by Sergey Grodzensky and Tim Harding, 160pp. + CD ROM (Chess Mail 2003)

This is the previously untold story of 21 classic chess tournaments and the masters who competed in them. The book includes 84 exciting annotated games and eight pages of photographs. The USSR Correspondence Chess Championships began in the late 1940s and featured dozens of great players including Estrin, Ragozin, Simagin, Umansky and Zagorovsky. The final cycle of tournaments, begun in the dying days of the USSR, ended only in the 21st century, ten years after the Soviet Union had ceased to exist!

Correspondence Grandmaster Sergey Grodzensky is a historian with several books published in Russia. He knew many of the people in this story very well. Senior International Master and popular ChessCafe.com columnist Tim Harding is a well-known chess writer and author of the best-selling book 64 Great Chess Games. He is also editor of the outstanding correspondence chess magazine Chess Mail.

The book is the fruit of several years' research by both authors.It includes a CD-ROM with a database featuring hundreds of brilliant chess games rescured from obscurity. It also has the complete original Russian text.