Monday, Apr. 30, 2007
Garry Kasparov
By Michael Elliott
Garry Kasparov likes to say he has been in politics all his life. In the Soviet Union, the nation in which he grew up, chess was a way of demonstrating the superiority of communism over the decadent West, and a chess prodigy was inevitably a political figure. Kasparov never dodged that fate; when he took on and eventually defeated Anatoly Karpov, the darling of the Soviet chess establishment, in 1985, his image as a prominent outsider—Kasparov is half Jewish, half Armenian—was fixed.
Kasparov’s status has been maintained in post-Soviet Russia. His organization, the Other Russia, a coalition of those opposed to the rule of President Vladimir Putin, has held a series of demonstrations, often broken up by the police. For Kasparov, Russia today, dominated by a combination of huge energy enterprises and former security apparatchiks (such as Putin), is a betrayal of those who dreamed of democracy in the early 1990s.
Putin’s foes are fragmented and run from old-fashioned nationalists to modern liberals; Kasparov, 44, insists he is just a moderator, not a leader, of the movement. But by giving a voice to those who believe that Russia can develop in a way different from the authoritarianism that seems always to have been its fate, the retired grand master shows that he has not yet made his last move.
Source: Time Magazine
I could not care less what Kasparov is doing in Russia. I care what he does for chess and right now not much 🙁
I must say I’m a bit afraid that he may be killed soon. He’s been extremely couragous and at least making us aware of what’s going on in Russia. Putin is supposed to step down in 2008. Will he?Normally I wouldn’t care, thinking russia as a ‘black box’, but it’s not. I’ve been telling everyone at work about Kasparov’s efforts. Some of my friends (one who is Armenian) are incredibly impressed with Kasparov holding the line.