No Pawn of the System : World Chess Champ Kasparov Speaks Out Against Gorbachev, Communism

Perched in a chair like a coiled spring, Garry Kasparov spoke with the intensity of an evangelist, punching the air as the words tumbled out.

“Leave us alone.”

The message from the world chess champion, who has become a leading activist for democratic rights in the Soviet Union, was quite simple--aimed at the U.S. government and others who support Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, whom he heartily opposes.

Kasparov, 27, is in Los Angeles for capitalist reasons--namely, to make money through developing chess videotapes and software for the mass market, and to promote the idea of a 1993 championship match in Los Angeles.

But in this era of unprecedented openness in the Soviet Union, he took time out Monday at the offices of his Beverly Hills agent, Creative Artists Agency, to speak of his democratic hopes for his homeland.

Communism is dying in the Soviet Union and change is inevitable, he maintained. How this comes about “is our problem,” he said in fluent English.

“If you leave us alone, within a year, there will be no Gorbachev, there will be no communists. There will be something else. It will happen.”

Last week’s referendum, with more than 75% of the vote in favor of retaining the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was no mandate for Gorbachev, he said. Given the anti-Soviet Union votes that were cast, despite what Kasparov called “this terrible campaign of libel from the communists, we still got great results in many, many cities. Actually there was a mandate, to get rid of the communists.”

Kasparov, a slender man of average height, with dark hair and dark eyes, displayed the same intense, forceful manner toward events in the Soviet Union that he has been known to project in the game he has dominated as world champion since 1985.

At chess, he is known as a bold attacker, willing to take the offensive and adept at the psychological tactics of the game.

“The way I play chess shows my character,” he said.

Born in the Soviet republic of Azerbaijan, of Armenian and Jewish parentage, his efforts to be a champion inevitably led him to politics, he said, in a country where “chess is a sport used to promote the advantages of socialism all over the world. To be a chess player is to become a tool of communist propaganda.”

Kasparov believes his battles and defeat of the former Soviet world champion, Anatoly Karpov, foreshadowed the changes to come in the country as a whole. The Soviet regime was against him when he challenged Karpov, he explained, because the former champion “had become the symbol of the system. They tried to stop me because I challenged the symbol.”

The contrast between the old and the new was there from the start, Kasparov said.

“Chess is black and white,” he said. “Karpov, Kasparov, pro and anti. I didn’t have my anti-communist ideas at that time. That came later. All our matches were a step ahead of the changes in the country.”

Although he personally spoke out against Gorbachev, whom he called a “a criminal, by definition,” as head of the Communist Party, he did not become an overt activist until a year ago. He was propelled to action after what he called the Soviet-fostered “Armenian genocide” during rioting between Armenian and Azerbaijani factions in his home city of Baku.

“I realized the inhumanity of the regime,” he said. “They just let it happen.”

Kasparov, a resident of Moscow, became a founding member of the Democratic Party of Russia, even though he feared the time he devoted to that cause could affect his performance. But his prestige and popularity in the Soviet Union could be a powerful weapon, he thought.

“People need an example, an image to follow,” he said. “If I speak against the regime, it gives the additional strength to others to stand up.”

Kasparov said he is disappointed about America’s “love affair with Gorbachev,” but is heartened by what he perceives as a change in attitude since the recent crackdown in the Baltic states.

Kasparov does not worry that his mission could fail, for he is a chess player.

“I’m not overestimating my position,” Kasparov said. “I have to anticipate the strength of my forces, the strength of my opponents. I have to take risks, if I want to win.

“Even if they win the first round, they will lose the whole match.”