From Champion of Russia to Enemy of the People

In an era when socialist realism ruled in art and Marxist-Leninist doctrine ruled in science, the only island of free thought in the Soviet Union was perhaps on the chessboard, for it was not subject to party and government directives. The laws of logic and harmony were still in force, and by following them, one could move as they wished, whereas in other domains of mental activity, any step away from ideological tenets could be the last. This is what drew many minds to this game, looking for shelter from the terrible conditions of the time.

Somewhat paradoxical was that during the years of repression, the strongest players who lived in Moscow escaped an unfortunate fate, almost as if there was invincibility for the Soviet chess school. Despite this, the title of national champion did not protect Petr Izmailov, who, among others, tragically fell victim to the Great Purge. The question then is straightforward: what happens when an elite Soviet player's legacy ends up at Stalin's mercy? 

Early Life

Petr Izmailov as a gymnasium student, 1915

Petr Nikolaevich Izmailov was born on the 13th of July, 1906 (30th of June Julian) in Kazan to the family of priest Petr Petrovich Izmailov senior. He studied at the local Kazan Gymnasium, where from childhood he demonstrated an interest in sciences. He became acquainted with chess at age 15 in the gymnasium's chess club, and soon, the young Petr began to confidently beat experienced players. After receiving secondary education, Izmailov entered the Physics Department of the Tomsk State University. Since religious affiliates were on Stalin's target list, in all the questionnaires, he was recorded as the son of a teacher.

Career in Chess

The 16-year-old Izmailov made his tournament debut at the 1922 Kazan Championship where he finished 14th out of 15 players. However, by 1924, he had already won the Volga Region Championship and by March of 1928, he had already accumulated three Omsk and two Siberian Championship wins. The native of Kazan did not have a mentor throughout his entire career. Instead, he studied theory, games of famous masters such as Capablanca and Alekhine and analysed his own encounters with strong opponents. In the words of Grandmaster Mihail Marin, Izmailov was "up-to-date with the latest theoretical developments" and "did not blindly follow the recent trends but passed the new findings through his filter and made his own contribution to further developments."

One of the highlights of his career was undoubtedly the 3rd RSFSR Championship held in Moscow in 1928, where he placed first with 10/13 ahead of players including Mikhail Szebarszin, Vasily Panov and Ilya Kan. 

Izmailov only conceded one loss in the whole tournament against the then 19-year-old Kan, in a game which, many years later, would feature in Izmailov's biography. Interestingly, in the annotations, Marin showed various ways through which the game could have been saved, but not even the greatest World Champions could feel confident defending a double rook and knight vs queen and double knights endgame.

The RSFSR Championship victory qualified Izmailov for the 1929 USSR Championship held in Odessa. In the quarterfinals stage, he took third place in his group behind Nikolai Grigoriev and Vladimir Makogonov, allowing him to move onto the semi-finals, where the debutant overtook Mikhail Botvinnik and Makogonov for a spot in the finals.

Ilya Kan, Sergey von Freymann, Boris Verlinsky and Petr Izmailov were supposed to play in the final of the championship. However, Izmailov did not play, and the reason remains murky. Kan later wrote that Izmailov himself refused to participate due to his final exams at university, and other reports were coming from the Pravda and Izvestia that he was ill or physically exhausted.

His son, Nikolai, wrote in his biography, "Half a century later, recalling this episode, my mother told me that in the mid-30s she and father had a conversation on this topic (in 1929 they did not yet know each other), and he claimed that he was healthy and was preparing to continue the fight, but he was forced to leave... Now, of course, it is impossible to establish what really happened, but one thing is certain: this offensive story left a deep mark on Izmailov’s soul."

After his sensational success in 1929, Izmailov's results at the 1931 USSR Championship seemed modest. He failed to reach the finals, taking third place in his semi-final group after Botvinnik and Genrikh Kasparyan. Although he was a little unlucky, he did acquire his second win against Botvinnik, making him one of the few players to maintain a positive score against the future World Champion.

