Yugoslavia vs USSR — Teslic 1979
From 1956 the Soviet and Yugoslav federations had met almost every year in a ten-a-side friendly, the venue alternating between the two countries, and Teslić in the early summer of 1979 produced the same result it always had: a Soviet win, 25–15, across men's, women's and boys' sections. It was the twenty-first meeting in the series and the twenty-first Soviet victory — the Yugoslavs had never once beaten them.
The last of an unbeaten run
The USSR–Yugoslavia matches were, for a quarter-century, one of the fixtures of the European chess calendar — annual or near-annual friendlies that drew on the depth of Soviet chess and the best team in the non-aligned world. Twenty-one of them were played between 1956 and 1979, and the Soviet Union won every single one; Teslić, held that May and June in a small spa town in Bosnia, turned out to be the last of the original series. The rivalry was not revived until 2007, when veterans from both sides met for an exhibition in Moscow — by which time both nations the match was named for had ceased to exist.
The 1979 fixture split into three sections by category: six men a side, two women, and two boys (juniors), each pairing playing across the full match. The Soviets took the men's section 13–11, swept the women's boards 8–0, and drew the boys' section 4–4 — enough, combined, for the official 25–15 final margin.
Two former champions, two teenagers
The Soviet roster the archive records reads Tigran Petrosian, Mikhail Tal, Viktor Kupreichik, Yuri Balashov, Oleg Romanishin and Eduard Gufeld among the men — two former world champions anchoring a squad several boards deep — with Nana Alexandria and Elena Akhmilovskaya on the women's boards and the teenage Zurab Azmaiparashvili and Tamaz Giorgadze, both not yet twenty, filling the boys' section.
Yugoslavia's most experienced player was Borislav Ivkov, who by now had played in sixteen of the series' matches, more than anyone else on either side over its whole run. On the boys' boards, 18-year-old Predrag Nikolić was three years from his first Yugoslav title and would reach world No. 6 in 1988; Yugoslav chess kept producing players like him, even while losing to the Soviets year after year.
The games
Thirty-eight of the forty games played across the three sections survive here — two short of a complete record. Those archived games score 23–15, while the two missing games account for the remaining two Soviet points in the official 25–15 result. The page therefore uses the published historical headline and does not present the partial PGN sum as a complete match score.
Final standings
Official final match score. We have 38 of the games played, listed by board and round.
| # | Team | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Yugoslavia | 15 |
| 1 | USSR | 25 |