“From apolitical amateurism to conscious subordination to the tasks of socialist reconstruction”: the development of chess periodicals in the USSR in the 1920s

Section: History of Journalism

This article examines the typological transformation of specialized chess press in the Soviet Union during the 1920s as an integral part of the physical culture and sports print media system of that period under the influence of key factors such as politicization, ideological orientation of the chess sphere, and centralization of publishing processes. The main stages and patterns of its development are identified, along with the reasons for changes and circumstances surrounding them, as well as the leading figures involved in chess journalism. Based on a comparative analysis of two primary groups of sources – publications from chess magazines of the 1920s and archival documents from the State Archive of the Russian Federation – the process is traced by which these publications evolved from narrowly specialized journals focused on intellectual leisure for a limited audience of chess enthusiasts into tools for engaging broad masses of athletes in cultural, political, and socio-economic state-building efforts.

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To cite this article: Alekseev K. A., Silantev K. V. (2025) «Ot apolitichnogo lyubitel’stva k soznatel’nomu podchineniyu zadacham sotsialisticheskoy rekonstruktsii»: razvitie shakhmatnoy periodiki v SSSR v 1920-e gg. [“From apolitical amateurism to conscious subordination to the tasks of socialist reconstruction”: the development of chess periodicals in the USSR in the 1920s]. Vestnik Moskovskogo Universiteta. Seriya 10. Zhurnalistika 6: 163–194. DOI: 10.55959/msu.vestnik. journ.6.2025.163194