Garry Kasparov

The King’s Gambit, This Week on Firing Line

A Soviet-schooled chess prodigy who became the king of the game. Garry Kasparov was the world’s Number 1 player for two decades but lost to a supercomputer named Deep Blue. He’s a pro-democracy advocate 

Kasparov April 2007 Arrest this regime is criminal. It’s a police state. They arrest people everywhere.

Calling out Vladimir Putin and authoritarians around the world 

Kasparov 2013: “I am a looming target for Putin’s regime”

Now living in the United States… As Russia flexes its military muscle, what does Garry Kasparov say now?

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HOOVER: Garry Kasparov, welcome to Firing Line. 

KASPAROV: Thank you for inviting me. 

HOOVER: You are joining us from New York City, where you live now and have essentially been living in exile from Russia since 2013. You were briefly jailed in Moscow in 2007. And in a recent interview, you responded to a question about whether you would return to Russia by saying, quote, “What is the point of becoming a martyr?” and that you could do more against Putin from outside Russia. What would happen to you if you returned to Russia? 

KASPAROV: Looking at what happened to Alexei Navalny recently, or to late Boris Nemtsov, one of the great leaders who was shot in 2015 in the center of Moscow. There’s so many of my friends and colleagues who marched with me in our peaceful rallies. Almost all of them are either in exile, in jail, or worse. Putin’s Russia, it’s a full blown dictatorship that doesn’t allow any dissent within its borders. And I believe that staying alive, staying free abroad, I could do much more by revealing the truth about Putin’s regime and also helping to unify the Russian opposition. 

HOOVER: Russian dissident Alexei Navalny did return, as you mentioned.

KASPAROV: It was a heroic move. He was poisoned. They tried to kill him. He survived after several weeks in a coma. And then he decided to come back and now he’s in jail. And I have bad news. I don’t believe he’ll see daylight outside the prison cell as long as Putin stays in power.

HOOVER: His treatment by Putin and the Russian government has triggered massive protests across the country, but also on the other side has inspired a brutal crackdown from Russian authorities. Now, we have seen new images of Navalny since he has broken his hunger strike. And you wrote that there is a real possibility that he could perish in prison. What happens if he does die in prison? 

KASPAROV: I have more bad news. Nothing will happen And that’s tragic. Nothing will happen because the free world still treats Putin as the legitimate leader. Yes, there will be some kind of protest, a bunch of empty words from Washington, London and other capitals, but then, business as usual. So Putin just has been testing how resolute the free world was in response of Navalny’s treatment. And he found out that there was, there was nothing to fear. 

HOOVER: What should President Biden do about Nalvany?

KASPAROV: He had a very encouraging start by calling Putin a killer, you know, just– and that was well received by all of us because that’s what Putin is. And then I don’t know why he offered Putin the meeting. For Putin, that’s all he needs. It’s not about the content of the conversation. It’s about the fact that the President of the United States, the leader of the most powerful democracy in the world, is offering Putin a summit. That’s how dictators reinstate their legitimacy and, and project the image of invincibility. 

HOOVER: Federal authorities are monitoring a cyber attack that has crippled the Colonial Pipeline, which runs from Texas to New Jersey and transports 45 percent of East Coast’s fuel supply. The FBI says dark side ransomware thought to have come from Eastern Europe, possibly Russia, is responsible. Now, President Biden has said there is no evidence so far that the Russian government is involved. And the Russian government, of course, denies direct involvement. What do you think, Garry Kasparov? 

KASPAROV: Of course, Russian government denies. This is the way every dictatorship works. This is the way KGB dictatorship works. Attacking America, whether it’s American democracy, whether it’s American infrastructure, whether it’s American interests worldwide, cannot happen without a direct instruction from the very top. 

HOOVER: The Biden administration has come in and has rolled out new sanctions in response to Russia’s election interference, to cyber attacks like the SolarWinds breach, and also for the Russian annexation of Crimea. So ten Russian diplomats were expelled, but is this enough? 

KASPAROV: No, absolutely not. It’s much better than what we saw under Trump, because Trump also imposed sanctions but we all knew that it was all kind of fake. And Putin knew it. And I believe we still yet to find out why Trump was so friendly to Putin and why he was willing to accommodate Putin’s bidding. But now we reached a point where just, you know, traditional measures like expelling diplomats, this is just not going to work because it doesn’t affect Putin. You expel diplomats, he expels diplomats. So Putin cares only about his direct interest, and it’s money. And it’s not just his money, but money of Russian oligarchs. And as long as America and Europe are not ready to go after this money, to impose sanctions on oligarchs from Putin’s perspective, it’s a lot of noise, but no action.

