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Home , Chess City, Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

LETTER FROM PLANET KIRSAN

Inside a master’s fiefdom. BY MICHAEL SPECTER

irsan Ilyumzhinov is not your typical term of office. He finds little beauty in post-Soviet millionaire Buddhist democracy and readily concedes that Kautocrat. He is the ruler of , one his republic is corrupt. (“Who was it that of the least well known of Russia’s twenty- they arrested last week?’’ he said to me. one republics. He also happens to be pres- “Something having to do with the in- ident of the Fédération Internationale spection of the lower courts—for bribes, des Échecs, or FIDE, the governing body or something. Anyway, while money ex- of world chess. Ilyumzhinov functions a ists, while there is government, beginning bit like the Wizard of Oz. Instead of a with the Roman Empire, and in the thou- balloon, though, he uses a private jet. In sands of years since—it’s always been a Kalmykia, a barren stretch of land wedged problem.”) between Stavropol and , on the Ilyumzhinov has clashed many times , you can’t miss the man: his with the Kremlin—most famously when, picture dominates the airport arrivals hall, in 1998, he threatened to sever ties with and billboards all along the rutted road Russia and turn Kalmykia into an inde- that leads to , the capital, show him pendent tax haven, like Luxembourg or on horseback or next to various people he Monaco. Kalmykia is only a few hundred regards as peers—Vladimir Putin, the kilometres north of , which , the Russian Orthodox Pa- has been attempting, bloodily, to secede triarch Alexy II. At the local museum, an from Russia for three hundred years. exhibit called Planet Kirsan displays gifts does not joke about those is- that he has received from visiting digni- sues, and in 2004 Putin put a stop to the taries. Another exhibit, devoted to his direct election of regional leaders. The chess memorabilia, is on view at the Chess new rules looked certain to end the Museum, which is housed on the third flamboyant young Ilyumzhinov’s politi- floor of the Chess Palace, in the center of cal career. Yet, last June, Putin flew to , which Ilyumzhinov built on Elista and spent an hour alone with him. the outskirts of the capital—at a cost of Nobody revealed what was said, but nearly fifty million dollars—for the 1998 when the two men emerged and posed . for pictures a glimmer of delight shone in Ilyumzhinov was the Kalmyk national Ilyumzhinov’s deep black eyes. Putin champion by the age of fourteen, and he looked stiff, dour, and paternal. When is convinced that, with his authority as the time came to name a new leader, the president of FIDE, he can turn a nearly Putin nominated the old one. The choice empty desert the size of Scotland into a was ratified instantly by the parliament chess paradise. He sees Kalmykia as the that Ilyumzhinov had created to replace crossroads on a modern version of the the one that he had dismissed. Silk Route, with hordes of chess players Ilyumzhinov called his autobiography, replacing caravans of and Scyth- published in 1998, “The President’s ians. “Everything here comes from my Crown of Thorns.’’ (Chapter titles in- image,’’ he told me, with a shrug, one af- clude “Without Me the People Are In- ternoon not long ago. “I am lifting the re- complete,” “I Become a Millionaire,’’ and public up.’’ “It Only Takes Two Weeks to Have a Many people dispute the last part of Man Killed.”) In the book, he describes that assertion, but nobody questions the growing up in Elista. After high school, first. Ilyumzhinov was elected President he worked in a factory and served in the in 1993, at the age of thirty-one. He im- Soviet Army. He then attended Mos- mediately abolished the parliament, al- cow’s Institute for Foreign Relations, tered the constitution, and lengthened his where he met people like Brezhnev’s

