Chess star squares up to Putin
By James Rodgers
BBC News, Moscow
Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov sees his campaign to change Russia as a mission to safeguard constitutional rights.
“It’s a very important battle,” he told the BBC, at the end of a news conference which he and his political allies had called to outline their plans for a protest on Saturday.
He has assembled a bewilderingly broad coalition. It includes former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and the extremist National Bolshevik Party.
The NBP has become known for audacious stunts aimed at embarrassing the establishment. Nevertheless, their flag borrows heavily from Nazi imagery – a hammer and sickle replaces the swastika. They hardly seem likely partners for Western-style democrats.
I put it to Garry Kasparov that his coalition, called “Another Russia”, simply lacks popular support.
Here is the full BBC article.
He’s making a big mistake.
Present Communism in the west is very different from yesterday’s Communism.
Many Sympathize with Communist’s parties all over Europe. I myself have protested alongside some of them in Italy and Paris.
So it really depends on your own perception of Communism.
Rastamann.
Kasparov should be supporting Putin. Then run for something like Mayor of Moscow, work his way up in the government, then make changes from the inside like Mikhail Gorbachev did. The way Kasparov is going now I would not be surprised to see him get into an accident or end up in the Russian Gulag.
Happy 44th Birthday Mr. Kasparov!
Present Communism seems very similar to yesterday’s Communism. I have protested alongside some of them in San Francisco and elsewhere (albeit 15-20 years ago) and have had many conversations with them over the years. The degree of anger, hatred, and intolerance of dissent that they displayed and the affinity for suppressing other points of view was astounding. Yes, many do sympathize with them–and it’s chilling.
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Kasparov’s politics are not my politics. (I don’t share the worldview of too many Wall Street Journal columnists.) And when I complimented him on MGP 5 & the Fischer section of MGP 4 at a Palmer House luncheon last year, I also told him that I wasn’t crazy about the first half of MGP 4. And one should really move a touched piece… 😉
However, it’s incredibly reductive, IMO, to point to one faction in the anti-Putin popular front and make that an argument against the popular front itself. One can always argue tactics, but I think he’s a brave & honorable man fighting for the freedom of Russia. Many of my friends on the other end of the (U.S.) political spectrum agree with me.
As if Putin himself were not even more closely entangled with the history of totalitarianism.
‘Present Communism seems very similar to yesterday’s Communism. I have protested alongside some of them in San Francisco…’
Maybe we met different people.
Rastamann.