A Century of Chess: USSR Championship 1924

Chess in the Soviet Union got off to a slow start. In the 1910s, the Russian Empire had clearly been the coming power in chess, but between the war and civil war virtually all of the leading Russian players — Alekhine, Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch, Bogoljubow, Tartakower, Bernstein — emigrated. Several other talents — Levitsky, Flamberg, Freymann — seemed to vanish without a trace. In the first Soviet championship in 1920, there were no proper invitations: the tournament was announced and any masters still alive were welcome to turn up. And then the tradition itself fell into abeyance and the next USSR championship wasn’t held until 1923.

But in the meantime, Soviet chess found a patron saint in Nikolai Krylenko, the former head of the Red Army and a pioneer of Soviet terror. Krylenko, a mass murderer (one of his choice lines was, "We must execute not only the guilty, execution of the innocent will  impress the masses even more"), was also, probably, the single most significant figure in 20th century chess, virtually the sole creator of the Soviet chess machine. In 1924, Krylenko, although also busy with the brutal suppression of the Catholic Church, became chair of the All-Union Chess Section. The Soviet Championship that year was his first major event, featuring a reputable group of Soviet masters and with Krylenko securing the participation of Efim Bogoljubow and Alexey Selezniev from abroad.  

For Bogoljubow, it was fairly easy work tearing through the Soviet field. He was simply a level ahead, playing with greater ferocity and precision than anyone else. Grigory Levenfish, the third-place finisher, was forced to sadly conclude, “It became clear that Soviet masters, cut off from foreign chess life, had been left behind both in opening study and technique.” 

Playing second fiddle to Bogoljubow was Pyotr Romanovsky, the first real Soviet star. Romanosky was an interesting and easy-to-overlook player, probably on a par with Fred Yates or Edgar Colle among 1920s stars. Soltis, in his book on Soviet Chess, writes, "But the heart of chess in Leningrad seemed to be wherever Pyotr Arsenievich Romanovsky was...He was looked on as a deity and his influence was measured in decades." Romanovsky had won the 1923 championship and started the 1924 edition with 7.5 points out of his first 8, but even that wasn't enough to match Bogoljubow's torrid pace. 

Krylenko - really doing his best from the standpoint of chess promotion - organized a follow-up match between Bogoljubow and Romanovsky, which, however, Bogoljubow also won easily. 

For Bogolubow, the real significance of the tournament lay in the future. He had his chance to take the measure of the Soviet players and that appeared to give him an advantage in the Moscow international tournament held the next year, which would be his greatest career success. And Krylenko’s blandishments did their work with him and he returned to the USSR for a two-year stint before expatriating again to Germany. 

For Krylenko, too, the tournament was really about the future. He was able to make his case that chess was a sport that could catch on in the Soviet Union and that he could attract foreign masters to play. Not surprisingly, he was able to couch all this in Party terms, writing that the "introduction of chess and checkers to the masses is a weapon of the cultural revolution." But the next step — still far off in the future — would be the development of Soviet talent that could compete on a world stage. Sources: The tournament is discussed in Soltis' Soviet Chess, and in Levenfish's Soviet Outcast.