Alexander the Great

A new book from the Elk and Ruby stable joins the Willy Hendricks analysis of the relationship between Tarrasch and Nimzowitsch as an undoubted candidate for ECF Book of the Year. Packed with new information, original documents and fresh insights, Alexander Alekhine, The Russian Sphinx, Volume 1, by Sergey Voronkov, adds entirely new dimensions to the tumultuous career of one of perennially most fascinating of world chess champions. Alekhine has encountered criticism for ducking a rematch against Capablanca (from whom he had seized the sceptre in 1927), instead preferring a 1929 clash between Alekhine and Bogolyubov. By accepting Bogolyubov’s challenge, Alekhine recognised that his fellow Russian émigré had certainly earned his right to a title match, specifically by virtue of his victories in such mega-tournaments as Pistyan 1922, Carlsbad 1923, Moscow 1925 (ahead of Lasker and Capablanca) and Bad Kissingen 1928, again one point ahead of Capablanca.

Indeed, the global chess community breathed a huge welcoming sigh of relief at the buccaneering style of the 1929 battles, when compared with the arid war of attrition waged by Capablanca and Alekhine (most games were Queen’s Gambits, nearly all drawn). Similarly, the uncompromising willingness to take risks was greeted most favourably by the chess commentariat, when compared with the doubtless more accurate, but undeniably tedious wastes of seemingly endless draws in the previous Alekhine v Capablanca contest.

The chess public at large was, therefore hungering and thirsting for the swashbuckling attitude of Alekhine and Bogoljubov, both of whom were prepared to hazard downright errors, but combative ones, in their quest for victory.

Alexander Alexandrovitch Alekhine, one of the most brilliant and charismatic figures in the history of the game, was World Chess Champion from 1927 (when he defeated Capablanca) to 1935 and again from 1937 (when he regained the title from the Dutch Grandmaster Max Euwe) until his death in 1946.

After the Russian Revolution of 1917, Alekhine already cast himself in the role of émigré. There was no way such a free spirit could possibly have existed for long within the intellectual straitjacket of the fledgling USSR. Alekhine, therefore, found a way to escape to France and start life anew as a chess professional.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Alekhine was still a resident of France. Unfortunately he fell into the hands of the Nazi occupation forces, who quickly recognised the propaganda value of exploiting the presence of the World Chess Champion.

Indeed, in the early 1940’s Alekhine won some of his most brilliant games and notched up several impressive tournament victories. In these Nazi-run events Alekhine completely outclassed the opposition, including the young Paul Keres. The great Estonian Grandmaster had triumphed with Reuben Fine at the elite AVRO super-tournament of 1938, at which Alekhine had finished 4th-6th equal.

Had Alekhine confined himself to playing chess, all might have been well. Tragically for him, he had also unwisely allowed his name to become associated with widely publicised anti-Semitic slurs in the Nazi controlled Pariser Zeitung against such eminent Jewish titans of the game as Emanuel Lasker, Aron Nimzowitsch and Samuel Reshevsky. For this reason, perhaps, Alekhine had been denied a visa to America, where a much anticipated rematch for the world title might have been staged between him and his lifelong rival, Capablanca, who however died in 1942.

If these clumsy pro-Nazi articles were forgeries, as he was later to claim, Alekhine acted insufficiently at the time to distance himself from them.  His denial of authorship was disproved in 1956 when the manuscripts were found among his wife‘s effects. In any case it was an entirely superfluous gesture to cultivate favour with his Nazi overlords. The mere fact of Alekhine, as World Champion, gracing Nazi-organised tournaments in Salzburg, Munich, Krakow and Prague with his illustrious presence, would have been quite sufficient for propaganda purposes.

By late 1943, though, it had become clear to Alekhine that the Nazi imperium was tottering and it was time to depart. After turning up late for a chess display against the German officer corps in Paris, Alekhine departed by train to the Spain of Generalissimo Franco, where a variety of chess events were conceived in his honour. It seems that Alekhine had no trouble passing from France to Spain, and he arrived in Madrid, pockets bulging with Reichsmarks, which still retained their value at that time.

