**Chess uses figures named Knight, Bishop, King & Queen. During the Soviet era, these seem rather politically incorrect. Counter-revolutionary, dare I suggest?
Were the names changed? Did the pieces go by other names under Soviet rule? Were people punished for using the traditional names?
BTW–this post is Red, because it has been Collectivized.** 
King = king.
Queen = queen or “ferz.” According to wiki, the latter derives from vizier or commander in Farsi.
Bishops = elephants or officers.
Knights = horses (male).
I don’t think any of these were changed under the Soviets, btw.
The King in Persian was Shah, which may be where ‘checkmate’ comes from (Shah mat = the King is dead).
My team played the Soviet Champions in the European Club Championship twenty-odd years ago. They brought eight top grandmasters, a competent captain and a ‘translator’. The ‘translator’ didn’t speak English, wore a trenchcoat :rolleyes: and accompanied any player who left the playing room. Undoubtedly KGB.
The players used English names for the pieces, and were far more interested in arranging a shopping trip to Oxford Street than spouting the party line.
Certainly the Soviet party used chess as a propaganda tool (e.g. GM Taimanov was severely punished for losing 0-6 to Fischer in a World Championship qualifier), and they hated defectors (e.g. Korchnoi), but renaming pieces was probably just too silly for them.
Many of the old, bourgeois notions relating to Chess as well as to very many other things were retained during the Soviet period out of sheer pragmatism. To give one example, a common expression in Russian that should be taken to mean something like ‘of course, please, by all means’ (for instance in response to a question such as ‘can I sit down next to you’, is ‘radi boga’ (Ради бога), which translates as ‘for god’s sake’. In spite of the officially atheist ideology, this was used in all layers of Soviet society regardless of the possible religious connotation.