Spassky causes an uproar...

Boris Spassky, the former chess champion of the world, has caused an uproar in Russia by signing an anti-semitic petition:

Boris Spassky, the former chess world champion, has caused uproar in Russia by signing a petition that demands the country's state prosecutor bans a number of Jewish organisations.

Spassky was among 5,000 Russians who put their name to a letter calling for a ban on all religious and national groups acting on the principles of the Shulchan Aruch, a repository of Jewish law originally written in the 1560s.

The "Letter of 5,000", sent three weeks ago, branded Judaism "anti-Christian and inhumane" and accused believers of "committing ritual murders".

It warned of a "hidden campaign of genocide against the Russian people and their traditional society and values", and was backed with quotes from anti-Semitic literature from the 19th century.

Other Russian chess masters are upset, and one tells a story from Spassky's past.

Evgeny Gik, a Russian chess master and writer who is a long-term acquaintance of Spassky, had condemned the letter in a Russian newspaper. He recalled how, in the 1990s, Spassky travelled from his home in France to the St Petersburg chess club to be the guest of honour at a dinner party.

There, according to Gik, Spassky remarked: "Everything is good in Russia, but I don't know how the Russian people can have allowed so many big-nosed people into government." Gik said that several grandmasters left the table in protest.