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

Reviewed by John Watson

Dale Brandreth is the owner of the publishing company Caissa Editions, which has been publishing books related to chess history, both reprints and originals, for many years now. For example, they put out John Hilbert’s The United States Chess Championship: New York 1940, which I reviewed some time ago. A notable recent publication is Chess: 60 years on with Caissa and Friends, by Alan Phillips. This is a selection of British chess games from the late 1930s to the late 1990, with a wonderful 20-page section of photos of notables from the British chess world such as Leonard Barden, W.A. Fairhurst, C.H. O'D Alexander, Robert Wade, B. H. Wood, Stuart Milner-Barry, David Hooper (a co-author of Brandreth’s), and many others. More of a nostalgic book than a history of British play, it will appeal to those who have been part of the English chess scene. Caissa Editions also publishes books about older tournaments.

Of more general interest is Andris Fride’s biography of the Latvian player Vladimirs Petrovs: A chessplayer's story from greatness to the Gulags. Petrovs is a player of whom I remained totally ignorant until I was “thumbing through” the ChessBase DVD on great tournaments and noticed his amazing tie for first place with Flohr and Reshevsky at Kemeri 1937. It turns out that this is more than coincidence: the Soviet Union’s persecution of Petrovs, which resulted in his tragic death in the Gulags in 1943, also led to his being expunged from Soviet chess literature (a typical technique under Stalin). This “disappearance” extended to Western historical awareness since so much source material in the West came from the U.S.S.R.

Fride believes in an additional explanation. He says bitterly that, “Even some willing Westerners ‘forgot’ to include him and his games in their works.” For me, it’s hard to give any weight to this assertion since it isn’t backed up by a single example. More convincing is his interpretation of the fallout from Petrovs’ fate: “The Soviets had made the name of Petrovs unmentionable and this took a heavy toll on the Latvia [sic] chessplayers. Most had known him well, but that had to be buried in the past. Some would not even greet his widow when passing. Even now, after the Soviets have rehabilitated him and Latvia is independent, when one mentions Petrovs’ name the Latvia players avert their eyes. Some things live with you forever ...” Okay, one suspects that younger Latvian players are unlikely to be so intimidated 62 years after the fact, but for a fast-disappearing generation  Petrovs’ treatment must have had a great impact. All the better that we be reminded of what is possible. The Soviets engineered accusations in the Latvian newspapers about Petrovs, including drunkenness, voluntary indebtedness, and opposition to the Russians themselves. Maybe some of this was true, but obviously not cause for his fatal punishment. Being Latvian and independently-minded were apparently enough to seal his fate.

Out of curiosity, I endeavored to understand Petrovs’ style as well as his results. Let’s take a look at a few of Petrovs’ tournaments in approximate chronological order, which I think is revealing. He was born in 1908 and came to chess relatively late at age 13. By 1928 he was playing for the Latvian Olympiad team, chalking up a 53% result against modest opposition. [Trivia: The famous Dadaist Marcel Duchamp was representing France and Petrovs lost to him; two years later they drew.] By 1932 Petrovs has made a great leap, winning the Riga Championship. At the Folkestone Olympiad he scored a quite respectable 54% result but lost to the leading players. By 1935, he did even better on first board for Latvia, but did so by demolishing the lesser lights and still losing to Keres, Fine, Flohr, Alekhine and Steiner. Then, in his first international grandmaster-level tournament at Podebrady 1936, he began what was later to become a pattern: he didn’t get a win against the top 6 players although achieving draws from three of them: Alekhine, Foltys, and Pirc. Thus, in spite of a very impressive score versus the remainder of the table, he finished in the middle.

In the powerful 1937 Kemeri international tournament mentioned above Petrovs had by far the greatest result of his life and performed at a truly world-class level. Again, he scored only 2.5-3.5 against the other top 6 finishers but he did beat Fine and blasted away the rest of the field by 8.5-1.5. As I see it, Petrovs’ play was very cautious and sometimes deceptively quiet. Out of nowhere he could establish positional advantages and nurture them home with his superb technique. The drawback of this style is that it lacked the unpredictability and dynamism necessary to achieve full points versus leading players. This showed in the powerful 1937 Semmering-Baden International (a double round-robin) where he finished in last place behind the likes of Keres, Fine, Capablanca, Reshevsky and Flohr. Against those players he ended up with 6 draws, 3 losses, and 1 win. Likewise, his 8th place in the middle of the table at Kemeri 1939 resulted from 4 losses to the top four players, 3 draws and a loss versus the next four players, and then 6-0 versus the bottom end. This story repeated itself, e.g., in the 1940 USSR Championship, where he scored 1-7 versus the top finishers and 8-3 versus the other competitors. He was solid and competent, and could draw the super-elite players more often than most of his contemporaries; it’s just he couldn’t seem to create enough problems for them to win. Based upon the games included in the book, I calculated his lifetime score versus leading players: (a) 1.5-1.5 vs. Capablanca; (b) 2.5-2.5 vs. Alekhine; (c) 0-1 vs. Botvinnik; (d) 2.5-7.5 vs. Keres; (e) 0-2 vs. Euwe; (f) 1-4 vs. Flohr; (g) 1.5-2.5 vs. Fine. A side note: his results over the years were helped significantly by his 9.5-3.5 against Mikenas!

Petrovs’ other successes included clear second in Margate 1938 (in which he beat Alekhine and drew Spielmann) and 2nd place in Sverdlosk 1942. Overall, however, he was second-tier and had quite a few disappointing results. His most spectacular achievement (apart from the Kemeri triumph) came in the Buenos Aires Olympiad of 1939, where he scored 72% on 1st board. Once again, this was because he was able to draw (but not defeat) the top stars Alekhine, Keres, Capablanca, and Stahlberg, while avoiding a single defeat in 19 rounds!

Fride talks quite a bit about chess in Latvia and to a lesser extent in the neighbouring countries. A section called “Chess Personalities of the Baltic States” lists and briefly describes Kieseritsky, Nimzowitsch, Betins, Petrovs himself, Mikenas, Keres, Tal, and the contemporary players Tonu Oim and Konstantins Grivianis, the latter a world-famous correspondence master who translated Fride's book from Latvian. Glaringly absent is the brilliant Alexei Shirov who, were he included, would represent his beloved Latvia better in terms of strength and creativity than anyone else since Tal. One suspects that the Fride has his reasons, perhaps Shirov’s move to Spain, but I’ve never heard anything negative about Shirov from the Latvian players I’ve talked with.

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