Here is my favourite article (written by Mr Lev Khariton). I have read it
many times and I think this is the best chess article published on internet,
ever.

Once Upon A Time In Paris
by Lev Khariton

"Tel etait le Paris de notre jeunesse quand nous etions tres pauvres and
tres hereux"
("Such was the Paris of our youth, when we very poor and very happy")
These words you can read on one of the houses in the 5th arondissment of
Paris. They belong to the great American writer Ernest Hemingway. Actually,
they are the final words of his book "The Movable Feast", the book he
dedicated to those years that he and other American writers spent in Paris
in the early 20-s.

I was happy to visit this house when I lived in Paris. One of my chess
students, a little boy Alexander Pottier, lived in this house with his
parents on the second floor. The parents had a small restaurant (what the
French call, "creperie", that is, "pancakes") on the first floor, and that
is exactly there where I was giving Alexander chess lessons. Each time I
came to Alexander's house, before entering I looked up to see the words and
also the open windows on the 3rd floor where Hemingway used to live for a
couple of years. I always had that strange feeling that the writer was still
there, or possibly he had just left and forgotten to close the windows?

Yes, I was lucky to live in Paris for the long (and short!) nine years from
1990 to 1999.If anyone had told me in my childhood or many years later that
one day I would be a French citizen living in Paris, I would have laughed at
him for kidding me. To be in the country of three musketeers, to walk the
streets that knew Flaubert and Balzac, to speak the language that sounded so
romantic and so remote in my home in Moscow. When I was making my first
steps on the French soil in August 1990, I was thinking about my mother who
was dreaming of Paris and France all her life but had never come there! Even
many years later, when I already got used to be a Parisian, I was still
thinking of her, as it was not me, but my mother who was walking the narrow
streets of Quartier Latin.

While working as a chess columnist in La Pensee Russe, the Russian immigrant
newspaper, I was lucky to meet many interesting people. Suffice it to say
that the editor-in-chief of this weekly, that was founded in 1947, was
Madame Irina Ilovaiskaya, one of the most educated women I had ever met in
my life. She spoke eight languages, for a number of years she was the
secretary of the great Russian dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn in
Vermont (as is well known he was exiled from the Soviet Union). For me,
Ilovaiskaya will always remain (she passed away in 2000) the symbol of a
fighter for freedom. She hailed the collapse of the Soviet Union, and only
in 1992 did she visit for the first time the country of her ancestors who
fled Russia soon after the revolution.

In Paris I met Alexander Ginzburg, one of the most well-known Soviet
dissidents. He was also working in La Pensee Russe. Only God knows how many
years Ginzburg had spent in GULAG fighting for human rights and the freedom
of the Soviet people. In 1975 soon after the famous Helsinki Conference
attended by all European countries, USA and Canada, Ginzburg headed the
Helsinki Group on the verification of human rights. How often in Moscow I
listened to the forbidden in the USSR the radio station "The Voice of
America" when it broadcast interviews with Alexander Ginzburg. This man was
a legend, and who could imagine that one day I would see him in Paris almost
every day, working in the same newspaper with him!

Probably, the most interesting people, however, were not these well-know
persons, but two elderly gentlemen who lived in Paris for many decades.
Yakov Kotlama and Yevgeny Savostianov became my great friends. They were
regular readers of La Pensee Russe and certainly they read my chess column
every week. Kotlama was born in 1909 in Saint Petersburg and he came to
Paris with his parents in 1918.Nevertheless, he did not lose his Russian, he
spoke the language without any accent, just as if he had lived next door to
me in Moscow! Savostianov came to Paris many years later. He was two years
younger than Kotlama. He was born in Kiev and there he made his doctorate in
chemistry. When the Second World War broke out he was in the Nazi-occupied
Kiev and with his wife and the little son he managed to flee to the West
finally settling in Paris. I often met these noble gentlemen in Paris and I
owe them a lot for what they told me about Paris and the Russian emigration
in our friendly talks either receiving me in their houses or just chatting
in the cozy coffee-houses of Paris.

Both of them were avid readers of chess literature, great connaisseurs of
chess history and quite good chess players. What is more, both Savostianov
and Kotlama were running "Potiomkin", the old chess club in Paris. This club
was organized in 1926 by Piotr Potiomkin, the Russian chess player and poet
who left Russia after the October Revolution in 1917. Potiomkin was not a
strong player, but he played both in Russia and even crossed swords at the
board with Alexander Alekhine. Potiomkin belonged to the old Russian
aristocratic family. His great ancestor was Prince Potiomkin, the greatest
favorite of the Russian Empress Catherine the Great. Most of the people like
Piotr Potiomkin could not accept the Bolshevik revolution and they left
Russia in 1917 and after.