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TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 112—133SC.112—133SC.—#2 PAGE—CHANGE IN ITALIC TYPE AT TOP grandson and Castro’s nephew, establish- ing connections that proved useful in the waning days of Communism, and even more so afterward. Ilyumzhinov profited greatly from the dissolution of the . Like many other ambitious biz- nesmeny who found themselves in Mos- cow in the early, lawless days of post- Soviet capitalism, he walked away with millions—nobody really knows how much—by, among other things, trading automobiles, and he has said that he owns a stake in fifty companies, including some banks. Oddly for a chess player, Ilyumzhinov seems incapable of sitting still for more than five minutes (perhaps that is because he is also a former Kalmyk boxing cham- pion). He is a stylish man—tall and wiry—and, in a part of the world where “dressed up” often means wearing clothes with buttons, Ilyumzhinov prefers well- tailored dark suits, crisp white shirts, and boldly patterned rep ties. His brown penny loafers are shiny and European. Ilyumzhinov’s chess gig keeps him on the road much of the time, but when he is in Elista he moves around town in a white Rolls-Royce, followed closely by a Range Rover and a Cadillac that he bought six- teen years ago in Vienna. He keeps a black Rolls in Moscow to use on his fre- quent trips there. It has often been said that Ilyumzhinov owns ten Rolls-Royces. He denies it. “I never had ten,’’ he said. “Six, but not ten. It’s a good car. Well made, dependable. By the way, they are not the government’s. They’re my cars. I paid for them and I drive around in them. says of Kalmykia, “Everything here comes from my image.” The republic didn’t pay anything.’’ With as much as seventy per cent Their wool is soft, but their hooves, pot. It was a novel idea, and people were of the labor force unemployed and a sharpened by life on jagged mountain- excited, but the cell phones did little to al- huge regional debt to Moscow, Kalmykia sides, cut like razors through the delicate leviate poverty. doesn’t have the kind of economy that soil. Kalmykia became ’s first can absorb the purchase of many luxury man-made desert, officially recognized was supposed to meet with Ilyumzhi- cars. Ilyumzhinov may be wealthy, but as an environmental disaster area by nov for the first time on a Saturday; his people certainly aren’t, and few believe the United Nations. In satellite photo- Iwhen I arrived at his office, however, his that chess will do much to change that. graphs, it looks like the moon; only the press secretary explained that some rich For thousands of years, Kalmykia’s rich largest stretches of compare people had suddenly flown in from Mos- black earth provided an ideal environ- in bleak expanses of emptiness. The sheep cow “on a private plane” and the Presi- ment for raising sheep and other animals. population, while still the main source of dent had taken them wolf hunting. The In the nineteen-fifties, the Soviets de- income, has been devastated, and at- meeting would have to wait. Rich people cided to capitalize on the grazing oppor- tempts to raise camels on the desert ter- are flying in more frequently these days, tunities there and brought in more than a rain have been only partly successful. because Kalmykia has oil and gas and an million new sheep, but the topsoil was When Ilyumzhinov first ran for Presi- even more important resource: the sea. thin, and there was not enough grass to dent, in 1993, he said that he would re- Ilyumzhinov has made an agreement feed that many animals. In addition, ag- solve this problem. He also promised with a group of German investors and ricultural officials in Moscow had de- each shepherd in Kalmykia a mobile Iranian oil producers to develop a port on STEVE BRODNER cided that only merino sheep would do. phone—his version of a chicken in every the Caspian, at Lagan. The plan is to ship

