Chess Family Belavenets

Sergei Belavenets (1910-1942) was one of the strongest Soviet chess masters of the 1930s and early 1940s, a renowned theoretician and journalist. He competed in three Soviet championship finals, finishing 3rd in 1939. He also won the Moscow championship twice. Sergei was working on a manual for club players, but his book remained unfinished – he perished on the front lines early in World War II, defending Leningrad from the Nazi invaders. His daughter Ludmila Belavenets (1940-2021) also dedicated her life to chess: she won Soviet and Moscow women’s chess championships and became women’s world correspondence chess champion in 1992. Ludmila seconded Alla Kushnir at three world championship matches against Nona Gaprindashvili and spent decades as a leading chess coach of the USSR and then Russia. Her most successful pupils included grandmasters Morozevich, Sokolov, Oparin, and Vyzmanavin. Ludmila edited the textbook materials prepared by her father – over 70 pages of high-quality instruction on middlegame and endgame strategy illustrated with 36 fragments involving top contemporary players such as Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, Botvinnik and Smyslov.