Axxon
04-01-2007, 04:41 PM
But here is a pretty interesting article about what he's up to. What I found interesting is that it's good for a second language article and how really serious these guys take their chess.
hxxp://ari.ru/eng/doc/?id=16
“Chess!” said Ostap. “Do you realize what chess is? It promotes the advance of culture and also the economy”. With such words the great contriver Ostap Bender from the Twelve Chairs, a brilliant novel by Ilf and Petrov, began his unprecedented chess affair of turning the regional town Vasyuki into the capital of the world, the most elegant city in the universe. The great grandmaster Garry Kasparov seems to be entirely of the same opinion. He assures that his section “Committee 2008”, given the right organization, could completely change Russia.
Announcing that he quitted professional chess Kasparov said: “now I’m going to use my intellect and strategic mentality in the Russian politics”. A straight but opposite analogy with Ostap Bender suggests itself. The great contriver was playing chess for the second time in his life, but promised to make happy the popular masses of Vasyuki with the help of chess. The great chess-player Kasparov, on the contrary, plays chess ingeniously but doesn’t want to attend to his business – to coach the upcoming chess generation, for example. Neither wants he to do with writing some instructive stories about our esteemed ultramodernists in his book “My great precursors”. He wants to be a Russian democrat and to “help Russia, help Russian citizens to make their country comfortable, just and free”.
Critics and analysts argue if it was the annoying defeat to Bulgarian Topalov, a headache or a magnetic storm that forced Mr. Kasparov to make such a sudden and strange step. It makes no matter to me. What interests me indeed is Kasparov’s assurance, putting it mildly, that he is the one to save Russia, that the Russians need nothing but his “intellect and strategic mentality ” to get to know how to make their land “comfortable, just and free”. On what grounds, I wonder, the great chess-player is going to teach me how to live? On the grounds of his great chess achievements?
There are a great many kinds of sport, different arts and sciences in the world: billiard, croquet, atomic physics, cybernetics, shipbuilding and dominoes. All of these kinds and fields of human creation and toil demands some intellect and strategic mentality. And, obviously, the higher intelligence, the higher the achievements. Still, even ethereal achievements in such a wonderful and difficult field like, say, billiard, hardly worth a bit in the field of microsurgery. In one’s proper place to go about one’s own business - that’s a guarantee of success, a pledge of competence, a sign of serious beginning and a condition of serious results.
But, unfortunately, a success in some field of science or kind of sport often causes such a side-effect like irresistible and overmastering desire to edify people and decide fates of nations. For some incomprehensible reasons a success in physics or bobsled infects people with a somewhat didactic-rescuing obsession, induce them to write memoirs and go into politics, as if from scientific discoveries or sport records they’ve derived the whole truth of life and all the mysteries of existence.
Even if the Russians played chess like the Chukchi play football still it wouldn’t give the greatest grandmaster from Baku a right to make the democracy in their land. Besides, to put it fairly, the Russian nation is one of the best in the world of chess. Suffice it to remember Alyohin, Karpov, Spasskyi, Smislov. But whatever the Russian’s achievements in chess are, it can’t be a reason for an Armenian-Jewish chess-player to arrange the Russian’s politics and their way of life. Where at all Mr. Kasparov has gotten not even a confidence but the very thought that Russia needs his help, that Russia is unable to solve it’s problems itself, without his help? On what grounds Mr. Kasparov believes that he has something to help Russian people with? What, for God’s sake, happened to the Russians that only an Armenian-Jewish chess-player may help them to “make their country comfortable, just and free ”?
Nothing happens to the Russians at all. Because it’s obvious that Mr. Kasparov as a politician will never gain either popularity or authority among the Russians. Already today nobody but those who has a professional interest in the politics has ever heard about the “Committee 2008”. Thus, any political influence, threat or, on the contrary, benefit is out of the question. Kasparov’s political role itself is not a political question. Still, it’s a matter of principle. This is a sign of the times, of our times in which there is no place for the Russians as it was taken by representatives of other nice nations, distinguished figures in their way but not in their motherland. They’ve taken it and hold on to it firmly, promoting the massive policy of eliminating in the Russians any vestige of self-confidence and self-esteem. That’s their only policy which they carry out almost unconsciously, which is carried out by their will to live, their will to power.
