Dating back to the time of
Ivan the Terrible, Russian politics has always been a quagmire. Or minefield. More recently, a quagmire lined with nuclear-tipped mines, ringed with barbed wire and surrounded by hostile forces both external and internal.
After all, there are not many countries in which a
significant political figure can end up poisoned, shot, beaten with a truncheon AND then drowned all in the same day.
So the emergence of 43-year old chess grandmaster
Garry Kasparov as an opposition leader to Russian Federation President Vladimir Putin presents a supreme threat to the dominance of the
siloviki (political power elite) who control the country's financial might through the vast natural (read energy) resources and, more succinctly, to Kasparov's own health.
I can calculate the possibilities as a chess player and I have to be honest and say that our chances are not high. But I take this as a moral duty, and when you do something out of moral duty, then who cares?
Kasparov told The Times of London.
“So I am here, I am fighting and I try to defend our rights. I don’t feel that I have the right to be scared.”
Putin, at this point, controls all of the pawns. He consolidated the country's energy resources and his own power with an iron fist, with military dominance of eastern Europe having been replaced by control of the energy flow. Recently Russia's national energy power Gazprom unceremoniously bounced
Royal Dutch Shell out of the enormous Sakhalin Island natural gas program at a huge financial loss. That might not seem significant on the surface (every world power has at least marched through Holland in the last 100 years), but Shell also happens to be the second-largest company in the world (measured in revenues) to Exxon/Mobil.
Scorecard: Putin 1, European Oil Multinationals 0.
Putin himself is well versed in the Russian political landscape, his grandfather is said to have served meals to both Rasputin and Lenin as a renowned chef while his father served in the
NKVD during the reign of Stalin. Putin entered the KGB in 1976 and resigned in 1991. Putin learned enough from his escapades (including a lengthy posting in Germany) to institute his own brand of "sovereign democracy", in which the policy of the President should be supported by the popular majority in Russia itself and not be governed from outside of the country; an obvious shake of the head to substantial financial expatriate interests. Perhaps most substantially, Putin has inspired a sort of nationalistic fervor which has led to an estimated 81% approval rating.
Kasparov is following what might be described as a risky strategy, as de facto face of an opposition group called
The Other Russia. Following a tried and true formula
"In a chess game, when your king is under attack, you have to defend," Kasparov told the Christian Science Monitor. "Beneath this illusion of stability there is boiling protest and growing economic disparity. The only way out is to have real, competitive, and free elections."
The current aim of
the Other Russia seems to be hinged on getting other world leaders to denounce Putin and possibly exclude Putin's regime from attending economic summits. However, Kasparov was prevented from attending a planned protest at the European Union-Russia summit in Samara May 18. Less than a week later, Kasparov received a standing ovation at the European Parliament (EP) for comments he made about the regime.
"I have always said that Putin is a Russian problem and that we do not need outside assistance. But that does not mean we are happy to see Europe’s leaders, supposedly the defenders of democracy, giving aid and support to the authoritarian Putin government. We do not so much ask for your action as for your honesty. Stop providing Putin with democratic credentials he has in no way earned. Stop receiving him and his allies as democratic equals. Stand up to authoritarianism instead of quietly endorsing it," Kasparov said.
"Nobody denies the necessity of doing business with Russia. The EU also does business with China, for example. But you do not provide the Chinese leadership with the trappings of democratic comradeship as you do with Putin. Every summit, every collegial meeting, is played on state-controlled Russian television as a way of discrediting the pro-democracy opposition of which I am a member. They say, “see, Putin is welcomed and treated as an equal by Europe’s leaders. He is a democrat too.”"
The gambit by Kasparov to push towards representative democracy is daring and no less of a master stroke than any of his famous catalog of chess maneuvers. And the vast army of pawns is undoubtedly controlled by Putin. But even U.S. Senator (and Presidential candidate) John McCain has acknowledged the root of Kasparov's message.
"Russia is probably the greatest disappointment in recent years. It has turned into a KGB oligarchy. [President Vladimir] Putin wants to restore the days of the old Russian empire, and he continues to repress democracy, human rights, and freedom of the press. Mysterious assassinations are even taking place," McCain said. "If oil were still $10 a barrel, Mr. Putin would not pose any kind of a threat. I do not believe you will see a reigniting of the Cold War. But I do believe that Putin and his cadre of KGB friends are causing us great difficulties in a variety of ways, including a failure to assist us in trying to rein in Iranian nuclear ambitions."
But by the same token, Kasparov must realize that the "king" he is attempting to topple wields nuclear power.
And in this match of grandmasters, the stakes indeed may end up as life or death.
