For more than half a century Alexander Petrov was regarded as Russia's strongest player. His five-part chess manual of 1824 brought theory and practical examples into a systematic Russian-language work. He challenged Philidor's analysis, helped develop the defence that carries his name, and represented Napoleon's retreat from Moscow in a chess composition. Pushkin owned two copies of his manual, one inscribed by the author.
The boy who beat St Petersburg
He was born on 12 February 1794 at Biserovo in the Pskov Governorate, into a noble family, and came to St Petersburg in 1804. As a young man he defeated leading players of the capital and established his reputation as Russia's strongest player. He retained that standing for more than fifty years.
Chess was never his profession. He entered state service in 1808 as a clerk in the Chancellery of Petition Affairs, rose to Actual State Councillor in 1848, and ended as a Privy Councillor holding the Orders of St Stanislaus, St Anna and St Vladimir. The chess was done in the evenings, for half a century, by a senior official of the Russian civil service.
A systematic chess manual
In 1824, aged thirty, he published Shakhmatnaya igra, privedyonnaya v sistematicheskiy poryadok — The Game of Chess, Brought into Systematic Order — in St Petersburg. Its five parts joined theory with practical play. In the preface he acknowledged an earlier Russian chess book by Butrimov, compiled from Koch's work and suitable for beginners. Petrov's purpose was to organize the theory and show how to apply it (preface, pp. i–ii).
He initially limited the edition to 300 copies. His explanation was that chess was not yet widely practised locally; a favourable reception would encourage him to prepare another edition. He set out this plan in the preface (pp. v–vi).
Readers were expected to work through the examples on a board and examine the purpose of each move. Petrov asked them to decide what they would play, compare their choice with the book's move, and investigate the difference. The manual required their own analysis alongside its explanations (preface, p. iv).
His admiration for Philidor did not prevent disagreement. The preface credits Philidor's understanding of pawns but criticizes his greater attention to attack than defence and his use of weak Black moves to demonstrate a pawn centre. In Part III Petrov discusses ways to prevent that centre and argues that correct play should lead to a draw, rather than a forced win for the first player (preface, pp. ii–iii; Part III, pp. 10–11).
The manual reached readers outside chess circles, including Pushkin, Turgenev and Chernyshevsky. Pushkin's library held two copies, one with a presentation inscription from Petrov. His reputation earned him the name Northern Philidor.
In 1827 a draughts manual followed, Rukovodstvo k osnovatelnomu poznaniyu shashechnoy igry — A Guide to a Thorough Knowledge of Draughts — printed in St Petersburg by A. Smirdin. Its title page carries no author's name; the Russian State Library catalogue attributes it to Petrov. The book covers the rules and terms of ordinary draughts, model games, endings, twelve problems and the giveaway game, and it records moves by numbering the playable squares of the board. In the endings chapter the author disputed the common view that three kings could beat a lone king only through the defender's mistake: once the three held the long diagonal, he maintained, the win could be forced in twelve moves or fewer (pp. 33–34). As in the chess manual, he advised readers to solve the problems themselves and to look at his solutions only when stuck or to check their moves (p. 52).
Napoleon's retreat, in fourteen moves
His best-known composition, The Flight of Napoleon from Moscow to Paris, appears in the appendix to his 1824 manual (pp. XI–XII). The black king represents Napoleon and starts on a1, Moscow; h8 is Paris. The white pieces represent the Russian army, and the knights pursue the retreating king. The published solution begins 1.Nd2+ Ka2 2.Nc3+ Ka3 and ends with 14.Kg1#, uncovering the white queen's check along the h-file.
A footnote at move six offers an earlier end to the pursuit: Qa8 would prevent Napoleon from reaching Paris and give mate. Petrov instead supplies the fourteen-move route across the board. The political allegory is part of his own explanation of the composition.
The defence that carries his name
1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 — Black declines to defend the e-pawn and counter-attacks instead. Petrov analysed the line with Carl Jaenisch, the other pillar of early Russian theory, and it has been called Petrov's Defence, or simply the Russian Game, ever since. It has been played at every level of the game, world championship matches included.
His 1824 manual already examined 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6. In Part IV, Game XXXV, he judged Black's second move poor, although the following example gave Black good play after 3.Nxe5 Qe7 (pp. 55–56). The early manual records a critical assessment of the move that later carried his name.
He left his name on two other lines as well: a variation of the Bishop's Opening and a gambit in the King's Gambit Accepted. The archive here catches him handling his own defence from the White side against Jaenisch himself in their 1844 match, winning in twenty-six moves — 21.Qg5+ Ng6 22.Nxg6 Rxf1+ 23.Kxf1, and then a king hunt that ends 25.Qh5+ Kxe7 26.Bg5+.
Warsaw
From 1840 he lived in Warsaw, holding senior posts in the administration of the Kingdom of Poland, and his house there became the meeting place for Russian and Polish players alike — Alexander Hoffmann, Szymański, Hieronim Czarnowski, and later the young Szymon Winawer, who would go on to be one of the strongest masters in the world.
The most celebrated game of Petrov's life was played in Warsaw in 1844 against Hoffmann, and it survives in this archive. With his queen attacked by 12.Nxf7, Petrov castled. Hoffmann took the queen with 13.Nxd8, but Petrov's pieces pursued the exposed white king until 23...Be3# ended the game.
Staunton invited him to the London tournament of 1851, but he did not take part. Kasparov's My Great Predecessors, Part I names Petrov, Jaenisch and Shumov among the invited Russian masters who were absent (chapter 1, “Chess before Steinitz,” subsection “Genius of Combinations”).
The last years
He kept playing into old age, and kept winning. He defeated Prince Sergey Urusov at St Petersburg in 1853 and again by 13½–7½ at Warsaw in 1859, at sixty-five; he beat Ilya Shumov 4–2 in 1862.
In 1863, with the January Uprising underway in Poland and his wife reportedly aiding the insurgents, Petrov left the country rather than fall under suspicion of revolutionary sympathies. He went to Vienna and then Paris, met the leading masters of Western Europe — though never Morphy — and went on playing: the last two games in this archive are Paris wins from 1863 and 1864, both of them against the King's Gambit, the second played in his seventieth year.
He returned to Warsaw and died there of apoplexy on 22 April 1867, aged seventy-three. He was buried in the city's Orthodox Cemetery; the grave has not survived.
Legacy
Petrov helped establish Russian chess literature through a systematic manual that combined instruction with independent criticism. His name survives in an opening still played at the highest level. His Napoleon composition also preserves a different use of the board: a sequence of chess moves could tell the story of a military retreat.
Books
Books Alexander Petrov wrote, co-wrote, edited, or contributed to. Translations and reprints are grouped under the same work.