Photo of the Lev Polugaevsky, in b/w, 17,5x24 cm, personal photo taken with a Nikon F2 camera.

Lev Abramovich Polugaevsky (20 November 1934 – 30 August 1995) was a Soviet chess player. He was awarded the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1962 and was a frequent contender for the World Championship, although he never achieved that title. He was one of the strongest players in the world from the early 1960s until the late 1980s.

In addition to his over-the-board and theoretical successes, Polugaevsky was a highly respected chess author. His 1977 book Grandmaster Preparation is a classic that contains notable insights into his own thinking as he crafted the ultra-sharp eponymous variation in the main line (6. Bg5 e6 7. f4 b5) Najdorf Sicilian Defence. He went about his writing with the same meticulous care as characterized his analyses, and was contemptuous of the many less thorough authors who sought to profit from the post-Fischer chess boom with shoddy work, memorably commenting that "Ninety per cent of all chess books you can open at page one and then immediately close again for ever. Sometimes you see books that have been written in one month. I don't like that. You should take at least two years for a book, or not do it [at] all."