Nikolai Krylenko, creator of the Red Army, who persuaded the Kremlin to adopt chess as a symbol of Soviet power. From then on, competitors were obliged to play for the state, or risk imprisonment and exile.
