Is this Jacobin article really trying to make the claim that the USSR’s “welfare state” allowed people to reach their potential? And that the evidence is seen in chess players that didn’t have to fund raise and could live off the state to focus on their hobby? I get that a TV show may not accurately reflect real life, but this isn’t a convincing argument.
This is well known, the USSR had a network of chess clubs in "Pioneer Palaces", where kids would learn and practice chess, promising young players would be identified and given extra training, etc. No you didn't get to live off the state if you were playing at the hobbyist level, but if you were a strong master or grandmaster you could get an allowance and in some cases live and train off of it instead of having to scrape tournament winnings. So it was easier to become a full time player in the USSR than in the West.
It was not an opulent living by any means, and tournament prizes were quite low. When Spassky won the World Champion from Petrosian in 1966 he got something like $1400 for winning it. But it didn't have to be bigger, because both of them were getting those allowances to pay their bills with. Bobby Fischer was the one who pounded the table until prize money and tournament conditions became better pretty much everywhere. Kasparov called Fischer the first real chess professional. Even ex-Soviet players who thought of Fischer as a terrible person were grateful to him for his making those improvements happen.
My favorite chess movie is a super-low-budget youtube biodoc about Soviet IM and Russian champion Rashid Nezhmedtinov, who was mostly active in the 1950s and 1960s or so. It is in 3 parts of about 10 minutes each and gives an interesting picture of life under that system:
In Russian culture, interest in math and engineering is emphasized from a young age across both sexes. This continues today, and has nothing do with the political system.