For other eminent members of the European intelligentsia, though, crossing the Pyrenees to escape the Nazis was far more of an ordeal. In order to reach Spain by the officially approved route, it was necessary to hold an exit visa from France, an entry visa to Spain and, on top of all that, a letter of transit. Shades of the movie Casablanca, which describes exactly that kind of bureaucratic nightmare.

One strangely Quixotic figure, the American Varian Fry, even set himself up as a kind of anti-Nazi Scarlet Pimpernel, with an ambitious programme to rescue prominent Europeans. On his list of potential exiles were André Gide, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp and André Breton, none of whom, as it happened, needed to be rescued, since most of them were already in New York. Those whom Fry did help to escape included Thomas Mann’s brother and son, Heinrich and Golo, not to mention Franz Werfel, at that time married to the serially polyandrous Alma Mahler, who also formed part of the exodus.

Apart from visa complications, the fleeing intellectuals were also advised to travel light, since the train journey across the Pyrenees usually involved stopping at Cerbère on the French side of the frontier, before proceeding to the station at Port Bou on the Spanish section of the border.

Alekhine possessed the necessary documents, so his transition in 1943 would have presented no problems to him. Those taking the Cerbère route, who had the required documents, were permitted to stay in comfort on the train, for the crucial leap from Cerbère to Port Bou. For the group assisted by Fry, things were less simple. Initially the border crossing was controlled by Vichy French officials, who were quite relaxed about the requisite paperwork. As hostilities progressed, the Nazis took control and escape became that much more arduous.

Alma Mahler, for example, was told to bring one suitcase. She brought twelve, packed with her jewellery and copies of Gustav Mahler’s musical compositions. At Cerbère she was obliged to detrain, clamber clandestinely over an unguarded small hill, and rejoin the same train with her luggage (guarded by the faithful Fry) at Port Bou.

Others were less fortunate. The German/ Jewish philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin, made it to the haven of Port Bou, only to be turned back by the border equivalent of the Guardia Civil. Overnight, unable to face the prospect of deliverance into the hands of the Nazis, who would undoubtedly have sent him to a concentration camp, Benjamin committed suicide by taking a large dose of morphine. A few tablets were left over and another celebrated (Hungarian) Jewish writer, Arthur Koestler, also attempted to kill himself by ingesting the remainder. These turned out to be insufficient and Koestler had to wait another four decades before successfully self-terminating. Not long after, Stefan Zweig himself, though in Brazil and in little danger from the Nazis, would also take the suicide route, writing: “My own power has been expended after years of wandering homeless.”

Koestler it was who, having eventually reached the safe haven offered by the United Kingdom, went on to coin the term “Mimophant” to describe the mercurial Bobby Fischer, Alekhine’s later successor as World Chess Champion; a Mimophant being a “hybrid species, a cross between a mimosa and an elephant. A member of this species is sensitive like a mimosa where his own feelings are concerned, and thick-skinned like an elephant trampling over the feelings of others.”

As for Alekhine, his circumstances in the Iberian Peninsula gradually worsened. During the war years, organising chess events was not at the top of the agenda and Alekhine turned to drink. His results deteriorated, leading to some embarrassing defeats against opponents whom he could normally have thrashed in simultaneous displays.

He ended his days, a tragically displaced person, holed up at the celebrated Palace Hotel, Estoril, in the environs of Lisbon: out of money, out of luck and out of opponents, an invitation to the London 1946 Victory tournament having been rescinded when protests were made concerning his alleged authorship of the anti-Semitic Pariser Zeitung diatribes.

In 1985 I interviewed the long-standing barman at the Palace Hotel, who remembered Alekhine well, asserting that a down-at-heel World Chess Champion of Franco-Russian background blended rather well with the international assortment of agents, spies and generally rootless usual suspects who had congregated around Lisbon at that time.

