Prosecutors pulled the crystal owl over the Russian globe: how the CHGKs became undesirable

In November 2024, the Prosecutor General’s Office of the Russian Federation recognised the International Association of Mind Games (IAIG) as an undesirable organisation. This absurd, at first glance, decision was preceded by a long history of ethical transformation and splitting of the once united intellectual community. Today, this confrontation looks like a war, and everyone writes about it. However, it is based on deep contradictions and psychological deformations dating back to the Soviet era.

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For the past two years, about 80 per cent of the “What? Where? When?” (CHGK) tournaments in Russia and around the world have been held under the auspices of the International Association of Mind Games (IAMG). But when the IAGI was declared an undesirable organisation on 5 November , journalists first of all began to pour questions about the status of the game into Natalia Stetsenko, the general director of Igra-TV, the TV company that produces the CHGK TV show. In response, they were told that the MAII not only has nothing to do with the TV show, but also illegally uses the trademark belonging to Igra-TV. That’s not entirely true. But to understand how it came about that one part of the CHGK community is actually outlawed, while the other participates in the show on Channel One in tails and with butterflies, we have to go back to 1975.

The birth of the movement

The game “What? Where? When?” appeared in 1975 as a one-off episode of a youth programme on the first programme of the USSR Central Television, where a family quiz was held. The author of the idea was Vladimir Voroshilov, a fashionable and somewhat scandalous theatre artist who came to television almost by accident.

He started there by launching in 1968 the first in the USSR advertising and entertainment programme “Auction”, which was broadcast live. His assistant was Natalia Stetsenko, his future wife and co-author. However, Voroshilov’s liberties caused problems on TV. After six episodes, the programme was closed for performing an unlit (not approved by censorship) bardic song about a nuclear accident. Voroshilov was fired and banned from appearing on the screen, but his friends allowed him to freelance on television. That is why the author and host of “What? Where? When?” remained a voice-over until the collapse of the USSR and did not appear in the credits.

At first, the game appeared on the screen once or twice a year, its format was constantly changing, and the documents stated that the programme had no host. Organisational and “political” issues were solved by the editor-in-chief Natalia Stetsenko. It was very difficult to build this relationship: in 1978 a whole series of games was filmed, but only two were allowed on air: the censorship insisted on rejecting classical motifs in the design. Only since 1979 the programme has been regularly broadcast in the format of a “television youth club”. Moreover, Voroshilov, whose name began to appear in the credits in 1982, was also a bit of a “hooligan” in the musical pauses. Otherwise, the programme remained apolitical, and by 1986, during the first wave of perestroika glasnost, it managed to get a live broadcast.

Natalia Stetsenko and Vladimir Voroshilov, 1996. Photo: Facebook

When reading interviews and listening to performances of different years, Vladimir Voroshilov appears as an artist playing the game of life, and Natalia Stetsenko as a manager ensuring the survival of this game in the harsh framework of reality. An idealist and a pragmatist – a perfect combination not to miss the point on the road to success. And yet it is hard to escape the feeling that the two people who stood at the origins of the game, predetermined the future bifurcation of the CHGK-movement and marked the line of its future split.

IAC and “The Game”

Under the influence of the show’s immense popularity, amateur clubs of the CHGK began to appear all over the country and even abroad. To unite amateurs in 1989, the International Association of Clubs “What? Where? When?” (IAC Chess) was created, and a year earlier than in the USSR was adopted the law “On Public Associations” that legalised such activity. The founding congress was held in Mariupol, Ukraine, and the sponsor was the Azovstal plant. The IAC board included both sports club enthusiasts and the management of the televised game.

Voroshilov pinned a lot of hopes on the IAC, as he perceived CHGK primarily as a public cultural phenomenon. It is no coincidence that the “What? Where? When?” trademark in the early 1990s was registered to the IAC. The IAC also signed a long-term lease agreement on behalf of the IAC for the famous Hunting Lodge in Neskuchny Garden, where, since the early 1990s, ChGK games had been filmed.

