Which chess player died as the reigning champion. Alekhin Alexander Alexandrovich, the only world chess champion who died undefeated. Life under occupation
On a cold January morning, Bukavshin was found dead in the room of the Togliatti sanatorium "Scarlet Paruses", where coaching camps were taking place. The doctors version is a stroke. The version of investigators is an accident. The verdict of the parents - the son was poisoned by envious people. And friends believe that Vanya was killed because of debts in the bookmaker's office. To unravel the knot, I had to go to Togliatti and meet with those who saw Ivan a couple of hours before his death, and check out the most diverse versions of the death of a talented chess player - from real to the most insane.
Version number 1. Stroke
Ivan Bukavshin's mother, a 50-year-old woman who has not taken off her black scarf for almost a year, shows an SMS message from Ivan. “Mom, please collect the first aid kit. Don't forget the vitamins," the son asks.
See for yourself, there are no serious drugs on the list, - says Elena Bukavshina, - iodine, brilliant green, adhesive plaster, citramone ... He had excellent health. Before the training camp, I underwent a cardiogram. Doctors joked that they could be sent into space. What kind of stroke can be ...
And who established this cause of death? - we ask the lawyer Bukavshin Vladimir Zubkov.
Nurse. Imagine, the most ordinary nurse, - says Vladimir. - And the district police officer wrote it down from her words, even no one called the investigators.
No investigators - no case. Only six months later, at the request of the prosecutor's office, the case of Bukavshin's death was returned for additional investigation, because there was not enough evidence pointing to a stroke.
Version number 2. Poisoning
Let's make a reservation right away that only Ivan's parents and the lawyer believe in it. And that's why. The forensic examination showed that the day before the guy took lethal dose drug no-shpa, which entered the body in liquid form.
No traces of alcohol or drugs were found in the blood, continues the family's lawyer. - But the concentration of no-shpy in the stomach, liver, kidney was simply monstrous. According to the conclusion of the examination, these are concentrations exceeding the minimum lethal by several times.
But Vanya himself could not eat so many pills.
They dissolved them in grapefruit juice, which he often drank, the mother is sure.
It turns out that someone went into his room with Vanya while he was busy, poured the crushed pills into the juice and left. But who? Bukavshin had many friends, however, as well as envious people who were haunted by the fame of a young successful grandmaster. Bukavshin from the age of 10 won in various chess tournaments, received fees. Looking ahead a little, let's say that by the age of 21 he had saved 1.5 million rubles. The money was in a bank account.
When Ivan died, the mother of one of his rivals called me, I told her about the death of my son, so she answered me, they say, thank God, ”recalls Elena Bukavshina. - Why did she say that?
Some of his fellow rivals had Ivan's victories like a bone in their throat. So this time they met, as they say, face to face: Sanan Syugirov, Dmitry Frolyanov, Alexander Predke, Yakov Geller, Igor Lysy and Ivan Bukavshin.
Passed in February big tournament from a Russian airline, Bukavshin's friends tell us on condition of anonymity. - Prize fund - 10 million rubles. Everyone kept saying that Ivan would win. He was already a world champion. Prepare for these competitions. At the training camp, because of the competition, he quarreled with Andrei Mitin *. This is another guy who wanted to win. They scolded a lot. But then Andryukha, in a fit of anger, shouted, they say, anyway, you will not participate.
The investigation does not believe in such a coincidence. And he does not consider the version about poisoning, but works out another one - an accident.
Ivan drank the medicine, due to negligence, an overdose occurred, which led to an accident, - comments the senior assistant to the head of the Investigative Committee of the TFR for Samara region Elena Shkaeva.
This cannot be, - Elena Bukavshina insists. - He did not take no-shpu.
Version number 3. debts
We have already said that Ivan had a very decent amount in his account - 1.5 million rubles. Bukavshin's parents and friends knew about the money.
Ivan wanted to buy good car- says Elena Bukavshina. - We agreed. He earned himself - let him spend it himself, but not on some nonsense.
