Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships: Volume II (1938-1947)

The second part of Sergey Voronkov’s three-volume treatise continues from where Volume I left off. It covers the eleventh to fifteenth Soviet championships, the 1941 match tournament for the title of Soviet Absolute Champion, and the main events in the country’s chess history between these tournaments. Themes include the downfall of Nikolai Krylenko, the persecution and disappearance of Soviet chess players during the purges, and the experience of chess players in World War Two. The atmosphere of the time is captured in contemporary accounts and memoirs of key players and cultural figures. We see Botvinnik and Keres established as leading challengers for Alekhine’s throne, with plans being made to arrange a title match. We encounter for the first time and witness the rise of great Soviet players such as Smyslov, Bronstein and Boleslavsky, and enjoy the games of many other stars including Flohr, Lilienthal, Bondarevsky, Kotov and Tolush. This volume contains 84 games and fragments mostly annotated by the players themselves and their peers, and subjected to recent computer analysis. It is illustrated with around 250 photos and cartoons from the period, the main sources being Russian chess magazines and tournament bulletins. Volume I of Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships was named the English Chess Federation’s Book of the Year 2021. The jury stated: “The book reads like a novel… 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.”

Table of Contents:
CONTENTS Index of Games............................................................................................................... 4 Introduction: Without Gloss and Retouching...................................................... 6 Under the Wheel of Fate. 11th Soviet Championship: Leningrad, 15th April – 16th May 1939............................................................. 10 The Stakes are Bigger than Life Itself. 12th Soviet Championship: Moscow, 5th September – 3rd October 1940.................................................... 85 Operation Restoration. Match Tournament for the Title of Soviet Absolute Champion: Leningrad – Moscow, 23rd March – 29th April 1941...................................175 The Living and the Dead. 13th Soviet Championship: Moscow, 21st May – 17th June 1944................................................................250 The Palace Coup. 14th Soviet Championship: Moscow, 1st June – 4th July 1945......................................................................345 The Keres Mystery. 15th Soviet Championship: Leningrad, 2nd February – 8th March 1947....................................................414 The Paul Keres Enigma...........................................................................................493 Championship Tables.................................................................................................514 Bibliography................................................................................................................520

About the Author :
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, the first English volume was published in 2020) 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.

Review :
"Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships, Volume II (1938-1947) by Sergey Voronkov is a real 5 star book! The period before and during the Second World War is obviously both a horrific and horrifically fascinating period of European history. This book gives an amazing insight into how Russian chess players and players from surrounding regions coped with the profound effects of the war - effects that obviously had a huge general impact, but also often reached deep into their personal lives and professions." - Grandmaster Matthew Sadler, New In Chess magazine, January 2022