In the new market pragmatics programme creators also orientated quickly. Already in 1990, they founded the television company “Game” (later “Igra-TV”). And since 1991 the show changed its image in the spirit of the times and began to be broadcast in the format of an “intellectual casino”, where “everyone can earn money with their own mind”. Natalia Stetsenko has always been more focused on the success of a television project. But whereas in the USSR this required building relationships with ideological bodies, with the transition to the market the focus shifted to business and money.

It is interesting that during the Soviet period, when mercantile motives were not encouraged, Voroshilov supported them. What is worth an amber necklace in the programme “Auction”, sealed in a jar of tinned squid to stimulate sales. In the CHGK appeared prizes: first scarce in the USSR books, then more valuable things, and before the collapse of the Union, as connoisseurs have already started to play for money. Natalia Stetsenko was very worried that the game was criticised in Soviet newspapers for its expensive prizes. And in response to the idea of an “intellectual casino” the team almost quit in full. But this negativism passed very quickly.

As for Voroshilov, as soon as money became a trend, as the concern for it began to weigh on him no less than Soviet censorship.

“And you start carrying money. And ruin your programme. Because already sponsors are coming out of your ears, sponsors are coming out of your nostrils,” he lamented in his last interview in December 2000. He expressed his attitude to the commercial aspect of the TV project as follows: “Money is just an opportunity to do your favourite work without thinking about it, and nothing else”.

Who is the boss in the house

Since Voroshilov’s favourite job has always been live broadcasting, and Igra-TV allowed him to host it, it is not surprising that over time his interest shifted to the family TV company. Especially since Boris Kruk, the son of Natalia Stetsenko, adopted by Voroshilov, who later became a TV game show host, began working there. All this time the TV company has been growing successfully, and today it has more than 20 projects related to TV games.

IAC developed its own way and by the end of the 1990s it united hundreds of clubs from dozens of countries, supervised the organisation of tournaments all year round, maintained the rating of teams, created a database of questions, monitored compliance with the regulations. The demands of the community grew, new games and new formats emerged: synchronised tournaments held simultaneously in several dozen cities, telephone and internet versions. The structure of the IAC was becoming more complex, with a dozen commissions and departments, in which enthusiasts of the movement worked for free. At one point, there were about 1000 teams and more than 250,000 players in 60 countries. Voroshilov sometimes criticised the IAC’s activities for the insufficient level of artistic elaboration of projects, but the television crews did not interfere in the association’s affairs.

Trouble began after Voroshilov’s death in early 2001. Almost immediately Natalia Stetsenko sued two famous connoisseurs – Vladimir Belkin and Elena Orlova – for attempting to organise under the auspices of the IAC the CIS championship on the CHGK on a script allegedly belonging to her. At the same time, Natalia Stetsenko, being the Chairman of the IAC Board, without any public discussion rewrote the trademark “What? Where? When?” to the company “Igra-TV”. At the IAC Congress, which gathered after that, the participants were put before the fact and entrusted the well-known expert Alexander Druz to settle legal relations with the TV company on intellectual property issues. (By the way, the trademark was ceded in 2007 to some offshore company in the Seychelles, probably for security reasons, but in 2015 it was returned back, probably for the same reasons) As a result, Igra-TV was able to control IAC’s activities, forcing it to apply for a licence to use the CHGK trademark. At first, no money was demanded for this, but who was the master of the house was recognised.

However, the IAC remained nominally the owner of the Hunting Lodge. And for lack of funds it could not pay even the modest rent, which it as a non-profit organisation was assigned in the 1990s by the Moscow authorities. Moreover, the TV company used the house. In 2007, the Moscow Property Department filed a lawsuit demanding payment, and CHGK almost lost its traditional film set. But the case was eventually settled, and by 2015 the TV company had restored the house.

Still, these conflicts did not split the community, as no one questioned the defining contribution to the game of its creators – Vladimir Voroshilov and Natalia Stetsenko – and their moral right to consolidate their legacy.

