The Moscow Times
Monday, March 14, 2005. Issue 3123. Page 1.
Kasparov Quits Chess in Biggest Gambit Yet
By Carl Schreck
Staff Writer
AP
Garry Kasparov, the world’s top chess player for two decades and considered
by many the greatest player in history, has announced his retirement from
professional chess in an ambitious gambit and vowed to devote his energy to
battling what he called the “dictatorship” of President Vladimir Putin.
Kasparov, 41, a former world champion who has been No. 1 in the rankings
since 1984, made his announcement Thursday in Spain after winning the annual
Linares chess tournament, one of the game’s most prestigious events, on a
tiebreak despite losing his final-round game to Bulgarian grandmaster
Veselin Topalov.
“Before this tournament I made a conscious decision that Linares 2005 will
be my last professional tournament, and today I played my last professional
game,” Kasparov said at a news conference.
Kasparov, one of Putin’s most vociferous liberal critics, released a
statement Friday on his web site, kasparov.ru, saying that Russia was
“moving in the wrong direction,” and that he would “do everything possible
to fight Putin’s dictatorship.”
“I did everything that I could in chess, even more,” he said in the
statement. “Now I intend to use my intellect and strategic thinking in
Russian politics.”
Kasparov has accused Putin of rolling back democracy in the country and
creating a police state. In a Wall Street Journal comment last month titled
“Caligula in Moscow,” Kasparov called Putin’s nomination of Anton Ivanov, a
senior official at Gazprom-Media from Putin’s hometown of St. Petersburg, as
the new chairman of the Supreme Arbitration Court, “a move akin to
Caligula’s naming a horse to the Senate.”
Kasparov is chairman of Committee 2008: Free Choice, a group formed by
prominent liberal opposition leaders, including former Union of Right Forces
leader Boris Nemtsov, independent State Duma Deputy Vladimir Ryzhkov and
Irina Khakamada, who ran against Putin in 2004.
Denis Bilunov, Kasparov’s assistant in Moscow, said by telephone Friday that
Kasparov and Ryzhkov were planning to travel together to at least 10 regions
in the coming months to give political speeches.
Ryzhkov declined to comment on Kasparov’s future plans when contacted by
e-mail Friday.
Nemtsov said by telephone that he hoped Kasparov would be “as successful in
politics as he was in chess.”
In his chess career, Kasparov never shied away from political battles, going
back even to before he became world champion by defeating the Soviet
establishment favorite, Anatoly Karpov, in Moscow in 1985.
In 1984, the rivals’ first world championship match, also in Moscow, broke
up in controversy after five months when Florencio Campomanes, president of
the international chess federation, FIDE, stopped the match after 48 games
when the score stood at 5-3 to Karpov, citing concerns for the players’
health.
Karpov had led the match 5-0, but after a long series of draws, Kasparov had
won two games in a row, prompting speculation that Karpov was on the verge
of physical and mental collapse.
At a news conference covered by Western television, Kasparov loudly
protested the decision, and while a new match was being organized, he
angered top Soviet officials by giving interviews to Western media
insinuating that FIDE, the Soviet Chess Federation and Karpov’s team were
conspiring against him.
In November 1985, Kasparov won the second match to become the 13th world
chess champion, and successfully defended his title against Karpov in 1986,
1987 and 1990.
In a 1987 autobiography, “Child of Change,” Kasparov, a vocal proponent of
perestroika, wrote that he was saved by the intervention of Mikhail
Gorbachev’s pro-reform ideology chief Alexander Yakovlev. “The (chess)
authorities were told in no uncertain terms that our dispute had to be
settled at the chess board. There could be no more dirty tricks,” Kasparov
wrote. “[Yakovlev] prevented them from attacking me in the Soviet press,
trying to ruin my image in the country. It was their last chance, and he
stopped them.”
Kasparov, who later dubbed Gorbachev the “Louis XVI of communism,” was
aligned with several short-lived liberal movements in the early 1990s,
including the Democratic Party of Russia. Infighting in the party prompted
Kasparov to help form a breakaway faction, the Liberal-Conservative Union,
shortly after the DPR’s creation. Kasparov eventually threw his support
behind Boris Yeltsin, but later switched allegiances, backing Alexander
Lebed’s bid for the presidency after Lebed predicted that an ailing Yeltsin
would not finish his second term of office.
Political analyst Vladimir Pribylovsky, head of the Panorama think tank,
said he thought Kasparov would not remain in politics for long, given his
previous forays into the political arena.
“With the exception of chess, he has never proven himself capable of
committing fully to any project,” Pribylovsky said. “He will do something
very well for one month, and then he’ll take a trip abroad and disappear
completely.”
Pribylovsky conceded, however, that Kasparov appeared to be serious about
his activities with Committee 2008, which he helped found during last year’s
presidential election campaign.
“It’s the longest he’s ever stuck with a political movement,” Pribylovsky
said.
Internet chess journalist Mig Greengard, a close friend and associate of
Kasparov’s, said the fact that he was giving up the game that made him
famous was the best indicator of his intentions.
“He could have continued being a political dilettante while remaining the
No. 1 player in the world,” Greengard, editor of chessninja.com, said by
telephone from New York on Sunday. “He could have continued using his chess
success to bring publicity to his political cause. If there were any
questions about how serious he is [about politics], his retirement should
answer them.”
Kasparov was as controversial as he was dominant in the world of chess.
In 1993, he broke away from FIDE, taking the title of world champion with
him. He subsequently staged and won a series of world championship matches,
while FIDE, now led by the mercurial president of Kalmykia, Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov, refused to recognize Kasparov’s claim and held its own
championships.
In 2000, Kasparov lost a championship match he arranged with Russian
grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik.
Two years later, the warring factions agreed on a reunification plan to
attract sponsors and interest back to the game, but talks repeatedly broke
down, and in January, Kasparov announced he was withdrawing from the process
altogether.
Alexander Roshal, editor of the Russian chess magazine 64, said he was not
surprised that Kasparov had retired.
“Once he saw that the reunification process was hopeless and that he would
not be able to win back his title, he realized there was nothing more for
him to accomplish in chess,” Roshal said.
Born Garrik Vainshtein in Baku, Azerbaijan, in 1963 to a Jewish father and
an Armenian mother, Kasparov began studying at the Soviet Union’s most
prestigious chess school, run by former world champion Mikhail Botvinnik, at
age 10. After the death of his father, Kim Vainshtein, Kasparov adopted his
mother’s surname. At 12, Kasparov became the youngest player to win the
Soviet junior championship, and became a grandmaster on his 17th birthday.
Kasparov, famed for his aggressive play built on fearsome calculation skills
and deep preparation, was renowned for intimidating and distracting
opponents with wild gesticulations and fierce facial expressions during
games.
Computers, however, proved more difficult to intimidate, and in 1997 he lost
a controversial match against IBM supercomputer Deep Blue. Kasparov later
accused the IBM programmers of interfering with the computer’s play.
Greengard said it was too early to tell whether Kasparov would eventually
make a return to top-level competitive chess, or stick to his promise to
play only in speed chess tournaments and exhibition matches.
“You can never say never, but he’s completely serious about it right now,”
Greengard said of Kasparov’s retirement. “After doing this for 30 years, it
must feel strange to give it up. But we’ll see how he feels a year or two
from now.”