People We Should Know #29 – Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov - Chess World Champion....and Human Rights Champion
Garry Kasparov – Chess World Champion….and Human Rights Champion

The loneliest place in the world is likely at the chess board in a grandmaster world championship chess match.  Sitting across is the greatest computational foe imaginable, a fellow grandmaster, who is probing for any weakness in conception, multi-dimensional thinking,  preparation and study,  courage, and stamina.  One hesitation, one casual move, one momentary weakness, and the match is good as lost. The match may extend hours, or days, the competition-months.  The crushing pressure has been too great for some, and destroyed the health of others.  To play grandmaster chess requires an intellect and a will that is present in very, very few of humanity.  53 year old Garry Kasparov is one of the greatest ever grand champions, and the number of people who could claim a capacity to compete with him on at his level at chess, are able to be counted on one hand.  Garry Kasparov retired from competitive championship level chess in 2005, but he has since 2005 taken on his greatest opponent ever in the ever more dangerous game of chess that is Russian politics.  He has determined to take the white pieces championing democracy and free speech. His opponent, Vladimir Putin, the dictator of Russia, is most comfortable with the black pieces, and cares not one wit for the rules of civility.  He has worked to eliminate Kasparov’s fellow pieces one by one, working toward a final deadly check mate.

Garry Kasparov is in the match of his life and is courageously willing to play through to the match’s conclusion.  As one of the great defenders of civilization’s ramparts,  Garry Kasparov is Ramparts:   People We Should Know – #29. 

Garry Kasparov was born in 1963 in the Soviet Union’s Azerbaijan Republic to jewish and armenian parents.  His father died when he was seven, and consistent with prodigiously talented children of the soviet, the state provided further paternal guidance.  His tremendous talent for chess and its challenges became known very early, and in a country that valued superiority in chess as another example of the superior societal model, Kasparov received exceptional training.  By age 15, he was a chess master, by 17 a grandmaster, and at 22 years of age, the youngest world champion up to his time ever crowned. But training wasn’t Kasparov’s secret – it was his soaring intellect and indomitable will.  He played for the world champion ship in 1984 against one of the great Soviet chess machines, Anatoli Karpov, in a brutal match that saw an incredible number of draws that left Karpov ahead but exhausted, and the match was called mysteriously before a conclusion.  A rematch was set for 1985, and this time Kasparov broke Karpov’s defensive style and became at 22 years old the youngest champion ever.  For 15 years, Kasparov fought off every great world champion, including multiple challenges by Karpov, relinquishing the title finally in 2000.  His run was considered one of the most dominant in chess history, and his 2005 retirement from world competition allowed many fellow grand masters to breathe a sigh of relief.

Kasparov’s true awakening occurred however, in 1991 with the fall of the Soviet Union.  Flush with the vitality of new found freedom and one of his country’s most important ambassadors,  Kasparov found himself contributing to Russia’s nascent development of democratic institutions.  He was one of the founders of Democratic Party of Russia, which morphed into a centrist party of Russia’s Choice promoting  Boris Yeltsin against the communists attempting a resurgence.  He became intimate friends with Boris Yeltsin’s first protege Boris Nemtsov.  When the ailing Yeltsin was pressured away from naming the liberal democrat Nemtsov as his successor, and instead handed it to a little known KGB apparachnik named Vladimir Putin, Russia’s future became dark and progressively totalitarian.  Kasparov, seeing the predictable pattern of dictator in Putin, attempted to marshal political forces against him, working with Nemtsov and others to form the Other Russia as a democratic political alternative to Putin’s autocracy.  Kasparov attempted to run for President in opposition to Putin in 2007, but the Putin machine prevented any momentum, and Kasparov progressively saw his life straying onto thinner and thinner ice. He was sham arrested several times, and many of his friends were harassed and more ominously experienced violent deaths. Many were among the most prominent Putin opponents and defenders of human rights and free speech in Russia.  The dogged anti Putin investigational reporter, Anna Politkovskaya, was murdered in Moscow.  The Putin antagonist Alexander Litvinenko, a British citizen, was poisoned with nuclear material and painfully killed in London. Most brazenly, Nemtsov was murdered right in front of the Kremlin. The message could not have been more clear. Behind all the events, the common thread – opponents of Vladimir Putin.  Kasparov realized his best chance for survival and continuing the message of freedom for Russians would be outside the country, and he has taken residence in New York City since 2013.   His lectern is as head of the Human Rights Foundation, whom he succeeded the sainted Vaclav Havel as leader.  Despite the enormous personal risks, he has continued to speak out against Putin’s dictatorship and his thuggish mafia like record of assassinations, beatings, arrests, and one party rule. He recently was interviewed by Jay Nordlinger at the Oslo Freedom Forum.  Jay through his interview show on Ricochet , Q&A , has often highlighted the many courageous people who attend the Oslo Forum and are often the sole spokespersons for freedom in the dangerous totalitarian countries in which they reside.  Below please take in Jay’s interview with Garry Kasparov, who locked in mortal combat with his most dangerous opponent ever in Vladimir Putin, is one of freedom’s brightest lights, and justly Ramparts: People We Should Know  #29.

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