Boris Spassky, Soviet chess champion and Cold War symbol, dies at 88. His 1972 match against Bobby Fischer, the American chess star, became known as the “Match of the Century.” ...

Boris Spassky, a Soviet-era world chess champion who lost his title to American Bobby Fischer in a legendary 1972 match that became a proxy for Cold War rivalries, died Thursday in Moscow. He was 88.

This is a Russian chess set, made in 1922-23, when the Russian Revolution was new. Led by Lenin and Trotsky, the Bolsheviks had lately taken over Russia, ...