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TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 113—133SC.—LIVE ART R15042_RD—#2 PAGE, ART FIX oil through the republic to India, which the World Championship of chess. traterrestrials put a yellow spacesuit on needs it badly. Kalmykia—or, at least, Fischer played brilliantly and acted like me. They gave me a tour of the spaceship Ilyumzhinov—stands to earn millions. a spoiled brat. The acrimonious match, and showed me the command center. I “We ’t want to herd sheep our entire which was held on neutral ground, in Ice- felt very comfortable with them.’’ Ilyum- lives,’’ he told me when we finally met. land, reverberated with dark echoes of the zhinov relies heavily on the services of a “We also want to develop, to civilize. For Cold War. Fischer can no longer return Bulgarian astrologer named Vanga, who some reason, in America the people think to the United States; he is under indict- told him that he would become president they’re entitled to live well. We also want ment for violating sanctions against the of both Kalmykia and FIDE. She also said to live well! We want to build a port. We former by playing a rematch that he would build an oil pipeline and a want to develop trade. We want to create against Spassky there in 1992. Ilyumzhi- “wool-scouring factory.” jobs. We want Kalmykia to become a nov calls Fischer a “star in the history of So far, she has been right about every- commercial crossroads.’’ Ilyumzhinov civilization,” and compares him to New- thing but the pipeline. Soon after he be- punched a silver bell on the conference ton, Einstein, Copernicus, and the cos- came President, Ilyumzhinov issued a table in his office. A secretary appeared monaut Yuri Gagarin. In 1995, Ilyum- directive, Ukaz 129: “On Government instantly. “Coffee?” he asked. “Tea?” zhinov turned up in Budapest carrying a Support for the Development of a Chess Ilyumzhinov is capable of doing or bag with a hundred thousand dollars in it. Movement.” Since then, the study of saying nearly anything; a soccer fanatic He handed the money to Fischer and said chess has been required of every student who lavishes millions of dollars on the it was compensation for the fact that the in the first three grades and strongly en- local team, Uralan, he announced in 1996 Soviet Union had never paid royalties couraged for others. Clubs have sprouted, that he had bought the World Cup star for Fischer’s book, “My Sixty Memor- and youngsters talk about the intricacies Diego Maradona—which would be a bit able Games.” Ilyumzhinov insists that he of the Nimzo Indian Defense and the like signing Derek Jeter to play baseball “takes seriously what the stars or the sor- Queen’s Gambit the way American teen- in Montenegro. Maradona never came. cerers say,’’ and he often comments on his agers might ponder the implications of Ilyumzhinov worships Bobby Fischer, ability to communicate with aliens. In story lines on “The O.C.” The effort has the loopy, anti-Semitic American exile, 2001, he told journalists that he had re- proved successful: seventeen students who in 1972 defeated Boris Spassky for cently been on board a U.F.O.: “The ex- from the tiny republic have received of- ficial rankings from FIDE in the last de- cade, a remarkable feat for a place with three hundred thousand residents. (For Moscow, by comparison, a city of eight million and still the world’s true chess center, the number is a hundred; for St. Petersburg, forty-eight.) “Chess disci- plines children,’’ Ilyumzhinov told me. “They get better grades. They perform. They are focussed.’’ Ilyumzhinov rarely stays out of the news for long. Russian leaders have de- bated what to do with Lenin’s Tomb since the fall of Communism. A few months ago, he came up with a solution: he would simply buy the tomb, for a million dollars, and then build a mauso- leum in Elista to hold it. Most laughed and shook their heads, as they often do at his schemes. There are times, though, when laughter doesn’t quite work. Ilyumzhinov spent a lot of time in Baghdad during the nineteen-nineties and considers Saddam Hussein a friend. A few years ago, he offered Saddam a four-hectare plot of land in the Kalmyk capital. “In twenty, thirty, fifty years, his- tory will have its say,’’ Ilyumzhinov told me when I asked how he felt about Sad- dam now. “He did hold it all together. In Iraq, you have the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds. So many problems. But it was quiet then. You had to negotiate with

TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 114—133SC—LIVE OPI ART A11461 him, but that’s politics. Of course, I’m a Thousands more died during the ensuing Buddhist. When there’s torture going on years of exile. They were not allowed to and blood flowing, I don’t like it.” return to their homes until 1957, after delivered his “secret almykia is the only Buddhist region speech” denouncing Stalin. By then, in the territory of Europe. The peo- there were fewer than seventy thous- Kple, whose language is derived from and ; most of their houses had Mongolian, are descendants of nomads been expropriated by Russians after the who first roamed the steppes of Central war, and every Buddhist temple had been Asia nearly eight hundred years ago, destroyed. under the leadership of Genghis Khan— Ilyumzhinov decided to rebuild every who, as it happens, is one of Ilyumzhi- one. And more. “Thirteen years ago, nov’s heroes, along with Fischer and the when they elected me, there wasn’t a sin- Dalai Lama. The only art I ever noticed gle Buddhist temple in Kalmykia,’’ he in the deserted corridors that lead to his said as we sat in his office, staring out at office was a giant, scrolled lime-green the recently completed Golden Temple. portrait of the thirteenth-century war- Construction took six months, and it lord. There is another in the office itself. opened on December 27th, in time to “I don’t understand when people call him commemorate the anniversary of the day a dictator,” Ilyumzhinov told me. “If that Stalin deported the Kalmyks. Ilyum- there is order, if there is law, if there are zhinov had hoped to have Chuck Norris established rules of the game, everyone (who had been there before) and several has to abide by them, otherwise we will celebrity Buddhists on hand—he had turn into animals. And even animals have mentioned Steven Segal, Richard Gere, a certain order of their own—the wolves, and Sharon Stone. None made it; but the the sheep. There has to be order and dis- Royal Nepalese Ambassador to the Rus- cipline everywhere. Whoever violates it sian Federation was there, as were repre- must be punished, of course, and whoev- sentatives of Buddhist communities from er’s working, well, let him work. Genghis , , and , and the spe- Khan had order, discipline; he created a cial representative of the Dalai Lama state, he improved the lives of his peo- (who had visited in 2004 and consecrated ple—it was fine.” the site). “In thirteen years, we’ve built Genghis Khan’s empire eventually fell thirty-eight Buddhist temples—thirty- apart. Most of the nomads remained in eight! We’ve built twenty-two Orthodox Central Asia, but one group migrated to- churches. We built a Polish Catholic ca- ward the Caspian Sea and settled what thedral and a mosque. And I want to em- became Kalmykia—kalmyk is the Turk- phasize this: it wasn’t Russia that built it; ish word for “remnant.” It has been rough it wasn’t Moscow that built it, not the in- going ever since. Peter I permitted the vestors, not the sponsors. It was all built Kalmyks to build temples and practice with my own personal money, and given in exchange for defending the to the people.’’ (He made the decision to southern borders of Imperial Russia. By build the cathedral after a 1994 meeting the end of the eighteenth century, how- with Pope John Paul II at the Vatican— ever, Catherine the Great had forced the even though, he said, there was only one Buddhist kingdom into subjugation. Catholic living in Kalmykia.) Ilyumzhi- More than a hundred thousand people nov put fifteen million dollars into the ca- fled across the . Most died. In the thedral and far more than that into the nineteen-thirties, the Soviets simply took Golden Temple. “The entire temple was the nomads from their tents and settled built with my money. Just now, the con- them on collective farms—as they did struction minister came by and I gave with millions of others. It was a disaster, him another six million rubles”—about but much worse was coming: Stalin sus- two hundred thousand dollars—“to pay pected the Kalmyks of supporting the the salaries.’’ Nazis during the Second World War, so The day after I arrived in Elista seemed he deported them all. Even for Stalin, it unusually cold, even by the standards of was an epic act of genocide. Beginning on the steppe—where winds can roll unim- December 28, 1943, the Kalmyks were peded, gathering strength, for hundreds loaded into cattle cars and shipped to Si- of kilometres. Perhaps that explained beria; many died before the trains arrived. why so few people were on the street.