But time passed, and Vanya was in no hurry to buy a car. Chose. And then my mother found out that her son had been betting at a bookmaker for six months.
There was a conversation with him, but he assured me that the stakes were small, and he almost did not lose, - my mother recalls. - I don’t really understand anything about betting, I trusted him completely.
But those who have ever encountered gambling, knows how addictive it is. So Ivan got hooked.
By the end of last year, his debt in the office was almost a million rubles, say the chess player's friends. - He began to withdraw money from the card, then he generally lost money. But he was calm, he promised creditors that if I win 10 million, I will give everything back.
In the bookmaker’s office, Ivan was not particularly “pressed”, they knew that the guy was an athlete, responsible, they expected that he would give the money, he would not go anywhere. But no - so they will not remain silent, they will inform the coach, and Ivan was afraid of this most of all. Suddenly removed from all competitions. After the death of Bukavshin, the investigators took the computer for study and mobile phone Ivan.
But why then die? Maybe he just didn't want to embarrass himself. After the version with a stroke, the investigation considered another version - suicide, but assumed that Ivan committed suicide because of unrequited love, and not because of debts.
The version of suicide due to unrequited love was originally, but now it is not being considered, - they explain in the Investigative Committee. - But the fact that there are many inconsistencies in the case, we know. We are working.
*According to the law, the surname and name of the hero have been changed.
Hockey player Gordie Howe, weightlifter Leonid Zhabotinsky and many others. RT remembers the legends and idols of millions and pays tribute to those who have left our world.
Flutter like a butterfly, sting like a bee
In early June, the world lost one of the most outstanding boxers, who was called the greatest during his professional career. On June 3, Mohammed Ali died - a man whose name was known even to that category of people who are not fond of sports in principle.
Already at the age of 18, the born Cassius Clay won the Olympic gold medal. He was proud of his achievement and appeared everywhere with his award. But after one of the establishments in his native Louisville refused to serve Clay, he left Clay in frustration and threw the medal into the Ohio River the same day.
Muhammad Ali globallookpress.com © imago sportfotodienst
Only in 1996, at the home Olympics in Atlanta, the champion was awarded a duplicate gold medal. By this time, the boxer became known to everyone as Mohammed Ali. This happened after he firmly associated himself with the American organization "Nation of Islam".
At 22, he became a world champion, but the refusal to do military service in the United States deprived him of all titles. Ali managed to return to the sport and, in the fight against the great boxers of his time, regain the title of world champion, and his confrontations with Joe Frazier and George Foreman became iconic. Mohammed was not shy about sharp statements, and some of his phrases later became winged. The most famous of them is “Hands work, eyes see. Flutter like a butterfly, pity like a bee.
Mohammed Ali globallookpress.com In 1980, Ali ended his career, and four years later he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, which causes a violation of the locomotor system. At the age of 74, the boxer died due to septic shock. One of the most touching posts on social networks was left by the former world boxing champion Mike Tyson. “God has come for his champion. Great for a long time,” Tyson wrote on his Twitter.
God came for his champion. So long great one. @MuhammadAli #TheGreatest #RIP pic.twitter.com/jhXyqOuabi
Mike Tyson (@MikeTyson) June 4, 2016
Flying Dutchman
While still a football player, Johan Cruyff was close to the title of world and European champion, but in 1974 the Dutch lost to the German national team in the final of the world championship, and two years later, at the championship of the continent, they were content with only bronze medals.
Cruyff won title after title with Ajax, while at Barcelona he only managed to celebrate a triumph in the Spanish Championship once. However, becoming a coach, he filled the gap, leading the Catalans to gold medals four times in eight years.
Johan Cruyff
In the 90s, Barcelona became the dominant force and talents like Josep Guardiola, Gheorghe Hadji, Ronald Koeman, Mikael Laudrup, Romário and Hristo Stoichkov were revealed under Cruyff. In the 1991/92 season, Barcelona won the European Cup for the first time in history. But in 1996, the Dutchman left the Spanish team and never returned to coaching.
