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Garry Kasparov
Russian chess player and activist

My nature is that I have to excite myself with a big

challenge.
The game that defines dictators much better is poker
because it’s about bluffs. It doesn’t matter whether
you have a strong hand or weak hand. You can have a
weak hand, but if you’re comfortable bluffing, raising
stakes, and if you can read your opponent.

I have to say as somebody who was born and raised in

a Communist country, I cannot criticize any action that
led to the destruction of dictatorship.
[T]he failure of capitalism is still much better than the
success of socialism.

Garry Kimovich Kasparov (born 13 April

1963) is a chess grandmaster and one of
the strongest chess players in history.

Quotes
1990s …

The public must come to see that chess

is a violent sport. Chess is mental
torture.
As quoted in Martin Amis's review
of "Kasparov-Short" by Raymond
Keene, Independent on Sunday,
November 1995.

2000s …

In conclusion, if you want to unravel the

multitude of secrets of chess then don't
begrudge the time.
Learn Chess with Gary Kasparov
(2003)
 My nature is that I have to excite myself
with a big challenge.
Guardian interview, Stephen Moss
Monday March 14, 2005
Every country has its own mafia. In
Russia, the mafia has its own country.
How Life Imitates Chess (2007) …

Having spent a lifetime analyzing the

game of chess and comparing the
capacity of computers to the capacity of
the human brain, I've often wondered,
where does our success come from?
The answer is synthesis, the ability to
combine creativity and calculation, art
and science, into a whole that is much
greater than the sum of its parts. Chess
is a unique cognitive nexus, a place
where art and science come together in
the human mind, and are then refined
and improved by experience.
Opening Gambit, Why Chess?, p. 4
It's not enough to be talented. It's not
enough to work hard and to study late
into the night. You must also become
intimately aware of the methods you use
to reach your decisions.
Part I, Chapter 1, The Lesson, p. 14
With each success the ability to change
is reduced. My longtime friend and
coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly
compared it to being dipped in bronze.
Each victory added another coat.
Part I, Chapter 2, Strategy, p. 34
This obligation to move can be a burden
to a player without strategic vision.
Part I, Chapter 3, Strategy And
Tactics At Work, p. 36
You must also have a sense of when to
stop.
Part I, Chapter 4, Calculation, p. 51
For inspiration I look to those great
players who consistently found original
ways to shock their opponents. None
did this better than the eighth world
champion, Mikhail Tal. The "Magician of
Riga" rose to become champion in 1960
at age twenty-three and became famous
for his aggressive, volatile play.
Part I, Chapter 5, Talent, p. 60-61
Everyone, at any age, has talents that
aren't fully developed-even those who
reach the top of their profession.
Part I, Chapter 6, Preparation, p. 69
We think about time as something not to
waste, not as something to invest.
Part II, Chapter 7, MTQ: Material,
Time, Quality, p. 93
In chess, bigamy is acceptable but
monarchy is absolute.
Part II, Chapter 8, Exchanges And
Imbalances, p. 102
I like to say that the attacker always has
the advantage.
Part II, Chapter 10, The Attacker's
Advantage, p. 122
If you're already in a fight, you want the
first blow to be the last and you had
better be the one to throw it.
Part II, Chapter 10, The Attacker's
Advantage, p. 130
Question the status quo at all times,
especially when things are going well.
Part III, Chapter 11, Question
Success, p. 135
Solving new problems is what keeps us
moving forward as individuals and as a
society, so don't back down.
 Part III, Chapter 13, Man Vs.
Machine, p. 170
Caissa, the goddess of chess, had
punished me for my conservative play,
for betraying my nature.
Part III, Chapter 15, Crisis Point, p.
188
Millions like me in Russia want a free
press, the rule of law, social justice, and
free and fair elections. My new job is to
fight for those people and to fight for
these fundamental rights.
Part III, Endgame, p. 195
We have to always look ahead enough
moves to be well prepared, even for
victory!
 Part III, Epilogue, p. 204

2010s …

Allow dissent & free media for 6 months

in Russia and see what happens. Putin
would never risk it because he’s terrified
of his own people and the truth, like
every dictator.
As quoted in "Is Putin Popular?"
(2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National
Review
The leaders of the free world keep
lowering their standards and
authoritarians keep taking more territory.
Eventually people wake up and ask why
Putin murders in the UK or hacks in the
 US. Why wouldn’t he? You didn’t stop
him before.
As quoted in "Is Putin Popular?"
(2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National
Review
People ask about dictators, "Why?" But
dictators themselves ask, "Why not?"
As quoted in "Is Putin Popular?"
(2018), by Jay Nordlinger, National
Review
Winter is Coming (2015) …

