October 31: Birthday of Alexander Alekhine, the first Russian world champion
Born in Moscow Alexander Alekhine. A chess player, a hereditary nobleman, and an émigré. The first champion of the RSFSR and the fourth world chess champion.
For me, chess is not a game, not even an art, but a struggle in which, as in the struggle of life, the strongest always wins.
Alexander Alekhine: Childhood and First Victories
Father — a nobleman and a member of the Fourth State Duma. His mother came from a family of a major manufacturer. At the age of 10, he became seriously interested in chess after seeing a simultaneous exhibition by an American maestro in Moscow. Harry Pillsbury.
At 13, he won his first victory in a correspondence tournament for the magazine "Chess Review." At 15, he made his international debut. A year later, he won the All-Russian Amateur Tournament, earning the title of "Maestro."
In 1914, at 21, he took third place in the tournament in Petersburg, where the entire international chess elite gathered.
World War I and the Revolution
He met the outbreak of World War I at a tournament in Germany and was declared the winner ahead of schedule. Because of a photograph of himself wearing the uniform of a law school student—Alekhine had indeed graduated, but the police mistook him for a Russian officer—he was sent to a military prison. He only returned to Russia two months later.
He performed simultaneous exhibitions for wounded soldiers and captured Russian chess players. He fought as a volunteer, was shell-shocked twice, and was awarded two St. George medals.
In 1917, after the revolution, he lost his nobility and fortune. Under the pretext of participating in a tournament, he left Moscow for Odessa. He earned money by gambling in cafes. He was arrested by the Cheka, but was released thanks to his connections.
In 1920, he returned to Moscow and worked as a detective at the Main Police Department. That same year, he won the All-Russian Chess Olympiad, considered the first national championship. During a Comintern propaganda tour of the Urals and Siberia (working as a translator), he met a Swiss journalist. After marrying her, he was able to emigrate to Latvia.
In Berlin, he published the book “Chess Life in Soviet Russia,” in which he spoke out against the Soviet regime (it was not published in his homeland until the 1990s).
The heyday of chess life will come when the event that the Russian chess community awaits with the same ardent hope as all honest-thinking Russia finally happens.
Match with Capablanca
He toured Europe and North America, winning numerous prizes and awards for the beauty of his games. In 1927, he played a legendary match with the world champion in Buenos Aires. Jose Raul Capablanca — he was considered a "chess automaton" and an invincible genius. The match was played to six wins for each player, with no draws allowed; the struggle lasted 34 games and nearly two and a half months. Alekhine emerged victorious, thanks to strategy, serious homework, and subtle psychology.
He became the fourth World Chess Champion in world history and the first in Russian history. After the match, the crowd carried him back to his hotel. In the USSR, after Alekhine's toast at a banquet at the Russian Club in Paris, he was declared an enemy of the people.
My toast is that the wild, shameless phantasmagoria that has enveloped our homeland would disappear as completely as the ghost of Capablanca's invincibility disappeared in my struggle.
In the mid-1930s, he developed an addiction to alcohol. In 1935, he lost his championship title, but regained it two years later.
During World War II, he participated in competitions organized by the Nazi German Chess Union. He later explained this by saying he had no other means of support. Because of this, the professional community boycotted him.
Last years
In his final years, he led a reclusive life. In the spring of 1946, he was found dead in his hotel room in Portugal, at a chess table. The official cause of death was asphyxia: he choked on a piece of meat. Other theories include angina and poisoning by Western or Soviet intelligence agencies.
He died an undefeated champion (he remained so until 1948). In its obituary, the magazine "Chess in the USSR" acknowledged Alekhine's talent and skill, but added the following note:
As a person who is morally unstable and unprincipled, our attitude towards him can only be negative.
