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disappearance as a European state. At the peak
of the Polish advance into Soviet territory,
Piłsudski's troops attacked Kiev, capital of the
Ukraine, in late April 1920, and captured it on
May 7, 1920. Soviet troops reorganized under
the young general Mikhail TUKHACHEVSKY ,
recently successful in establishing Soviet control
of most of Siberia, and drove the Polish troops
out of the Ukraine by June 1920. On July 4,
1920, Tukhachevsky's armies crossed the border
into Poland. Advancing rapidly, they reached the
Vistula River, on the outskirts of Warsaw, by
mid-August 1920.
The turning point of the war was the battle
for Warsaw. After a 10-day battle, known at the
time as the “Miracle on the Vistula,” Piłsudski's
troops stopped the Soviet advance. On August
31, 1920, the last great cavalry battle in Euro-
pean history took place to the south of Poland,
involving over 20,000 cavalry troops. The Poles
won and through September 1920 further
pushed the Soviet armies eastward to the
Neman River almost 200 miles to the east of
Warsaw. Defeated, the Soviets agreed to an
armistice, which was formalized on October 12,
1920. After months of negotiations both sides
signed the Treaty of Riga on March 18, 1921.
According to the treaty, Poland received parts of
the Ukraine and Belorussia, which it would
later lose in World War II. The conclusion of the
Soviet-Polish War in October 1920 helped the
Bolsheviks to consolidate their control of Russia
by freeing their armies for the final rout of the
remnants of the White armies still fighting Soviet
power. In November 1920, Baron WRANGEL , the
last White commander, led the evacuation of
over 150,000 White troops from the Crimea,
thus marking the end of the Russian civil war.
a highly publicized contest. Spassky was born in
Leningrad, but at the age of four his family
moved to the Ural Mountain region seeking shel-
ter from the German siege of LENINGRAD . Here,
the young Boris first learned to play chess and
after returning to Leningrad in 1945 began for-
mal studies. In 1953, at the age of 16 he became
an international master and two years later, after
winning the world junior championship in
Antwerp, Belgium, gained the title of interna-
tional grand master. In 1960 he contributed a
minor footnote to popular culture when his end-
ing sequence in a match against David Bronstein
was used in the opening sequence of the James
Bond classic film, From Russia with Love. In the
early 1960s under the coaching of the interna-
tional grandmaster, Igor Bondarevsky, Spassky
developed into a world-class player, able to chal-
lenge for the world championship. He twice
challenged reigning world champion Tigran PET -
ROSIAN for the world title, losing by a slim margin
in 1966 before defeating him in 1969. Three
years later, when the controversial American
player Bobby Fischer won the right to challenge
him for the title, Spassky became a pawn in a
sometimes farcical battle that preceded the actual
matches, which was as much about the tense
Soviet-American cold war relationship as it was
about chess. After protracted negotiations that
extended to matters such as the size of chairs,
shape of the table, and lighting of the rooms, the
matches were held in Reykjavík, Iceland, in July
and August 1972. After 21 matches that included
seven consecutive draws, Fischer gained the
agreed-upon seven victories (to Spassky's four)
necessary to win the championship. Spassky's
defeat marked the first time in over 50 years that
the world title was not held by a Russian or
Soviet player.
Spassky returned to the Soviet Union and
won the 1973 Soviet championship but lost out
to another rising star, Anatoli KARPOV , in his bid
to challenge Fischer and regain his world title.
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Spassky con-
tinued to challenge for the top positions in the
international world of chess, but he never had
another opportunity to play for the world cham-
Spassky, Boris Vasilievich (1937-
)
chess player
A chess child prodigy who became known for his
tremendous attacking ability and willingness to
sacrifice pieces for overall advantage, Spassky
reigned as world chess champion from 1969 to
1972, when he was defeated by Bobby Fischer in
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