The http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_alphabet Russian alphabet isn't hard to figure out, as many of the letters are the same as we use. The problem is though that some of them looks like another letter we use.
Therefore personal names are easily read in russian books. Reading words in general are as easy to do but much more difficult to understand. Normally also russian names include the person's fathers first name as middlename.
Boris Vasiljevitsj Spasskij - Борис Васильевич Спасский - suggests his fathers first name was Vasiljev. (Vasiljev-son)
Thanks for sharing those pictures batgirl.
Alekhine (Picture 19) looks like "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn..." (Very Clark Gable-ish). Picture 14 on the other hand looks like a western shootout about to go down. Nice pictures...