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 – and first published them in the USSR in 1963 in her book Master Sergei Belavenets. Indeed, Dvoretsky stated in an interview that the 1963 book prompted him to work on his own endgame notes. Ludmila then included them together with 31 of her father’s best games and 22 of her own for this book, annotated in detail. Sergei’s games are mostly against famous players such as Keres, Flohr, Kotov, Lilienthal, and Levenfish. Ludmila’s games are mostly against top female correspondence players.
Further, Ludmila added substantial biographical history as well as family and tournament photographs. The book is supplemented with reflections on the life and legacy of Sergei Belavenets by leading peers including Averbakh and Levenfish. It was written together with Grandmaster Sergey Yanovsky and International Master Vladimir Barsky, both of whom were close to Ludmila in the second half of her career. All games and materials were updated using the latest engines by International Master Tibor Karolyi for the 2024 English version.