HOOVER: Satellite images show a recent Russian military buildup near the border with Ukraine. The US approach towards Russia, as you well know, during the Cold War, was largely one of containment, one that prevented Russian expansion abroad. As Russia flexes its muscles now, what should US policy towards Russia be? 

KASPAROV: You said this word containment. You can call it deterrence. In the world we’re living today, the cyber threats are far more relevant than the nuclear threats. And I think America needs a policy to address the cyber threats with the same resolution as America imposed deterrence and containment during the Cold War. 

HOOVER: Will there ever be an opposition movement or a set of events that could force Putin from office? 

KASPAROV: Look, we all know that regimes like Putin’s, and we can look back in Russian history, they are always vulnerable when and if they suffer major geopolitical defeat. The moment dictatorship shows its weakness in the eyes of its subjects, that’s the end. And by the, by the end of 1989, the Soviet empire in Eastern Europe collapsed, and in less than three years after the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Putin has to face the same reality. And unfortunately, there were many, many opportunities that the free world missed. One of them, I believe, was Syria in 2013. President Obama blinked and did not remove Assad, Syrian dictator Assad, who used chemical weapons against his own people. And, and crossed the red line imposed by U.S. president. So that was a moment. And there were many other moments where American presidents and European allies could actually inflict a major defeat on Putin. Right now, Ukraine could be this case. But unless Putin suffers this kind of defeat, inside the country he has enough resources, both financial and political will to spill blood, because he has no allergy for blood. And that’s why no opposition movement can succeed without the regime being weakened in the eyes of the masses. A hundred thousand people is not enough. Two hundred thousand is not enough. Five million will be enough. But for these people to join the protest, even if they have a shortage of food, they still need to recognize that the regime is getting weaker and not stronger.

HOOVER: You said that Russia is a full-blown dictatorship. Do you think that Americans understand that? 

KASPAROV: No, they don’t. Americans, they tend to believe that Russia somehow gets it’s a flawed democracy and they always call Putin ‘President’ Putin that we should call him his name. He’s a killer and he’s a dictator.

HOOVER:  Reagan famously said, quote, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” You’re the chairman of the Human Rights Foundation. Do you worry that here at home in the United States, Reagan’s message has been forgotten? 

KASPAROV: Absolutely. We can look at the current state of the GOP, of the Republican Party. What’s happening now there just reminds me of George Orwell. That is, ‘at the time of universal deceit, speaking truth is a revolutionary act.’ So you cannot speak the truth. And one big lie now is supported by many more lies. But the problem is that this is not happening on one side of the political spectrum. You know, these far right groups, they’re being emboldened and energized by a very radical agenda coming from the left. When they hear ‘defund the police,’ that’s what they used to rally their supporters. And this divide is getting wider and wider. The gap between opposing voices. And the moderate voices, they are, they’re being lost. And my concern is that as someone who is living in exile and as a chairman for the Human Rights Foundation, I’ve been in touch with dissidents around the world, that America is no longer seen as an example for others. So we need America to go back. But for America to take a lead, to be a moral leader of the free world, it has to fix problems domestically. We’re no longer talking about promoting democracy. We should talk now about defending democracy. Ironically, you know, after spending my life fighting for democracy in the Soviet Union and Russia, I’m trying to share my experience, helping Americans to understand the real threat to democracy in this land. 

HOOVER: Are you more concerned about threats to democracy here in the United States or the rise of authoritarianism abroad? 

KASPAROV: This, those are two sides of the same medal. That’s why I’m hoping that, you know, we’ll, we’ll find some kind of a middle ground. Because I believe a majority still believes in moderation. 

HOOVER: Trump may be gone, but his influence over the Republican Party is not gone. Liz Cheney has been ousted from leadership of the Republican Party, and on the floor of the House of Representatives this week, she said this: 

LIZ CHENEY, 5/11:  Today we face a threat America has never seen before. A former president who provoked a violent attack on this Capitol in an effort to steal an election, he has resumed his aggressive efforts to convince Americans that the election was stolen from him. He risks inciting further violence.

HOOVER: If our freedoms are only a generation away from extinction, are we closer to true danger to American democracy than we think? 

KASPAROV: But Trump is no longer president, thank God, but he dominates the Republican Party. And the story of Liz Cheney, the sad story of a true conservative, so we may agree or disagree with her on many issues, but she stands her ground — she believes in certain things and she spoke about them. And she was punished for speaking the truth. And how many Republicans were ready to actually go to her defense? Almost none. 

HOOVER: Very few. Too few. 

KASPAROV:  Yeah, exactly.

HOOVER: Can America lead again? What’s the playbook for America leading the world again?