“Most of all I love to watch the children play in the yard. This is the most sincere football. Exactly the one in which my teams played, ”Cruyff said.
He was a heavy smoker and was diagnosed with lung cancer in October 2015. In March 2016, the Dutchman died at the age of 68.
Mister Hockey
Just a week after the death of Muhammad Ali, the sports world suffered another irreparable loss. At the age of 89, Gordie Howe, a hockey legend, has died, after whom a specific hat-trick is named - a situation when a hockey player scores a puck, gives an assist and fights in one game. He was quite aggressive on the ice and good in attack, which provoked not only the appearance of the mentioned term, but also the nickname "Mr. Elbows". However, as soon as Howe crossed the mark of 500 abandoned goals in his career, the nickname "Mr. Hockey" was assigned to him for life.
Gordie Howe globallookpress.com © Doug Ball/STRTCPI
During his 35-year career, he primarily played for Detroit, with whom he won four Stanley Cups. At 43, he announced his retirement, but two years later he returned to big-time sports and joined the Houston Eros, then playing in the WHA. After the merger of the WHA and the NHL, Howe played for the Hartford Whalers, where he ended his professional career in 1980. As a result, Detroit, Hartford and Houston retired Gordy's number 9 as a sign of respect.
In the last years of his life, health problems made themselves felt. He suffered a stroke in 2014 and died two years later.
Idol Schwarzenegger
One of the first losses of the year was the departure of Leonid Zhabotinsky. The weightlifter passed away two weeks before his 78th birthday.
In 1963, he set his first world record by lifting a barbell weighing 165 kg. But at the World Championships in Stockholm, such a result was not enough to win and he became a bronze medalist. In total, during his career, Zhabotinsky set 19 world achievements.
Leonid Zhabotinsky
RIA News
A streak of victories overtook Zhabotinsky in the second half of the 1960s. He won two golds - first at the Olympics in Tokyo, and four years later in Mexico City. To two Olympic medals of the highest standard, he added four gold medals from world championships and brought two from continental championships.
The Soviet athlete over the years of his career has become a cult not only for colleagues, but also for bodybuilders. The most famous of them, Arnold Schwarzenegger, has repeatedly called Leonid his idol and role model. “I have been rooting for you since childhood. Even during the Tokyo Olympics, although Shemansky and Gubner competed there. Of course, I was also worried about them, but for some reason I wanted you to win ... ”, Schwarzenegger said to Zhabotinsky during his visit to the United States.
The death of the Brazilian football team
At the end of the year, there was a plane crash in Colombia that killed most of the Brazilian Chapecoense football team. There were 77 people on board, six managed to survive, but the goalkeeper of the club Danilo died in one of the hospitals. Five people survived, of which three players - 24-year-old goalkeeper Jaxon Folmann, 27-year-old defender Alan Ruschel and 31-year-old defensive player Neto.
FC Chapecoense
globallookpress.com © Marco Galvao/ZUMAPRESS.com Chapecoense headed to the first match of the Copa Sudamericana against Atlético Nacional, but that game was not to be. As a result, a proposal was made to declare the Brazilian team the winner of the tournament. The South American Football Confederation accepted it. Matches around the world began with a moment of silence in memory of the dead.
The World Chess Championship match between Norwegian Magnus Carlsen and Russian Sergey Karjakin has become one of the main sporting events of the outgoing year not only in the world of chess. Unfortunately, such grandiose events will not be able to make up for the bitterness of loss in this sport.
On June 6, the legendary grandmaster Viktor Korchnoi passed away. In 1978 and 1981, he twice claimed the chess crown, but on both occasions lost to Anatoly Karpov and never made it into history as a world champion.
