Vladimirs Petrovs - A Chessplayer's Story From Greatness to the Gulags

This book is about Vladimirs Petrovs, his exceptional chess talents and his early tragic fate.

Petrovs was an upcoming world-class grandmaster whom the Soviets sent to the Gulags. and a year later he was dead. This is also a story about the Baltic States, their independence between the two World Wars and players that came from those small countries: Aaron Nimzovich, Palu Keres, Vladas Mikenas and Vladimirs Petrovs.

In the chess world few have heard so little, if anything, of Petrovs. The Soviet system tried to conceal its misdeeds by hiding the names of those it killed; they made them "non-persons" and eliminated them from their public records. He was not mentioned in their writings and it was unhealthy for the Soviet people ever to mention him. His name is properly "Vladmirs Petrovs", even though it is often written "Petrov" in many English-language sources. The name "Petrov" is common in Russia and, therefore, to use that only made it easier to hide his disappearance and non-person status.