IF CHESS is mental torture, as Garry Kasparov once said, then Russian politics has not been much kinder to him since his dramatic debut this year.

In the past five months he has been hit over the head with a chess board, roughed up by police, pelted with eggs and tomato ketchup, and bombarded with verbal abuse.

All this after he announced in March that he was retiring from competitive chess to dedicate himself to the political fight against President Putin.

Mr Kasparov, 42, is not used to being the underdog, having dominated chess since 1985 when he become the youngest world champion.

Yet, far from being intimidated, he is throwing himself into the toughest — and riskiest — contest of his life with all the flair and aggression that made him the greatest chess player to date.

“There’s only one chance for this country — if the regime collapses,” he told The Times. “If the Government doesn’t change, then we must change the Government.”

Unlike most of Mr Putin’s opponents, he is not talking about running in the next parliamentary elections in 2007 or standing for president in 2008.

He is travelling around Russia calling openly for a peaceful revolution like those that rocked Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine last year. The trigger, he predicts, will be an attempt by the Kremlin to change the constitution to allow President Putin to serve a third term instead of stepping down in 2008.

“Next year the country will go through a political crisis which will decide the future of the country,” he said. “We’re talking about mass protests.”

Such talk is highly provocative — if not seditious — when the Kremlin has spent much of the past five years silencing political opponents.

In May Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oil tycoon, was jailed for nine years in what was widely seen as punishment for meddling in politics.

Then Mikhail Kasyanov, a former Prime Minister, became the target of a corruption probe last month after hinting at running for President in 2008.

So far, the worst Mr Kasparov has suffered is being hit on the head with a chess board by a youth activist in April and roughed up by police outside the courthouse where Mr Khodorkovsky was on trial in May. “I hope that if something really goes bad, we’ll hear more than mumbling from the West,” Mr Kasparov said.

In public, Russian officials have responded to his challenge with disdain — dismissing him as a political non-entity who appeals only to the West. Many political analysts agree, saying most Russians have not heard about his campaign and would not support him because of his Caucasian and Jewish roots. He was born in Azerbaijan to an Armenian mother and a Jewish father.

But at the same time, officials are going to extraordinary lengths to prevent such a respected celebrity from entering the political fray.

That much became clear when Mr Kasparov went to southern Russia in June to drum up grass-roots support in Dagestan, North Ossetia, Stavropol and Rostov.

“Unlike my critics, I go to the Russian regions,” he said. “It’s the only way to learn the situation in my country because the media is under the Kremlin’s strict control,” he said.

In Dagestan, local authorities blocked him from meeting refugees from neighbouring Chechnya and even tried to stop him giving prizes at a children’s chess tournament.

In North Ossetia, a meeting with Beslan residents in a cultural centre was cancelled after officials hastily arranged a showing of the cartoon Madagascar there. Then he was hit with eggs covered in tomato ketchup in Vladikavkaz, the regional capital. Local officials accused him of trying to exploit last year’s Beslan school siege, even though the victims’ mothers said that they were keen to meet him.

At his next stops, in Stavropol and Rostov, the airports refused to let his charter plane land. Hotels in Stavropol would not accept him and meetings in both places had to be held outside after the venues developed “technical” problems.

Mr Kasparov says that he believes local authorities were under orders from Mr Putin’s representative in the region, Dmitry Kozak. “If they act in this way, they are scared of anyone talking with the people,” Mr Kasparov said. “If people don’t like my ideas, fine, but at least let them speak with me.”

Mr Kasparov dabbled in politics in the 1990s and, early last year, was voted chairman of Committee 2008: Free Choice, a liberal group dedicated to ensuring the next presidential election is free and fair.

But his real political awakening came after the Beslan siege, when the Kremlin announced plans to abolish direct elections for regional governors.

This year he formed his own, more militant, group called the United Civil Front.

“It’s extreme because the situation is extreme,” he said. “The Government is violating the Russian constitution and limiting our rights to influence the electoral process.”

MEET THE KING

Born April 13, 1963, in Baku, Azerbaijan

November 1985 Beat Anatoly Karpov to become the youngest world champion at 22

2000 Lost world title to Russian grandmaster Vladimir Kramnik. Retained world number one ranking until 2005

1996 Beat Deep Blue, IBM’s supercomputer, but lost to its upgraded version the following year

March 2005 Retired from chess to devote time to Committee 2008: Free Choice, campaigning against Government of President Putin

THEY SAY

‘I’m a grandmaster but an awful lot of people are grandmasters these days. Kasparov and I have the same title, but it’s a different planet.’
Jonathan Rowson, British chess champion, July 2005

‘The future of chess lies in the hands of this young man.’
Mikhail Botvinnik, former world champion (when Kasparov was 11)

‘If Kasparov won, he would feel like a god afterwards, and if he lost, his dejection and rage would resist all forms of consolation.’
Fred Waitzkin, American writer, on the 1990 Kasparov-Karpov match

‘Forget the prize money. The fate of humanity is on the line, at least in Garry Kasparov’s head.’
Maurice Ashley, the only African-American grandmaster, on the Deep Blue-Kasparov final in 1997

HE SAYS

‘I have done everything I could in chess and more. Now I plan to use my intellect and strategic thoughts in Russian politics.’

‘I believe that the country is moving in the wrong direction, therefore it is necessary to help Russia, to help Russian citizens, to make the country comfortable, just and free.’

‘I devote a certain amount of time to Russian politics, as every decent person should do who opposes the dictator Vladimir Putin.’

March 2005

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