Garry Kasparov: The master who won’t be Putin’s pawn

The chess prodigy honoured by the Soviet Union now combines his Western
lecture tours with vociferous opposition to the Kremlin regime

Shaun Walker meets Garry
Sunday, 16 November 2008

Garry Kasparov was involved in some epic clashes during his time as
the world’s leading chess player, but of late, he’s picked an opponent
that he seems most unlikely to defeat: Vladimir Putin. Revered in
Russia as a chess legend, he has become persona non grata by dint of
his withering attacks on the country’s leader, who he says has
perpetrated "the greatest robbery in thehistory of the human race" by
dividing the proceeds of Russia’s wealth among his cronies.

Kasparov lives in a quiet and pleasant area of central Moscow. I am
escorted up to his apartment by a bodyguard and received by his
mother, Klara, who eyes me with some distrust. I wait for Kasparov in
the spacious living room of the apartment, which is done out in a
style best described as late-Soviet opulence. With glass chandeliers
and ornate mahogany cabinets overflowing with crystal and china
ornaments, it’s how I imagine the apartment of a 1970s politburo
bigwig might have looked.
Conical, spherical and chess-piece-shaped crystal trophies – the
spoils of two decades spent at the pinnacle of the chess world –
dominate theroom. In time, Kasparov breezes in and offers greetings in
his flawless English, spoken with twangs of American, Russian and – it
seems to me – Dutch, making up an accent that is difficult to
place. The furrowed brow is unmistakable, and behind it the intellect
of perhaps the greatest chess brain in history.
It’s nearly a year since he was arrested at one of the rallies of his
Other Russia coalition, which features everyone from Trotskyists to
libertarians united by their marginal status and opposition to the
Putin regime. He briefly entertained the hope of running for the
presidency, but administrative barriers were put in his way.
Since the election of Putin’s protÃ©gÃ©, Dmitry Medvedev, in
March,Kasparov seems to have faded somewhat from public view, I
say. What’s he been up to?"I don’t like to call it an election: that
gives the wrong impression," he quickly replies. "Barack Obama had 65
million voters. Medvedev had one."
He makes nonsense of the idea that Medvedev might have a genuine
liberal agenda, immediately launching into a political diatribe. It’s
a "typical trick of undemocratic regimes" to put a supposed reformer
in place. (Medvedev has introduced a bill to extend the presidential
term from four years to six, setting off speculation that his mentor
intends to return to the post very soon.)
And in the new climate of financial doom, with oil prices plummeting,
Kasparov predicts a rocky ride for the Putin-Medvedev tandemocracy.
"I would be surprised if this regime lasts more than 18 months," he
says. "I don’t know what form change will take. We just have to hope
it won’t be violent: this country has had enough violence. But the
regime is pushing it towards that. Soon there will be hundreds of
thousands of people on the streets."
The National Assembly, a debating forum set up by Other Russia, is
there to help provide a transition when this happens, he says.
This sounds rather fanciful. The Other Russia politicians enjoy very
little public support. This is partly because state control of
television keeps them off the screens, but it is also because people
just don’t seem to want revolutionary change. The massed, street
protests he envisages would surely require a drastic change in the
public outlook, I suggest. Most people I know, even graduates who one
might expect to be politically involved, are thoroughly uninterested
in protest, even if they dislike Putin.
"The 15 per cent of people who make up this ‘new middle class’ – they
are Putin’s strongest support group – have had it good," he
says. "Theycould get credit, they could buy cars, maybe even an
apartment, travel abroad. Now they are facing major problems. You can
lose your job, you can lose your apartment because you cannot
pay. They are used to a passive political mode, but they read the
internet and they see all these billions of dollars disappearing.
Where does the money go? Into the hands of Putin’s buddies. These
people will learn quick political lessons."
Kasparov was born in 1963 in Baku, now the capital of independent
Azerbaijan, to an Armenian mother and Jewish father. His father’s
surname was Weinstein, and his mother’s Kasparyan, which was later
Russified to Kasparov. His talent was immediately visible, and at
seven he began the life of a chess prodigy, training at elite Soviet
academies. By the 1980s he was challenging Anatoly Karpov for the
title of world champion.
Their first match, in 1984 in Moscow, had Kasparov 4-0 down in a
"first to six" tournament. He then managed to draw 17 successive games
before eking a win. With the score at 5-3 to Karpov, after 48 games,
the match was calledoff. Kasparov was furious, feeling he had the
upper hand at last and would go on to win. The next year, he got his
revenge and won the title.
Karpov was always seen as an establishment character, while Kasparov
was the young rebel, a distinction that has remained until today:
while Kasparov leads the Other Russia coalition of dissidents, Karpov
sits in Putin’s Public Chamber.
Kasparov had always been politically engaged, but the decision to go
into politics properly didn’t come until the end of 2004, and was
swayed by two events. One was his win in the Russian chess
championships, the only major title to elude him previously. "I had my
final dream in chess. When my son was born in the mid-1990s, my dream
was for him to be old enough to see his father playing and winning."
The other event was the Beslan school siege, which ended with Russian
