Awards

• Short-listed for International Chess Federation Book of the Year 2020
• Short-listed for International Chess Federation Book of the Year 2021
• Winner of English Chess Federation Book of the Year 2021

Overview

*****ENGLISH CHESS FEDERATION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2021***** In his three-volume treatise, leading Russian chess historian Sergey Voronkov vividly brings to life the long-forgotten history of the Soviet championships held in 1920-1953. Volume I covers the first 10 championships from 1920-1937, as well as the title match between Botvinnik and Levenfish. The key contestants also include world champion Alekhine and challenger Bogoljubov, lesser-known Soviet champions Romanovsky, Bogatyrchuk, Verlinsky, and Rabinovich, and names that today will be unfamiliar yet were big stars at the time: Riumin, Alatortsev, Makogonov, Rauzer, Ragozin, Chekhover, and many others. This book can be read on many levels: a carefully selected collection of 107 of the best games, commented on mostly by the players themselves, supported by computer analysis. A detailed and subtly argued social history of the Soviet Chess School and of how chess came to occupy such an important role in Soviet society. A discussion of how the chess community lost its independence and came to be managed by Party loyalists. A portrayal of how the governing body and its leader, Nikolai Krylenko, strived to replace an entire generation of free-thinking chess masters with those loyal to the state. A study of how the authorities’ goals changed from wanting to use chess as a means of raising the culture of the masses to wanting to use chess to prove the superiority of the Soviet way of life. Or a sometimes humorous, often tragic history of talented, yet flawed human beings caught up in seismic events beyond their control who just wanted to play chess. This book is illustrated with around 170 rarely seen photos and cartoons from the period, mostly taken from 1920s-1930s Russian chess magazines. As Garry Kasparov highlights in his foreword “this book virtually resembles a novel: with a mystery plot, protagonists and supporting cast, sudden denouements and even ‘author’s digressions’ – or, to be exact, introductions to the championships themselves, which constitute important parts of this book as well. These introductions, with wide and precise strokes, paint the portrait of the initial post-revolutionary era, heroic and horrific at the same time. I’ve always said that chess is a microcosm of society. Showing chess in the context of time is what makes this book valuable even beyond the purely analytical point of view.”

Full Product Details

Author:   Sergey Voronkov ,  Garry Kasparov
Publisher:   Limited Liability Company Elk and Ruby Publishing House
Imprint:   Limited Liability Company Elk and Ruby Publishing House
Volume:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 16.10cm , Height: 3.70cm , Length: 24.00cm
Weight:   0.933kg
ISBN:  

9785604469286

ISBN 10:   5604469289
Pages:   534
Publication Date:   09 December 2020
Audience:   General/trade ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Available To Order  
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Table of Contents

CONTENTS Index of Games............................................................................................................... 4 Foreword to the English Edition: Chess in the Context of Time..................... 7 Introduction: Through the Lava of Time................................................................ 9 A Chess Feast During the Plague. All-Russian Chess Olympiad: Moscow, 4th - 24th October 1920....................................................................... 11 A Chervonets from the Proletarian Dictatorship. All-Russian Championship Tournament: Petrograd, 8th - 24th July 1923..................... 42 Who is Not With Us is Against Us. 3rd Soviet Championship Tournament: Moscow, 23rd August - 15th September 1924......................... 84 Diagnosis: Chess Fever. 4th Soviet Championship: Leningrad, 11th August - 6th September 1925..............................................124 Krylenko's Fledglings Learn to Fly. 5th Soviet Championship: Moscow, 26th September - 25th October 1927.............................................168 Odessa Roulette. 6th Soviet Championship: Odessa, 2nd - 20th September 1929..................................................................225 The Splendors and Miseries of the Extras. 7th Soviet Championship: Moscow, 10th October - 11th November 1931..............................................265 A Mirror for the People's Commissar. 8th Soviet Championship: Leningrad, 16th August - 9th September 1933..............................................313 An Old Horse Doesn't Spoil the Furrows. 9th Soviet Championship: Leningrad, 7th December 1934 - 2nd January 1935...........................................366 Gamarjoba, Genatsvale!: 10th Soviet Championship: Tbilisi, 12th April - 14th May 1937..................................................................414 Running into a Brick Wall. Soviet Championship Match: Moscow - Leningrad, 5th October - 11th November 1937........................475 Championship Tables ................................................................................................517 Championship Rankings...........................................................................................530 Bibliography................................................................................................................532

Reviews

The icing on the cake is the visual material...This is a fabulous work and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in chess history and fine games. - Sean Marsh, CHESS Magazine, February 2021 It's a colourful, living, chaotic and gripping account of a remarkable period in Soviet chess which I would recommend to anyone! - Grandmaster Matthew Sadler, New In Chess Magazine, March 2021 In the ever changing formats and awards at the Soviet Championships, the notion of brilliancy prizes flitted in and out, according to circumstances. Of course such awards are based on subjective criteria of those who judge. The same applies to book reviews. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, relevance and teaching in the eye of the reviewer. In the case of this masterpiece of the drama and history of chess in the country which has most influenced it, I have no hesitation in nominating Voronkov's tremendous achievement for the first brilliancy prize. - Peter O'Brien, British Chess Magazine, June 2021 The book reads like a novel describing how the championships were organised and played in the appalling conditions of post-revolutionary Russia in an extraordinary story of keeping chess alive against very considerable odds...Many contemporary cartoons, photographs, press reports and gossip make you feel that you are there when reading the book...A most remarkable, absorbing and entertaining chess history which fully lives up to its title, Masterpieces and Dramas, on and off the board. A worthy winner of Book of the Year 2021 over strong competition. - English Chess Federation Book of the Year Judges, October 2021. Congrats to Sergey Voronkov on winning the ECF Book of the Year for his Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Champs. A great tome. - Grandmaster Nigel Short, Twitter, 8 October 2021

The icing on the cake is the visual material...This is a fabulous work and I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in chess history and fine games. - Sean Marsh, CHESS Magazine, February 2021

Author Information

Sergey Voronkov was born in 1954 and lives in Moscow. He is a leading Russian chess historian, journalist and author. Sergey has written ten books in Russian and numerous articles on Russian chess history. He graduated in Journalism from Moscow State University and edited over 100 chess books for the Fizkultura i Sport publishing house in 1978-1991. He was Deputy Chief Editor of the magazine Chess in Russia (the successor to Chess in the USSR) in 1992-1999 working under Yuri Averbakh. As an editor of the Ripol Klassik publishing house in 2002-2015 Sergey increased the total number of books edited by him to around 150, including fourteen written by Garry Kasparov (the original versions of the Modern Chess, Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov and My Great Predecessors series among others). He regularly contributes articles to the leading Russian-language ChessPro website. For his first book on David Janowski (1987 in Russian, co-authored with Dmitry Plisetsky) Sergey won the prize for Best Chess Book from the USSR Sports Committee. His other books include David Versus Goliath (2002 in Russian, co-authored with David Bronstein, published in English as Secret Notes, 2007), Russians Versus Fischer (2004 in Russian, co-authored with Dmitry Plisetsky, English editions published in 1994 and 2005, Italian edition published in 2003), Fyodor Bogatyrchuk: the Dr. Zhivago of Soviet Chess (2013 in Russian, in two volumes), Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships (2007 and 2019 in Russian, in three volumes) and The Russian Sphynx. Alexander Alekhine (2020 in Russian). Sergey's father Boris Voronkov was a distinguished chess coach of the RSFSR, an International Master at correspondence chess, an author of two chess books, and a participant in the semi-final of the Soviet Championship in 1956.

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