Petrovs Vladimirs (27.09.1907 – 26.08.1943)

Latvian Master. Latvian Champion in 1930 and 1931, Champion of Riga in 1926, 1932, and 1936.

Petrovs participated in several strong tournaments during the 1930s, usually with moderate results but with one outstanding achievement, at Kemeri 1937, where he came in first (+9=6-2) equal with Salo Flohr and Samuel Reshevsky, ahead of Alexander Alekhine, Paul Keres, and Ruben Fine.
He was tenth (out of 20) in the 1940 USSR Championship but he came second at Moscow in 1941 and Sverdlovsk in 1942.
In a match, he defeated Vladas Mikenas in 1932 (+2=1), lost to Rudolf Spielmann in 1934 (+1-2=5).

A participant in 8 Olympiads between 1928 and 1939 where he collected an individual gold in 1931 and an individual bronze in 1939. While he was playing in his seventh and last Olympiad in Buenos Aires 1939, war broke out.
When he returned home, his country was annexed and he became a Soviet citizen. Arrested on the 31st of August 1942 for violating the infamous “Article 58”, he was then suspected of counter-revolutionary activities and was sentenced to ten years in a corrective labor camp where he died from an inflammation of the lungs. Vladimir Petrov was posthumously rehabilitated some years later.