Editing David Bronstein (section)

== Early life ==
David Bronstein was born in [[Bila Tserkva]], [[Ukrainian SSR]], [[Soviet Union]], to Jewish parents. Growing up in a poor family, he learned chess at the age of six from his grandfather. As a youth in [[Kiev]], he was trained by the renowned International Master [[Alexander Konstantinopolsky]]. He finished second in the Kiev Championship when he was only 15, and achieved the Soviet Master title at the age of 16 for his second-place result in the 1940 [[Ukrainian Chess Championship|Ukrainian SSR Chess Championship]], behind [[Isaac Boleslavsky]], with whom he became close friends both on and off the chessboard. His first wife was [[Olga Ignatieva]] one of the strongest female chess players of the 1950s. He went on to marry Boleslavsky's daughter, Tatiana, in 1984.

After completing high school in spring 1941, his plans to study mathematics at [[Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv|Kiev University]] were interrupted by the spread of [[World War II]] throughout eastern Europe in the early 1940s. He had begun play in the 1941 semifinal of the Soviet Championship, but this event was cancelled as war began. Shortly after the war's conclusion, he began attending [[Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University|Leningrad Polytechnical Institute]] where he studied for approximately one year.

Judged unfit for military service, Bronstein spent the war performing various jobs; this included doing some reconstruction of war-damaged buildings, and other jobs of a clerical or laboring nature. Also during the war, his father, Johonon, was unfairly imprisoned for several years in the [[Gulag]] and was detained without substantial evidence of committing any crimes, it was later revealed.<ref>''The Sorcerer's Apprentice'', by Bronstein and Fuerstenberg, 1995, London, Cadogan Chess; copies of the relevant documents for Johonon Bronstein's case are reproduced in this volume, both in the original Russian language and in English translation</ref> The rumor that Bronstein was related to the former Soviet leader [[Leon Trotsky]] (whose real family name was Bronstein), was treated as unconfirmed, but doubtful, by Bronstein in his book ''The Sorcerer's Apprentice'' (1995). This belief could have explained the imprisonment of Bronstein's father.