Somehow people always forget that it's

much easier to install a dictator than to
remove one.
Foreword, p. XIV
Each victory pulls the victor down
slightly and makes it harder to put in
maximum effort to improve further.
Foreword, p. XX
The United States is a very different
thing. It's a continent-spanning nation
built from scratch by millions of
immigrants from every part of the world
on top of its native population.
p. 42
Anatoly Karpov and I donated the prize
fund from our 1986 world championship
match to the Chernobyl victim relief
fund.
p. 17
Communism is like an autoimmune
disorder; it doesn't do the killing itself,
but it weakens the system so much that
the victim is left helpless and unable to
fight off anything else.
p. 33
We must decide what we value and
decide what is worth fighting for and
then–the most important part–we must
fight for it.
p. 62
Reforms are only institutional if they
have a real effect on how people live.
p. 100
 It's not common, in our age, for
someone to retire while still at the top,
but I'm a man who needs a goal, and
who wants to make a difference.
p. 136
Great leaders are formed only by taking
on great challenges.
p. 190
The NSA is to the Stasi what a bad hotel
is to a maximum security prison.
p. 223
Interview with Bill Kristol (2016) …

Interview with Bill Kristol (February

2016), transcript
 [C]hess was treated by the Soviet
authorities as a very important and
useful ideological tool to demonstrate
the intellectual superiority of the Soviet
communist regime over the decadent
West.
"Socialism with a human face"? ...
Frankenstein also had a human face.
Interview with Bill Kristol (2016) …