However, Potiomkin did not stay at the head of the club (it was called
"Potiomkin's Circle") for long. Although his name has stayed attached to the
club until now, other people came to manage the affairs of the club, namely
the outstanding theatre and music critic, and a strong chess player Yevgeny
Znosko-Borovsky. Znosko-Borovsky was well known in the chess and artistic
milieu of Russia. One of his best friends was the greatest composer Sergey
Prokofiev. When still a very young man, Znosko-Borovsky played with many
strong Russian chess players, even with Chigorin and Alekhine. He was the
author of many chess books. May be, today they look a bit outmoded, but they
were translated in several languages and even today when strolling into
bookshops, whether it be Paris or New York one can find them. In Soviet
Russia the name of this outstanding personality, as well as the name of many
other famous immigrants, was erased from the memory of the Russian people,
and even if occasionally his name was mentioned, it was always in a very
negative context.

In the pre-war years Potiomkin's Circle was one of the strongest chess clubs
in Paris. Its membership was mostly Russian. It is interesting to note that
many Russian aristocrats who left Russia after 1917 were working as
taxi-drivers in Paris. In the evenings they liked to forget about their hard
and tedious jobs and came to Potiomkin?s Circle to play chess or just to
meet friends. Even the post war-era did not affect the prestige of this club
on the Parisian chess horizon. However, in the 60-70s new clubs were
springing up rapidly gradually eclipsing Potiomkin?s Circle. May be, this
was owing largely to the fact that the older generation of Russian players
were getting older and disappearing.

While meeting Kotlama and Savostianov I often asked them about the chess
players they had met in the club. Mostly it was Kotlama who spoke. He
remembered well such giants as Tartakower and Bernstein, and most
importantly, Alekhine. Tartakower often came to the club. He played many
blitz games, he was always full of anecdotes, he always came to the club
carrying many newspapers and it seemed that every visit to the club gave him
an inspiration to write something on chess for many chess columns in
different newspapers. Although playing cards was not particularly
encouraged in the club, Tartakower, who was an inveterate gambler, played
cards, especially bridge.

Alekhine's visits to the club were also frequent. It was difficult to see
that this poor man was the greatest chess player. He was wearing a shabby
long coat in winter, he was chain-smoking. Usually he did not play chess in
the club, but if anyone regardless of chess qualification offered him to
play, Alekhine never refused. With those who were too weak, he played giving
odds.Kotlama noted that he produced the impression of a homeless
man.Sometimes Alekhine stayed in the club for many hours until late at
night. He was always writing something. Kotlama never dared to look, but he
told me that Alekhine was definitely annotating some games, either for some
newspapers in Paris or some books. He never took chess from the club and he
was analyzing on his pocket chess set.

One day, it was, I remember, in September 1996, Savostianov called me and
invited to come to the club. They were organizing a party to commemorate the
70s jubilee of the club. When I arrived there I found very many guests. May
be, about 60 to 70 people, grown-ups and children. The club has lost its
Russian identity, although some of the guests still had Russian names, but
it was a new generation of Russians totally assimilated in France. True,
some of them spoke broken Russian. Well, France is not America, and people
especially after so many years, get totally integrated into French life. May
be, owing to this, or probably owing to the special honor that Savostianov
and Kotlama were giving me I felt that I was probably the only Russian at
the big celebration table. I was introduced to the people as a chess
columnist of La Pensee Russe, and the people showered me with various
questions ranging from chess to political estimates of what was happening in
Russia, France, etc.

And again sitting at this club, the place that was visited by Alekhine,
Tartakower,Bernstein,Znosko-Borovski I felt that somebody had switched the
Time Machine for me and brought these far-away years close to my heart.
Could I imagine many, many years ago that I would one day find myself in the
Holy of Holies of Chess History? Could I imagine reading and rereading
Alekhine's books in my youth that I would be sitting in the same room where
he spent so many years, may be playing chess, or writing books, or thinking
about his motherland? I felt, may be, what archaeologists feel when digging
the ground and finding relics of the times long bygone, something that is
difficult to express...

It was at this club where Alekhine came in the autumn of 1927 right after he
returned from Buenos-Aires to celebrate with the group of Russian emigrants
his historic victory over Capablanca. Here he pronounced his famous words:
"Now the myth of the invincibility of Capablanca has been dispelled. The
same will happen to the myth of the invincibility of the Bolsheviks!" These
words, as we know, reached Soviet Russia and the Kremlin never forgot them.
May be, Alekhine's life would have panned out differently if it were not for
these fatal words...

LEV KHARITON