David Bronstein Biography

Ukrainian land gave rise to a large number of famous masters of the chess game. This is not surprising: after all, in Ukraine, a band of settling took place in royal times, where Jews were allowed to live. And chess, as you know, at one time was considered almost a national sport among Jews. The greatest success among these Ukrainian chess players of Jews was achieved by David Bronstein, whom many experts consider the best player among those masters who were not destined to become the world champion.

Sometimes he is compared with the uncorgional world champion Paul Morphy, who was a recognized creator of the intellectual game. Fate also did not deprive him with sports achievements. Bronstein was a double champion of the USSR and; Four times took gold medals of the World Chess Olympiads as part of the USSR national team, and; twice became the European champion in the team championship; He was an international grandmaster from the year when the title was established.

But the main event of his sporting life was, of course, that dramatic match against Mikhail Botvinnik. Father, a native of the Rotmistry in the Cherkasy region, was a member of the Bund of the Jewish Socialist Party, a participant in the First World War. In the year, the family moved to Berdyansk, and in the year to Kyiv. Father taught to play chess David when the boy was six years old.

The guy was engaged in the chess club of the Kyiv Palace of Pioneers under the leadership of the famous master Alexander Constantinople, a native of Zhytomyr. Certain circumstances determined the life path of David and firmly connected him with chess. In the year of his father, who worked as the director of the mill on the hem, was expelled from the party and unclenched the same mills into the workers.

And in December, Jonah Bronstein was arrested as an “enemy of the people” and sentenced to 7 years of camps. See also: a photo of the story of a titled Ukrainian chess player, who was stopped by Nazi Germany after that for David, who dreamed of entering the faculty of mathematics of Kyiv University, such an opportunity closed. The guy completely focused on chess. Already at the age of 15, he took second place in the Kyiv championship, and a year later he became the second at the Ukrainian championship behind Isaac Boleslavsky and received the title of master of sports of the USSR.

Subsequently, Isaac Efremovich Boleslavsky, a native of Zolotonoshi, became a very close friend and chess companion of Bronstein. Later, in the year, David Ionovich married the daughter of Boleslavsky, Tatyana. When the German-Soviet war began, David Bronstein left Kyiv on foot and finally ended up in the Caucasus, where he earned sessions of simultaneous chess in hospitals in the year.

Then he often said that he was haunted by the fate of the traveler. He was not taken into the army because of severe myopia, but sent by the builder to restore the destroyed Stalingrad. He worked in the rear as a margin of reconstruction of buildings damaged by the war. But he continued to play chess. Since then, his chess skill began to grow sharply: at the Championship of the USSR of the year, he took third place behind Botvinnik and Boleslavsky, with whom he tied and won both parties on the tenth chessboard in the famous team of the USSR against the United States.

It was a significant application for belonging to the world chess elite. Weinstein organized David’s move to Moscow as an instructor in the Dynamo sports society and even settled him in his apartment. The first successful international tournament for Bronstein was the interglane tournament in Salthebaden of the year, which he won. In the year, he received the title of Grassmaster.

And the victory in the interzonal tournament qualified him in the tournament of the candidates of the year in Budapest, where Bronstein divided 1 place with Boleslavsky. The match between them decided who would play with the world champion Botvinnik; In a heavy struggle, Bronstein won. The match for the chess crown Bronstein and Botvinnik had very dissimilar styles of games, characteristics of character and lifestyle, and did not like each other.

The Botvinnik was the favorite of the elite of the Soviet regime, a scientist, and Bronstein was the son of a convicted "enemy of the people", yesterday's Black Eraser at a construction site. It should be noted that Botvinnik, after receiving the title on the Match Torrier, prepared a doctoral dissertation for electrical engineering for three years and did not play in tournaments.

He went to the match with Bronstein in the best shape. The champion played uncertainly, often getting into the dummy. As Bronstein recalled, "the parties of the match were distinguished by the chaotic nature of the struggle and many inaccuracies." However, both participants showed the high quality of the game; In the match, the leader changed four times. Bronstein won 22 part and stepped forward, but he had a nervous breakdown.

