Chernev published the book after the American team was stunned by their crushing defeats at the hands of the Soviet team in 1945 and 1946. The U.S. team was made up of players like Reshevsky, Fine, Denker, Horowitz and Kashdan and so the Americans were surprised when the Soviet players won such crushing victories and everyone began asking asking why.
Little was known of many of the Soviet players, what made them so good and what their secret was so Chernev attempted to answer those questions...at least that what the introduction said, but the games are all too lightly annotated to seriously address the issue. His criteria for selecting the games was that they must represent a variety of Soviet masters, be modern (meaning games played from 1925 to 1946), be reasonably short (averaging 30 moves) and enjoyable with the accent on brilliancy.
Chernev’s annotations aren’t very enlightening: his focus was on threats (often quite elementary) and why another move was bad. There is a diagram every few moves so it is possible to go through the games without setting up a board. Of course, many of his notes will be proven wrong by engines, but the games are quite enjoyable.
The following game was played in the semi-final of the 13th Soviet Championship in Omsk in 1944. The 13th Soviet Chess Championship, held in Moscow from May 21st to June 17th, 1944 was important because twelve of the Soviet Union's best players met.
The war had interrupted everybody’s career, especially Botvinnik’s who before the war was considered a good candidate to challenge Alekhine. And so with this championship and the next one Botvinnik wanted to show he still had the stuff to challenge Alekhine.
Andre Lilienthal, Vladimir Makogonov, Vladas Mikenas, and David Bronstein qualified from Baku. Alexander Kotov, Salomon Flohr, Gavriil Veresov, and Vladimir Alatortsev qualified from Moscow. Alexey Sokolsky, Abram Khavin, Isaac Boleslavsky, and Alexander Tolush qualified from Omsk. The five remaining spots went to invited players: Mikhail Botvinnik, Vasily Smyslov, Viacheslav Ragozin, Georgy Lisitsin and Grigory Ravinsky.
Botvinnik won easily with 12.5 points and finished 2.5 points ahead of Smylov even though he lost two games: to Alexander Tolush and David Bronstein. In case you’re wondering, Omsk is a city located in southwestern Siberia 1,389 miles from Moscow. Today it’s a major road and air hub and is served by a station on the Trans-Siberian Railway. It also has a port on the Irtysh River.
Isaac Boleslavsky (June 9, 1919 - February 15, 1977) was a GM and chess author. In the 1951 World Championship cycle he qualified from the 1948 Interzonal at Saltsjobaden for the Candidates Tournament two years later in Budapest. In the Candidates tournament he was the only undefeated player, and led for most of the tournament, but in the last round he was caught by Bronstein, who later won a playoff in Moscow later that same year (+3−2=9). After that his results began to slip. In 1950 Chessmetrics ranks him as number 3 in the world with a high rating of 2760.
Anatoly Ufimtsev (May, 1914 – July, 2000) was, according to Chessmetrics, rated 2533 in 1945. He was born in Omsk. He was an economist by profession and lived most of his life in Kazakhstan. He won the Kazakhstan chess championship 11 times. Beginning in 1934, he contributed to the theory and practice of the Pirc and in the Soviet Union it is known as the Ufimtsev Defense.
According to chess historians David Hooper and Kenneth Whyld, he was born Ufintsev, but when the secret police took his father away for execution in 1937 they recorded the name as Ufimtsev and it was deemed prudent to let that version stand.
The years 1936 to 1938 were the time of The Great Purge or the Great Terror, a campaign of political repression in the Soviet Union that involved a large-scale purge of the Communist Party, government officials, repression of wealthy landlords, the Red Army leadership, widespread police surveillance, suspicion of saboteurs, counter-revolutionaries, imprisonment and arbitrary executions.
Under Stalin, Nikolai Yezhov became the head of the Soviet secret police after he eliminated his predecessor by execution. Yezhov presided over the mass arrests and executions of the Great Purge, but he eventually fell from Stalin's favor and was himself arrested, confessed to a range of anti-Soviet activity, later claiming he was tortured into making them.
On February 4, 1940, Yezhov was shot in the basement of a small NKVD station in Moscow. The basement had a sloping floor so that it could be hosed down after executions. Ironically it had been built according to his own specifications. They avoided shooting him in the basement of the Lubyanka Prion in order to ensure total secrecy. His body was immediately cremated and his ashes dumped in a common grave at Moscow's Donskoi Cemetery. The execution remained secret and as late as 1948. Sometimes there is justice in life!
In the following game the quiet Rubinstein Variation of the French Defense gives rise to a violent attack by Ufimtsev who offers a Q, R and N. In an attempt to avoid being the victim of a brilliancy Boleslavsky gives up his own Q, but can’t avoid disaster. What makes this game remarkable, besides Ufimtsev’s play is that at the time he was not even a Master, but only a First Category player (approximately Elo 2000-2125).
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