One B. Nemtsov called Kasparov “one of the most respected and popular democrats in Russia”. A reporter from some Russian edition gave even more racy expression: “a bison of the Russian democratic movement.” Having a sober look at the real state of things you may take these expressions for a spiteful sarcasm, for a caustic taunt. Unfortunately, the gentlemen say it quite seriously. That’s how they make illusion, chimera, deception. Just the way the great contriver from The Twelve Chairs taught. They try to assure us insistently that the Russians are unable in principle to make themselves happy, that they themselves have not the slightest idea how to live and what to do, that the democracy in Russia is possible, if at all, only with foreign features. Indeed, the Russians must be an absolutely hopeless nation if nobody but a “young and hot south guy”, as the grandmaster Shipov called Kasparov, may make democracy and a free and fair society in their land.
The main aim of the Committee set up by Mr. Kasparov is not to allow the President Putin to be re-elected for the third time. That's the “Fruitful Opening Idea” of Mr. Kasparov, that’s his ”quasi una fantasia”, “a human thought moulded in logical chess form”, as the smooth operator Ostap Bender would say. In other words, Mr. Kasparov made the first move - pawn to king four. The remaining moves, judging by the declarations and statements of the Committee, are much more obscure for the grandmaster, but that don’t disturb him in the least. Neither is he disturbed with all his unsuccessful organising experience of the past when he set up a Professional Chess Association which parted the world of chess and then vanished into thin air, and his later vain efforts to reunite the world of chess split by him. No failures of the past may upset the great chess-player, just like the great contriver. He is still overwhelmed with fruitful political ideas of rescuing Russia.
Considering all these I’d like to give a friendly advice to all the uninvited benefactors of Russia. It’s simple: mind their own business in their own places. At least, either mind their own business – chess, for example, - or in their proper place – to support democracy in such a wonderful countries like Armenia or Israel. And leave the Russia to the Russians, believe that they’re completely able to “make their life comfortable, just and free” without any outside help. As the slogan on the wall of the Cardboardworker Club read: “Assistance to drowning persons is in the hands of those persons themselves”.
PHEW. Wonder what this guy would write about Jesse Ventura. :D
hxxp://ari.ru/eng/doc/?id=16
“Chess!” said Ostap. “Do you realize what chess is? It promotes the advance of culture and also the economy”. With such words the great contriver Ostap Bender from the Twelve Chairs, a brilliant novel by Ilf and Petrov, began his unprecedented chess affair of turning the regional town Vasyuki into the capital of the world, the most elegant city in the universe. The great grandmaster Garry Kasparov seems to be entirely of the same opinion. He assures that his section “Committee 2008”, given the right organization, could completely change Russia.
Announcing that he quitted professional chess Kasparov said: “now I’m going to use my intellect and strategic mentality in the Russian politics”. A straight but opposite analogy with Ostap Bender suggests itself. The great contriver was playing chess for the second time in his life, but promised to make happy the popular masses of Vasyuki with the help of chess. The great chess-player Kasparov, on the contrary, plays chess ingeniously but doesn’t want to attend to his business – to coach the upcoming chess generation, for example. Neither wants he to do with writing some instructive stories about our esteemed ultramodernists in his book “My great precursors”. He wants to be a Russian democrat and to “help Russia, help Russian citizens to make their country comfortable, just and free”.
Critics and analysts argue if it was the annoying defeat to Bulgarian Topalov, a headache or a magnetic storm that forced Mr. Kasparov to make such a sudden and strange step. It makes no matter to me. What interests me indeed is Kasparov’s assurance, putting it mildly, that he is the one to save Russia, that the Russians need nothing but his “intellect and strategic mentality ” to get to know how to make their land “comfortable, just and free”. On what grounds, I wonder, the great chess-player is going to teach me how to live? On the grounds of his great chess achievements?
There are a great many kinds of sport, different arts and sciences in the world: billiard, croquet, atomic physics, cybernetics, shipbuilding and dominoes. All of these kinds and fields of human creation and toil demands some intellect and strategic mentality. And, obviously, the higher intelligence, the higher the achievements. Still, even ethereal achievements in such a wonderful and difficult field like, say, billiard, hardly worth a bit in the field of microsurgery. In one’s proper place to go about one’s own business - that’s a guarantee of success, a pledge of competence, a sign of serious beginning and a condition of serious results.
