{{Short description|Ukrainian economist and chess composer}} {{Family name hatnote|Borisovich|Zalkind|lang=Eastern Slavic}} {{Infobox person | name = Lazar Borisovich Zalkind | image = Lazar Zalkind.jpg | caption = Lazar Zalkind in 1928 | birth_date = 14 January 1886 [O.S. 2 January] | birth_place = Kharkov, Kharkov Governorate, Russian Empire | death_date = 25 June 1945 (aged 59) | death_place = Komsomolsk-on-Amur, Soviet Union | occupation = Economist, chess composer }}
'''Lazar Borisovich Zalkind''' ({{langx|ru|Лазарь Борисович Залкинд}}; {{OldStyleDateNY|14 January 1886|2 January}} – 25 June 1945<ref name=encyclopedia>{{cite book |last=Berdichevsky |first=Igor |title=Шахматная еврейская энциклопедия |language=ru |trans-title=Jewish Chess Encyclopedia |page=97 |year=2016 |publisher=Russian Chess House |location=Moscow |isbn=978-5-94693-503-6}}</ref>) was a Ukrainian economist and chess composer.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.jewishgen.org/BELARUS/rje_z.htm |title=Russian Jewish Encyclopedia: Surnames starting with the letter Z |last1=Charny |first1=Josif |last2=Charny |first2=Vitaly |website=Belarus SIG |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160403032244/https://www.jewishgen.org/BELARUS/rje_z.htm |archive-date=3 April 2016}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|url=http://blog.chess.com/batgirl/art-for-arts-sake---not |title = Art for Art's Sake - not! |website=Chess.com |date=20 October 2007 |access-date=9 May 2023}}</ref>
Born in Kharkov in 1886, Zalkind's family moved to Kostroma when he was a child. He joined the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1903. He studied economics at Imperial Moscow University and worked as an assistant professor there after completing his degree. He was baptized when he married N. V. Andreeva in 1909. He continued his career as an economist at the People's Commissariat of Trade, where he was promoted to head of the accounting and statistical sector by the late 1920s.<ref name=Grodzensky>{{cite book |title=The Lubyanka Gambit |pages=30–54 |publisher=Elk and Ruby |year=2022 |isbn=978-5604177006}}</ref>
Zalkind became interested in chess when he was fifteen. He published his first chess composition in 1903, and soon established himself as a leading chess composer in Russia during the 1910s and 1920s.<ref name=Grodzensky/> He created more than 500 compositions, and edited the problem columns in the magazines {{ill|Shakhmatny Vestnik|ru|Шахматный вестник|italic=y}} (1913–1916) and ''Shakhmaty'' (1922–1929).<ref name=encyclopedia/> From 1926, he headed the Society of Chess Problems and Studies Fans of the All-Union Chess Section.<ref name=Grodzensky/>
In 1930, Zalkind was arrested for his role in a supposed plot to infiltrate the Bolshevik government with pro-Mensheviks. He was convicted in the 1931 Menshevik Trial and sentenced to eight years in the {{ill|Verkneuralsk political isolator|lt=OGPU political prison|ru|Верхнеуральский политизолятор}} in Verkhneuralsk. He then spent five more years at a labour camp in Komsomolsk-on-Amur. He was finally released in 1943, but was not permitted to leave Komsomolsk. At that point he learned that his 18-year-old son Boris had died on the Eastern Front.<ref name=encyclopedia/>
Zalkind died of a heart attack in 1945. He was posthumously rehabilitated.<ref name=encyclopedia/>
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== * [https://www.arves.org/arves/index.php/nl/halloffame/516-zalkind-l A selection of Zalkind's studies] by ARVES, the Dutch-Flemish Association for Endgame Study
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Zalkind, Lazar}} Category:1886 births Category:1945 deaths Category:Writers from Kharkiv Category:People from Kharkovsky Uyezd Category:Ukrainian Jews Category:Russian Social Democratic Labour Party members Category:Mensheviks Category:Ukrainian chess players Category:Jewish chess players Category:Jewish socialists Category:Chess composers Category:Imperial Moscow University alumni Category:Academic staff of Imperial Moscow University Category:1931 Menshevik Trial Category:Ukrainian Gulag detainees Category:Soviet rehabilitations