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TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 116—133SC.—#2 PAGE—TEXT CHANGE Late that morning, it started to snow. which is not yet open, and the sixth floor, I drove slowly past a series of Khrush- which contains a residence reserved for chevki—the five-story, instantly dilapi- the Dalai Lama—if he is able to return. dated housing blocks built throughout “When he came before, he stayed in a the Soviet Union by Khrushchev, and hotel,’’ the monk said, shaking his head loathed by all. Fat flakes filled the wind- in sadness. “Next time, he can be in a shield as I entered the parking lot of clean place. A Buddhist place.” Lobsang the Golden Temple. At sixty-four me- spoke of the Dalai Lama and the leader tres, the shrine is the tallest outside of of Kalmykia as if they were of equal spir- Asia, plopped into an unusually decrepit itual importance. “Our President is the scene of provincial Russian life. The tem- builder,’’ he said. “He supports all reli- ple might belong in Thailand, or India. gions, all people. Without him, we would Maybe Haight-Ashbury during the Sum- have nothing.’’ mer of Love. Anywhere but Kalmykia. The main structure, a hulking pagoda rive along the steppe leading from with a gilt façade and enormous red lac- Elista to the Caspian Sea—a ghostly quered doors, was encircled by seventeen Dstretch without buildings, trees, or any smaller pavilions, each covered in red other sign of life, except perhaps a shep- paint and gold leaf, and trimmed in for- herd and a few camels—and, eventually, est green. They looked like life-size ver- you will arrive in Yashkul, Kalmykia’s sions of the parasols one often finds in second city. Even for an unfinished, semi- tropical cocktails. Each pavilion repre- abandoned creation of nameless Soviet sents one of Buddha’s seventeen disciples. planners, Yashkul is a dark place on the Scaffolding still covered parts of the main brightest day. Dogs run down the center temple, and dozens of men were out in of Ulitza Lenina, the main drag. Dozens the intense cold, some chopping ice and of buildings remain frozen in various others slapping on a final coat of paint. stages of construction; the workers left Inside, two hundred people, led by long ago. Ladas made of cheap tin, four young monks in saffron robes, prayed no doubt manufactured when Leonid to the world’s largest plastic Buddha. Brezhnev was sitting in the Kremlin, rust The figure was made in Russia from “ad- along the sides of the roads. In most Rus- vanced space-age composites,’’ according sian cities, big or small, when Commu- to one of the monks, and was covered in nism fell so did the statues of Lenin that gold, with a tightly braided coil of black stood in front of every town hall or cul- hair wound around the top of its head. tural center and in every city square. Not The windowsills were painted bright red, in Yashkul. the walls pink, and the platform on which I had arranged to visit a community the Buddha sat, two metres high, was center, but first there was lunch with the adorned with a series of large lotus pet- town’s mayor, Telman Khaglyshev, at the als—they looked exactly like the red house of one of his friends. It was a fairly tongues on Rolling Stones albums. New new and solidly built structure with a sat- Age music that sounded like water slowly ellite dish on the roof. Khaglyshev and his dripping on rocks came from a boom box friends sat in leather chairs watching an in the chapel. The spiritual leader of the “Animal Planet” episode about young Kalmyk community, whose given name giraffes, on a flat-screen television that was Erdne Ombadykow, is a native of made the animals look as if they were in Philadelphia, with a weakness for punk the room. It was lunchtime, and the rock. At the age of seven, he was sent by vodka bottles had clearly been out for a his parents to study Buddhism in India, while. The men were making toasts in where the Dalai Lama recognized him as Kalmyk—a language that few people the reincarnation of the Buddhist saint speak anymore. (Ilyumzhinov, who stud- Tilopa. He was visiting his family in the ied languages at university and speaks United States when I was in Kalmykia, Japanese fluently, as well as some Ger- so I met with a pleasant and studious man and English, can converse in his na- twenty-three-year-old monk named tive tongue, but not easily.) Lobsang Tsultim. Like any fifty-eight-year-old Kalmyk, We talked while sitting on the tem- Khaglyshev was born in and ple’s mezzanine, which overlooks the largely raised there. A bulky man with Buddha. Lobsang showed me the library, thick, unkempt tufts of hair that seem

