Garry Kasparov

Garry Kasparov is a world-famous chess player who enters the book’s political narrative as a leader of The Other Russia, the opposition coalition he forms with Eduard Limonov and a former prime minister. His importance lies not in a developed personal portrait but in the changing political position he shares—and then contests—with Limonov: their alliance lends Limonov public respectability, while its failure leaves the two men competing within a diminished opposition.

Identity and Political Entrance

The narrator first places Kasparov among the three unlikely figures at the head of a new coalition: one of the greatest chess players of all time, a former prime minister, and Limonov, an author whom respectable company would normally shun. The contrast makes the coalition itself a sign of political change. Limonov may not have changed, the narrator suggests, but the position he occupies in his country has; association with Kasparov helps make him legible as an acceptable political actor.

Kasparov also belongs to the book’s public opposition landscape through the press conference he holds with Limonov. The narrator recalls meeting a British journalist there who predicted the outcome of the 2008 elections. The episode places Kasparov at the center of the opposition’s public-facing effort, even as the subsequent account measures how little that visibility can accomplish against political pressure.

Alliance and Its Limits

The Other Russia brings together figures whose shared opposition does not erase their differences. Kasparov and Limonov appear as coalition partners, but the narrator’s framing emphasizes the unusual breadth of the alliance rather than any deep agreement between its leaders. For Limonov, the association changes how others can regard him: the former pariah becomes a socially acceptable opposition politician alongside Kasparov.

That new standing proves precarious. The narrator says Kasparov was harassed in numerous ways and did not even try to run in the presidential election. The movement, after what the narrator calls its failure in that contest, no longer exists. The coalition’s collapse therefore marks both an institutional defeat and the end of the political arrangement that had briefly placed Limonov beside a nationally recognized figure.

From Ally to Rival

After The Other Russia disappears, Kasparov and Limonov pursue distinct political projects. Limonov creates Strategy 31, named for Article 31 of the constitution, which guarantees the right to demonstrate. Its supporters gather on Triumfalnaya Square on the thirty-first of months that have one, usually facing many more police than demonstrators and often ending with arrests. This recurring street action becomes Limonov’s own means of keeping an opposition presence visible.

At the same time, Limonov tries to establish a national assembly of opposition forces, with support from some older democrats and human-rights activists. Kasparov launches his own platform in an effort to preempt that project. The narrator describes the resulting rivalry as surprisingly mild: rather than a dramatic rupture, it is expressed in competition over which man commands the larger online audience. Limonov is pleased that his website attracts more visits than Kasparov’s.

Narrative Role and Lasting Image

Kasparov functions as a measure of Limonov’s changing status and of the opposition’s narrowing prospects. First, their alliance lends Limonov political respectability; later, their rivalry shows how the coalition’s common purpose has given way to separate platforms. The account does not supply a comparable interior portrait of Kasparov, keeping attention on what his presence means in Limonov’s political trajectory.

That asymmetry shapes the book’s closing image of their competition. In a conversation about what might constitute a perfect ending for Limonov, the possibility of his counting his Facebook friends to see whether he has more than Kasparov is proposed as something better than watching him triumph on a podium. Kasparov is thus left as the other name in a deliberately undignified measure of political success: not office or victory, but the number of people who click, follow, or claim a connection.