Leonid Stein would seem to be the player that suffered most as a result>

<Oh, those exclamation points! How they erode the innocent soul of the amateur, removing all hope of allowing him to examine another player's ideas critically!>

-- Tigran Petrosian

Interview on the internet>

I am not sure I understand your question.

There is an article about a visit to the Marshall Chess Club in NYC on June 5, 2008:

http://main.uschess.org/content/vie...

And in this page,
http://tinyurl.com/de8pqr

you find an excerpt from an interview. GM Larry Evans interviewed GM Averbakh in 1990. Here is the excerpt:

EVANS: What was your reaction when Karpov didn’t play Fischer in 1975?

AVERBAKH: You know, I was a very good friend of Fischer’s manager Ed Edmondson. May I say we were on extremely friendly terms? He told me honestly before the FIDE congress in 1975 that we would no longer be on such good terms when the congress was over. He lashed the Soviet Chess Federation for opposing Fischer’s match conditions. In my opinion, he knew in his heart that Fischer couldn’t play this match but wanted us to take the blame.

EVANS: Campomanes told me that he knew Fischer’s conditions were doomed when FIDE split it into two votes. Did it make sense for FIDE to vote for a 10-win match and then limit it to 36 games?

AVERBAKH: It was illogical. But ten wins was ridiculous.

EVANS: Many people think that Fischer would have beaten Karpov very badly.

AVERBAKH: I agree. But I believe that Fischer just couldn’t play. I just don’t know why.

EVANS: In other words, it wasn’t a case of Fischer being afraid of Karpov so much as Fischer being afraid of himself?

AVERBAKH: Only.

EVANS: If Fischer had asked for a return match clause instead of ten wins,
do you think FIDE would have given it to him?

AVERBAKH: Of course. Of course.

EVANS: How did you feel years later when FIDE restored the rematch clause for Karpov after having taken it away from Botvinnik in 1963?

AVERBAKH: It was top secret, but Ed Edmondson was the one who organized this return match clause for Karpov! I was present during the negotiations for the Karpov-Korchnoi match. Our federation wanted to have 24 games or a maximum of 30, and Edmondson pressed for six wins. At the FIDE congress in Caracas in 1977 Karpov demanded a rematch clause for accepting six wins. Edmondson helped him get it.

EVANS: But this clause was a bigger mathematical advantage than the one FIDE had denied Fischer. What was Ed’s motive?

AVERBAKH: Probably to make up for some of the nasty things he wrote about Karpov, such as "this mouse who roars like a lion." Fischer was out of the picture already and had dismissed Edmondson, so perhaps Ed wanted to improve his relations with Karpov. Really he organized everything.

EVANS: Do you think Karpov was happy to get the title without playing Fischer?

AVERBAKH: Of course. Karpov was afraid of Fischer in 1975. Who wouldn’t like to get the title by default?

EVANS: Do you think that’s the main reason why Karpov was so active after that: to prove he was really worthy of the title?

AVERBAKH: For Karpov, you know, money is very important. This is his main stimulus. He may lose to Kasparov, but he is always well compensated for it.

EVANS: Why do you think the first K-K match was stopped in 1985?

AVERBAKH: For me it’s completely clear. Because Karpov couldn’t continue at all.

EVANS: Was he suffering from nervous exhaustion?

This quote from Kramnik has always intrigued me because he separates positional and strategic chess.

In a later part of the interview he describes Karpov as very positional, but not strategic at all. If I have it right, positional/tactical are two sides of the same coin, while strategy is a mind-set of a bigger plan.

...And therefore this indicates <positional> superiority specifically, rather than some other kind of superiority? Ehhh, you lost me there.

As with most conversations like this, they forget that players understanding of chess was not a constant throughout their entire career. Smyslov was older, so there was certainly a time when his positional superiority was greater.

Here's a seminal game, played when Petrosian was 20 and Smyslov was 28.

Petrosian vs Smyslov, 1949