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TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 117—133SC. to run randomly across his head, he was gracious but not much of a conversa- tionalist. Most former Soviet-era bureau- AND SOUL crats tend to talk in speeches, and he was no exception. His eyes began to glow. My mother died one summer— “Would you have come here before he the wettest in the records of the state. was President, ever?” Khaglyshev asked. Crops rotted in the west. He quickly answered his own question. Checked tablecloths dissolved in back gardens. “No. You are here because Kirsan has Empty deck chairs collected rain. made us famous. We didn’t use to have As I took my way to her gas or hot water. Today, we have cable through traffic, through lilacs dripping blackly TV.’’ He meant satellite dishes. Yashkul behind houses isn’t exactly wired. Many Kalmyks still and on curbsides, to pay her rely on trucks to deliver drinking water, the last tribute of a daughter, I thought of something and burn sheep dung to help them make I remembered it through each winter. “We live because I heard once, that the body is, or is Kirsan brought us back to life,’’ Khagly- said to be, almost all shev said. Murmurs of agreement filled water and, as I turned southward, that ours is the room. He spoke at some length about a city of it, the roads—fifty-three kilometres of one in which them—that had been built in the area every single day the elements begin during the past two years, and about the a journey toward each other that will never, horses raised there, which bring high given our weather, prices at markets throughout the world, fail— and, most of all, about how the oil in the the ocean visible in the edges cut by it, Caspian Sea would make Kalmykia rich. cloud color reaching into air, “The special joy in being a Buddhist is the Liffey storing one and summoning that we do nothing bad to other people,” the other, salt greeting the lack of it at the North Wall, and, Khaglyshev said. “Not like others nearby.’’ as if that weren’t enough, all of it He gave me a knowing look. “We are not ending up almost every evening so far from Chechnya, you know. But we inside our speech— are not like them. Our region is among coast canal ocean river stream and now the quietest in Russia. And, of course, Kir- mother—and I drove on and although san built our chess city. You can believe it the mind is unreliable in grief, at or not, but the international Chess Olym- the next cloudburst it almost seemed piad in 1998—with a hundred and ten they could be shades of each other, flags flying over the pavilion—was for the way the body is Kalmykia its greatest moment.” He punc- of every one of them and we tuated each assertion with a shot of vodka, were all moving now—fog into mist, and insisted that his guests join him. By mist into sea spray, and both into the oily glaze this time, we had stumbled to the lunch that lay on the railings of table. the house she was dying in “Football is great and we are a great as I went inside. country and we will have chess tourists and jobs.’’ Khaglyshev had started to ram- —Eavan Boland ble, and, as if on cue, his wife appeared and began to pass out plates full of food. She did not speak, and Khaglyshev made some chess. The House of Culture in completing a move. On the second floor, no attempt to introduce her. She carried Yashkul is a two-story white brick build- there was one occupied room. A placard bowls of Kalmyk pelmeni—a spicy, Cen- ing in the center of town. Most of the on the door said “White Rook Chess tral Asian version of wonton soup—and glass in the blue windows was cracked. A Club”; inside, a dozen people were sit- dishes made of boiled and seasoned lamb, couple of panes were missing completely. ting at tables. The youngest was a girl of fried dough, and several other staples of a The first floor was dark, cold, and unoc- eight, the oldest a man who couldn’t re- diet that has helped Kalmykia play its role cupied. But there was a faint sound com- member his age. as part of a country with the lowest life ing from the floor above. Having spent Every Soviet cultural center had a de- expectancy in the industrialized world, more time than I should have in Wash- votional wall, usually filled with propa- where most men are dead by the age of ington Square Park when I was younger, ganda about Lenin or Yuri Andropov or sixty. I recognized it easily: chess players slap- the achievements of some local tractor After the meal, it was time to see ping their opponent’s time clock after factory. In Kalmykia, the objects of devo-

