Learn from Tolush 

Discounted

"Forward, Kazimirych!" and the Attack in Its Purest Form

The coach who changed Spassky’s chess

Boris Spassky started as a positional player under his first trainer, Zak. Between 1952 and 1960, Alexander Kazimirovich Tolush was his coach and opened a new world to him.

In his foreword to Tolush’s best-games collection (Moscow, 1983), Spassky admits he once played “methodical, but dry and boring” chess. Tolush gave him tactics and the uncompromising style that later carried him to the World Championship.

Tolush was little known internationally but highly respected in the USSR. In blitz he cheered himself on with “Forward, Kazimirych!”, a cry that, as Mark Taimanov recalls, spread far beyond Russian-speaking circles.

Why GM Mihail Marin wrote this course

Marin had known the story for years, but only Spassky’s foreword confirmed it was not folklore. He also noticed that his own Learn from Spassky course never mentioned Tolush.

Still, his interest is not historical. Marin was drawn to Tolush’s reckless attacks and outstanding tactics, so he designed the course as a manual about the attack in its pure form.

What makes the course unique

This is not a collection of flawless attacks. Marin explains where Tolush’s attacks were justified and where they went beyond acceptable risk.

The opening game sets the tone. In Tolush–Taimanov, Riga 1958, Tolush was objectively lost and turned the game around with 21.Rxd5!. Marin argues that the human perspective matters more than the engine verdict: White was just one tempo short of full compensation, so Taimanov could never relax.

The annotations also draw on comments by Tolush and Taimanov from the 1983 book, checked and corrected where needed. In the same game, for instance, Marin shows that the white king escapes the perpetual check Taimanov believed in.

Course structure

The 35 games were played between 1935 and 1961, against opponents such as Smyslov, Petrosian, Kortschnoj, Flohr, and Taimanov. They are divided into five chapters:

• A Matter of Style: attacking out of habit, sometimes beyond the admissible risk
• The Attack as a Necessity: Steinitz’s rule in action
• Fluent Attacks: the preparation that leads into the assault
• Outplaying the Opponent and Improvising: practical pressure in balanced, sharp positions
• Defence and Counterattack: Tolush’s inventiveness under fire

Course Features

• 5 thematic chapters
• 35 annotated games
• 23 test positions with solutions
• Video instruction
• Multilingual PGN availability (English, German, French, Spanish)

Part of the Learn from the Classics series

Learn from Tolush continues Marin’s Learn from the Classics series. It pairs naturally with Learn from Spassky: one presents the attacking school, the other the World Champion it helped shape.

Go forward with Tolush

Play through Tolush’s games with GM Mihail Marin and test yourself on 23 critical positions. Along the way, learn when to launch the attack and when caution is the better choice.

Add Learn from Tolush to your library today and discover why “Forward, Kazimirych!” became a battle cry far beyond the Soviet Union.

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