Interview with Bill Kristol (April 2016),

transcript
I was almost annoyed hearing that Putin
plays chess and Obama or other leaders
of the free world they play checkers. I
thought I had to defend the integrity of
my game because chess is not a game
for dictators for numerous reasons. One,
it’s transparent. It’s all information
hundred percent available so you know
exactly what you have, you know exactly
what your opponent has. You don’t know
what he or she is thinking, but you
definitely know what kind of resources
your opponent can use to hurt you, to
damage your position.
[C]hess is not a game for dictators for
numerous reasons. One, it's transparent.
It’s all information hundred percent
available so you know exactly what you
have, you know exactly what your
opponent has. You don’t know what he
or she is thinking, but you definitely know
what kind of resources your opponent
can use to hurt you, to damage your
position. Also, chess is very much a
strategic game so you have to think
long-term. Dictators don’t think long-
term. Dictators, especially who are in
power for so long as Putin is, they have
to work on the survival mode. Because
it’s all about today, maybe tomorrow
morning. Everything that helps us survive
is good. Because the moment the
dictator thinks long-term, he’ll definitely
miss guys from his own entourage
hitting him in his own back. The game
that defines dictators much better is
poker because it’s about bluffs. It
doesn’t matter whether you have a
strong hand or weak hand. You can have
a weak hand, but if you’re comfortable
bluffing, raising stakes, and if you can
read your opponent.
[I]t's very important to understand that
this is the dictators always operate
short-term, and democracies must
operate long-term because it’s not about
one individual who’s currently running
the country, whether it’s president or
prime minister. It’s about the success of
the country. It’s about the success of the
system. It’s about pressing, you know, all
advantages and their strategic, lasting
institutions that could make the
difference even when the president or
prime minister is no longer in the office.
Putin hasn’t come out of the blue, you
know? It’s not just Putin. That’s why
again in my book Winter is Coming, I
emphasize why Vladimir Putin and
enemies of the free world must be
stopped. Because Putin, you may call
him bosses of bosses, Capo dei Capi,
he’s like a spider in the center of this
web. Because Putin helps other bad
guys, other thugs, dictators, and
terrorists to sort of feel free to attack
the free world. Because they all know
that unless they attack the free world,
unless they attack the United States as
the leader of the free world, they will
have no credibility with their own people
because neither Putin nor Iranian
mullahs, nor Al Qaeda, Islamic State or
other dictators around the globe, they
have nothing to offer but confrontation.
They have to present themselves of the
protectors of their own people against
the world evil. And of course, they have
to attack the free world that produces
everything that, by the way, they use
quite effectively against us. They cannot
compete in innovations, they cannot
compete in ideas, in productivity. But
they can compete in something quite
different because for us, each human
life is unique. *For them, killing a
thousand people, hundreds of
thousands of people, a million is a
demonstration of strengths. So we
should realize that they have no allergy
for blood. And they will keep pressing
their advantage, and it’s not that we
have grown – that our enemies have
grown stronger. It’s our resolve that has
grown weaker.
So what’s happened since ’92, it’s where
the administrations that changed quite
dramatically, the foreign policy, and it
was working more like pendulum,
swinging from one side to the other.
Clinton did very little, W did too much,
Obama has been doing nothing. It sent a
message – sent numerous messages
across the world. While people knew in
the 50s and 60s and 70s and 80s that
America was there, America was
consistent. Even if you have a change in
the Oval Office, one party replaces
another, you could rely on the United
States. America was behind American
allies. Today? It’s probably, it’s a
springtime to be an American enemy
because this administration gives up
everything to the enemies and betrays
allies. And going back to George W.
administration, it’s very popular to
criticize Bush today, Bush 43. Especially
for the Iraq invasion, and I’ve heard
many voices, even within the Republican
Party, it’s just floating with the popular
trend. First of all, I have to say as
somebody who was born and raised in a
Communist country, I cannot criticize
any action that led to the destruction of
dictatorship. I think his people had
wrong expectations. When they saw the
collapse of Saddam’s dictatorship after
American invasion of Iraq and then the
collapse of a few other dictatorships
during the Arab Spring, they had
expectations that next day, it would be a
democracy. It’s wrong. It was very naive
because dictators succeeds the staying
in power for so many years, not because
he’s a nice guy, just helps his people to
get out of poverty, but because he’s
brutal, he’s cruel. He succeeds in
destroying opposition, first political
opposition and then freedom of press
and remaining horizontal ties in the
society. All the NGOs, anything that
could represent not just a threat to him,
but it’s any sort of the slightest dissent.
It’s kind of a political desert. What do
you expect in a desert after 10, 20, 30 –
in the case of Gaddafi, 42 years of
dictatorship?
Bush Administration was a success.
[E]ven if we disagree about the Iraq
invasion in 2003 and the consequent
moves made by Bush 43 Administration,
the decision of Obama Administration to
retreat, especially announcing it, this is
the worst you can do. At noon, at that
day, that month, we are out. By sending
the signal to the radical Islamists, to the
forces that were about just to recover
and prepare again for attacks against
the free world, that was a recipe for
disaster. It created a vacuum. It’s not a
surprise that we live in a world today
that is a much more dangerous place
than in 2008. It helped Vladimir Putin to
regain his confidence and because after
his attack against the Republic of
Georgia in 2008 in August, he was
basically rewarded by Obama/Clinton
“reset” policy instead of paying a price
for taking territory of neighboring
country.
Since ’91, it was more of poker because
again, it’s America, even today is much
more powerful than all the enemies
combined. It’s probably the first time
after the collapse of the Soviet Union
that the forces of freedom, the free
world, had overwhelming military and
economic advantage. And also
politically, it dominated the field
because even the worst dictatorships
now they’re trying to pretend that they
have elections. Not pressing it’s
advantages looks quite odd because it
again create this vacuum, and also I
think it affects ordinary people in these
countries. Whether it’s Iran, Arab
countries, Russia, because they used to
look at America as a beacon of freedom
and the country that stood firm
defending the free world. And now it’s
quite odd because America is there, but
America is not there. The whole stories
about current political climate here and
elections, they’re for the eroding
reputation of the United States, and I
think the damage caused by this
 administration to the prestige of the
country, and especially to the prestige of
the presidency, this damage could take
years to recover and rebuild.
It’s easy to lose your reputation, it’s easy
to lose your friends, to lose their
confidence, than to regain it.
My response to Bernie Sanders' you
know uh stories you know fairytales is
that uh the failure of capitalism is still
much better than the success of
socialism.
The Truth About Putin (2018) …

Full text of "The Truth About Putin"

