Chess history trivia

[Kevin Thurlow]

Steel - as a tribute to Stalin?

[MJMcCready]

No.

[MJMcCready]

Socialist ones? Bad joke.

First actual guess: engineering workers?

Nope.

[MJMcCready]

Hint: let's just say those workers were a necessity of the country and culture back then. The following year, 130,000 entered after which it went on to become an annual event.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Vodka distillers, followed by sex workers.

No, seriously, generic groups like factory workers or agricultural workers seem the only ones large enough. I am going to go for "factory workers".

[MJMcCready]

Farm workers on collective farms.

[MJMcCready]

D.J.Richards publication on Soviet Chess discusses it.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

A 50/50 chance and I blew it! (The fact I have that publication makes it a bit ...)

[MJMcCready]

Good book, very good at making you relieved you didn't grow up in the Soviet Union.

[Mike Gunn]

Metalworkers?

(Guess based on one of those quotes you get from that annoying voice on Fritz.)

[MJMcCready]

Answer posted above already.

[Mike Gunn]

Oops, I thought that was another guess, not the answer.

[MJMcCready]

Who, in 1937, was told by a jolly Communist Propaganda Department official in Kiev that his failure to participate regularly at chess events might be held against him and interpreted in a way that could be dangerous?

And yes Soviet development appeared in print on our shores in more than one documented source (but can't say what just yet).

[David McAlister]

Who, in 1937, was told by a jolly Communist Propaganda Department official in Kiev that his failure to participate regularly at chess events might be held against him and interpreted in a way that could be dangerous?

Bohatyrchuk seems a likely answer.

[MJMcCready]

Yes, correct.