4/28/2018 – Chess is a wide field with many interconnections, and while preparing this month’s article about pawn endgame composer Nikolay Grigoriev, study expert and historian SIEGFRIED HORNECKER learned about a nearly forgotten chess organizer from the early Soviet Union, Valerian Eremeev. But also Alekhine’s five queen game might have influenced Grigoriev.

2/17/2018 – Fedor Bohatirschuk was a strong Ukrainian chess player and a doctor by profession. He inspired Boris Pasternak to parts of his character of Doctor Zhivago. In 1944 Bohatirschuk played a handicap simul in Prague against eight Czech players. Vlastimil Hort shares memories of the eight players and translates a passage of Bohatirschuk's autobiography in which the chess master meets Nikolai Krylenko, prosecutor for Stalin and promoter of Soviet chess.