Pyotr Romanovsky

Peter Romanovsky (born 29 July 1892, St Petersburg – died 1 March 1964, Moscow) was a Russian chess master.

He was the Soviet Champion in 1923 (2nd USSR-ch in Petrograd) and 1927 (with Fedor Bohatirchuk, 5th USSR-ch in Moscow). He tied for first with Efim Bogoljubow in the 1925 Leningrad championship. In December 1925, he tied for 7-8th in Moscow (1st it). In 1927, he won in Leningrad. His best international result was in Leningrad 1934, finishing 2nd= with Nikolai Riumin, behind Mikhail Botvinnik. In 1935, he was the first Soviet chess player to be awarded Honored Master of Sport. During the terrible winter of 1941-42, a rescue party reached his home in Leningrad. They found Romanovsky half-conscious from starvation and cold. The rest of his family had frozen to death. All the furniture in the house had been used for firewood.

In 1954, the Soviets withdrew their application for Romanovsky to receive the Grandmaster title. They based his GM title on his 1st place in the 1927 USSR championship. But because Fedor Bohatirchuk also took 1st place in 1927, and he was no longer recognized in the USSR (having defected), the USSR Chess Federation did not want to give the GM title to Bohatirchuk (at the end of WW II, he escaped to West, and later emigrated to Canada), so they withdrew the application for Romanovsky.

Awarded the IM title in 1950 and an International Arbiter in 1951.