Splitting the movement: the first cracks

The first significant political disagreements arose over the annexation of Crimea. The official position of the TV company – “ČGK is out of politics” – seemed to prevent the impending split, but only for a short time. After 2015, the connoisseurship community was rocked by a series of scandals that undermined the reputation of a number of leading players who were symbols of the CHGC movement.

Ilya Novikov: a principled choice

The first open conflict occurred in 2016. Lawyer Ilya Novikov after 14 years in the club was forced to leave the televised game. About his decision he prefers to talk not as a political demarche or breakup, but as a choice between work and hobby. During this period, Ilya Novikov’s main job was defending in court Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian military pilot who spent two years in a Russian prison: “I was informed that I was no longer playing at the beginning of 2016. At that time, the trial was in full swing, it was the culmination of the trial that began in 2014, and Channel One regularly broadcast reports from the courtroom. It was no longer possible to pretend that lawyer Novikov and expert Novikov were, as it were, two different people. Before that, since 2014, we had been pretending by default that they were.”

“‘What? Where? When? – is out of politics,” commented the programme’s host Boris Kruk, thus marking the TV company’s political stance. Participation in further high-profile cases did not allow the player to return to television: he defended a defendant in the case of Oleg Sentsov – historian Alexei Chirniy, defended the case of Frude Berg, a Norwegian pensioner convicted of espionage against Russia. Ilya Novikov then defended Yegor Zhukov and took part in the defence of Memorial and FBK. Later, the lawyer left Russia for Ukraine, where in 2022 he was engaged in collecting evidence of war crimes of the Russian army.

In October 2023, a criminal case of high treason was opened against Ilya Novikov. on 25 July 2024, he was added to Rosfinmonitoring’s list of terrorists and extremists.

Nadezhda Savchenko and lawyer Ilya Novikov in court. Photo: ria.ru

Alexander Druz: scandal with attempted fraud

The next crack in the IAC iceberg was the “Druzya-gate”, a scandal named after the most recognisable player of the TV club, master of the game and IAC CHGC vice-president Alexander Druzya. In 2018, Ilya Ber, editor-in-chief of the TV programme “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, accused Alexander Druzya of fraud and attempted bribery. Before the recording of the programme, Druzya offered Ber to reveal a list of questions and answers prepared for the programme in exchange for 3 million rubles – part of the planned winnings.

To prove his words, Ilya Ber provided a record of telephone conversations, a list of the questions and answers he passed on, as well as those he did not pass on, preventing fraud. The presenter sent the statement and evidence to the IAC ethics commission, which was then headed by the same Alexander Druz. As a result, both of them were suspended from the air. However, Druz returned to the TV game in 2019, first as a viewer, and a year later – at the gaming table. Ilya Ber, on the other hand, lost access to the TV kitchen.

Ilya Ber, former editor-in-chief of the TV programme “Who wants to become a millionaire?”. Photo: rbc.ru

By bringing Alexander Druzya back on the air, the TV company showed that CHGK is gradually turning into a profanation in the style of the “psychic show”, where the reputation of intellectualism goes to the most skilful cheat. Thousands of connoisseurs experienced the “Spanish shame”. However, at the time, it still seemed to be an isolated case.

Ilya Ber launched the fact-checking project “Verified.Media”in 2020 , and on 17 November 2023, the Russian Ministry of Justice entered the register of foreign agents.

Mikhail Skipsky: allegations of harassment

The scandal of 2020 culminated when several former female students accused Mikhail Skipsky, a 40-year-old geography teacher and member of the IAC commission on work with children, of sexual harassment.

A group of connoisseurs, in an attempt to save the club’s reputation, approached the management of the televised game to comment on the situation. Having been refused, some of them defiantly left the TV-game. Five IAC member clubs (Vladivostok, London, New York, Bern and Vilnius) sent an open letter to the IAC management, asking them to investigate the matter and, until the investigation is completed, to suspend Mikhail Skipsky from membership in the IAC Commission for Work with Children and Youth, as well as from events involving minors.

