The Other Russia

David Remnick, whose reporting I always enjoy, has a piece in last week’s New Yorker about the Don Quixote of Russian politics, former world chess champ Garry Kasparov. It’s an interesting story that illustrates the insincere democratic makeup of the former Soviet Union, a country that successfully suppressed religion.

Kasparov, who announced Monday that he would run for president next year, leads the opposition party, The Other Russia, and is a main target of Vladimir Putin’s propaganda machine, illustrated this summer by a legion of youth organizers protesting outside an oppositional meeting and chanting, “Kasparov is Judas!”