A Marvel named Aljechin

   The October Revolution took place in Russia in 1917 when the Bolsheviks seized Petrograd forming the beginnings of what would later be the USSR. At this time anything even remotely bourgeois was crushed. Chess was considered a recreation of the bourgeois class. Shortly after the new year, Alexander Aljechin moved from Moscow to Odessa, Ukraine where chess could be played freely.

     Al Horowitz presented this game as one of 6 blindfold games in a simul conducted by Ajechin in 1918 in Odessa. The odd thing is that Aljechin played the black pieces, unusual in a blindfold simul (or even in a regular simul).  Aljechin played with a brilliance reminiscent of Morphy at his best.