Mikhail Skipsky. Photo: screenshot of the “What? Where? When?” programme

The question about the internal investigation was also asked by BBC journalists. They sent an enquiry to Maria Uvarova, chairman of the IAC disciplinary commission. She showed the response prepared for the media to Natalia Stetsenko, the general director of Games-TV, who threatened to ban the use of the name “What? Where? When?” for IAC tournaments, which would jeopardise the very existence of the sports movement. The conflict ended with Maria Uvarova resigning her position. And the role of investigators was taken on by the journalists of the publication Project, who found out that the story of Mikhail Skipsky’s harassment of minors began much earlier – at the Anichkov Lyceum, where he worked.

Mikhail Skipsky continued to play in the show “What? Where? When?” and to lead training sessions at children’s clubs.

These examples illustrate the principled position of management that has been observed since Soviet times: no ethical, idealistic, or humanistic motives can stand in the way of a project’s success. Business accepts whatever values the authorities dictate to it, be they Soviet or liberal. Such business pragmatics used to meet some opposition in the person of Vladimir Voroshilov. Now that he is gone, this ethical conformity of the leadership has led to an inevitable split in the CHGK movement.

The split in the faces

Anatoly Wasserman and Boris Burda are among the most recognisable TV players in the CHGK movement. Both were born in Odessa and were members of the same team, both are honoured maestros. This is where their similarities end.

Anatoly Wasserman asked for Russian citizenship in 2016, received it very soon and immediately went into politics, being elected to the State Duma from the Just Russia party. Wasserman considers himself a Stalinist, states that “Ukraine is an integral part of Russia” and “an independent Ukraine is dangerous for all its citizens”.

Boris Burda emigrated from Ukraine to Spain on the eve of the Russian invasion in 2022. Although he once sharply condemned Ukrainian nationalism, he calls what is happening now “an ugly unprovoked attack”, and believes it is already clear to everyone, “even the big Russian patriots”.

MAII: change of leader

For the majority of connoisseurs, the game of CHGK is not just a temporary hobby, but a way of life. The club is a meeting place for friends and like-minded people, an atmosphere of trust and mutual acceptance. Personal relationships and long-term friendship often arise here, families are created, new generations of “hereditary” players are grown. In order to preserve this valuable atmosphere for the players, clubs introduce their own rules and regulations, their own democratic management system, which allows for the open resolution of controversial issues.

For the “television” family, the game of CHGC has become a pocket-lacquered, profitable show by 2021. Conflicts and scandals around it only scared away advertisers. Therefore, the management of “Games-TV” preferred to pretend that the problems simply did not exist. This was often done in a simple way: to accuse those affected or outraged of lying. And in case the TV players would give comments not corresponding to the official line, the TV company threatened that the entire sports movement will not be able to play in the CHGK without the licence issued by them, that is, the game outside the “First Channel” will be outlawed.

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In response, some of the movement’s activists left the IAC and in 2021 formed the non-profit International Association of Mind Games (IAMG) with registration in Liechtenstein, the only jurisdiction that was able to hold its founding meeting online. The IAIA has 215 members, including, for example, Ilya Ber. These are, of course, not all players, and not even representatives of all clubs, but people who were willing to actively support the sports movement of intellectual games. This makes the movement organisationally independent from the IAC and from Games-TV, since the name “What? Where? When?”, which is protected as a trademark in Russia, is not officially used by the MAII, and the format of intellectual games with questions and answers in one minute is not subject to protection.

The IAIA has restored the institution’s reputation by speaking out clearly on all controversial ethical and political issues. The difference between the positions of the management of the TV game and the movement under the auspices of the MAII became particularly pronounced in 2022. With the onset of full-scale Russian aggression, about two thousand players signed an open letter against the invasion of Russian troops into Ukraine.

Igra-TV continued to adhere to the principle of “the game is out of politics”. According to Ekaterina Mereminskaya, a player of the 1980s generation, the general director of the TV company offered her a choice: delete the post “No to War” from Facebook or leave the TV club. However, the TV company was quite loyal to Maxim Potashev’s public speech in front of the mobilised. In other words, the TV company does not consider political gestures as such to be “politics”, but only those that go against the policies of the current government.

