What’s Kasparov Up To These Days?

     There is no doubt in my mind that Garry Kasparov was one of the most exciting players in recent history and I was happy when he finally ousted the solid but boring, Karpov. 
      After Kasparov retired from chess in 2005 I never paid much attention to his activities. I knew that he had become a political activist in the Soviet Union, but not much more than that. 
     I was aware that shortly after retiring he was hit over the head with a chessboard in a politically motivated attack. Kasparov wasn’t injured when, after signing the board for a young man at an event in Moscow, he was hit with it and the assailant told him, "I admired you as a chess player, but you gave that up for politics." 
     And who could forget that in 2012 he was beaten and arrested outside the Moscow court house where the Pussy Riot trial was taking place, but beyond that I never followed his activities. 
     Kasparov has a long history of dabbling in politics dating back to the 1980s. Kasparov's grandfather was a staunch communist but Kasparov began to have doubts about the Soviet Union's political system at age 13 when he traveled abroad for the first time to Paris for a tournament. In 1981, at age 18 he read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago, a copy of which he bought while abroad.
     Kasparov joined the Communist Party in 1984 and in 1987 was elected to the Central Committee of Komsomol. However, in 1990, he left the party and his family fled from Baku to Moscow on a chartered plane when pogroms against Armenians in Baku took place forcing thousands of ethnic Armenians to flee Azerbaijan. It was then that he became active in Soviet politics. 
     In the chess world, after he won the World Championship in 1985 Kasparov began opposing FIDE and in 1986 he created the Grandmasters Association (GMA), an organization to represent professional players and give them more say in FIDE's activities. 
     In 1993, under the auspices of another organization created by Kasparov called the Professional Chess Association (PCA), he played Nigel Short for the world championship outside FIDE's jurisdiction. As a result both were both kicked out of FIDE. 
     The 1995 match against Anand at the World Trade Center in New York City (Kasparov won the match +4 -1 =13) was the last World Championship to be held under the auspices of the PCA. The organization collapsed when one of its major backers withdrew its sponsorship. 
     Kasparov tried to organize another World Championship match, under another organization, the World Chess Association (WCA) with Linares organizer Luis Rentero. But, when Rentero admitted that the promised funds required for the match had never materialized, the WCA collapsed. This left Kasparov stranded until Brain Games headed by Raymond Keene stepped up. 
     Brain Games organized the World Championship match in 2000 between Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik. But then Brain Games later collapsed under controversial circumstances. 
     In an interview in 2007, Kasparov called the break with FIDE the worst mistake of his career because in the long run it hurt the game.
     In 2013, Kasparov announced his candidacy for FIDE president and in 2014, he lost the presidential election to incumbent Kirsan Ilyumzhinov by a vote of 110–61. Later, in 2015, the FIDE Ethics Commission found Kasparov and his partner guilty of violating its Code of Ethics and suspended them for two years from all FIDE functions and meetings. 
     Back to politics...in September 2013, Kasparov said in Time magazine that he considered the chess metaphors being thrown around during the world's response to the civil war in Syria to be trite and rejected what he called all the nonsense about Putin playing chess and while Obama was playing checkers.
     Kasparov claimed Putin did not have to outplay or out think anyone because he won by forfeit when President Obama, Prime Minister Cameron and the rest of the so-called leaders of the free world walked away from the table. 
     Kasparov said Russia was a dictatorship under Putin and Obama’s going to Russia was dead wrong, morally and politically. Kasparov spoke out several times about Putin's anti-gay laws and the proposed the 2014 Sochi Olympics be boycotted. He stated Russia's bid would allow Putin's cronies to embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars and lend prestige to Putin's authoritarian regime.
     Kasparov complained that Putin’s encroachment on the freedom of speech of Russia's citizens was largely being ignored by the international community. He also spoke out against the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and stated that control of Crimea should be returned to Ukraine after the overthrow of Putin. 
     In October 2015, Kasparov published a book titled Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. In the book, Kasparov likens Putin to Hitler and explains the need for the west to oppose Putin rather than appeasing him and postponing an eventual confrontation. 
     In the 2016 United States presidential election, Kasparov began meddling in U.S. politics when he described Donald Trump as "a celebrity showman with racist leanings and authoritarian tendencies" and criticized Trump for calling for closer ties with Putin. He was fair though. He also criticized the economic policies of Democratic primary candidate Bernie Sanders. 
     In 2017, he condemned the violence unleashed by the Spanish police against the independence referendum in Catalonia and criticized the Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy and accused him of betraying the European promise of peace. After the Catalan regional election he called on the European Union to intervene in the conflict to find a negotiated solution. 

For more information of Karpov’s current political machinations visit: 
Kasparov’s 2018 interview in the New Yorker 
Kasparov’s Website