The 1924 Soviet Chess Match Where The Chess Pieces Were Real Soldiers and Horses

Let’s time trav­el back to Leningrad (aka St. Peters­burg) in 1924. That’s when an uncon­ven­tion­al chess match was played by Peter Romanovsky and Ilya Rabi­novich, two chess mas­ters of the day.

Appar­ent­ly, they called in their moves over the tele­phone. And then real-life chess pieces—in the form of human beings and horses—were moved across a huge chess­board cov­er­ing Palace Square. Mem­bers of the Sovi­et Union’s Red Army served as the black pieces; mem­bers of the Sovi­et navy were the white pieces. 8,000 onlook­ers watched the action unfold.

Accord­ing to this online forum for chess enthu­si­asts, the 5‑hour match “was an annu­al event, designed to pro­mote chess in the USSR.” The first such match was held in Smolen­sk in 1921, fol­lowed by match­es in Kerch in 1922, Omsk in 1923 and then St. Peters­burg in 1924. You can catch a glimpse of the match in the footage below.

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