KASPAROV: I would say it’s not about whether America can lead. America must lead if we want democracy to survive globally. You need a leader. It these, otherwise the space will not stay vacant. There’s no vacuum. If America walks away, you know, you have Xi Jinping and you have Putin, you have other terrorists and thugs coming in. So there’s no alternative for American leadership. 

HOOVER: You know, there’s a growing curiosity in the United States about socialism, especially on the left. You have called socialism “uniquely toxic.” What can you tell young people about your experience of socialism? 

KASPAROV:  Just read books. Look around…

HOOVER: We thought we’d won the argument, Garry.

KASPAROV:  You won the argument. Socialism was always a failure. You could look at every country in the world, you know that that uses the socialist model. They all fail. And by the way, it’s very important to understand that when we talk about socialism, we’re talking about, you know, state control of private enterprises and the means of production. You should not point out Sweden or Finland or Denmark and say, ‘oh, they’re socialist.’ 

HOOVER: Yes.

KASPAROV: That’s not true. Those are socially democratic countries. Democratic socialist is different.

HOOVER: It is different.

KASPAROV: So, again, it’s just history tells us that that in open competition, socialism and socialistic, all sorts of socialistic models, they failed and they lost fair and square against capitalism. It doesn’t mean that the capitalism is perfect. Nothing’s perfect in this universe. But we cannot argue about the advantages of the free market and liberal democracy. And that’s why so many people today still, they’re still dreaming about coming to America. Because they know this is a country where they can apply their talents and get the best reward for their resolution and dedication and hard work. 

HOOVER: You know, over the past year here in the United States, there’s been a lot of talk about this term, ‘cancel culture.’ What do you make of this phenomenon? 

KASPAROV: For many of my friends who live outside of the United States it sounds, diplomatically, it sounds odd. They just don’t understand. The extremes of cancel culture met with surprise and confusion by many activists, democratic activists, worldwide. And again, I grew up in the Soviet Union. I know what it means having only one textbook that tells you this is right, this is wrong. And also, we knew in the Soviet Union that– it always was a joke that the Soviet Union was a country with an unpredictable past because things could change. You know, you have a new government, a new leadership of Politburo, and then they start changing the history books. It seems that some people in America now, some most radical proponents of cancel culture, they want to go as far. 

HOOVER: You said, Garry, in a 2003 documentary, quote, “I cannot survive if I feel I’m in fetters. So that’s why for me it was virtually impossible to play under the strict rules of the Soviet regime.” Would you have gained the mastery of your craft in chess if it weren’t for the training under the Soviet regime? 

KASPAROV: Look, it’s a fair point. I grew up in the Soviet Union and I benefited from the system that was designed to find talent and to train this talent. The fact is that it was done not to promote chess or education or a culture, but simply to demonstrate the ideological superiority of the communist regime over the decadent West. I mean, doesn’t change the fact that I did benefit. Whether my talent could be found and developed as successfully if I was born and raised elsewhere, I don’t know. But at a very early age, I recognized the shortcomings of the regime, especially because as a chess player, I could travel abroad. That’s quite an irony. So my first trip abroad was in 1976 when I was 13. And a trip to France, you know, made me think about the realities of life back in the Soviet Union. 

HOOVER: You were quoted in The New York Times recently, a column by Nick Kristof, about a 10 year old chess prodigy, Tani Adewumi, who was a refugee living in a homeless shelter in New York City when he started to play chess and is now one of the youngest chess masters ever. 

KASPAROV: That’s a great story. Great story. I’m very happy for the boy and his parents. And it proved my belief that talent does exist everywhere. The difference between some countries and others, it’s an opportunity. The moment you provide opportunity, you always find talent. And America today offers more opportunities than any other country in the world. 

HOOVER: You helped make playing chess popular also through the popular series The Queen’s Gambit. I’m going to show the audience a clip of that show. Take a look. 

MOVIE CLIP Music and dialog “He’s not doing what he’s supposed to do.”

KASPAROV: I have to confirm the authenticity of the scene. As a consultant of the show, I told Scott Frank that I would do everything I could to have the real games. So I spoke to Vasily Borgov, Martin Torchinsky, the Polish actor who played this sort of champion, and he spent endless hours watching me playing so that’s why to make sure that, you know, the way they did take the pieces so that it will be very, very authentic. By the way, originally, Scott wanted me to play Borgov, but I just had other engagements. But, I actually went through the script. And also I added elements that made it more relevant to the KGB role that is played in chess. So the scene in the elevator. This is when Borgov spoke with the KGB guys. So I invented this one. 

MOVIE CLIP, dialog in Russian with subtitles

HOOVER: You invented that scene. I didn’t know that. I remember that moment so well.

