IMJohnCox wrote on 04/02/14 at 09:36:56:


I'm bit confused about your question. You deal a lot with Mr. Ordkhonikidze as the reason a tournament was named like that. I can't imagine that his influence in chess or chess politics was big enough to brand a whole tournament series after him.
It is surely much simpler to take it as it nearly allways is: The tournaments were named after the town where they took place.
So a brief wikipedia-research reveals, that there are at least two towns in the former USSR named Ordkhonikidze, not to mention several villages. One  (with 41.000 inhabitants) can be found in Ukraine near Dnipropetrowsk. But much more interesting is the other one, which is now called Vladikavkaz - with about 310.000 inhabitants a real capital sited in Ossetia, Cacasus.
"From 1931 to 1944 and from 1954 to 1990, its name in both Russian and Ossetic languages was Ordzhonikidze" says http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladikavkaz.
I think that's the answer. These tournaments took place in the Caucasus-capital.

I am a climber (no, not alps, mainly bouldering) and bird-watcher, but combining them at the same time can be fatal I think. Chess is more peaceful 

Sorry for being off-topic...

Jupp53 wrote on 04/02/14 at 21:33:54:

but none of this tells where Burevestnik comes from

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Song_of_the_Stormy_Petrel

Burevestnik

http://duckduckgo.com/Burevestnik_%28sports_society%29

As I had the chance to be born and raised in a country deep behind "the Iron Curtain" and provided that I'm nearly 50, I can say I clearly remember these past times. There were factories called "Lenin", "Voroshilov" and alike, we went down the streets called "October Revolution", "November 7th", "Karl Marx" and so on, entered towns like Tolbuhin and...whatever some strange and twisted minds invented.. So, I'm not surprised that a chess team can be named by Ordzhonikidze at that time - probably a plant, or a factory that sponsored this team was called after this person.
Anyway, I recall, back then, in Russia, there were some very strong team championships for a cup called "Burevestnik" (petrel, storm-bird). Does anyone know something about such tournaments?
Not to be mixed up with the Leningrad (now St Peterburg) team called "Burevestnik", which won the Soviet Union championship in 1971. Just to mention the names of the "Burevestnik" players: Taymanov, Smyslov, Balashov, Bagirov, Gulko, Grigoryan, Fatalibekova, Lematchko, Saunina. 

Thanks, Vass - particularly entertained to learn that Krylenko was a mountaineer - I've always fancied myself as a bit of a pioneer on the climbing-cum-chessplayer front, but predictably I'm not the only one.

So maybe one of these tournaments was just treated as a qualifier for the SC one year and that's how I got this impression. Or maybe I just made it up.

Strange they weren't called the Orkhonikidze Memorial. Perhaps they actually did take place in a town named after him. Bit strange too that if he did get purged they then named towns and ships after him. Maybe that's how it worked.

TalJechin wrote on 04/02/14 at 11:39:22:


No, not at all!
He probably was just a political leader who knew how to play chess and that's all.
As for the translation, maybe it's avoiding somehow.. It seems this man just watched the game play by Capablanca against some of the well known names in the Soviet Union these days.
(There were cities called Voroshilov and Kuybishev, named after these two men. As for Krylenko you can see this one: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikolai_Krylenko)

Edit: Omg! How about that? (from the above link for Krylenko):
Quote:
In the 1930s Krylenko headed the Soviet chess, checkers and mountain climbing associations. He was one of the pioneers of the Pamirs mountain climbing, leading the Soviet half of a joint Soviet-German expedition in 1928 as well as expeditions to the Eastern Pamirs in 1931 and to the Lenin Peak in 1934 [4]. Krylenko used his positions to carry out the Stalinist line of total control and politicization of all areas of public life:
We must finish once and for all with the neutrality of chess. We must condemn once and for all the formula "chess for the sake of chess", like the formula "art for art's sake". We must organize shockbrigades of chess-players, and begin immediate realization of a Five-Year Plan for chess. [5]
Unquote 

Another one..
Here, in this article (Russian language only) we can read about Mikhail Botvinnik and his avoiding of...sex during the tournaments.
http://fakty.ua/138197-vo-vremya-turnirov-mihail-botvinnik-izbegal-seksa
Anyway, a part of this article says:
Quote:
"В 1935 году Орджоникидзе подарил ему машину. Тогда мало кто имел легковой автомобиль."
Unquote

Google translated: "In 1935, Ordzhonikidze gave him a car as a present. In these times, few people had a personal car."