Erzi Towers, Republic of Ingushetia

This mountain fortress complex consists of 8 military towers, 2 semi-military towers, and 47 residential towers, all encircled by defensive stone walls.

In the 19th century, a bronze eagle figurine from the late 8th century, known as the "Eagle of Suleiman," was discovered in one of these towers.

The towers and walls are built directly on bedrock without any foundation, using river boulders. The site regularly hosts events and festivals.

#ILoveRussia ❤️
#BeautifulRussia@TCofRus

Alekhine: The War Years

The war caught Alekhine in Buenos Aires, where the World Chess Olympiad was held in August–September 1939. Many European chess players, especially those who were Jewish, upon learning of the outbreak of war decided not to return home but to remain in Argentina. The strongest and most famous among them was Miguel Najdorf, who played at the Olympiad for the Polish team. (Miguel was his Argentine name. At birth he has got the name Mendel, and in Polish documents he was registered as Mieczysław.) Emigration to Argentina saved his life—none of his relatives who remained in Poland survived the Nazi occupation.

Alekhine returned to France and volunteered for the French army. Being no longer a young man, he did not take direct part in combat operations but was engaged in rear-area support. Despite Alekhine’s help, the army was soon defeated; half of France was occupied by the Germans, and the other half was placed under their control.

Here it is necessary to speak about the most obscure and dark episode in Alekhine’s biography.

In March 1941, several articles under the general noscript Aryan and Jewish Chess were published in a German-language newspaper in Paris. They contained harsh antisemitic attacks and argued the thesis that “Aryan” chess is characterized by active, attacking play, while “Jewish” chess is characterized by defense and waiting for the opponent’s mistakes. After the end of the war, European chess players led by Euwe, and American players (Fine and Reshevsky), organized a boycott of Alekhine. However, in a letter to the organizers of the London 1946 tournament, from which he was barred, Alekhine wrote that the text published under his name in the Pariser Zeitung had little in common with what he himself had written. In the original text there were no antisemitic attacks. There were only reflections on the need to reconstruct FIDE and criticism of the theories of Steinitz and Lasker.

In 1941–1943, Alekhine took part in chess tournaments on the territory of occupied Europe. Many other very strong chess players played there as well, in particular Bogoljubow and Keres. In the autumn of 1943, Alekhine left France, first for Spain and then for Portugal, settling in the small resort town of Estoril. In February 1946, he received a challenge for a championship match from Botvinnik and accepted it. On March 23 of that year, FIDE made an official decision to hold the match.

But the next day on March 24, Alekhine was found dead in his hotel room. He was sitting in an armchair, and in front of him was a chessboard with the pieces set up. The official medical report stated that death occurred as a result of asphyxiation caused by a piece of meat entering the respiratory tract. Whether this was or was not the true cause of death is, of course, now impossible to establish.

In the obituary written by the well-known Soviet master Romanovsky and published in the journal Chess in the USSR, it was said in particular:
Alekhine was born and grew up in Russia. It is in our country that his chess talent and strength developed. Soviet chess players highly value Alekhine as an outstanding master who made a rich contribution to the treasury of chess art. Romanovsky also had to add: But as a person morally unstable and unprincipled, our attitude toward him can only be negative…

#RussianSport@TCofRus