Kasparov's Politics
A few days ago, the Chicago Tribune ran a piece about chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov's political ambitions. Link. Excerpt:
Announcing his retirement from professional chess in March, Kasparov threw himself headlong into Russian politics, undaunted by its tripwires or its steely overseer, President Vladimir Putin.
In fact, Kasparov has made clear he sees Putin as his new archrival. Kasparov is virtually alone in Russian politics in calling for the dismantling of Putin's regime, and in the use of large-scale street rallies to try to get the job done.
The article doesn't address his political views.
Which are kinda bizarre and disconcerting.
They're a form of "Eurasianism," a strain of thinking among some Russians that hope to establish an Asian empire to prevail over "Atlanticism" (mostly, the U.S. and U.K.). That, according to James Billington's recent book, Russia in Search of Itself. Excerpts from Chapter 4, "The Authoritarian Alternative: Eurasianism":
The essential prerequisite is that Russia think of itself as neither "a regional power" nor "a nation state," but as "a new Eurasian empire." . . .
The key to success will be a "Russo-Islamic pact." . . .
Russia will become a "Eurasian Union," the lynchpin in a "continental bloc" that will prevail over the Atlanticists. Intensive scientific development in this Union will lead Eurasia both forward to economic modernization and back to traditional village values.
[A group of odd scientists and mathematicians have given this movement an intellectual background.] Using dating techniques and probability theory, they conclude that the Russian and Mongol empires were, in fact, one and the same entity during the 250 years wrongly referred to as the period of the "Mongol yoke." Accordingly, "Russia and Turkey are parts of a previously singly empire." . . . They contend that Troy was located in Italy, that the encyclopedia Almagest attributed to Ptolemy was written by others a millennium after his death, and that the entire saga of Russians struggling with the Mongols/Tatars is a retrospective fabrication of the Romanov dynasty. They argue that almost nothing in the traditional view of Russian history prior to the fourteenth century can be factually verified. . .
Kasparav accused the Germanophile Romanov dynasty of destroying the records of Russia's harmonious links with its Eastern neighbors and inventing insulting names for all their enemies.
