Alekhine's Odessa Secrets: Chess, War and Revolution - Softcover

Tkachenko, Sergei

Softcover

ISBN 10: 5950043332 ISBN 13: 9785950043338

Publisher: Limited Liability Company Elk and Ruby Publishing House, 2018

Synopsis

*** SHORT-LISTED FOR THE ENGLISH CHESS FEDERATION BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARD 2018 ***

Sergei Tkachenko has written a fascinating account of Alexander Alekhine’s time spent in Odessa during World War I, the Russian Revolution and Civil War, as well as of the impact of Odessa on his later life. Sergei, an Odessa native and ex-world chess composition champion, has carried out original research drawing from Odessa, Voronezh, Cheka and KGB archives among others, as well as local newspapers from the time. His research, together with a review of Russian-language secondary materials, has dug up lots of new information and analysis on Alekhine, including on his trips to Odessa and their reasons, his service during World War I, his interrogations by the Cheka and his ties to the White Movement. Sergei portrays Alekhine’s Odessa relatives and the Odessite chess masters against whom he played a number of friendly and simultaneous games during his three trips to the Ukrainian city.

Sergei provides a detailed description of chess in Odessa from the beginning of the nineteenth century and through the upheavals of the early twentieth century, including the city’s leading chess organizers, the main and university chess clubs, and even high society’s chess-themed ballroom parties. He goes on to describe the chaos under Bolshevik rule during the Civil War, during which Alekhine was arrested by the Reds and very nearly executed. The author reviews the backdrop to Alekhine’s arrest and investigates the circumstances of his last-minute release. His heart-rending account of terror by the Cheka brings home to the reader how near the chess world was to losing its greatest player of the first half of the twentieth century.

This book then goes on to review the strong Odessa links with key events surrounding Alekhine later – his exile, failing marriages, plans for a match with Botvinnik, murky death and eventual burial ten years later.

Alekhine’s Odessa Secrets: Chess, War and Revolution includes 24 complete games (some handicapped) with annotations from Alekhine, Sergei Tkachenko and Sergei Voronkov (co-author with David Bronstein of Secret Notes), as well as five puzzles and one fragment. Alekhine played in 22 of these games and the fragment and set three of the puzzles.

Furthermore, the book contains around 100 photos, mostly of Alekhine’s Odessa contemporaries among chess masters and politicians, as well as of the places he frequented in Odessa and key publication clippings and memorabilia.

With an introduction to the English edition by Boris Gelfand.

About this title

About the Author

Sergei Tkachenko (born in 1963, near Odessa, Ukraine) is a member of the Ukrainian team that won the 5th World Chess Composition Tournament in 1997 and which came second in 2000, 2004, 2013, and 2017. He has won the studies section of the Ukrainian Chess Composition Championship six times and has won prizes, many of them for first place, in over 100 international chess composition tournaments.

Sergei coaches the Ukrainian chess composition team. He is also the press secretary of the Chess Composition Committee of the Ukrainian Chess Federation.

Sergei is an award-winning author who has written 18 chess books (in Russian), including compositions and on historical themes. Four of his chess study books have been published in English. He is deputy chief editor of a Ukrainian chess composition magazine called Problemist of Ukraine and has a regular studies column on the ChessPro website. Sergei is a member of the Ukrainian Union of Journalists. He is a historian and archivist, a mechanical engineering graduate, and additionally spent five years studying theater production.

Review

“The book is a wonderful mix of chess, chess history and modern history, in which Alekhine’s life, games and analysis, and the important chess figures of that period are examined in the context of the tumultuous events following the Russian Revolution. Just like Boris Gelfand – who provides the foreword to the English edition – I read the book from cover to cover in one go... ...the meat of the book is the extraordinary amount of work that Tkachenko has put into bringing together so many sources from that time to shed fresh light on such topics as Alekhine’s officer’s uniform and decorations, the time he spent in a Cheka jail in 1919, his subsequent employment in the Foreign Department of the Odessa Gubernia Executive Committee, and his various marriages... It’s a wonderful, beautifully produced book illustrated with many photos and facsimiles of original documents. A treat for anyone interested in Alekhine’s life and times and the Odessan players with which he spent so much time in 1918 and 1919.” – Grandmaster Matthew Sadler in New In Chess magazine, April 2018

"The book draws on a fantastic variety of sources, local newspapers, numerous archives, biographies and other historical works that are not available in English and thus unknown to nearly all of us...There are also numerous minor biographies of other local characters, thereby providing interesting sidebars to the main story as these include descriptions of chess life in Odessa, the city itself during the upheavals of the early 20th century, and what motivated people to act the way they did in those turbulent times.

Tkachenko has written a phenomenal book that puts the record straight on many historical discrepancies and this in particular will be welcomed by all readers who appreciate chess history." – FIDE Master Carsten Hansen in American Chess Magazine, October 2018

"A masterpiece, and an unusual one" – FIDE Master James Vigus, CHESS Magazine, October 2018

"Maybe one day someone will write a history of the world from the perspective of chess. And, if they do, they will find a very instructive and useful book for that undertaking – ‘Alekhine’s Odessa Secrets: Chess, War and Revolution’ written by Sergei Tkachenko (b. 1963)...At just over 200 pages, the book – published by Elk and Ruby in 2018 – offers a fascinating account of events surrounding Alexander Alekhine’s three visits to Odessa during and immediately after the First World War. Drawing on research gathered from historians, chess players, memoirs of notable Odessans and their descendants, as well as the infamous Cheka and the KGB, the book is a valuable resource about a period in history of a life of a chess champion, as well as the people of that place and time. Sergei Tkachenko (an Odessa native and a member of the Ukrainian team that won the 5th World Chess Composition Tournament in 1997) takes the reader on a trip starting from the Russian Revolution in 1917 and ending with the analysis of the mystery surrounding the death of the great world champion in Portugal in 1946. The book debunks myths and reveals details about Alekhine’s service during WW1 and (made-up?) decorations, his arrest by the Cheka in 1919 and the alleged links he had with the anti-communist White Movement which almost cost him his life...Overall, this is a highly readable and enjoyable piece for anyone who likes chess, history and politics." - Milan Dinic, British Chess Magazine, April 2019

Edition details

• Publisher: Limited Liability Company Elk and Ruby Publishing House
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 5950043332
• ISBN 13: 9785950043338
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 213