Alexander Ilyin-Zhenevsky
Encyclopedia
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Geneva
Geneva In the national languages of Switzerland the city is known as Genf , Ginevra and Genevra is the second-most-populous city in Switzerland and is the most populous city of Romandie, the French-speaking part of Switzerland...
n" because he joined the Bolshevik
Bolshevik
The Bolsheviks, originally also Bolshevists , derived from bol'shinstvo, "majority") were a faction of the Marxist Russian Social Democratic Labour Party which split apart from the Menshevik faction at the Second Party Congress in 1903....
group of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n émigrés while exiled in that city, was a Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
chess
Chess
Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...
master and organizer, one of founders of the Soviet chess school, an Old-Guard Bolshevik cadre, a writer, a military organizer, a historian and a diplomat. He was born in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
and was the younger brother of Red Navy leader Fedor Raskolnikov
Fedor Raskolnikov
Fyodor Fyodorovich Raskolnikov , real name Fyodor Ilyin , was a Bolshevik, participant in the October Revolution, commander of Red fleets on the Caspian and the Baltic during the Russian Civil War, and later a Soviet diplomat...
.
Ilyin-Zhenevsky promoted the usage of chess as an instrument for developing tactical and strategical comprehension during military training and he was the main responsible for the spreading of chess as a way to teach the basics of scientific and rational thought. The first Soviet Championship
USSR Chess Championship
This is a list of all the winners of the USSR Chess Championship. It was the strongest national chess championship ever held, with eight world chess champions and four world championship finalists among its winners...
in 1920 and the 1933 match Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Botvinnik
Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik, Ph.D. was a Soviet and Russian International Grandmaster and three-time World Chess Champion. Working as an electrical engineer and computer scientist at the same time, he was one of the very few famous chess players who achieved distinction in another career while...
– Salo Flohr
Salo Flohr
Salomon Mikhailovich Flohr was a leading Czech and later Soviet chess grandmaster of the mid-20th century, who became a national hero in Czechoslovakia during the 1930s. His name was used to sell many of the luxury products of the time, including Salo Flohr cigarettes, slippers and eau-de-cologne...
were organized by him. He was three times chess champion of Leningrad (now again Saint Petersburg) in 1925 (jointly), 1926, and 1929. In 1925, he won one game against José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca
José Raúl Capablanca y Graupera was a Cuban chess player who was world chess champion from 1921 to 1927. One of the greatest players of all time, he was renowned for his exceptional endgame skill and speed of play...
, making him one of a handful of players to have an even score (+1 =0 −1) against Capablanca.
A variation of the Dutch Defence
Dutch Defence
The Dutch Defence is a chess opening characterised by the moves:-History:Elias Stein , an Alsatian who settled in The Hague, recommended the defence as the best reply to 1.d4 in his 1789 book Nouvel essai sur le jeu des échecs, avec des réflexions militaires relatives à ce jeu.-Theory:Black's 1.....
, characterized by the moves 1.d4 f5 2.c4 Nf6 3.g3 e6 4.Bg2 Be7 5.Nf3 0-0 6.0-0 d6 7.Nc3 Qe8, is named after him.
Being personally associated with many oppositionists since Civil War times, he suffered persecution in the Stalin era. According to Botvinnik and official sources he died in a Nazi air raid
Airstrike
An air strike is an attack on a specific objective by military aircraft during an offensive mission. Air strikes are commonly delivered from aircraft such as fighters, bombers, ground attack aircraft, attack helicopters, and others...
on Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga
Lake Ladoga is a freshwater lake located in the Republic of Karelia and Leningrad Oblast in northwestern Russia, not far from Saint Petersburg. It is the largest lake in Europe, and the 14th largest lake by area in the world.-Geography:...
on a ship
Ship
Since the end of the age of sail a ship has been any large buoyant marine vessel. Ships are generally distinguished from boats based on size and cargo or passenger capacity. Ships are used on lakes, seas, and rivers for a variety of activities, such as the transport of people or goods, fishing,...
during the siege of Leningrad
Siege of Leningrad
The Siege of Leningrad, also known as the Leningrad Blockade was a prolonged military operation resulting from the failure of the German Army Group North to capture Leningrad, now known as Saint Petersburg, in the Eastern Front theatre of World War II. It started on 8 September 1941, when the last...
, but it is believed by some that he fell victim to the Stalinist
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
repression along with the majority of the Old Guard of revolutionists.
Political works
- From February to the Conquest of Power
- The Bolsheviks in Power - Reminiscences of the Year 1918, New Park, ISBN 0-86151-011-9