special forces storming the school and hundreds of children
dying. Although he had had his doubts about the Putin government since
its inception in 2000, Beslan was the final straw. "I had to make a
choice. Either you stay in this country and fight it, or you
leave. You can’t live here and pretend it doesn’t bother you."
Kasparov decided to stay. Is it a choice that he regrets now? After
all, he had the money and the contacts to live a luxurious life in any
world city of his choosing.
"We all have our thoughts in the night," he says. "But how can you
leave all these people? As long as I can do it without immediate
physical danger for me and my family, I will do it. I am still
protected by my name – nota very reliable protection, but some
protection. A lot of other people in our movement don’t have that."
His name hasn’t stopped the harassment, however. Last year I was due
to interview him before the Duma elections, and had bought a plane
ticket to St Petersburg, where he was travelling for an opposition
rally. I had been promised an interview during the flight, but the
night before, he was arrested at the Moscow rally, and given five days
in prison. "They probably arrested me because you were planning to
interview me the next day," he jokes.
Vociferous critics of the Kremlin have a habit of coming to sticky
ends. One need only recall the journalist Anna Politkovskaya, shot
dead in Moscow, or Alexander Litvinenko, who died of polonium
poisoning in London two years ago.
Kasparov is permanently followed, he says, and his phones are
tapped. On the night of the US elections, a battered Soviet-era car,
without licence plates, rammed into his car while he was giving a
radio interview. He retains a retinue of bodyguards, one of whom sits
in on our interview. It’s not going to protect him against polonium,
but it does guard against attacks by young fanatics from
Putin-friendly youth brigades such as Nashi.
A "fan" once asked him to autograph a chessboard then beat him around
the head with it. His press conferences and speeches have been
disrupted by tear gas and a phallus-shaped mini helicopter that was
swatted into oblivion by a security guard.
Kasparov’s move into politics also revealed his real friends. "Many
people just disappeared," he says, with a smile that suggests he’s
happy to see the back of them. "When I was released from prison last
year I asked my mother who called during the five days I was inside. I
was quite surprised at how many people didn’t even call."
Support did come from many people, however, and in one case it was
thoroughly unexpected. Karpov, with whom Kasparov had not spoken for
years, tried to visit his former foe in prison. "The prison guard told
me he had a packageof chess magazines from Karpov and I thought he was
joking," says Kasparov. "We had a lot of bad blood; I didn’t and don’t
approve of his politics, but for him to put the champions’ brotherhood
above everything else was a big step."
Putin is less forgiving. One of the rare occasions when he so much as
acknowledged Kasparov’s existence was when he was asked by Time
magazine during his "Person of the Year" interview last December about
the former chess star’s arrest. "Why do you think Mr Kasparov was
speaking English rather than Russian when he was detained?" said Mr
Putin, looking irritated at the question. "Did this not occur to you?
First and foremost his deeds were not aimed at his own people but
rather at a Western audience. A person who works for an international
audience can never be a leader in his own country."
Perhaps Putin had a point. At times before the election, it seemed as
though Kasparov might be suffering from "Saakashvili Syndrome" –
assiduously courting the foreign press, like the Georgian President,
while neglecting his domestic audience. But in the case of Kasparov,
there’s a fairly good reason for this. Entrenched on the "stop-lists"
that name those people deemed unsuitable for airtime on
state-controlled television, he is invisible to most Russians. When
he is mentioned, it is usually in a defamatory context, with the
implication that he has an American passport, and is working for
foreign enemies of Russia.
"I know two languages, and if I speak to English-speaking journalists
I speak English," says Kasparov when I put Putin’s criticism to
him. "The problem is that there was no Russian TV camera when I was
arrested. I would be very happy to present my views on Russian
television. I can speak much better Russian than Putin. If he wants to
check, we can do it on television in public, and find out who speaks,
or writes, better Russian."
He makes his money now on the international lecture circuit, where he
brings chess strategy to bear on personal and business problems. Next
month he is speaking at the Leaders in London conference, along with
the likes of Rudy Giuliani, the former presidential hopeful, and the
business guru Jack Welch.
Does chess – a cerebral, individualistic pursuit if ever there was one
– really help solve real problems? Yes, says Kasparov: "I talk about
strategy, tactics, achieving your potential, decoding the complexity
of life, so it’s mainly about the big picture. I feel I have enough
experience to pull these things together."
Kasparov rules out a return to professional chess, saying that "the
river only flows in one direction". These days, his chess playing is
restricted to quickfire games online. Does he play anonymously, I ask?
"Maybe they know who I am," he says with a faint grin.
It seems unlikely that his successes in chess will be matched on the
political playing field, but ultimately, he says, that doesn’t
matter. "This is a battle I don’t care whether I win or not. For me it
was a moral imperative. You play, your chances are slim, but it’s
something you do because you believe you must do it."