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TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 118—133SC. tion were Kirsan Ilyumzhinov and other or boards. I’ll never forget seeing one play it are crazy.” Then, perhaps assum- leaders of FIDE. There were also photo- man making chess figures out of flour ing that somebody writing about chess graphs or drawings of legendary chess and water.” must be good at it, he asked me what my players, from Wilhelm Steinitz, who rose current ranking was in the United States. from the coffeehouses of Vienna to be- he epic poem of the Kalmyk people, (I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that come the first world champion, in 1886, which has been chanted since the my chess career had ended in 1970, when through Capablanca, Alekhine, and Tal, timeT of the Mongol invasions, is called the I traded a beautiful wooden chess set I to the glowering visages of Bobby Fischer Djangar, after its hero. It contains, among had received as a gift for a copy—auto- and . The opposite wall many other things, descriptions of a graphed by Willis Reed—of the New had been given over to the women. There magnificent palace with silver doors and York Knicks yearbook.) were pictures of a steady string of Slavic walls of pearl and murals portraying the Except for five armed men guarding matrons: Menchik, Bykova, Rudenko. In feats of Djangar’s companions, the 6,012 the Chess Palace, a pyramid of glass and the nineteen-sixties, they yielded to the Heroes. Ilyumzhinov doesn’t seem to mirrors shimmering in the frozen sun- era of Georgian supremacy. (Nona Ga- have that many companions, but he light among groups of condos, stores, and prindashvili became the first female definitely has the palace. “Wait till you see bars, Chess City was deserted when I ar- Grand Master and held the world title for Chess City,’’ Berik Balgabaev told me rived. The city looked like a sort of Olym- sixteen years, until 1978, when she lost it with pride on the flight to Elista from pic Village—at least, one with a Bud- to a fellow-Georgian, Maya Chibur- Moscow. “You will never forget it.’’ Balg- dhist temple and laid out in the shape of danidze, who then reigned for more than abaev is the special assistant to the presi- a Central Asian yurt. The most promi- a decade.) dent of FIDE, and Ilyumzhinov’s emissary nent picture on the wall of the palace A thirteen-year-old girl in pigtails to Moscow on matters of chess. (There is shows Chuck Norris striding purpose- stood by the door, a welcoming smile also a separate diplomatic mission, since, fully through the construction site. The on her face. Her name was Katya, and as an autonomous republic, Kalmykia palace has an airy, open foyer—like she had been playing chess since she conducts its own foreign policy.) a Marriott Hotel. There were dozens was seven. We walked over to one of Balgabaev, who met Ilyumzhinov of chess tables, chessboards, and chess the tables. Books lay scattered on the when they were students at the Institute rooms. Beautifully carved, super-sized floor next to it. One was called “The for Foreign Relations, was travelling with figures sat on the squares—but there was Queen’s Pawn Game”; another analyzed a delegation from the Siberian region of nobody to move them. I walked through a series of famous matches, which the Khanty-Mansiysk, which produces about the museum, which has keepsakes from children are required to copy and learn five per cent of the world’s oil, more than many of history’s most famous matches, in school. Katya huddled with a girl who any other part of Russia. The group was including the 1996 bout between Gata looked like a younger sister. They gig- considering building a chess city, like the Kamsky and , which Il- gled, bent down, and picked up a chess one in Kalmykia. The delegation was led yumzhinov, after negotiations with Sad- monograph by David Bronstein, with by the son of the governor—who hap- dam Hussein, had scheduled for Bagh- an analysis of the 1953 Zurich Interna- pened to be the president of the Khanty- dad. The international response was so tional Chess Tournament. “Do you Mansiysk Chess Federation and also the harsh, however, that FIDE moved the know him?” Katya asked. I certainly region’s vice-minister of construction. match to Elista. (That didn’t turn Ilyum- knew of him. Bronstein, who is eighty- There were representatives from the de- zhinov away from dictators. He arranged two, is widely considered one