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and the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. He
learned chess from his mother and at the age of
15 was already playing in tournaments. Three
years later, in 1910, he took seventh place in his
first international tournament, which was played
in Hamburg. A chess master since the age of 16,
he won the rank of grand master in 1913, at the
age of 21. In 1921, one year after winning the
Russian championship, Alekhine emigrated to
France and eventually became a French citizen.
Although a lawyer by training, educated at the
Imperial Law School of St. Petersburg and the
University of Paris (Sorbonne), Alekhine never
practiced law, devoting himself instead to the
full-time pursuit of his chess career.
In 1927 he became world chess champion by
defeating the legendary Cuban grand master
José Raúl Capablanca, with whom he developed
an intense personal rivalry based on personal
differences as much as playing styles. He held his
title until 1935, when he was defeated by the
Dutch player Max Euwe, during which time he
refused to grant Capablanca a rematch in oppo-
sition to the desires of most of the chess-playing
world, who longed to see the two chess giants
play each other. Alekhine defeated Euwe two
years later to regain his title, the first deposed
champion to do so in the modern history of chess,
which he held until his death in 1946. Always a
showman, he established world records in 1925
and 1933 for winning simultaneous games while
blindfolded.
As during his World War I years, when he
either served with the Russian Red Cross and
was decorated for bravery or played chess in an
Austrian prisoner-of-war camp, accounts of his
World War II years were shrouded in confusion,
much of it caused by Alekhine himself. He
claimed to have spent most of the war in Lisbon
but was also reputed to have played in Germany
and other occupied countries and to have writ-
ten anti-Semitic articles. Although he initially
denied authorship, he later alleged that the Nazis
had inserted the anti-Semitic material into his
chess articles. Nevertheless, he was roundly con-
demned by the chess world and public opinion
for his collaboration. Still the world champion,
he was on the verge of arranging a champi-
onship match with the emerging star, Mikhail
BOTVINNIK
, when he died in a Portuguese hotel
alone and penniless. The autopsy later revealed
he had choked on a piece of meat. In 1956, the
International Chess Federation arranged for his
remains to be interred in the Montparnasse
Cemetery in Paris.
Aleksandrov, Grigorii Vasilievich
(1903-1983)
film director
The director of some of the most popular Soviet
comedies of the 1930s, Aleksandrov, born
Grigorii Mormonenko, started his career as an
assistant costumer and stage designer in the
Ekaterinburg Opera Theater. After the October
Revolution, he held various jobs in several gov-
ernmental art departments, while taking courses
for a diploma in film direction. In 1921 he joined
the Proletkult Workers Theater as an actor,
where he met Sergei
EISENSTEIN
, an important
influence on his career. He assisted Eisenstein in
some of his early classic films, such as
Strike!
(1924),
Battleship Potemkin
(1924),
October
(1929),
and
The General Line
(1929). From 1929 to 1932,
he joined Eisenstein and his cameraman Eduard
Tisse and traveled to the United States and Mex-
ico. With the exception of Eisenstein's unfin-
ished
Que Viva Mexico!,
the trip did not produce
any lasting results. Back in the Soviet Union, he
began an artistic partnership with his wife, the
actress Liubov
ORLOVA
, and the composer Isaak
Dunaevsky, which resulted in three highly suc-
cessful and popular comedies:
The Happy-go-
lucky Guys
(1934), which was greatly acclaimed
at the Venice Film Festival,
Circus,
and
Volga,
Volga.
Orlova's outstanding comedic talents,
Dunaevsky's music, and Aleksandrov's directo-
rial expertise combined to produce light but
highly entertaining comedies that are integral
parts of the Soviet film canon. Aleksandrov's
films from the late 1930s and 1940s suffered
from increasing political pressures. Even the best
of these,
Meeting on the Elba,
which won the 1950
Stalin Prize, are essentially propaganda works.
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