Editing Alexander Alekhine (section)

====World War I and post-revolutionary Russia====
In July–August 1914, Alekhine was leading an international [[Mannheim 1914 chess tournament|Mannheim tournament]], the 19th [[DSB Congress]] (German Chess Federation Congress) in [[Mannheim]], Germany, with nine wins, one draw and one loss, when World War I broke out. Alekhine's prize was 1,100 marks (worth about 11,000 [[euro]]s in terms of purchasing power today).<ref>{{cite web |title=Das unvollendete Turnier: Mannheim 1914 |url=http://www.chessbase.de/nachrichten.asp?newsid=5003 |publisher=ChessBase |date=20 December 2005 |access-date=2008-05-30 |language=de |archive-date=2012-02-05 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120205184818/http://www.chessbase.de/nachrichten.asp?newsid=5003 |url-status=live }}</ref> After the declaration of war against Russia, eleven "Russian" players (Alekhine, [[Efim Bogoljubov]], [[Fedor Bogatyrchuk]], [[Alexander Flamberg]], [[N. Koppelman (chess player)|N. Koppelman]], [[Boris Maliutin]], [[Ilya Rabinovich]], [[Peter Romanovsky]], [[Peter Petrovich Saburov|Pyotr Saburov]], [[Alexey Selezniev]], and [[Samuil Weinstein]]) were interned in Rastatt, Germany. On September 14, 17, and 29 of 1914, four of them (Alekhine, Bogatyrchuk, Saburov, and Koppelman) were freed and allowed to return home.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chesscafe.com/text/mannheim.txt |title=Manheim 1914 The Legend |access-date=2008-06-05 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081211035736/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/mannheim.txt |archive-date=December 11, 2008}}</ref> Alekhine made his way back to Russia (via Switzerland, Italy, London, Sweden, and Finland) by the end of October 1914. A fifth player, Romanovsky, was released in 1915,<ref>{{cite book |last=Romanov |first=Isaak Zalmanovich |title=Petr Romanovsky |publisher=Fizkultura i sport |year=1984 |page=20 |language=ru}}</ref> and a sixth, Flamberg, was allowed to return to Warsaw in 1916.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter04.html |title=3540. The internees |access-date=2008-05-30 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080509083259/http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/winter04.html |archive-date=9 May 2008 |url-status=live}}</ref>

When Alekhine returned to Russia, he helped raise money by giving simultaneous exhibitions to aid the Russian chess players who remained interned in Germany. In December 1915, he won the Moscow Chess Club Championship. In April 1916, he won a mini-match against [[Alexander Evensohn]] with two wins and one loss at [[Kiev]], and in summer he served in the Union of Cities (Red Cross) on the Austrian front. In September, he played five people in a blindfold display at a Russian military hospital at [[Tarnopol]]. In 1918, he won a "triangular tournament" in Moscow. In June of the following year, after the Russians forced the German army to retreat from [[Ukraine]], Alekhine was charged with links with [[White movement]] counter-intelligence and was briefly imprisoned in [[Odessa]]'s death cell by the Odessa [[Cheka]]. Rumors appeared in the West that he had been killed by the [[Bolshevik]]s.{{sfn|Linder|Linder|2016|loc=Chapter 1: Life and Destiny}}