Valery Atashkin

Valery Atashkin (1945-2008) was a Russian Go player who was one of the first promoters of the game in the Soviet Union after Youri Filatov. He learnt to play the game in 1965 at Filatov's Go Club in Lenningrad. In 1975, together with George Nilov, he published a series of 12 articles introducing Go in the popular journal “Nauka i Zhizn” (“Science and Life” in English).

He won the first Soviet Go Championship in 1977, and came 6th in the European Go Championship that same year. In 1989 he became President of the USSR Go Federation. There is a annual memorial tournament in his honour.