A final lifeline was thrown, when a challenge to Alekhine for the world title was issued by Mikhail Botvinnik, via the Soviet Chess authorities. The British Chess Federation was to be the host, and it would have been a fascinating clash of ideas. Sadly it was not to be, since Alekhine choked on a piece of meat and died on the evening of March 25, 1946.

Alekhine was unfortunate in selecting both his enemies and his friends. As a Russian aristocrat, he enraged the nascent but increasingly influential Bolshevik chess fraternity by defecting to France after the Russian Revolution. Worse, he befriended chess enthusiast Hans Frank, Gauleiter of the Nazi-controlled Generalgouvernement of Poland during the occupation, later to be executed at Nuremberg for war crimes. Finally, Alekhine alienated the post-war Jewish chess community by failing to distance himself with sufficient clarity from the Pariser Zeitung fulminations against Jewish chess grandmasters.

“Don’t be stupid, be a smarty, 

Come and join the Nazi Party!”

(Mel Brooks, The Producers)

The story of Alekhine‘s life is a mixture of powerful artistry and tragically misdirected genius. A political trimmer, he supported whatever regime would allow him to earn a living as a chess player. Moreover, a predilection for alcohol and the turn of historical fate compounded to produce one of the most turbulent careers in the history of chess. Alekhine was born in Moscow in 1892 of a family that was both wealthy and aristocratic. He and his brother were taught chess by their mother and in 1909 he gained the Master title in St Petersburg.

In the summer of 1914 Alekhine was playing in Mannheim, Germany, when he was interned by the Germans at the outbreak of the Great War. His release was doubtless obtained by family influence. In 1915 he joined the Russian Red Cross and served on the Austrian front. The Russian Revolution of 1917 destroyed the family fortune. Thereafter he worked as a magistrate and chess player, winning the first Soviet Championship in 1920. He joined the Communist Party in 1921 and operated as an official interpreter, but later settled in France and became a naturalised French citizen. From the safety of exile, and having escaped from Lenin and Stalin, he criticised the Soviet regime. Alekhine’s later attempts to be reconciled with the Soviet authorities failed. So he never returned to Russia, where the Communist government was giving increasing prominence and support to chess and its foremost exponents.

From 1921 to 1927 Alekhine (pictured below, 1931) ran up a string of tournament victories, but his ultimate goal was to take the World Championship from the hitherto invincible José Raul Capablanca. In 1927 the Cuban finally accepted Alekhine’s challenge; after a mammoth struggle in Buenos Aires Capablanca unexpectedly conceded the title. Although Alekhine now dominated the chess world like a Colossus, refusing to grant Capablanca a return match and brushing aside the resistance of other established grandmasters as if they were mere beginners, discerning critics noticed disturbing signs of impatience in Alekhine’s games. Not content with the inevitable incidence of drawn games, especially when one is facing strong opposition and one has the black pieces, Alekhine began to force events at every turn, running hideous risks in his desperate efforts to crush every opponent.

By 1935 Alekhine’s impatience had become compounded by a new reliance on the stimulation offered by alcohol. More or less in a perpetual stupor, he lost his title in 1935 to the much younger Dutchman, Max Euwe. The pre-match contract had stipulated that Alekhine had the right to a return bout. Alarmed by his loss, Alekhine suppressed his desire for drink and regained the title from Euwe in 1937, thus becoming the first man to win the World Championship twice. He retained the title until his death, the only man ever to die while still World Champion.

World Chess Champion Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine (1892-1946) at the Chess Olympiad in Prague. 1931. Photograph. (Photo by Imagno/Getty Images)

He was playing for France in the Buenos Aries Olympiad of 1939 when war was declared and as captain he refused to allow his team to play against Germany. On returning to Europe he joined the French army , once again as an interpreter. At the fall of France  he fell under Nazi influence. Not only did the aforementioned regrettable articles appear in print, perhaps losing him the chance of a visa to the US, he also played in tournaments in Germany and occupied countries. After the war, these actions were later construed as collaboration and in 1946 he was refused an invitation to the London tournament. He was also suffering from the effects of years of hard drinking.

