Cold War politics featured in the 1972 World Championship match between the American Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union, when Fischer defeated Spassky and temporarily halted Soviet chess dominance; and again in the 1978 World Championship match, when the Soviet Anatoly Karpov narrowly defeated Viktor Korchnoi, who had recently defected from the Soviet Union. Several countries boycotted the 1976 Chess Olympiad, because it was held in Israel.