Oscar Blum

Oscar Blum (1886 ^[1] – ?) was a Lithuanian–French chess master. He was pushed off Lenin's 1917 train by Lenin himself ^[2] This incident is mentioned in Ben Kingsley's Lenin movie (Lenin...The Train), and in James Wollrab: Russian Winter p. 206 ^[3]

In 1923 his book Russiche Köpfe was published in Germany.^[4] He described Grigory Zinoviev as a dreamer, a sleepwalker, who lived in a world of pure literature.^[5]

Chess

He won, ahead of Nicolas Rossolimo and Vitaly Halberstadt, in the 8th Paris City Chess Championship in 1932.^[6] Dr Oscar Blum played at Folkestone 1933. He participated not in the 5th Chess Olympiad but in the General Congress, finishing second, half a point behind Eugene Znosko-Borovsky.^[7][8]

References

1. "The Mysterious Oscar Blum - English Chess Forum".
2. "The Mysterious Oscar Blum - English Chess Forum".
3. Wollrab, James (February 2007). Russian Winter. ISBN 9780595428045.
4. Blum, Oskar (1923). Russiche Köpfe. Berlin: Franz Scheider Verlag.
5. Haupt, Georges; Marie, Jean-Jacques (2017). Makers of the Russian Revolution: Biographies. Routledge. ISBN 9781315400204.
6. Champ Paris 1932
7. Chess Notes by Edward Winter
8. NED-ch08 The Hague/Leiden 1933 Archived August 7, 2007, at the Wayback Machine