Alekhine was, of course, still World Champion – the opportunity for matches having been severely limited by the constraints of World War Two. However, the young challenger Mikhail Botvinnik was eager for a match to take place. This was arranged in March 1946 under the auspices of the British Chess Federation, but the day after the news was dispatched by telegram, Alekhine died from a heart attack.

Alekhine’s opponent in two world championship matches was another Russian émigré, Yefim Bogolyubov. He was the one man ever to have held the German and Soviet Championships at the same time. Bogolyubov defected from the USSR in 1926 and was declared a traitor, his name only being rehabilitated in 1977, 25 years after his death. Bogolyubov was a portly figure, eternal optimist and a child of nature, possessed of a river of flowing ideas, when in action on the chessboard. His poetic skills in that medium were not matched by his appearance. At one tournament the official photographer cut Bogolyubov, in fact the senior grandmaster present, out of the picture since he thought that a rotund gentleman brandishing a giant Bratwurst and a Stein of beer had no place in a photographic record of chess grandmasters. Although Bogolyubov participated with equal vigour in Nazi chess programmes and tournaments, he had the good sense to keep his mouth shut and his quill dry. The opprobrium which attached itself to Alekhine never affected Bogolyubov with the same venomous intensity.

The last word on Alekhine’s Nazi affiliations has apparently now been pronounced by Dr Christian Rohrer in his paper on Alekhine and the Nazis: “With regard to his actions and behaviour towards the National Socialist regime, Alekhine is not aptly characterised as an ‘opportunist’, at least if one is to mean that an opportunist seizes opportunities that he considers favourable for himself, accepting negative consequences and disregarding general norms and values. Alekhine, however, by no means simply seized opportunities that presented themselves to him here and there. Rather, he himself contributed significantly to the fact that these opportunities arose in the first place. Alekhine’s actions and behaviour were those of a calculated tactician who – in the manner characteristic of a chess master – thinks in terms of variations. With his two-pronged strategy, Alekhine tried to achieve the maximum for himself and his wife, namely a semblance of their successful life in peacetime. But he failed in many ways, as a human being and as a chess player. In the end, he opened himself up to collaboration with the criminal National Socialist regime, but he was only able to escape from its sphere of power at a late stage, without his wife no less, his health and his reputation in the chess world were ruined, a match for the world chess championship was no longer possible and his world championship title held only questionable value.”

I broadly agree with this judgement, and was particularly impressed by Dr Rohrer’s subtle differentiation between types of opportunism. I would, however, disagree that Alekhine’s World Title had become worthless. True, he was in straightened circumstances when he died in 1946, but Alekhine’s powers of recuperation were legendary and, at his time of passing, the USSR and British Chess Federations were, as previously noted, in the process of funding and hosting a challenge by the rising Soviet star Mikhail Botvinnik.

There is only one way to compare the relative chessboard strengths of Alekhine and Botvinnik during the period 1940 to 1946. That bridge is provided by Paul Keres, the Estonian Grandmaster, who had scored a notable triumph at the AVRO tournament of 1938 (ahead of Botvinnik, Alekhine, Euwe and Capablanca) and thus occupied a special place in the halls of honour of world chess. Somehow Keres contrived to compete in both Soviet and German events during the war period, a feat of inter-dictatorial legerdemain, balancing his career between Stalin and Hitler, which many observers of the chess scene believed would lead to Keres’ liquidation during the early years of the Iron Curtain. Not so: Keres survived to be recognised as a permanent member of the world’s leading chess elite for another two decades after the close of The Great Patriotic War, the Russian defence against Hitler in World War Two.

In tournaments from 1940/1941 Keres finished ahead of Botvinnik in one event, but behind him in another. His score vs Botvinnik amounted to four draws and one loss. As for Alekhine, Keres tied with him once, during the 1940–1943 period, but finished behind him three times and in individual games he lost out by three losses with three draws and again, no wins. If Alekhine had survived to meet Botvinnik’s challenge, I believe that the old warhorse would have lost the match, but, as the Klingons say in Star Trek, it would have been a glorious defeat.

