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Benin Chess World Championship Michael Botvinnik stamp 1999 A-23
$ 2.63
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Good stamp.Mikhail Moiseyevich Botvinnik
(August 17 [O.S. August 4] 1911 – May 5, 1995) was a Soviet chess player. The sixth World Chess Champion, he also worked as an electrical engineer and computer scientist and was a pioneer of computer chess. Botvinnik was the first world-class player to develop within the Soviet Union. He also played a major role in the organization of chess, making a significant contribution to the design of the World Chess Championship system after World War II and becoming a leading member of the coaching system that enabled the Soviet Union to dominate top-class chess during that time. His pupils include World Champions Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. His parents were Russian Jews; his father, Moisei Botvinnik (1878–1931), was a dental technician and his mother, Shifra (Serafima) Rabinovich (1876–1952), a dentist, which allowed the family to live outside the Pale of Settlement, to which most Jews in the Russian Empire were restricted at the time. As a result, Botvinnik grew up in Saint Petersburg's Nevsky Prospekt. His father forbade the speaking of Yiddish at home, and Mikhail and his older brother Isaak "Issy" attended Soviet schools. Botvinnik later recounted, "I was asked once, “What do you consider yourself to be from the point of view of nationality?” My reply was, “Yes, my position is 'complicated'. I am a Jew by blood, a Russian by culture, Soviet by upbringing.”" On his religious views, he called himself an atheist. In 1920, his mother became ill and his father left the family, but maintained contact with the children, even after his second marriage, to a Russian woman. At about the same time, Botvinnik started reading newspapers, and became a committed communist.