But, unfortunately, a success in some field of science or kind of sport often causes such a side-effect like irresistible and overmastering desire to edify people and decide fates of nations. For some incomprehensible reasons a success in physics or bobsled infects people with a somewhat didactic-rescuing obsession, induce them to write memoirs and go into politics, as if from scientific discoveries or sport records they’ve derived the whole truth of life and all the mysteries of existence.
Even if the Russians played chess like the Chukchi play football still it wouldn’t give the greatest grandmaster from Baku a right to make the democracy in their land. Besides, to put it fairly, the Russian nation is one of the best in the world of chess. Suffice it to remember Alyohin, Karpov, Spasskyi, Smislov. But whatever the Russian’s achievements in chess are, it can’t be a reason for an Armenian-Jewish chess-player to arrange the Russian’s politics and their way of life. Where at all Mr. Kasparov has gotten not even a confidence but the very thought that Russia needs his help, that Russia is unable to solve it’s problems itself, without his help? On what grounds Mr. Kasparov believes that he has something to help Russian people with? What, for God’s sake, happened to the Russians that only an Armenian-Jewish chess-player may help them to “make their country comfortable, just and free ”?
Nothing happens to the Russians at all. Because it’s obvious that Mr. Kasparov as a politician will never gain either popularity or authority among the Russians. Already today nobody but those who has a professional interest in the politics has ever heard about the “Committee 2008”. Thus, any political influence, threat or, on the contrary, benefit is out of the question. Kasparov’s political role itself is not a political question. Still, it’s a matter of principle. This is a sign of the times, of our times in which there is no place for the Russians as it was taken by representatives of other nice nations, distinguished figures in their way but not in their motherland. They’ve taken it and hold on to it firmly, promoting the massive policy of eliminating in the Russians any vestige of self-confidence and self-esteem. That’s their only policy which they carry out almost unconsciously, which is carried out by their will to live, their will to power.
One B. Nemtsov called Kasparov “one of the most respected and popular democrats in Russia”. A reporter from some Russian edition gave even more racy expression: “a bison of the Russian democratic movement.” Having a sober look at the real state of things you may take these expressions for a spiteful sarcasm, for a caustic taunt. Unfortunately, the gentlemen say it quite seriously. That’s how they make illusion, chimera, deception. Just the way the great contriver from The Twelve Chairs taught. They try to assure us insistently that the Russians are unable in principle to make themselves happy, that they themselves have not the slightest idea how to live and what to do, that the democracy in Russia is possible, if at all, only with foreign features. Indeed, the Russians must be an absolutely hopeless nation if nobody but a “young and hot south guy”, as the grandmaster Shipov called Kasparov, may make democracy and a free and fair society in their land.
The main aim of the Committee set up by Mr. Kasparov is not to allow the President Putin to be re-elected for the third time. That's the “Fruitful Opening Idea” of Mr. Kasparov, that’s his ”quasi una fantasia”, “a human thought moulded in logical chess form”, as the smooth operator Ostap Bender would say. In other words, Mr. Kasparov made the first move - pawn to king four. The remaining moves, judging by the declarations and statements of the Committee, are much more obscure for the grandmaster, but that don’t disturb him in the least. Neither is he disturbed with all his unsuccessful organising experience of the past when he set up a Professional Chess Association which parted the world of chess and then vanished into thin air, and his later vain efforts to reunite the world of chess split by him. No failures of the past may upset the great chess-player, just like the great contriver. He is still overwhelmed with fruitful political ideas of rescuing Russia.
Considering all these I’d like to give a friendly advice to all the uninvited benefactors of Russia. It’s simple: mind their own business in their own places. At least, either mind their own business – chess, for example, - or in their proper place – to support democracy in such a wonderful countries like Armenia or Israel. And leave the Russia to the Russians, believe that they’re completely able to “make their life comfortable, just and free” without any outside help. As the slogan on the wall of the Cardboardworker Club read: “Assistance to drowning persons is in the hands of those persons themselves”.
PHEW. Wonder what this guy would write about Jesse Ventura. :D