46. Qxa4? lets Black out of his entanglement.

49...Rb6! is a sure winner in White's time pressure. After 50. Qxc5 Rcxc6 and 51...Rxd6 wins.

52...Rbxc6 is just a variation on the same theme.

30mns for 15 moves is hardly zeitnot
even in 1956!!!

Bronstein has some interesting anticdotes and funny stories by him and concerning him.

Fischer lost to Spassky in Argentina. After the game he went to his room and started crying. Bronstein dropped in and said, ‘Why are you crying? Don’t cry. Just because of one game? I was made to lose a world championship match to Botvinnik, and yet I didn’t cry.”

What I do mind, very much, is kbitzers of my own strength (i.e. not very great) seeing moves they don't understand in a game involving Keres or Bronstein or Botvinnik or Karpov and leaping to the conclusion that the game was "fixed."

<Quite a lot of the stories that seem to be clustering around Bronstein,...> Actually, quite a lot of the stories are clustered around Botvinnik. He had an allergic reaction to any player that challenged his supreme position in Soviet Chess (Levenfish, Bohatirchuk, Bronstein,...) and thus many other players gave him wide bearth (Flohr, Boleslavskij, Keres,...).

Here is a rudimentary understanding of the mayor, behind the scenes players, as I pieced it together. Please, do take it all with that healthy dose of skepticism:

It is no secret that Botvinnik was a protege of Stalin, Suslov, and Molotov. He was especially a protege of Krylenko, the komisar (minister) of justice and also the tzar over the chess resort. Krylenko was the one who buit up the Soviet chess machine in twenties and thirties. Botvinnik was Krylenko's finest trumph-card and Krylenko was passionate about Botvinnik's well being. Suslov and Molotov did not care nearly as much, but protected Botvinnik's interests for Stalin once the top dog of Soviet empire took liking to Botvinnik.

But Botvinnik also had a terible politburo enemy, the head of Cheka/KGB, Beria. (There is a silly-sounding spite-story about how it all started because of Botvinnik's dacha (=cabin) that Botvinnik got in a politically exclusive region, despite of objections of Beria.) This Beria was a rival of Krylenko and the heir-apparent to Stalin. To make matters worse for Botvinnik, after Krylenko went to gallows in one of Stalin's late 30's purges, Beria gained control also of the chess resort. Unlike Krylenko, he did not run the resort as a hobby by himself, but put a certain Vainstein in charge of it.

There probably was no one that Botvinnik despised more than Veinstein. In fact, when an enormously talented young kid of the same name entered Botvinnik's chess camp years later, Botvinnik immediately insisted on this kid changing the name to that of kid's mother - Kasparov. But, back to the first Vainstein, it was Vainstein (or Beria through Veinstein) that declared Alekhine a traitor and tried to stop the Botvinnik-Alekhine w-ch-match under negotiations. And it was also the same Vainstein that was Bronstein's second, in fact, Bronstein was his protege!

I would not be surprised if we eventually learned that, at Veinstein's orchestration, Boleslavskij slowed down his pace and allowed Bronstein to catch up to him at the 49/51 Candidates and w. ch. cycle. They were and remained close friends (Bronstein later became Boleslavskij's son-in-law) and the question could have been who of the two is tougher, or more ambitious, to cross paths with Botvinnik.

At Veinstein's insistence, Bronstein did not prepare any variations for his match w Botvinnik. Bronstein's task was to improvise and outplay Botvinnik OTB. I can see idiosincratic reasons for Bronstein wanting to do that. But for Veinstein to insist so, I fathom only one reason -- Veinstein was concerned either about Botvinnik's clairvoyance or his intelligence network. Before the match, Botvinnik insisted that Veinstein got removed from Bronstein's team. So, he was removed. The match ended in a draw and I believe that, while Bronstein did not want to lose it, he did not dare to win.

With the fall of Beria, Veinstein was out of favor. In fact, he was in potentially grave peril himself. Bronstein went to Zurich, once again, without his second.

All in all, it seems that, as the gods and demi-gods of Greeek mythology tried to surprise and embarass each other through their games with mortals, the Kremlin demi-gods used chessplayers to embaras rivals. Botvinnik's clique won most of the times.

As for the games: I believe -- hope, realy -- that over 99% of them is genuine and not arranged. These guys were extremely good and they genuinely loved to play chess.

----

I must admit, one reason I always discounted any accusation of chichanery in the 1951 match was that I couldn't understand why the Soviets just didn't stop Bronstein from winning the Candidates tournament. (As Gypsy notes, Boleslavsky, who had a very bad record against Botvinnik, was one point in front of Bronstein with two rounds to go. Bronstein won his last two, while Boleslavsky drew both games. Bronstein won the subsequent playoff.) Now I see I may have judged too quickly.

I should add, I still believe the 1948 match tournament, '50 candidates, '51 match, and '53 candidates were on the level -- not necessarily that there was no monkey business, but that the final result was legitimate. But it is evidently a closer question than I realized.

Enigmatic Veinstein has been presented as both, Bronstein's second and co-author, and an apparatchik in Beria's organization. Thus I thought that perhaps he was one of the many Russian masters that got drafted into intelligence/security services. But I never ran accross any mention of his games or participation in tournaments -- with one exception, I think.

No, the real mystery is 46.Qxa4, which simply gives the position away. I don't have an improvement though, since I'm not a GM.

42.Rd2 .. is no doubt the best move here, but there seems to be no forced win. Bronstein's mistakes were maybe moves 46 and 47 and certainly moves 49 (49.Ne3 .. is equal) and 50 (50.Qxc5 Rcxc6 51.Qxb6 Rxb6 52.Nc8 .. still draws).

I put some descriptions of 'female' into a English/Russian translator a transcript the results. (женская женщина девочки мелкая сука цыпленка девчушки королевы)

Female = Kournikova, but no game of Kournikova was in the game database.