Viktor Korchnoi
RIA News
During the Karjakin-Carlsen meeting, 90-year-old chess player Mark Taimanov died, and the day before his death, grandmaster, former Russian champion in classical chess Yury Eliseev tragically died at the age of 20 - the young man fell from a great height while trying to climb from the window to the balcony .
Yuri Eliseev
© Russian Chess Federation
At the beginning of the year, 20-year-old Russian chess player Ivan Bukavshin died during a training camp. The cause of the tragedy was a stroke. Successes at a young age made him one of the most promising in his craft, but Bukavshin's dreams were not destined to come true.
Ivan Bukavshin
© ladachess.ru A little more than a month was not enough for Samuil Zhukhovitsky to celebrate his 100th birthday. One of the oldest chess players in the world has died at the age of 99, and one of the rapid chess competitions has become a tournament in his memory.
Samuil Zhukhovitsky
© Wikimedia Commons
Also in the past year, the sports world lost chess player and author Evgeny Gik, who died at the age of 73. In addition, international chess master Mark Dvoretsky passed away. He was 68 years old.
Evgeniy Gik © Wikimedia Commons
Football and hockey
On January 7, the famous football player and coach Sergei Shustikov, the son of the legendary Torpedo football player Viktor Shustikov, passed away. Sergei managed to play abroad, but did not achieve significant achievements in Spain. In 2004, he ended his career, and in 2009 he became the coach of CSKA. He left the capital club after five years.
He died at the age of 45 in the arms of his wife. “We called an ambulance when there was the first attack. When the doctors did not come for a long time, the second happened. I had an earring on my hands. Breathed. I held it. He was weakening, ”said Sergey’s wife Natalya after his death.
Sergei Shustikov (left)
RIA News
One of the most talented football players of his generation, Artyom Bezrodny, has died at the age of 37. He was a prominent figure in Spartak, won the Russian championship four times, tried to play in Europe, but injuries and a difficult character did not allow him to prove himself in the German Bayer. Leaving Spartak in 2002 was the last notable milestone in Bezrodny's career. Artyom died in his native Sumy.
Artyom Bezrodny
RIA News
In 2016, the football world lost two legends of Soviet football. The 1956 Olympic champions Anatoly Isaev and Anatoly Ilyin, who forged the glory of the Moscow Spartak, have passed away.
Anatoly Isaev and Anatoly Ilyin.
globallookpress.com © Dmitry Golubovich/Russian Look
Two-time Olympic volleyball champion Galina Leontyeva died on February 4. In addition to victories at the Olympics, she twice became the champion of Europe and once the world champion.
Galina Leontieva
© Wikimedia Commons
Soviet athlete Faina Melnik passed away on December 16. She knew no equal in discus throwing at the 1972 Olympics. Melnik won two more continental championships (1971 and 1974).
Chess - board logic game figures on the 64 cell board. Each figure moves along certain cells-routes.
Chess is first mentioned in records dating back to the 4th-5th centuries. new era. They appeared in India. Chess came to our country straight from Persia around 820.
The title of world chess champion began to be played for the first time in 1886 and the first champion was Wilhelm Steinitz, a grandmaster from Austria. In the future, the official title was worn by about 20 more people.
But the only chess player who passed away with the rank of current world champion was Alexander Alekhine is a Russian grandmaster who also plays for France. 
He became the fourth world champion in history. Alekhine was an extremely versatile chess player. He is best known for his attacking style of play and spectacular, deeply calculated combinations. He is considered the greatest chess player of the 20th century. This will be the correct answer to the question.
The rest of the champions from this list: Mikhail Tal, José Raul Capablanca, Wilhelm Steinz gave their titles to other chess players in their lost matches during their lifetime.
So, today we have Saturday, May 20, 2017 and we traditionally offer you answers to the quiz in the "Question - Answer" format. The questions we meet are both the most simple and quite complex. The quiz is very interesting and quite popular, but we just help you test your knowledge and make sure that you have chosen the correct answer out of the four proposed. And we have another question in the quiz - Who was the only chess player who passed away with the rank of current world champion?
