Alexander Alekhine shot by the Cheka

Alexander Alekhine (1892-1946), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Alekhine was one of the greatest chess players of all time and World Champion from 1927 to 1935 and 1937 to 1946. But what if we remembered him only as a promising young grandmaster who was one of many victims of the Red Terror?

Certainly Alekhine's class origins--his father was a hereditary nobleman, a large landowner, and a member of the Duma--put him at risk. There are various accounts of his experiences during the years 1917-21; I will quote from Garry Kasparov's in My Great Predecessors: Part I, p. 355:

"In the autumn [of 1918] Alekhine made a dangerous trip to the south--to Kiev and Odessa. The civil war was at its height, and many towns were constantly changing hands...In Odessa a tournament was planned with the participation of some local masters--Verlinsky, Vilner and others, but Alekhine's main aim was to travel abroad by boat. However, the tournament did not take place, it was not possible to obtain a ticket on a boat, and Alekhine was stuck in Odessa until spring 1919. The terrible situation at the time was described by Ivan Bunin in his narrative diary Cursed Days and by Sergey Melgunov in his book The Red Terror in Russia 1918-1920. Everywhere there were mass arrests and shootings...

"What happened next was related by Bohatirchuk, from the words of Yakov Vilner, who was working in the Odessa military tribunal: 'Alekhine was faced with the problems of how to survive and how not to lose hopes of becoming world chess champion. Some admirer of his chess genius found him work in the safest place--in the commission for confiscating valuables from the bourgeoisie! To work in the commission you had to join the communist party, which Alekhine did...' But he could not escape his fate: he was nevertheless arrested by the secret police--apparently due to someone informing against him--and sentenced to be shot. However, literally a couple of hours before the sentence was carried out, Vilner managed to contact the Ukrainian Chief Commissar Khristian Rakovsky, who gave the order to free Alekhine (according to another version, he was saved by the Agriculture Commissar, Dmitry Manuilsky, with whose consent Alekhine was living in Odessa.)"

Anyway, Alekhine returned to Moscow, tried acting for a while, gave it up, visited Kharkov where his elder brother was then living, caught typhus there, recovered, and in May 1920 again returned to Moscow, where in October 1920 he won the first chess championship of Soviet Russia. "Meanwhile in November the Moscow secret police, after receiving a signal from their Odessa branch, brought a new case against Alekhine. Fortunately, early in 1921, after a very detailed interrogation of the suspect, the charges of 'anti-Soviet activity' were dropped." (p. 356)

In 1921, Alekhine (who was then working as a translator for the Comintern, where his excellent knowledge of French and German proved helpful) married Annaliese Ruegg, a Swiss woman who had come to Russia as a Comintern delegate. "Annaliese was already expecting a baby and naturally, wanted to have the birth at home, with the moral support of her husband. In view of this, in the words of Bohartichuk, 'the persistent lady delegate obtained a reception with Lenin himself' or in another version--with Karl Radek, who is supposed to have said "Alekhine may be a counterrevolutionary, but in chess he is a genius. He can display this gift only outside of Russia." In any event, the couple was allowed to leave, and soon separated from each other.

It is evident from this that Alekhine had some close calls stemming from the Odessa accusations. And of course even if he were not shot, he might have died of typhus in Kharkov. Or still earlier, he might have been killed during the World War, where he had worked at the Austrian front as a Red Cross (according to other versions, Union of Cities) official, rescuing the wounded under artillery fire (he was in fact hospitalized in 1916 in Tarnopol).

In any event, let's assume he was killed one way or the other sometime from 1916 to 1921. What would the effects be on chess? Specifically, who would challenge Capablanca, the reigning champion of the 1920s? Lasker was too old, Reti and Bogoljubow were not really of world-championship caliber, Rubinstein was increasingly the victim of psychological problems (if only he had been able to have a match with Lasker before the war!). Nimzowitsch's challenge was (in Alekhine's brutal term) "platonic"--he may have had the skill but not the cash (in those pre-FIDE days https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIDE world champions could set their own terms for challenges--Capablanca's conditions, set out in his 1922 "London agreement" with Alekhine, Bogoljubow, Reti, Rubinstein and others included a $10,000 stake). Euwe? He didn't really become of world championship strength until the 1930s--if then. (I say "if then" because his victory in 1935 was largely the product of Alekhine's bad habits and weak play at the time.)

Great as Capablanca was, his style was by no means flawless. There was a certain laziness to him, owing to his belief that his intuitive genius would carry him through--which indeed it usually did. But to take advantage of Capablanca's weaknesses required a strong challenger, and one who was willing to take risks. It's not clear to me who that would be if not for Alekhine. The Age of Capablanca might have extended well into the 1930s when people like Botvinnik and Keres came along. (And of course without Alekhine's influence they may have played differently than they did--certainly Alekhine helped to make respectable a style that departed drastically from Capablanca's "simplicity.")
 
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