PUTIN'S NO KARPOV:

Chess Champion Moves to Check Putin's Power: Garry Kasparov enters the game of politics in Russia, planning to use a player's strategy to attack the president and promote democracy. (Kim Murphy, May 22, 2005, LA Times)

Announcing his retirement from chess recently, the 42-year-old master declared that his new vocation was politics, and vowed to take on Russia's increasingly autocratic power structure.

He wants Putin to step down in 2008, as the constitution mandates, and a democratically elected leader to take his place. [...]

Kasparov has been quietly raising his political profile since the 2004 presidential election, when he co-founded a nonpartisan pro-democracy group.

Then, after continuing battles with the international chess federation over administration of the title, he announced in March that he was abandoning the game professionally to pursue politics and write full time.

"I felt that I could use my resources, to apply my philosophy, my strategic vision in my native country, because it's such a crucial, decisive moment in history, and I felt my presence could make some difference," explained Kasparov, who said he had been banned from state-owned TV because he posed a threat to the government.

"I don't have any negative record in the eyes of the Russian people. I don't have any ties to oligarchs, or to [former President Boris N.] Yeltsin's Russia. I'm a person who's been defending Soviet national colors, Russian national colors," he said. "People listening to Garry Kasparov, who is independent … may cause a collision [for] Russians who have had no chance to hear opposite opinions."

Kasparov said he brought another important quality to the table: a chess player's judgment.

He is finishing work on a book, scheduled for publication in 2006, titled "How Life Imitates Chess." In it, he asserts that the sharp reasoning and intuition that guide a superior chess player's moves are the same elements that determine all effective decision-making.

"I have a strange idea that the decisions made by the housewife and the president of the United States consist of similar ingredients," he said. "And at the end of the day, a lot of it is intuition.

"Most of us I don't think trust intuition. We live in an era of modern technologies. We have to touch it. Where in fact intuition is a very important element that helps us to make more sophisticated decisions."

In Kasparov's case, intuition tells him that Russians are losing patience.

Well, he was instrumental in bringing down the USSR.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 22, 2005 12:00 AM