From Stalin/Krylenko to MAGA: Politicizing the Nonpolitical Realms of Chess and Science Soviet Chess : By 1929 tensions were rising in the top levels of organized tournament chess between mostly old school, pre-revolutionary chess players, organizers and journalists asserting that chess was a form of art that existed separate from politics. Indeed, chess was viewed this way by one well-known and respected journalist/magazine publisher N. I. Grekov, owner and publisher of the chess magazine Shakhmaty. Unfortunately for Grekov and those like him, chess organization in the Soviet Union had come under the bureaucratic control of Deputy Soviet State Prosecutor Nikolai Krylenko. The man who would stage Stalin’s initial “show” trials was determined to develop and use chess as a political tool of the Soviet state. Because Grekov was so highly respected in the Russian/Soviet chess community and Soviet political power was still undergoing a process of consolidation,...