compete in tournaments such as AVRO 1938 (even though he was the reigning Soviet Champion). This further weakened his standing and most likely affected his morale, as well as his development as a chess player. Other players born before the revolution, such as Alexander Alekhine, Efim Bogoljubov, and Akiba Rubinstein were all allowed to travel and even ended up living abroad. Deprived of the same opportunities, Levenfish played only within the confines of Soviet Russia and supplemented his income with a job as an engineer in the glass industry. This eventually resulted in a slow retirement from active play. Levenfish was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE, the world chess federation, in 1950, the year the title was introduced officially. Legacy Genna Sosonko, in his book Russian Silhouettes, echoes the thoughts of some grandmasters who knew him, and they speak of a man of integrity and independence, who never complained about his difficult living conditions. Boris Spassky encountered him in a Moscow subway, just days before his death. Levenfish, who had a wretched look, was clutching a handkerchief to his mouth and declared that he had just had six teeth extracted. Vasily Smyslov recounts the time that Levenfish visited him, towards the end of his life, armed with a huge pile of papers. It turned out to be a manuscript detailing his lifetime work on rook endgames. He asked Smyslov to check for errors, and some minor corrections later, the book was published (1957) bearing both names, under the title Teoriya ladeynykh okonchaniy ("The theory of rook endings"), later published in English in 1971 under the title Rook Endings. Smyslov freely admits that all of the hard work was carried out by his co-author. In his time, Levenfish also wrote books for beginners and edited a collaborative effort on chess openings, titled Sovremenny debyut ("Modern openings"). His posthumously published autobiography, Izbrannye partii i vospominaniya (1967), contained 79 annotated games. Regarding his playing abilities, Sosonko points to his deep understanding of the game and a keen eye for brilliantly imaginative moves. He was also an opening theorist; the Levenfish Attack, a variation of the Sicilian Defence, is named after him. Playing style Levenfish defeated virtually all of the top Russian and Soviet players from the 1910s to the early 1950s, and beat world champions Alexander Alekhine and Emanuel Lasker as well. However, he was bested by young superstars Paul