Alexander Alekhine vs. Ksawery Tartakower

International tournament, London, 1932, rd. 7

Notes by A. Alekhine

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e5 3. dxe5 Ne4

Less usual, but not better than 3… Ng4 against which I have had (excepting the Gilg game, Semmering, 1926) rather pleasant experiences, too.

4. Nd2 Nc5

If 4… Bb4 then 5. Nf3 followed by a3, in order to obtain the advantage of the two Bishops.

5. Ngf3 Nc6 6. g3 Qe7 7. Bg2 g6 8. Nb1!

This at first sight surprising move is in reality perfectly logical. After Black has clearly shown his intention to develop the King’s Bishop at g7, White has no longer to reckon with any action on the diagonal e1-a5. There is no reason, therefore, for delay in placing his Knight on the dominating square d5.

8… Nxe5 9. O-O Nxf3+ 10. exf3 Bg7 11. Re1 Ne6 12. Nc3 O-O 13. Nd5 Qd8 14. f4 c6

He has willy-nilly to dislodge the White Knight–thus creating a dangerous weakness at d6–because after the immediate 14. d6 the temporary sacrifice 15. f5, etc., would be too dangerous for him.

15. Nc3 d6 16. Be3 Qc7 17. Rc1 Bd7 18. Qd2 Rad8 19. Red1 Bc8 20. Ne4

Stronger still is 20. b4! f5 21. Qc2 Rfe8 22. Qa4 a6 23. Qa3 a5 24. bxa5 Nc5 25. Qb4 Be6 26. Na4 Ra8 27. Nb6 Rad8 28. h4; White has more space and better activated pieces. (Pancho*)

20… Nc5

This will be finally refuted by the combination starting with White’s 24th move–but owing to the weakness mentioned above Black’s position was already very difficult. Unsatisfactory would be, for instance, 20. d5 21. cxd5 Rxd5 22. Nf6+, followed by 23. Bxd5 etc., winning the exchange; or 20 … c5 21. f5! gxf5 22. Nc3 Nd4 23. Nd5 Qb8 24. Bg5, etc. ; and after the comparatively safest 20… b6 White could also easily increase his advantage in space by continuing 21. b4 etc.

21. Nxd6 Na4 22. c5 Nxb2 23. Re1 b5

The combination referenced in the next note had also to take into account this improvement: 23… Bf5! 24. Bf1 b6 25. Qb4 a5 26. Qa3 b5 27. Qb3 h5 28. a3 h4 29. Nxf5 gxf5, with equality. It is this single move, 23… b5?? that is the underpinning cause of Black’s demise, and on which Alekhine seizes with persistent aggression and merciless exploitation. (Pancho*)

24. cxb6!

A surprising but not very complicated combination. The only difficulty consisted in the necessity of foreseeing this possibility several moves before, when making the capture 21. Nxd6.

24… Qxd6 25. Qxd6 Rxd6 26. bxa7 Bb7 27. Bc5 Rdd8 28. Bxf8 Kxf8 29. Bxc6 Bxc6 30. Rxc6 Ra8

The last moves of Black were practically forced and, his position being absolutely hopeless, he prefers a quick end. If, instead of this, 30. Bd4 then 31. Rd6, also winning immediately.

31. Rb6 Rxa7 32. Rb8 checkmate

Pancho* is the pet name for our friendly Stockfish 17.1 engine that assists the analysis of our game’s moves.

Ray’s 206th book, “  Chess in the Year of the King  ”, written in collaboration with Adam Black, and his 207th, “  Napoleon and Goethe: The Touchstone of Genius  ” (which discusses their relationship with chess) can be ordered from both Amazon and Blackwells. His 208th, the world record for chess books, written jointly with chess playing artist Barry Martin,  Chess through the Looking Glass ,  is now also available from Amazon. 

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