A few months later Izmailov graduated from university with a geophysics engineering degree. He was appointed to Khakassia, where he worked as the head of an ore mining enterprise. In 1933, he was transferred back to Tomsk to the position of head of the geological party at the West Siberian Geological Trust.

Being cut off from chess life by his work in the taiga, Izmailov lacked serious practice. From 1931 to 1936, he rarely participated in tournaments and when he did, he showed visible signs of rust in his play. His results were not particularly striking at the 5th RSFSR Championship nor the 1936 All-Union Tournament of the first category. In the former, the ex-champion of RSFSR played too cautiously and made too many draws, only allowing him to share 6th place with a 50% score when the first five progressed to the finals. 

The All-Union Tournament introduced us to the names of future famous masters, as well as Grandmaster Alexander Kotov. Izmailov scored 7.5/14, but in distant Siberia, cut off from chess resources, he couldn't have expected a better outcome. In spite of this, Peter Romanovsky commented that his game was "highly conscientious." 

 Izmailov's Final Months

When the Bolsheviks came to power they were soft and easy with their enemies... we had begun by making a mistake. Leniency towards such a power was a crime against the working classes. That soon became apparent...

— Joseph Stalin

Not long after, Izmailov became a victim of Soviet repression. In 1935, for seemingly no reason, he was deprived of his Master of Sport of the USSR title based on the results of a qualification test conducted by the All-Union Council for Physical Culture and Sport. 

In the afternoon of the 10th of September, 1936, Izmailov called his wife Galina Kozmina from work to warn her not to worry. He would arrive later than usual since he was invited to a conversation at the notorious NKVD to clarify some minor issues. This was their last conservation. He never left the walls of the NKVD. 

The local NKVD department in Tomsk ©tripadvisor.com

In the 1990s, Nikolai Izmailov had a chance to familiarise himself with his father's case, from which he was shocked to learn that his father was being accused of being a member of a “counter-revolutionary Trotskyist-fascist terrorist organization” that aimed to overthrow the existing leadership and establish a new fascist dictatorship with Alfred Rosenberg as head of state, the same one who was sentenced to death during the Nuremberg Trials. It was even evidenced that the real purpose of Izmailov's recent trip to Leningrad was to participate in a meeting that developed a plan to assassinate Zhdanov. 

Alfred Ernst Rosenberg (front row, left) in the 1946 Nuremberg Courtroom

The case of Petr Nikolaevich Izmailov was heard at a closed court session of the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR on 28 April 1937. As stated in the meeting minutes, "the presiding officer explained to the defendant the essence of the charges brought against him and asked him whether he would plead guilty, to which the defendant replied that he would not plead guilty." And, "In his last word, the defendant stated that he was not a member of any counter-revolutionary organization."

The entire court hearing only lasted 20 minutes. So in that time, without representatives from the persecution nor defence, without witnesses, the fate of a man was decided. The troika sentenced Izmailov to capital punishment — execution with confiscation of all his property. The sentence was carried out on the same day as the verdict and Izmailov died before a firing squad in Novosibirsk. His wife, Galina Kozmina, was sentenced to eight years in the Kolyma Gulag for being a family member of a traitor to the Motherland. 

The Kolyma Gulag had the reputation of being the worst Gulag

Rehabilitation of Izmailov's Legacy 

For over 50 years, Petr Izmailov's name was erased from the Soviet chess press. At the time of the arrest, his son, Nikolai, was only two years old and had no recollection of his father. Once the Soviet-era archives opened up, Nikolai set out to reconstruct the life and chess career of the father he never knew. Using numerous sources reported in the press over the years, he pieced together a book that gives the most accurate idea of what his father's life was like. 

There is an annual tournament held in Tomsk in memoriam of Izmailov and the local chess club is named after him. To this day, he is still considered one of the greatest, if not the greatest Tomsk chess player ever. It was terribly unfortunate he was alive at the wrong time under the wrong circumstances, otherwise, who knows how far he could have gone in chess. 

Thanks for reading.