130 years ago, Alexander Alexandrovich Alekhine was born, a great chess player, the first Russian world champion, whom many experts in the ancient game consider the strongest grandmaster “of all times and peoples.” He treated chess as an art - and was its devoted servant, a bright thinker, and not just a player. Alekhine stands at the origins of the Soviet chess school. But since 1921, he lived in a foreign land, where he became the winner of many prestigious chess tournaments and won the crown of world champion, confirming this high title three more times. He died in 1946 undefeated. Grandmaster A. A. Kotov’s story about Alexander Alekhine remains unsurpassed. We have supplemented it with a modern essay on the life and work of the great chess player, which talks about what the author, who wrote his masterpiece in 1965, involuntarily kept silent about.