(March 2018), The Weekly Standard
When I retired from professional chess
in 2005 to join the Russian pro-
democracy movement against Putin, I
was frequently asked how my chess
experience might help me in politics. My
answer was that it wouldn’t help much
at all, because in chess we had fixed
rules and uncertain results, while in
Russian politics it was exactly the
opposite.
Putin should simply be called a dictator.
Let’s move on to the next major lie in my
opening statement, the idea of Putin’s
popularity in Russia. I could not begin to
count the number of times I’ve been
forced to address this myth, the
persistence of which I again attribute to
our lack of language to describe modern
dictatorships. Terms like “polls” and
“popularity” as applied to politicians in
the free world have very different
meanings in authoritarian regimes. I’m
fond of asking in response to questions
about Putin’s “popularity” if a restaurant
is popular if it’s the only one in town and
every other restaurant was burned to the
ground.
This is not to say that a dictator or his
policies cannot have popular support.
The problem is defining what support
means after 18 years of a personality
cult and 24/7 propaganda that portrays
Putin as a demigod protecting Russia
from deadly enemies without and within.
A year of fake news trolling and half-
baked social media memes had half of
America and its vaunted media running
in circles in 2016. Imagine what it does
to a population when that’s all there is,
every hour, every day, for nearly two
decades.
The same definition issue arises with the
word “election.” In a free society, the day
of the vote is the culmination of a long
democratic process that depends on
equal access to an unfettered media,
fair conditions, debates, etc., none of
which have existed in Russia for nearly
20 years. Postulating that Putin would
win anyway even if the March 18 election
were honest is a meaningless exercise.
If he and his policies were truly popular,
in the real sense of the word, he wouldn’t
need to spend so much time and effort
dominating the media, eliminating rivals,
and rigging elections large and small.
Persecuting bloggers and arresting a
single protester standing in the town
square with an anti-Putin sign does not
strike me as the behavior of a ruler who
believes in his own popularity.
As for polling, when an anonymous
caller reaches a Russian at home to ask
his opinion of the man who controls
every aspect of the Russian police state,
it would take great courage to report
anything less than enthusiastic support.
It is a testament to the bravery of many
of my countrymen that Putin does not
yet receive the 99 percent approval
scores that Saddam Hussein and
Muammar Qaddafi enjoyed up until the
minute they no longer had the power of
life and death over their own citizens.
It’s still unfathomable that Russia went
from joyously celebrating the end of
totalitarianism to electing a KGB
lieutenant-colonel in just nine years.
Never take your liberty for granted, and
be careful whom you vote for because it
may be the last election you’ll ever have.
In chess, we say that the player with the
initiative is obliged to attack, otherwise
the initiative will be lost and the
counterattack will likely be decisive.
The implicit, or even explicit, offer made
by authoritarians is stability in exchange
for liberty. High oil prices allowed Putin
to keep this bargain for a while, aided by
an international community that lost
interest in promoting liberty as soon as
the Berlin Wall fell. Putin was welcomed
by the G7 as an equal while destroying
democracy and civil society at home.
Imagine how difficult it was for us in
Russia to attack Putin’s regime as
undemocratic while he was being
embraced by the leaders of the free
world. Even Putin’s invasion of
neighboring Georgia in August 2008
resulted in no censure or sanction. He
was rewarded by Obama and Hillary
Clinton’s reset a few months later,
confirming to him that a move into
Ukraine would also go unchallenged.
The old joke about the two main Soviet
papers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestia
(“News”), was “There’s no news in the
Truth and no truth in the News!”
There are an infinite number of ways to
lie and only one truth. Propaganda today
is not a wall, not a dike holding back
information from reaching the people. It
is a flood, overwhelming our critical
thinking. The concept is not to promote
a particular narrative or agenda but to
create doubt and to make people believe
that the truth is unknowable. There are
no Russian forces in Ukraine. Russia
didn’t meddle in the U.S. election. The
popular Vladimir Putin was reelected on
March 18, 2018.
Putin is willing to poison bodies in the
free world, not only minds. Why would
he do this? Why would he call attention
to his murderous ways now? Well, I’ll
turn that around and ask instead, why
wouldn’t he? Dictators don’t ask “Why,”
they ask “Why not?”
Like any bully, Putin only picks fights that
he is sure he can win. History tells us
that sooner or later, he will become so
overconfident, so accustomed to his
opponents folding their cards against
his weak hand, that he will overstep,
potentially resulting in a catastrophe on
a global scale.
Russia’s election spectacle on March 18
isn’t only a domestic distraction. It
provides Putin’s defenders in the free
world with rhetorical ammunition, as do
the approval polls and fake
controversies over the fake opposition
 candidates. There is no form of
democratic process or opposition in
Putin’s Russia. Pretending otherwise
makes you complicit in his propaganda.
Stop calling them elections. Stop calling
Putin a president. Stop calling to
congratulate him on his victories. Let us
begin the fight against Putin’s lies with
the fundamental truth about what he
really is.

External links
Encyclopedic article on Garry Kasparov
at Wikipedia
Media related to Garry Kasparov at
Wikimedia Commons
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Last edited 3 months ago by Veli-Turo

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