Or, in English, Many chessplayers understand a little Russian.
When I was young, there were few chess books published, and British Chess Magazine reviewed German- and Russian-language books. That doesn’t happen any more. Where can I find a source and reviews of Russian chess books?
I think that phrase is more like “Many chessplayers don’t understand much Russian.” with the tone that they don’t understand enough. It could include understanding none at all. But I could be wrong.
Back 40 years ago, it was necessary to read German and Russian to access much of the useful literature. I remember the only real book on the Benoni was in German. By ten years later (say, 1980) it was much less important. English translations were being published of the most important (as far as I could tell) stuff.
And now you can read stuff on the web, and translate.google.com will get it close enough that you can read it in English. For example 64.ru/?/en/magazine/year=200 … rticle=768
These days I think you can be mono-lingual and not miss much in terms of literature.
If I wanted to write “do not understand” I would have to say “ne ponimaiut,” negating the verb.