VLADIMIRS PETROVS: A Chessplayer’s Story From Greatness to the Gulags
Author: Andris Fride
190 pages
$27.50
Caissa Editions (2004)

Reviewed by John Donaldson

VLADIMIRS PETROVS by Andris Fride tells the tragic story of Latvia’s top player in the 1930s. Just how good a player Petrovs could be was shown at Kemeri 1937, where he tied for first on native soil with Flohr and Reshevsky ahead of Alekhine, Keres, Fine, Tartakover, Stahlberg, Mikenas and many other first rate players. Sadly he would die six year later in a Soviet labor camp.

Fride’s book could not have been written before the breakup of the Soviet Union and the return to free nation status of Latvia. One only has to consult Jeremy Gaige’s bible for researchers, CHESS PERSONALIA, published in 1987, to discover how even the most basic information about Petrovs’ life could be incorrect. There Petrovs’ place and date of death is mistakenly given as March 15, 1945, in Smolensk. In fact it was August 26, 1943, in Vorkuta, as Gaige’s as yet unpublished 1994 update of Personalia lists, that Petrovs perished.

If even such fundamental information is in doubt we can only imagine how difficult it was for Fride to piece together the story of Petrovs’ life. Fortunately he was aided by Petrovs’ wife and other Baltic chess players who shared their memories and memorabilia, including several letters that are reproduced in the book. Such material helps to bring Petrovs alive.

The heart of the book is 265 games, many of which are annotated. Breaking with tradition, tradition, the author has chosen to arrange the games alphabetically by player rather than chronologically. This has both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand the reader can instantly see how Petrovs fared one on one with his contemporaries (3-3 versus Alekhine!), but it does make it tougher to enjoy his tournament successes as playing over all the games from Kemeri 1937 requires a fair amount of work. It also makes it difficult to see exactly which games of Petrovs are missing. MegaDatabase 2004 by ChessBase gives 242 of Petrovs games, including the following that does not appear in VLADIMIRS PETROVS: A Chessplayer’s Story From Greatness to the Gulags.

P Keres - V Petrovs [D19]

Tallinn, 1938

1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 d5 3.c4 c6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Bf5 6.e3 e6 7.Bxc4 Bb4 8.0–0 0–0 9.Qe2 Ne4 10.Bd3 Bxc3 11.bxc3 Nxc3 12.Qc2 Bxd3 13.Qxd3 Nd5 14.Ba3 Re8 15.Rab1 b6 16.Rfc1 Nf6 17.Ne5 Qd5 18.Qc3 Ne4 19.Qb2 f6 20.Nc4 Ng5 21.f3 Nf7 22.e4 Qd7 23.a5 b5 24.Ne3 Na6 25.Qc3 Rac8 26.Rd1 Red8 27.Qb3 Rb8 28.Rbc1 Rdc8 29.Bb2 Nc7 30.Qc3 Na6 31.f4 Qe7 32.g4 Qb4 33.Qd3 Qxb2 34.Rb1 Nb4 35.Rxb2 Nxd3 36.Rxd3 a6 37.Rc2 Nd6 38.Rdc3 Nxe4 39.Rxc6 Rxc6 40.Rxc6 b4 41.Nc4 b3 42.Nb2 Kf7 43.Kg2 Rd8 44.Kf3 Rxd4 45.Ke3 Rd2 46.Nc4 Rc2 47.Kxe4 b2 48.Nd6+ Ke7 49.Rb6 Rc6 50.Rxb2 Kxd6 51.Rb7 Rc7 52.Rb6+ Rc6 53.Rb7 Rc7 54.Rb6+ Rc6 55.Rb7, 1/2-1/2.

No source is given by ChessBase for this game score. Possibly Fride had questions about its reliability. The fact that ChessBase has close to the same game count as Fride would suggest that there are plenty more games of Petrovs out there. One great find is his missing games from the Stockholm Olympiad of 1937, among them an epic draw with Reshevsky. By the way, Petrovs was a great connoisseur of the Catalan and there are many examples of his skill with this delicate positional opening, including a win over Alekhine.

There are a few small glitches in this book. Inconsistencies like Caro-Kann and Caro Kann or many players listed with first name initials and other not, are mildly annoying. Seeing Eero E. Book listed as S. Book on the Kemeri 1937 crosstable is a small quibble, but it did bother me to see on page 36 that Mikhail Tal died in 1991. The Latvian born World Champion sadly died on June 28, 1992, shortly before he would have played on the Latvian team at the Olympiad in Manila. This was the first Olympiad Latvia had participated in since 1939, where Petrovs held down first board for his country.

These small defects aside VLADIMIRS PETROVS: A Chessplayer’s Story From Greatness to the Gulags is a fascinating look at a tragic story in chess history.

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