Chess great Kasparov joins exodus from Putin’s Russia

MOSCOW: Former chess champion and anti-Kremlin activist Garry Kasparov has said he is staying out of Russia over fears he could be put on trial, becoming the latest Russian intellectual to leave the homeland amid a crackdown on the opposition.
Kasparov said in Switzerland he would not be returning to Moscow for the moment because he could be investigated for his role in protests against President Vladimir Putin in the last months.
His comments came after prominent liberal economist Sergei Guriyev stepped down from a number of posts and abruptly left Russia for France last month, fearing he could be arrested after being interrogated by investigators.
The departure of the economist raised concerns about a new exodus of the intellectual elite from Putin’s Russia similar to the brain drain endured by the Soviet Union which lost some of its brightest minds.
“I kept traveling back and forth until late February when it became clear that I might be part of this ongoing investigation of the activities of the political protesters,” Kasparov said on Tuesday at a news conference in Geneva.
“Right now, I have serious doubts that if I return to Moscow I may not be able to travel back. So for the time being I refrain from returning to Russia,” Kasparov added.
He said that over the last one and a half years, Russia had seen “a transition from authoritarian style to one-man dictatorship” under Putin’s rule.
The chess legend has in recent years become an impassioned campaigner against Putin and took part in some of the mass opposition protests against his 13 years in power.
Ivan Tyutrin, an activist with the United Civil Front that Kasparov heads, told BBC Russian that investigators had wanted to question Kasparov over his role in May 2012 protests against Putin on the eve of his inauguration.
The spokesman of the Investigative Committee denied that Kasparov had been summoned and said he presented no interest to the investigation.
“This should make Kasparov happy. But maybe it will annoy him,” Vladimir Markin told the state ITAR-TASS news agency.
After a protest last summer, Kasparov was accused by police of biting an officer on the finger but a criminal probe was not opened.
Some bloggers accused Kasparov of abandoning his homeland but the chess master hit back by saying that “Russia is my home even when I am not able to be there.”
“Please, let no one doubt my commitment to the cause of a free and strong Russia, or doubt for one moment that I am working constantly to achieve that goal,” Kasparov wrote on Facebook.
Top opposition politician and former cabinet minister Boris Nemtsov wrote on Facebook that while he would in no way criticize Kasparov, “I have no intention of leaving and will continue to fight.”
Despite his astonishing achievement in dominating world chess in the 1980s and 1990s, the Baku-born Kasparov never won the hearts of a large number of Russians and many were suspicious of his frequent absences abroad.
The exit of dissident writers, artists and scientists was a major blight for the Soviet Union ever since the Bolshevik revolution as great figures sought to pursue careers elsewhere.
The country lost countless figures of historic importance including the novelist Vladimir Nabokov, the poet Joseph Brodsky and the ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov who all forged major careers in the United States.
The departure of Guriyev, who headed the New Economic School and commanded almost universal respect, was greeted with dismay and concern even from some figures close to the Kremlin.
“If Sergei Guriyev does not return to Russia then this will damage Russian economics and Russian civil society,” said former finance minister Alexei Kudrin who remains close to Putin.
Guriyev left Russia as he feared for his freedom after being repeatedly questioned in the Yukos case that sent anti-Kremlin tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky to jail.
Fellow top economist Konstantin Sonin wrote on his blog last month that with the moves of prominent Russian economists Maria Petrova, Ruben Enikolopov and Sergei Popov to foreign universities this year Russia was losing the “color of a whole generation.”