Chess champion Kasparov running for Russian presidency…by getting arrested

In March 2005 I published the first in a series of articles decrying Vladimir Putin’s brazen agenda to amass dictatorial powers as president of Russia. I described his agenda as the Putinization of Russia, and noted that Putin was so shrewd in executing it that Joseph Stalin would be red with envy.

But, back then, Putin was professing his democratic intentions so convincingly that no less a person than democracy’s Cowboy avenger, U.S. President George W. Bush, was moved to testify that when he looked into Putin’s eyes he saw the “soul of a Jeffersonian democrat”.

Notwithstanding Bush’s affection, however, here’s what I wrote in that March 2005 article about Putin’s most notable critic:

As a form of mild consolation, it might be helpful to note that many prominent figures in Russia are decidedly against this Putinization of Russia: Most notable amongst them is… the World champion Chess player, Garry Kasparov, who expressed his concerns as follows:

‘The Soviet Union could not and cannot be a part of modern Europe. It could become a part of Europe only with its conquests. We must distinguish between modern Russia that we need and the Soviet past that Putin is trying to retrieve.’

Indeed, Kasparov has become so disillusioned with Putin’s creeping dictatorship that he shocked the chess world last week with the abrupt announcement of his retirement to pursue his real interest in life now which is ‘toppling Russian President Vladimir Putin’.

But over the following year and a half I saw little evidence of Kasparov’s effort to topple Putin. I was more concerned, however, that I saw even less of Kasparov himself. This, in turn, compelled me to append the following query to a November 2006 article on Putin’s alleged role in the notorious poisoning of a rogue Russian spy in London:

By the way, has anybody seen Putin’s most celebrated critic, former Chess champion Garry Kasparov, lately…?

Therefore, I was somewhat heartened yesterday when I read reports out of Russia that Kasparov had resurged on Saturday to lead a “Dissenters March” in Pushkin Square – knowing full well that he would be arrested, and probably beaten, by Putin’s state police.

Alas, it’s a clear indication of what little regard Putin has for Kasparov and other Russian critics that – after harassing the marchers with summary arrests – the police released the vast majority of them, including Kasparov, within hours.

Yet, regardless of his ostensible indifference to Kasparov’s challenge, Putin is surely mindful that – as long as latter-day Thomas Paines like Kasparov are allowed to protest across Russia for true democratic freedoms – severe, perhaps even deadly, consequences loom for his iron-fisted rule. Indeed, he must have found it particularly galling when the harassed but un-intimidated Kasparov said the following on the steps of the courthouse after his brief detention:

It is no longer a country … where the government tries to pretend it is playing by the letter and spirit of the law….We now stand somewhere between Belarus and Zimbabwe – two dictatorships that have cracked down on opposition.

For now though, Putin remains so popular amongst Russia’s (new) oligarchs and proletarians alike that Kasparov’s calls for a democratic revolution make him more analogous to John the Baptist preaching in wilderness than Thomas Paine rallying revolutionaries to fight against tyranny. In fact, how’s this for a little perspective from the Associated Press:

Kasparov and his allies mustered, by their own reckoning, about 2,000 people – far fewer than the 30,000 people who patronize the McDonald’s restaurant at Pushkin Square on an average day.

But, just as it gives me hope for his opposition leadership, perhaps Kasparov can derive inspiration from this quote from noted inventor of the artificial heart, Dr Robert Jarvik:

Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them.

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