He went to 23 parties, in which, having underestimated the difficulties of the endguspile, he was defeated. The last batch ended in a draw, and Botvinnik, according to the FIDE regulations, retained the title of world champion Bronstein later wrote that it was possible for the better that he did not win the champion title, since his rebellious character and tendency to artistry would not be in accordance with the Soviet bureaucracy.Having inflicted 5 defeats during the match, David Bronstein became a member of the symbolic club of world champions winners Mikhail Chigorin.

Since the end of the 10ths, the sports results of Bronstein were declining, and he did not enter the number of applicants in the years. The desire for originality gradually replaced sports tasks in Bronstein’s game.

He took places in the middle of the table at the USSR championships and achieved success, mainly in international tournaments. David Bronstein wrote many chess books and articles. For many years he led a regular chess column in the newspaper Izvestia. Perhaps most of all he is respected for the book "International Tournament of Grandmasters of the Year." This book was very popular in the former USSR, withstanding a lot of reprints.

It was translated into foreign languages ​​and is considered the best manual to conduct the middle of the game. His research was enriched with the theory and practice of the debuts by the royal gambit, French, Sicilian, Dutch and, especially, Old Indian protection. Bronstein was a chess dreamer. He is known for his original ideas for the popularization of chess: he promoted the blitz, invented control of time "with a delay", and introduced digital chess hours.

Since the year, Bronstein often played against computer programs and, as a rule, achieved good results. He wrote about this his experience the book "David against Goliath." See also: photos erased from the history of the Soviet Union: the life path of the Ukrainian chess player Bogatyrchuk deserves respect for the moral position of David Bronstein. So, in the year he refused to sign a collective letter of Soviet grandmasters who condemned Victor Korchny's "defeator".

By the way, according to Korchny, it was Bronstein who understood chess deeper than all his contemporaries. On the slope of life, Bronstein continued to actively play in tournaments. He supported a good shape by winning a Gasting tournament at the age of 70 and wrote several important chess books. Fully absorbed in chess creativity, in the house of David Bronstein, according to contemporaries, was an amazingly impractical person.

Shahmatist colleagues said that Bronstein buys gifts according to this principle: a thing should be expensive, useless in everyday life and inconvenient in transportation. Grandmaster lived very modestly, content with small all his life. Participating in tournaments, he received a scholarship of rubles. Then he was deprived of this money - for reducing sports results - and offered to retire as an instructor in the Dynamo Society.

He refused and collected certificates for a year. The family lived only on the salary of the third wife of the chess player - Tatyana Isaakovna Boleslavskaya, art critic, associate professor of Belarusian State University. As a result, David was given a personal pension of local importance - rubles. It was impossible to live in Moscow for such money, so the family moved to Minsk, to Tatyana's homeland.

David Bronstein in the center and Tatyana Boleslavskaya Isaac Boleslavsky, a friend and opponent of Bronstein, did not see him in the status of his son -in -law: he died another year, and David Ionovich married Tatyana, who knew another little girl, in the year. So fate has developed. The Boleslav family lived in Minsk since the year: Isaac Efremovich moved there from Sverdlovsk now Yekaterinburg, where he lived after evacuation since the war.

In the last years of life, David’s health has worsened. He suffered from glaucoma, but was not treated, having lost interest in everything. According to the memoirs of Tatyana Boleslavskaya, the last thing that interested her husband was the events of the year in his native Kyiv. During the Orange Revolution on TV, they showed the house in which he lived - the old royal house on Pushkinskaya Street with rounded windows.

Grossmaster recognized his native places and could not calm down for a long time. Bronstein was ill with hypertension, in December of the year he had a stroke. In the hospital, doctors noted an extensive hemorrhage in the brain. Bronstein was conscious and could even speak; Before his death, he repeated: "I will die, and a whole layer of chess culture will die with me." The great chess player from Ukraine passed away on December 5.

David Bronstein was buried at the Chizhovsky cemetery in Minsk. The nicema match of the year has become a fixed idea for Bronstein, and in the last years of his life he constantly returned to the topic of confrontation with Botvinnik, but he entered the history of chess not as an unsuccessful contender, but as a master of attack and an original thinker. Documentary about the match Botvinnik - Bronstein.