April 02, 2007

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Garry Kasparov’s risky anti-Putin game plan

The chess master is backing peaceful – if often illegal – urban
protests of what he calls Russia’s ‘police state.’

By Fred Weir | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitor

MOSCOW

His trademark curly hair is going gray, but the boyish grin is still
in place.

Garry Kasparov, who reigned over the chess world for almost two
decades, still fills a room with his intense energy. But since
retiring two years ago, the lifetime grandmaster has hurled himself
into the less cerebral and far more turbulent domain of Russian
politics.

As head of the liberal oppositionist United Civil Front, and chief
eminence of an anti-Kremlin coalition called The Other Russia,
Mr. Kasparov is championing a risky strategy of confronting what he
calls President Vladimir Putin’s "police state" through peaceful – if
often illegal – urban protests.

The goal, he says, is to compel the Kremlin to give up plans for a
tightly managed succession from Mr. Putin to a new leader in a year’s
time, and to open the process for a free and fair choice. "In a chess
game, when your king is under attack, you have to defend," says
Kasparov, enumerating what he sees as the dire threats to democracy in
Russia. "We had to try something, so we tried creating The Other
Russia. And it worked.

"Beneath this illusion of stability," he adds, "there is boiling
protest and growing economic disparity. The only way out is to have
real, competitive, and free elections."

Arrests, water cannons at protests

In St. Petersburg, in early March, an estimated 5,000 demonstrators
chanting "freedom!" and "Russia without Putin!" broke through a cordon
of riot police and surged toward Palace Square, where the Russian
Revolution was staged 90 years ago. Dozens were arrested, but Kasparov
insists it was Russia’s biggest protest rally in years and "our first
great victory." At a smaller gathering in the Volga city of Nizhni
Novgorod in late March, thousands of police backed by helicopters and
water-cannons blocked protesters from reaching the city’s central
square. The next protest is slated for Moscow on April 14.

"This regime is used to operating without opposition, and even the
smallest protest makes the state panic," says Kasparov. "A strong
regime doesn’t use thousands of troops against a peaceful demo. Their
reaction to us only shows weakness."

Kasparov has attracted controversy by welding together disparate –
some say disreputable – forces from the left and right into The Other
Russia, including the neo-communist Worker’s Russia, the leftist
National Bolshevik Party, led by novelist Eduard Limonov, the liberal
People’s Democratic Union of former prime minister Mikhail Kasyanov,
as well as Kasparov’s own mostly youthful, prodemocracy
followers. Kasparov says a key goal is to bring the still-powerful
Communist Party – the last major opposition force still standing –
into the coalition.

"This plan to unite all the discontented people may be a good idea,
but I doubt it has any chance to succeed," says Sergei Mikheyev,
director of the Center for Political Technologies, an independent
Moscow think tank. "It’s a mystery to me why Kasparov gave up chess
and went into politics. Now his reputation has been seriously
damaged."

But Kasparov argues that the Kremlin is wracked with dissension over
Putin’s insistence on stepping down next March, and that battles over
the succession have created an opening for democratic action.

"If we can keep together and create a center of unity of different
opposition groups at a time when the Kremlin is disintegrating … the
system may evolve, and quite dramatically," he says. "There will
definitely be political turmoil in Russia by the end of this year."

Last week, Sergei Mironov, upper house speaker and chief of the
pro-Kremlin Fair Russia Party, urged parliament to consider changing
the Constitution to allow Putin to run for a third consecutive term. A
Kremlin spokesman responded that Putin’s position on leaving "remains
unchanged."

Kasparov says the next conference of The Other Russia, in July, will
put forward a unified opposition candidate to run in presidential
elections next March. Though he won’t offer names, he suggests that
it’s unlikely to be himself, since that might jeopardize his role as
"fixer" and "mediator" between the coalition’s diverse groups.

To support his contention that Russia has become a police state,
Kasparov points to harassment of Other Russia activists. He is not the
only one to report similar treatment at the hands of police bearing
lists of names, addresses, and workplaces of targeted political
dissidents.

Boris Kagarlitsky, an organizer of a social forum during the G-8
summit in St. Petersburg last July, says "about 300 of our invited
participants were pulled off trains and buses or prevented from
leaving their home towns. Some had their documents destroyed by
police."

Visits from Russia’s security services

Kasparov says the Kremlin’s National Anti-terrorism Committee, a
secret services task force, is being used to repress
opposition. "Under Russian law today, anybody can be labeled an
‘extremist,’ " he says. "For this regime, extremism equals
terrorism. Whenever we announce a demonstration, our activists begin
to receive visits from the FSB [security service]. We think we are
facing a well-organized secret-services operation against us."

Last week, the Kremlin urged all political parties to adopt a new
Charter on Countering Extremism, agreeing not to join in marches that
"promote ethnic, religious, or social tension," and to cut ties with
groups that attract minors into "extremist" activities. The
English-language Moscow Times reported that only the Communist Party
has so far refused to sign on.

Some experts say, whatever his political fortunes, Kasparov is doing a
useful service for Russian democracy. "As a person who is not afraid
to confront the authorities, does not shrink under pressure, he is
very effective," says Andrei Ryabov, of the Carnegie Center in
Moscow. "As a pioneer, blazing the path to political change in Russia,
he could be very important."

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