- Wilhelm Steinz
- Mikhail Tal
- Jose Raul Capablanca
- Alexander Alekhin
The correct answer is D - Alexander Alekhin
Alexander Alekhin (1892 1946) - Russian chess player, fourth world chess champion - from 1927 (after the victory over Capablanca) to 1935 and from 1937 (after the victory over Max Euwe) to 1946. In 1921 he emigrated to France. Alekhin is a representative of the Russian chess school of Alexander Petrov and Mikhail Chigorin. Brilliant combinational chess player, world record holder in blind play. Alekhine - the only chess player who died while being the reigning world champion.
In 1946, he, at that time an outcast in Portugal, was to meet in a match for the world chess crown with the champion of the USSR Mikhail Botvinnik. But the meeting I was looking forward to chess world, never took place. Alexander Alekhine died suddenly. His death is still considered mysterious.
A chess genius was born in Moscow in 1892 in a wealthy noble family. His father was the leader of the nobility of the Voronezh province, and his mother was the daughter of a textile manufacturer. In 1911, the family moved to St. Petersburg, where Alekhin graduated from the Imperial Institute of Jurisprudence and was assigned to the Ministry of Justice. Alekhin learned to play chess as a child, and thanks to his phenomenal memory, he immediately achieved brilliant success. Already at the age of 13, he won the first prize in the correspondence tournament.
In 1914, he took third place at the international tournament in St. Petersburg, losing only to the great Lasker and Capablanca. When the First World War began, Alekhine was interned in Mannheim, Germany, where an international tournament was held. But he was soon released, and he managed to return to Russia.
Due to heart disease, the chess player was not taken into the army, but Alekhine nevertheless went to the front as a volunteer, as an authorized representative of the Red Cross. For saving the wounded on the battlefield, he was awarded two St. George medals. Was twice shell-shocked.
After the October Revolution, Alekhin lost all his property and ended up in Odessa, where he was arrested on charges of having links with the White Guards and sentenced to death. However, he was released as a well-known chess player at the special request of the chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of Ukraine, Rakovsky, who turned out to be a great chess lover. For some time Alekhin worked as an investigator in the Moscow wanted list, where he dealt with the search for foreigners who disappeared during the revolution and the Civil War, and worked in the apparatus of the Comintern as a translator. In 1920 Alekhine won the All-Russian Chess Championship. Passed the tournament path without defeat: nine wins and six draws. This competition is considered the first official championship of the RSFSR, and the USSR championships are also counted from it.
Alekhine even became a candidate member of the party.
In May 1921, the chess player boarded a train to go on a trip abroad. Legally, with the permission of the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs, he left the USSR for Riga, and then for Berlin and Paris, not yet knowing that he would never return ...
Abroad, Alekhine travels around the world, plays a lot. He becomes an unsurpassed master of the simultaneous game on several boards, in New York he sets a world record for playing blindly on 26 boards at once. According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, Alekhin was a versatile educated and charming conversationalist, he spoke six languages. Grandmaster Grigory Levenfish recalled: “Alekhine had a phenomenal chess memory... He could completely restore a game played many years ago. But no less surprising was his distraction. Many times he left a valuable cigarette case with a large emerald clasp at the club. Two days later we came to the club, sat down at the board. A waiter would appear and, as if nothing had happened, handed Alekhine a cigarette case. Alekhine politely thanked.
The master also had his own quirks. Alekhine was a great lover of cats. His Siamese cat Chess (translated from English means "Chess") was constantly present at the competitions as a talisman. During the first match with Euwe, Alekhine made the cat sniff the board before each game.
He was one of the few chess players for whom the game became a profession. It was Alekhine that Vladimir Nabokov had in mind when he created the image of a chess genius in his "chess" novel:
He found deep pleasure in this, there was no need to deal with visible, audible, tangible figures, which, with their elaborate carvings, their wooden materiality, always interfered with him, always seemed to him a rough, earthly shell of charming, invisible chess forces. Playing blind, he felt these diverse forces in their original purity.
