Vladimirs Petrovs

Vladimir Petrov (Russian: Владимир Михайлович Петров, Vladimir Mikhailovich Petrov, born September 27, 1908 in Riga, Latvia; † August 26, 1943 in Kotlas ) was a Latvian chess master.

He learned chess at the age of 13 years and made rapid progress. In 1926 he became master of the city Riga and finished in the national championship shared second place.

From 1928 he played on eight chess Olympiads for his country. He achieved his best result in Buenos Aires in 1939, when he scored 19 points ( 8 wins, 11 draws ) on top board 13.5.

His best result at a single tournament was in Ķemeri 1937, where he reached the shared first place with 12 points from 17 matches, level on points with Salo Flohr and Samuel Reshevsky, but still ahead of the reigning world chess champion Alexander Alekhine and Paul Keres.

After the occupation of Latvia by the Soviet Union, he participated in the 12th National Championship of the USSR in 1940 partly in Moscow, where he finished 10th. He was separated from his wife who lives in Riga Galina Through the circumstances of war. His last tournament he played in 1942 in Sverdlovsk, where he finished second behind Viacheslav Ragozin.

In August 1942 he was arrested for making critical remarks about the supply situation by the KGB and imprisoned in a gulag. There he died of pneumonia and malnutrition. In the Soviet Union he was considered a non-person, evidence of his tournament results and games were erased from the chess books. In January 1989 he was rehabilitated by the Supreme Soviet.

His best historical Elo rating was 2647 in 1940.