A dissenter’s moves

1963 Born Garry Weinstein, in Baku, Azerbaijan. At the age of 12, he
adopted his mother’s maiden name, Kasparyan, which was modified to the
Russian Kasparov.

1976 Won the Soviet junior championship in Tbilisi.

1978 Became a chess master after winning the Sokolosky tournament in
Minsk. He went on to become the youngest competitor in the Soviet
chess championship.

1980 Won the world junior chess championship before making his debut
for the Soviet Union at the Chess Olympiad in Malta.

1984 Won the right to play world No 1 Anatoly Karpov for the world
championship. After going down five games to nil, Kasparov fought back
to take the match through to 48 games. The match was ended without
result. Joined Communist Party.

1985 Became youngest world champion in history by defeating Karpov
13-11 in Moscow. Several rematches followed. The fifth and final one
took place in New York and Lyons in 1990.

1986 Created Grandmasters’ Association to give players greater say in
the world chess organisation, FIDE.

1987 Elected to the Central Committee of Komsomol.

1990 Left Communist Party to help form the Democratic Party of Russia.

1993 Played and beat Nigel Short outside FIDE jurisdiction under the
organisation of the Professional Chess Association. This meant that
there were two world champions: Kasparov in the PCA and Karpov in
FIDE.

1996 Campaigned for Boris Yeltsin.

1997 Defeated by Deep Blue – the first time a computer had beaten a
world champion in match play.

2000 Lost world championship to his former student Vladimir Kramnik.

2003 Published the first volume of his five-volume ‘My Great
Predecessors’.

2005 Retired from serious competitive chess. Created the United Civil
Front with the aim of preserving electoral democracy in Russia.

2007 Arrested for organising the March of the Dissenters. Later said
that he would run for the Russian presidency, but had to withdraw
after he claimed his party, the Other Russia coalition, was being
suppressed by the Russian government.