At that time he did not see either the steep mane of the knight, or the shiny heads of the pawns, but he clearly felt that this or that imaginary square was occupied by a certain concentrated force, so that the movement of the piece seemed to him like a discharge, like a blow, like lightning, and everything was chess. the field trembled with tension, and he dominated this tension, here collecting, there releasing electric force ... ".
The dream of the world chess crown becomes the goal of Alekhine's life. In those years, the legendary Jose Raul Capablanca was the world champion. Candidates tournaments have not yet been held - the applicant himself had to send a personal challenge to the reigning champion, in which fee conditions were stipulated. The conditions of the arrogant Capablanca turned out to be enslaving: the applicant was obliged to provide prize fund$10,000, of which 20% automatically went to the Cuban as the reigning champion; the remaining amount was divided between the winner and the loser in the ratio of 60 to 40. In addition, the Russian “had the honor” to pay other expenses associated with the match. Alekhin with great difficulty managed to raise the necessary money, and in 1927 the Argentine government considered the duel of two geniuses a prestigious affair and helped organize the confrontation.
Capablanca at that time was reputed to be invincible. But Alekhine believed in himself.
Before the match, the Russian grandmaster said: "I can't imagine how I can win six games against Capablanca, but even less how Capablanca will be able to win six games against me!" Few believed in Alekhine's victory, but there was a sensation: 6:3 - this was the result of a grueling match.
Alekhine was hailed as a chess genius who brought the theoretical preparation for games to unprecedented heights, invented new openings and became famous for his attacking style of play.
The Russian emigration rejoiced. The emigrant writer Boris Zaitsev enthusiastically wrote: “This gloomy morning has been colored for us by your victory. Hooray!
You are now not a Russian Queen, but a Russian King. You can only move one cell, but from now on your step is "royal". Russia has won in your person. Your example should be a refreshment, an encouragement to every Russian, in whatever field he may work.
May God give you strength, health, prosperity to your art.”
But the triumph turned into problems. The newspapers replicated the words, allegedly spoken by Alekhine: "The myth of the invincibility of the Bolsheviks will be dispelled, as the myth of the invincibility of Capablanca was dispelled." He always tried to refrain from political statements, and therefore, most likely, this fatal phrase was attributed to him. Nevertheless, the reaction in Moscow was angry. A devastating article by the head of the Supreme Tribunal of the USSR Nikolai Krylenko appeared in the Chess Bulletin magazine: “After Alekhine’s speech in the Russian Club, everything is over with citizen Alekhine - he is our enemy, and from now on we must interpret him only as an enemy.” The world champion could no longer return to his homeland.
But the years passed, chess in the USSR became more and more popular, a real chess fever flared up. Young masters were gaining strength, in the first place - Mikhail Botvinnik. Alekhin rejoiced at the success of the Russian chess school and still hoped to return to Russia. In 1935, the world champion sent a letter to his homeland: “Not only as a long-term chess worker, but also as a person who understood the enormous significance of what has been achieved in the USSR in all areas of cultural life, I send sincere greetings to the chess players of the USSR on the occasion of the 18th anniversary of the October Revolution. Alekhine.
But soon came the second World War. Alekhine was in Argentina, where Chess Olympiad, and called for a boycott of the German team. As captain of the French team, he refused to play with the German team, and the whole team followed suit. In 1940, Alekhine volunteered for the French army and served as an interpreter, and after the end of hostilities against Germany, he settled in the south of the country occupied by the Germans.
In France, Alekhine found himself with his wife, Grace Wishard, an American of Jewish origin.
The grandmaster was hinted that if he did not compete, then Grace would have problems. And what it could mean at that time, it was not difficult to guess. Alekhine had to perform at tournaments under the flag with a swastika, play with German officers, give chess lessons to the Governor-General of Poland Hans Frank.