KASPAROV: Yes, it’s very important to demonstrate the role of the KGB in this process, they always follow Borgov, and also him understanding the real threat coming from Beth Harman. 

HOOVER: I mean, chess has a reputation, of course, as being a male dominated field. Will the show’s female lead, Beth Harman, attract more women to the chess board? 

KASPAROV: Absolutely. Absolutely. Again, this is it’s it’s it fights stereotypes. It’s it’s it’s all about numbers. You just have to make sure that more girls play chess. So the fact is that Judit Polgar, the strongest female player ever. Since age 13 she played only male opponents. At one point she made it to the top ten. So it tells you that it’s doable. But again, it’s all about numbers. It’s all about opportunities. 

HOOVER: Twenty four years ago this week, you famously lost a chess match to IBM’s Deep Blue computer right here in New York City. And you have since come to peace with that loss. But you say, quote, you were the first knowledge worker whose job was threatened by a machine.

KASPAROV: That’s true. 

HOOVER: You know, one study from MIT concluded that robots could replace as many as two million workers in manufacturing alone by 2025. What do you say to the millions of people who fear they are to lose their jobs from, at the hands of machines? 

KASPAROV: Look, from the early days of human history, we always invented machines to release us from some kind of work. So machines made us stronger, machines made us faster. Now we have a problem because we’re dealing with machines that should, in theory, make us smarter. But they are intelligent machines, and we are scared. And the facts are that intelligent machines, they are tools invented by other humans. And what is happening now is that many jobs that can be done by the machines, those are the jobs that do not require true human creativity. So it means that we just have to depart from the old time compliment: ‘Oh, he or she works like a machine.’ Now we have to do the opposite. It’s, we have to learn to work as humans. I lost in 1997 after winning in 1996, and I realized you can’t beat them, you join them. That’s the way of the future. Collaboration is an answer. But collaboration means that we have to bring our unique qualities, which is creativity, fantasy, dream. I don’t want to sound callous. You know, I know many, many jobs will be lost on the chopping block of automation. But again, it’s some jobs lost, new jobs created. How many things we can actually we can we can do, and how many great discoveries, you know, that are waiting for us if we have ambitions. And I believe that intelligent machines will help us to realize our wildest dreams. 

HOOVER: In 1978 William F. Buckley Jr. welcomed the journalist and author Malcolm Muggeridge to the program. And they were discussing the Russian novelist and political prisoner Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Take a look at this.

MUGGERIDGE: Solzhenitsyn’s enlightenment, which is one of the most wonderful of our time, came to him in the Gulag, not before.

BUCKLEY: Yes. 

MUGGERIDGE: People forget that Solzhenitsyn, if he’d wished, could have had the life of a sort of corrupt Gorki. He could have been the great writer. // Gorki is the best example who was prepared to be a sort of performing seal, ultimately, for the regime. Solzhenitsyn could have had all that. He could have had his Nobel prize. He could have traveled about the world. He could have addressed audiences and everything. And it was only because of what he learnt in the labor camp that that was intolerable to him.

 

HOOVER: You were influenced by Soviet dissident Aleksander Solzhenitsyn. As you now are a dissident yourself, in a way, right, what do you consider the political responsibility of the artist, the athlete, the celebrity, the Russian public figure who has left the regime?

KASPAROV: What I believe is important today for celebrity is  to be consistent. If you defend fundamental human rights and you fight all sorts of abuses in your country, you cannot, you know, pretend that it’s not happening elsewhere. So that’s why I am very critical about some of the very famous American athletes who are very active in the United States, pointing out the wrongdoings and the ills of the society, and at the same time feel no shame to receive payments, very generous payments, from dictators around the world. So consistency is very important. 

HOOVER: Who are you talking about? 

KASPAROV: LeBron James, number one. Yeah, it’s very clear. 

HOOVER: From China.

KASPAROV:  The man who was just promoting the racial justice here and not just, you know, receiving money from Chinese. He spoke against those in America who tried to point out the genocide of Uighurs and suppression of voting rights in Hong Kong. Consistency is very important because the moment you show this inconsistency, you damage the cause because people don’t believe you, that this is because you can make money with that. So it’s better to shut up. You know, but not, you know, just showing double standards in different places in the world. So I believe I was always consistent. Yes, I’m happy to take a stand. And it doesn’t change whether I talk about American foes or American allies. As a chairman of Human Rights Foundation, I can tell you that at Oslo Freedom Forum, it’s the it’s it’s our signature event that I’ve been doing for for for many years, so we had guests and speakers and human rights activists from all the countries, no matter whether they were pro-American or anti-American. 

HOOVER: Garry Kasparov, thank you for joining me.

KASPAROV: Thanks again for inviting me. 

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