During a 1976 chess tournament in Amsterdam, Soviet grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi quietly asked an English competitor how to spell the phrase “political asylum.”

During a 1976 chess tournament in Amsterdam, Soviet grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi quietly asked an English competitor how to spell the phrase “political asylum.” Moments later, he walked into a police station and announced that he wanted to defect from the Soviet Union. By the mid-1970s, Viktor Korch…