In contrast, the MAII issued a statement against the war in Ukraine, banned teams from Russia and Belarus from using their countries’ state symbols at foreign tournaments, and imposed “personal sanctions.” Anatoly Wasserman, a popular player and member of the State Duma was declared persona non grata at competitions under the auspices of the MAII. Later the MAII also imposed this restriction on Maxim Potashev, the second Master of the Game, because of his speeches to mobilised people.

At the same time, already in the first year of its existence, the MAII intercepted the leadership from the IAC in organising tournaments. As can be seen from the graph published by Mediazona, already since 2022, about 80% of tournaments on intellectual games (most of which take place in Russia) have been organised under the aegis of the MAII – an organisation with a clearly expressed anti-war stance. Given the cases already brought against individual players, could the Prosecutor General’s Office ignore the activities of the MAII?

Undesirable intellectuals

However, according to Konstantin Knop, a former member of the IAC Board and Chairman of the IAC Rating Commission and a former member of the IARI Audit Commission, the association could have remained unnoticed for a long time. Probably, the Prosecutor General’s Office, having declared the IARC an undesirable organisation, acted on someone’s tip-off. Anatoly Wasserman, who was barred from most sporting events by the MAII, could have taken offence. The IAC and Igra-TV are also interested in controlling the Russian part of the movement.

Yes, the IAC doesn’t have the resources to organise tournaments, judging by the statistics of the events held. And it won’t be possible to sell licences directly to independent clubs, they don’t have the money for that. But now there is an opportunity to sell the licence, for example, to the society “Znanie”, which is engaged in propaganda on the sites of the CHGK, especially since in the Soviet era, the programs of the CHGK already came out under its brand.

Already in March 2024, according to the first deputy head of the Presidential Administration of the Russian Federation, Sergei Kirienko, “Znanie” was going to hold “the largest in the world history of simultaneous championship, which can take part in up to 10 thousand people”. But it seems that these plans were not destined to come true. At least, no mention of the participants of the tournament announced as part of the “World Youth Festival” could be found on the Internet, except Maxim Potashev.

Screensaver of the programme “What? Where? When?” 1983 with a mention of the Soviet society “Znanie”

And what about the MAII? From the very beginning, the practical organisation of local tournaments: renting premises, finding prizes and technical staff were in the hands of local club activists. The role of IAC and MAII was both status and technical: they provided their big names for tournaments, collected question bases for international tournaments and counted team ratings. In other words, they acted as information partners, or, to be more precise, as international sports federations.

For a tournament under the auspices of an international organisation, it is usually easier to rent a venue or approach a potential sponsor for prizes. Collecting questions for large international tournaments is the most costly and difficult part of the job: question writers are the only category of participants in sporting CHGC that “can earn their own money”, albeit not much. However, the holy of holies of CHGK is the rating. Its purpose is similar to those ratings that are kept in the chess federation FIDE or football FIFA. It is a chronicle of successes and defeats of teams, a source of pride for those who were at the top, a source of excitement. The outbreak of war was the trigger for the final division of people into two organisations.

Unlike the IAC, the IAIA was originally built on paid personal membership. Symbolic membership fees were used to pay for the hosting of the site, the work of programmers on the rating, and royalties to the authors of questions. According to Konstantin Knop, the MAII members themselves worked on enthusiasm in the hope that one day the association would develop into a normal international sports federation living by the same principles as the chess federation. Now, with the declaration of the organisation as undesirable, this prospect has been postponed indefinitely: for Russian citizens, any contact with it may result in administrative and then criminal proceedings.

For this reason, the MAII advised Russian citizens and residents to stop membership in the organisation. Contributions and donations from Russian accounts have stopped. The MAII no longer organises tournaments under its auspices and has suspended the maintenance of rankings. De facto, all working groups of the IAIA have ceased to exist: there is no one to work in them now. However, the MAII participants themselves believe that this is a temporary situation. The association originally worked as a network organisation, and the people who organised tournaments and maintained ratings have retained their contacts and can continue their former activities even in the absence of a legal entity.

