Chess set from besieged Leningrad
Period
1943Place
Leningrad, USSR
Material
Cardboard, ink
Location
Russia, Moscow, Chess Museum of the Central Chess Club
Category
The GameSubcategory
Chess sets
Curious fact
The first Soviet chess champion, Lyudmila Rudenko, considered the evacuation of 300 children from Leningrad just days before the blockade began to be her life’s greatest achievement.
Spirit enclosed in feeble flesh — that is what they bring to mind, these light, hollow cardboard blocks painted red and black. Mass production of these chess pieces began in besieged Leningrad in 1943. Despite the blockade from 1941 to 1944, the city held annual championship tournaments. In December 1943, school children started enrolling in the chess club at Anichkov Palace. During the siege, the city and the Leningrad battlefront organized hundreds of tournaments, awarding over 500 Unified Sports Classification System of the USSR documents.
