Kasparov Playing Chess Without a Board
By Alexander Marriott

Gary Kasparov, the recently retired world chess champion, was perhaps the greatest chess player of all time. His reign at the top of the chess world was long and marked by great duels with other chess giants like Karpov and of course his matches against various versions of IBM supercomputers. It was a shock to the chess world, among others, when Kasparov announced his retirement to pursue a career in Russian politics, the principal aim of which is to see Putin and his cronies out of office. Kasparov is a liberal in the European sense, the classical sense of that term, he is a limited government pro-capitalism pro-freedom guy, the kind of guy a place like Russia needs many more of.

There is a problem though. Kasparov, while fighting a good fight against a would-be tyrant like Putin and his aristocratical allies, is making many mistakes and ultimately hurting his own cause. His problems range from allying himself with all anti-Putin forces, including the National Bolsheviks, to calling for improper constitutional reforms, like turning the Russian constitution into an even more rank copy of the French constitution, which it already heavily draws upon. There is no doubt that common cause needs to be made with other political groups aside from liberals and that serious constitutional reform needs to take place, but their are rational limits to both that Kasparov should keep in mind if he wishes to achieve anything against Putin and for a free Russia.

That Putin needs to go in undeniable for those who care about economic and personal liberty. Putin's crackdown on his enemies, most notoriously against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, whose Yukos oil company has now been declared bankrupt and parcelled out to Putin's cronies at the state oil company. Combine that with Putin's consolidation of the infant free pree in Russia under state-run media, his romanticization of Soviet-era relics like the national anthem and the cult-of-personality around the leader (i.e. Putin), and his manipulation of all recent elections and you have the makings of a stunning reversal in Russian politics. Such a reversal has been in the offing almost from the beginning of the Federation, ever since the failure to pass any substantial free market reforms under Yeltsin. Private property is still rare and state property is the payola of Putin's cronyism. Capitalism still has never had a run in Russia and yet the Russian people seem to think that capitalism and a democratic process (i.e. elections) are synonymous. Capitalism takes the blame for the corruption and the stagnant economy that were and still are the hallmarks of Russian tyranny.

Enter Gary Kasparov. That Putin thinks Kasparov is a serious threat is undeniable. A Kasparov staffer was badly beaten several months before the recent G8 summit in Moscow and numerous staffers for the alternative freedom summit were arrested days before that event. Kasparov is a popular national hero and a very articulate man who clearly is a Russian patriot. That Kasparov is a liberal makes him one of the few on the freedom side of Putin with any real clout. This is why it is so disheartening to see Kasparov teaming up with the likes of Eduard Limonov, leader of the National Bolsheviks whose only objection to Putin can be that Putin is fixing the elections for Putin and not Limonov. No one, including Kasparov, can think Limonov would not reinstate the Soviet tyranny which would make Putin look like the two-bit KGB agent that he was/is. To team up with such a group and person can only tell the Russians who wish to save Russia from a slide toward tyranny that the possible alternative in a free election is something far worse than Putin, which plays right into Putin's hands. This does not mean Kasparov should take on Putin alone, but it does mean he should have some standards and limits about who he allies himself with. The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, a principle sadly illustrated by the Allied alliance with Stalin in World War II. Putin, liberal that he is, should and must realize this if he has any hope to succeed.

As for constitutional reform, this is the fundamental defect of the Russian political world. When the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russian Federation was born there was a chance for a revolutionary constitutional shift in Russia. Instead of a dramatic change, Russia was given a meek transformation from cheaply veiled despotism to officially sanctioned command state with elections. By adopting a French model (i.e. heavily empowered President with a weak parliament whose leadership is largely in the hands of the President) with few dramatic economic reforms the Russians guaranteed themselves a Putin (i.e. would-be tyrant who relies on the immense power of his office to corrupt the entire body politic). Kasparov has suggested moving more in the direction of the French model, as if that hasn't caused enough problems. His reasoning seems to rely on the misperception that the current Federation constitution is built on a British model, which is entirely incorrect. The British model is a limited monarchy constructed over a 1000 years of legal decisions and compacts, charters, and parliamentary compromises. The British model is one of legislative supremacy now, the executive power has gathered in Parliament over the last 150+ years. The Russian model is nothing close to this, executive and to a somewhat lesser extent legislative power reside in the President, as in France. Neither France nor England should be the model for constitutional reform. The United States or Swiss constitutions, modified of their various defects, would be excellent models for the Russian Federation and would take account of the various peoples which make up the country. Whatever constitutional reform plan is forwarded though, it won't work without guarantees of actual individual rights, including economic private property rights and the complete denationalization of all industries and non-essential state property in Russia.

Constitutional reform should be second to getting rid of Putin, but it should also be taken more seriously and require a further selectivity of one's allies. Kasparov has yet to learn this lesson for the former task and until he does, both goals are in peril of being crushed by Putin through the weight of fear of Bolshevism and indifference to Kasparov's compromised message. Right now, Kasparov's queen is in jeopardy.