However, fundraising needs to be re-established for the games to fully continue, and for this the connoisseurs will have to create a new association.

“The tournaments were private shops, they will remain so,” says Konstantin Knop. – The declaration of the MAII as an undesirable organisation has made life more difficult for people, but fundamentally nothing has changed. The tournaments will continue to take place. Only the MAII rating, which used to send the results of tournaments, will no longer be called the MAII rating. We had more than 200 real activists – IAC has never had such a number of ambassadors”.

At the same time, Konstantin Knop believes that while international tournaments will remain, face-to-face games in Russia are not going through the best of times. “Russian tournaments actually did not survive the kovid and the beginning of the war. That is to say, they haven’t recovered. The emigration of activists is another of the reasons for the decline of club games in Russia as well. Well, and the emergence of online platforms, where it turned out to be more convenient and cheaper for many people to play, has also made itself felt.”

* * *

The history of the split of the “What? Where? When?” movement is indicative in several aspects.

Firstly, its example shows that in times of crisis the position “outside politics” paradoxically becomes overtly political.

Secondly, political conformism, which is demanded by power, is the strongest means of destroying ethics. Under its influence, people and projects even with a strong cultural and intellectual basis become ethically corrupted if the main criterion for them is business success – political and especially commercial.

Finally, this story reflects a specific psychological trauma of the post-Soviet consciousness: an uneven attitude towards money. Some people perceive it with squeamishness as an inevitable evil or a shameful pleasure, and this prevents them from managing it normally. For others, on the contrary, money is a benchmark measure that devalues everything that has no commercial dimension and allows them to sell any core of value. This distorted attitude to money can undermine even very bright projects. But overcoming this Soviet legacy is apparently very difficult. It may have contributed significantly to the failure of the democratic transit in Russia.

The legal aspect

T-Invariant asked lawyer Ivan Pavlov of the human rights organisation First Departmentto comment on the situation from a legal point of view.

T-i: Can anything threaten ordinary players in Russia who took part in games under the auspices of the MAII?

IP: Legislation sometimes acts by analogy. This is especially common in law enforcement practice. Look at how the current legislation is used in relation to the recently recognised extremist non-existent LGBT movement. People of non-traditional orientation or those who support them or do business on this topic are being caught. Andrei Kotov, director of the travel agency Men Travel, was recently arrested and accused of participating in an extremist community because, according to prosecutors, he organised trips for representatives of the LGBT movement. Such a thing is theoretically possible in this case. Another question is why does the Prosecutor General’s Office need this? Maybe they decided to fight with intellectuals, because they often do not share the political line of the party and represent a force that does not obey the decisions made in high offices. And the regime now demands unconditional obedience.

It is also possible that the “interest of the authorities” is directed towards specific individuals who are within reach. In such a case, the Russian authorities may use this repressive means (the status of an undesirable organisation. – T-i)if they continue the activities that caused this “interest”: “it is always the face that is hit, not the passport”.

T-i: Theoretically, what are these “specific persons”?

IP: At MAII tournaments there was a ban on the use of state symbols of Russia and Belarus, pro-war players were not allowed in. Who did not let in? Surely there were specific persons who implemented this policy? On the other hand, such a decision against the MAII is like recognising FIFA or UEFA as undesirable organisations. They have the same policy: they do not allow the Russian national team to attend their tournaments. So now we should expect UEFA and FIFA to be recognised as undesirable organisations? Russia is their collective member. And what should we do then? Will Russia withdraw from them?

T-i: Will the former members of the MAII be able to continue their work quietly in another organisation?

IP: An organisation whose activities are directed against Russia’s security can be declared undesirable. This is enshrined in the law. It is clear that it is not the game itself that poses a threat. Therefore, in order to answer this question, it is necessary to find the element of activity that, in the opinion of the Prosecutor General’s Office, posed a threat to security or potential harm to Russia’s security. And it is clear that if someone continues to engage in this element of activity, the authorities will consider it an offence.