In the spring of 1941, an article entitled "Jewish and Aryan Chess" was published in the Pariser Zeitung newspaper. Alekhine was again unlucky. The editors, to please the invaders, distorted his words, turning the cautious chess player into a fanatical "Shah Fuhrer". As a result, after the collapse of the Third Reich, European chess players accused Alekhine of collaborationism and declared a boycott against him.
“I played chess in Germany,” Alekhin later justified, “only because it was our only livelihood and, moreover, the price I paid for the freedom of my wife ...”.
He tried to return to the world chess orbit, but all attempts were severely suppressed by his colleagues. The great chess player had to settle in Portugal, in quiet Estoril.
He yearned for his homeland more sharply than before, but the path to the Soviet Union was closed. However, in February 1946, the British embassy unexpectedly handed him a letter from the USSR from Mikhail Botvinnik: “I regret that the war prevented our match in 1939. I again challenge you to the match for the world championship. If you agree, I am waiting for your response, in which I ask you to indicate your opinion about the time and place of the match.
It is clear that in those days Botvinnik himself could not write such a letter to an emigrant abroad - it was a special decision of the Soviet authorities. On March 23, FIDE agreed to a sensational match, but the very next day it became known that Alekhine had died unexpectedly. His ashes were later transported to Paris, where they were buried in a Russian cemetery with an inscription on the grave: "Alexander Alekhine - the genius of chess in Russia and France." He became the only world champion to die undefeated.
In emigre circles, they were convinced that the world champion had become a victim of NKVD agents. It is curious that in those years the chairman of the All-Union Chess Section was NKVD Colonel Boris Weinstein, who fiercely hated the "White Guard" Alekhine.
However, why did the NKVD have to arrange a reprisal against the world champion, if the USSR itself decided to initiate his match with Botvinnik?
Alekhine was found dead in the Park Hotel in the town of Estoril near Lisbon. There were crockery left on the table in his room, indicating that he had dinner with someone. A posthumous photograph of the great chess player appeared in the newspapers. He sits dead in an armchair, for some reason in a coat, and next to him is a chessboard with placed pieces - until the last minute the master was thinking about his favorite game...
According to the official version, the world champion suffocated, allegedly choking on a piece of meat while eating. However, other versions of death immediately appeared. Why did he have dinner without taking off his coat? If he has eaten, why are the plates empty? Is this photo staged at all? Alekhine's son from his first wife leaned towards the version of his father's murder. The doctors who performed the autopsy later admitted that they wrote what they were told, but in fact Alekhine was killed on the eve of the day when his body was discovered. True, one of the doctors spoke about a gunshot wound, and the other about poisoning. It is also known that the Portuguese Catholic priest refused to participate in the burial of Alekhine, since traces of violent death were clearly visible on the face of the deceased.
Mikhail Botvinnik did not believe in the official version either. In an article dedicated to Alekhine's centenary, "A Genius Remains a Man", published in the journal "64 - Chess Review", Botvinnik wrote: "There was a rumor that he died in the street. About 15 years ago, B. Podtserob sent me an article from a German magazine - it was reported that the Portuguese police assumed that the champion had poisoned himself. But if this is so, why, after he took the poison, did he have to have dinner or go for a walk?
In 2009, a sensational article by a certain Boris Smolensky was published in one of the Russian-language newspapers in Chicago.
He said that an employee of the restaurant in Estoril, where Alekhine dined, allegedly confessed to his relatives before his death that in March 1946 he received a large sum of money from two people who spoke with a strong foreign accent for putting some kind of that powder.
What really happened in distant Portugal? Alas, the mystery of the great chess player's death will probably never be revealed. The version of the involvement of the "insidious NKVD" in it, as we have already written, does not stand up to criticism.
However, there is another version of his death. As if the American intelligence services were involved in the death of Alekhine. The United States feared that Botvinnik would win, and the world chess crown sail away to the USSR, with which the cold war was already flaring up.
