Kasparov makes his first political move on Putin
By Emma Cowing
The Scotsman – United Kingdom; Jul 14, 2006
MOSCOW in March is not a welcoming place. The temperature hovers
around the -4C mark, the sun sets before 5pm, and a filthy slush coats
the darkened streets. So it is unsurprising that in this cold, dark
month Marina Litvinovich, a pretty blonde 31-year-old PR specialist,
was hurrying to get to her car after a late night at work. Leaving her
office about 9pm, she started to make her way down the city’s Makarenko
Street. She had almost reached her car when, without warning, she felt
a blow to her head from behind. Although she was immediately knocked
out cold, her attackers continued to beat her. She lay unconscious on
the freezing ground for around 20 minutes and, drowsily coming round,
knew what she had to do. She picked up her mobile phone and called
not the police, but her boss: Garry Kasparov, the world’s greatest
chess player.
The brutal attack on Litvinovich – two of her teeth were knocked out,
she suffered injuries to her face and ribs, but escaped lasting damage
– is merely one incident in a catalogue of intimidation toward Kasparov
and his staff since he made the surprising announcement last March
that he intended to retire from the international chess circuit to
enter Russian politics – a move that prompted one chess fan to hit
him over the head with a chessboard and shout: "I admired you as a
chess player, but you gave that up for politics!"
A long-time critic of the Putin regime, Kasparov means business. He
has his own political organisation, the United Civil Front, bodyguards
that would put George Bush’s to shame and plans to run for the Russian
presidency in 2008. In the West, he hit the headlines this week for
organising an alternative G8 summit in Moscow, just days before the
real summit goes ahead in Putin’s native St Petersburg.
The alternative summit has been a publicity coup for Kasparov.
Scheduled in order to cause maximum embarrassment to the Kremlin,
he attracted the likes of Anthony Brenton, the British ambassador,
who gave a speech at one of its forums, and Daniel Fried, the US
assistant secretary of state, who defended his appearance, saying
"if Russian officials attended a summit organised by the Democrats –
the American opposition – we wouldn’t regard it as anything other than
[them] doing their job". But while some of the summit’s attendees from
the West may have been coy about their real reasons for showing up,
Kasparov was in no doubt that the meeting was a chance to attack the
Russian president. "Democracy is not a bargaining chip," he railed
during a speech. "This is a fundamental issue. The West should not
pretend Mr Putin is a member of this club [the G8]".
KASPAROV COULD BE playing with fire. He claims more than 20 of his
supporters have been attacked over the past few weeks, while Kasparov
himself was apparently roughed up by Interior Ministry troops last
May. Venues where he has been scheduled to speak have suddenly lost
electrical power or been pronounced "full"; he has had ketchup-covered
eggs thrown at him, and police have dogged his every move. Others have
fared far worse: oil executive Mikhail Khodorkovsky is currently in
prison for fraud and tax evasion, though many suspect this is because
he was planning on financing the opposition.
"It stands to reason that all this is orchestrated by those who
don’t want us in politics," Kasparov said recently. "That means the
authorities."
Kasparov and his team have been putting their noses where they are
not wanted. It is believed the attack on Litvinovich was motivated
by investigations she had been doing on the 2004 siege of Beslan. She
edits a website entitled The Truth about Beslan, which makes a number
of allegations as to how the government and the army handled the
siege and its aftermath, and includes testimonies from parents and
victims alleging that they were not protected by their country.
"There are new and interesting facts that are serious enough and
important," she told a Russian radio station after the attack. "It
seems to me most regrettable that this upsets some people."
In a country where chess is viewed in much the same way as professional
tennis is in the US, Kasparov is an A-List celebrity.
Broodingly handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and dark soulful eyes,
he is one of Russia’s most recognisable figures. A child prodigy,
he was born in Azerbaijan on 16 April 1963 to an Armenian mother and
a Jewish father. His father died when he was just seven, and by eight
he was training at world-champion Mikhail Botvinnik’s chess school.
>From there it was a heady tumble into celebrity chess stardom. At 13 he
won the Soviet junior championship and started playing in tournaments
worldwide. By 15 he was a chess master. At 17 he won the world junior
championship. Part of Kasparov’s unblinkered view of Russia comes
from that early life on the chess circuit. Travelling the world as
a teenager, he saw the West as it really was, rather than the myth
spun by "invincible Mother Russia".
AS A CHESS PLAYER, Kasparov’s career remains unparalleled. Named world
number one a record 23 times, he has won every major chess tournament
and achieved the highest ever official chess rating.
Perhaps his most famous encounter was with IBM’s Deep Blue, a computer
that defeated Kasparov in 1996, at the height of his career.
A year later Kasparov ordered a rematch, and won. He is not, it seems,
a man easily beaten. His decision to end his chess career last year
confounded the chess community, but few realised how seriously he
took his devotion to politics.
Politically, he has been described as a revolutionary. He has watched
with admiration the domino effect of revolutions in former Soviet
states such as Kyrgyzstan, Ukraine and Georgia, and feels something
similar must happen in Russia. His United Civic Front is a group of
around 2,000 oppositionists, including Communists, Putin defectors
and members of nationalist parties, and is lead by his Committee 2008:
Free Choice, a group 32 with differing politics.
Kasparov is keen to bring his message – that there must be change,
that Putin must not be allowed to win a third term, that Russia must
do more to embrace democracy – to those outside Russia’s political
and economic hubs, Moscow and St Petersburg.
Unlike many Russian politicians, he travels: not abroad, but within
his own country. He trundles up and down the Soviet highways attending
meetings, giving speeches, hammering home his message in the most
far-flung corners of the country.
This is partly because, as an opposition politician, the state-friendly
TV channels are unlikely to give him much time. But he also stated
in an interview with Atlantic Monthly in December last year that
the experience is like going to university. "I want to shift the
centre of political gravity from Moscow to the regions," he told
the magazine. "To bring big politics down to the molecular level,
to show people how it affects them and how we can change policy to
change our lives."
But Kasparov’s persona is not all sunshine and good political works.
For years there were rumours on the chess circuit of his overbearing
manner, and British grandmaster Nigel Short famously described
him as "a hairy ape". He is known to be difficult and demanding,
and his private life is messy and complex. His first wife, Masha,
who lives in New Jersey with their 12-year-old daughter, won a court
order forbidding the child visiting Kasparov in Moscow, fearing if
she did she would not return to the US. He divorced his second wife,
Yulia, with whom he has a son, last year. He is currently dating a
beautiful young business graduate, Daria Tarasova.
So can the grandmaster turn president? He compares himself on the
political scale to Arnold Schwarzenegger – "economically conservative
but socially liberal" – although the celebrity comparison also rings
true. The only difference is that, while it has taken Schwarzenegger
years of political campaigning and donations to get to his current
position of Governor of California, Kasparov has caught serious
political attention in the West, has the highest political profile of
any Russian politician except Putin, and a good shot at the Russian
presidency come 2008, all within 18 months.
Perhaps we should not expect anything less from the man who has
dominated his sport for two decades. And perhaps politics has been
informing his chess for longer than we realised.
He is nothing if not determined. As he told an interviewer last year:
"I will stay in my country to fight for it; it is my country as much
as Mr Putin’s."