Battling with the Kremlin

May 26, 2010
Grandmaster Flash
By Roland Oliphant
Russia Profile

Is the Battle for the FIDE Presidency About Chess, Politics, or Big, Big Egos?

Anatoly Karpov, chess grandmaster, former world champion and diligently a-political public figure, has found himself on a collision course with the Kremlin over the future of world chess. By standing for the Russian nomination for World Chess Federation (FIDE) president he has challenged the incumbent, President of the Republic of Kalmykia Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, and clashed with his ally, the high-ranking Kremlin aide Arkady Dvorkovich.

For newsroom editors across the world, the idea of Karpov “battling with the Kremlin” for the future of world chess was too good a headline to miss. But this struggle seems to be less about politics than about personal prestige, allegiances and somewhat opaque business relationships.

The scandal – by now well documented in the Russian and Western press – erupted on May 14, when the Russian Chess Federation (RCF) met in Moscow to elect its candidate for president of FIDE – the sport’s governing body.

A meeting of the RCF’s governing council at its usual venue elected Karpov. But Dvorkovich, who is chairman of the RFC’s advisory board, had already announced in April that Ilyumzhinov would be the Russian candidate. He immediately claimed that the meeting lacked a quorum and Karpov’s nomination was therefore “illegitimate.” Days later, personnel from a private security firm carrying a document signed by Dvorkovich evicted Chairman of the RCF Alexander Bach from his office and closed the group’s headquarters in Moscow.

Bitter disputes in professional bodies over electoral protocol and the interests of rival factions are not that uncommon in Russia – a similar civil war in the Russian Cinematographers’ Union finally led to a schism this April. But the employment of tactics more commonly associated with corporate raiding has raised the very good question of what on earth is at stake. Has the Kremlin decided to fire Ilyumzhinov as president of Kalmykia and offer him the FIDE crown as a consolation prize? Are there murky business connections at stake? Or is it, as so often in chess, simply about the egos of the main players?

And what players they are. Karpov is a grandmaster and former world champion from the halcyon days of the 1970s and 1980s, when, as he likes to remind voters, his battles with Garry Kasparov made headline news across the world. Ilyumzhinov, by contrast, is an eccentric self-made millionaire and republican president who was once touted as a potential future president of Russia.

And it is the personalities that make the contest so intriguing. Skeptics of the political conspiracy argue that Karpov is an instinctively conciliatory character. Unlike, say, Garry Kasparov, whose fiery temper is well-known in and outside the chess world, Karpov “is all about compromise,” said Mark Glukhovsky, chief editor of the Russian chess journal 64. And if he’s not the kind of man to go looking for a fight in any case, he almost certainly would not pick one with the Kremlin.

In marked contrast to Kasparov, who has effectively become a pariah in Russia since joining the radical democratic opposition, Karpov has conscientiously avoided politics almost entirely – and he seems keen to continue to. “Nothing interests me except chess,” he told Radio Liberty in an interview this week. “And Garry Kasparov, with whom we’re working, understands that.”

Here is the full article.