1st: Botvinnik, 2nd: ???

Over my last few posts, especially Does 'Soviet School' Mean Botvinnik?, I've been focusing on Botvinnik as the first of the great Soviet players, a historical successor to Chigorin and Alekhine, whose styles were formed in the pre-Soviet era. The Soviet chess era can be split naturally into two histories: the pre-WWII era (before 1941) and the post-Alekhine era (after 1945), when the Soviet Union joined FIDE and contributed to the development of the modern World Championship.

Since the post-Alekhine era is the better known of the two histories (and I intend to examine certain aspects in future posts), what can be said about the pre-WWII era? D.J. Richards pointed out various important milestones in the timeline of the 1930s (see my post on D.J. Richards, 'Soviet Chess'), while another source would be the Soviet championships of that decade. The first question that comes to mind is: 'Who were Botvinnik's chief Soviet rivals of the 1930s?'

I dusted off my database of Soviet championships (see Players in the USSR Championships and the subsequent Notes), concentrated on the six Soviet championships of the 1930s, and devoloped some statistics to determine the most successful players. The year and number of players in each event is given in the following list -- 1931: 18, 1933: 20, 1934: 20, 1937: 20, 1939: 18, and 1940: 20.

The year 1933 was somewhat problematic to analyze, because the record of games is incomplete. Rusbase, for example, in 8th Championship of USSR - Leningrad 16.8-9.9.1933 has only '74 games of 190' played, but since I'm only interested in the final scores, the crosstable was sufficient to make the stats.

I determined that the 116 competitors in the six events covered 48 different players. Players scoring at least 50% in the events where they took part are shown in the following table, along with the number of events played, the first and last year of participation, the number of games played, and the total score. Botvinnik, for example, played in four of the six events, where the first in my survey was in 1931 (he also competed in 1927 and 1929, which are not covered here) and the last was in 1940; he scored 51.5 points in 72 games, for an overall scoring percentage of 71.5%:-

Player	Ct	First	Last	Gms	Score	Pct
Botvinnik, Mikhail	4	1931	1940	72	51.5	71.5%
Smyslov, Vassily	1	1940	1940	19	13.0	68.4%
Keres, Paul	1	1940	1940	19	12.0	63.2%
Boleslavsky, Isaak	1	1940	1940	19	11.5	60.5%
Bondarevsky, Igor	3	1937	1940	55	33.0	60.0%
Riumin, Nikolay Nikolaevich	3	1931	1934	55	32.5	59.1%
Belavenets, Sergey Vesevolodovi	3	1934	1939	55	32.0	58.2%
Bohatirchuk, Fedor Parfenovich	3	1931	1934	55	32.0	58.2%
Alatortsev, Vladimir	4	1931	1937	74	43.0	58.1%
Lilienthal, Andor	2	1937	1940	38	22.0	57.9%
Makogonov, Vladimir Andreevich	4	1934	1940	74	42.5	57.4%
Rabinovich, Ilya Leontievich	4	1933	1939	74	41.5	56.1%
Levenfish, Grigory	5	1933	1940	93	51.5	55.4%
Lisitsin, Georgy	6	1931	1940	110	59.5	54.1%
Ragozin, Viacheslav	4	1934	1940	74	39.5	53.4%
Chekhover, Vitaly	4	1933	1939	74	39.5	53.4%
Verlinsky, Boris	2	1931	1933	36	19.0	52.8%
Konstantinopolsky, Alexander	2	1937	1940	38	20.0	52.6%
Rauzer, Vsevolod	4	1931	1937	74	38.5	52.0%
Veresov, Gavriil	2	1934	1940	38	19.5	51.3%
Yudovich, Mikhail	5	1931	1939	91	46.5	51.1%
Kan, Ilia Abramovich	5	1931	1939	91	46.0	50.5%
Kotov, Alexander	2	1939	1940	36	18.0	50.0%

The four players who competed in more championships than Botvinnik -- Lisitsin (all 6 events), plus Kan, Levenfish, and Yudovich (5 each) -- are all shown in the table. Eight players, including Botvinnik, played in four events, while seven played in three.

After Botvinnik, the three most successful players played in their first Soviet championship in 1940, marking them as future rivals in the post-WWII, post-Alekhine era. The rest of the names in the table are also worthy of special attention.