of the partment of physical culture, the region’s to hold the 2004 World Champion- greatest of all chess players. She was chief architect, and a few women in seri- ship in Tripoli, at the urging of another studying Bronstein! ous sables. Balgabaev noticed that I was friend, Muammar Qaddafi.) Ilyumzhi- A rangy old man in a weather-beaten reading “The Defense,” Nabokov’s novel nov’s famous chess ukaz is on display in green vest walked over. He had spiky about a chess prodigy so obsessed by the the museum, as are souvenir pieces from gray hair, and wore pin-striped pants game that, as he ages, he loses connection Iran, India, Dubai, Libya, Iraq, Tunisia, and glasses with pink frames. He looked with everything else. “That is the worst Israel, Poland, and other countries. There like a refugee from the Mudd Club. He book about chess you can read,’’ Balga- are chess pieces made of ivory, teak, fake introduced himself as Dgilayev Dorzid- baev said. I was surprised, since many amber, and imitation alabaster; some are landgivich, the girl’s instructor, and then people think that it’s the best book about shaped like sheep, others like camels, and talked about chess, reminding me that it chess you can read. “It promotes the idea still others like wandering nomads. was Genghis Khan who brought the that chess is weird and that people who The real cost of Chess City is un- game to Russia. He also ran down the known; Kalmykia doesn’t adhere to open official list of virtues—reasoning, pa- principles of accounting. Ilyumzhinov tience, order—that chess is supposed to has said that he put forty million dollars instill in children. I asked him if that was of his own into it. “The city was built on why he played. He laughed and said no. investments,’’ he told me. “It’s all invest- “When Kalmyks lived in yurts, they ments. There is no budget money there. couldn’t read or write, but they could And, if investments are flowing in, I play chess,’’ he said. “When we were all think that’s very good—for the republic, sent off to Siberia, we had no chess pieces for the country, for the people.” I asked at

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TNY—2006_04_24—PAGE 120—133SC.—LIVE SPOT ART—R15047_D—PLEASE INSPECT AND REPORT ON QUALITY least two dozen people at shopping malls, I left for Elista. Mitrokhin is a leader of presidency this fall. Ilyumzhinov is run- Internet cafés, and restaurants if they felt Yabloko, Russia’s leading liberal party ning against a Dutch businessman named they had benefitted in any way from the and one of the few still willing to criticize Bessel Kok. Chess has always served as a construction of Chess City. Most refused the Kremlin, and he has openly called Ily- barometer of cultural supremacy in Rus- to answer; not one said yes. umzhinov a murderer. “He could sue us, sia, and the most talented people in Rus- In a republic where people are lucky to of course, but he doesn’t want all these sian chess think that Ilyumzhinov is a earn fifty dollars a month, the project has stories in public,” Mitrokhin went on. joke. “Even a dickhead would do a better generated more resentment than revenue. “He knows he can’t afford to offend the job than Ilyumzhinov,’’ Anatoly Karpov, Ilyumzhinov had hoped that the Olym- Kremlin. Anything else goes. It’s just like the former world champion, said recently, piad, in 1998, would put a spotlight on Latin America. In Russia today, the main when he was asked whom he supported. his domain. It did, but not exactly in the talent is to stay in power.” “The situation cannot become worse.’’ way that he had wanted. On June 8th, Running FIDE helps Ilyumzhinov do Garry Kasparov, who may be history’s just a few months before the participants that. It is the custodian of the game’s an- strongest player, has said that Ilyumzhi- were scheduled to arrive in Elista, the cient rules and the body that tabulates nov’s fast version of the game “will end body of a journalist, , was world rankings. Last year, Ilyumzhinov chess as we know it.” These days, Kas- found in a local pond; she had been replaced the final match in the two-year parov, who has retired and moved into stabbed repeatedly. Yudina was the edi- championship schedule with a more opposition politics, refuses even to discuss tor of Soviet Kalmykia Today, the only op- dramatic three-week tournament. He the subject. Last month, the British Grand position newspaper in the region. Ilyum- speeded up the game, discarding the tra- Master weighed in: “It is hard zhinov had banned the paper, so Yudina ditional format, in which players can to understate the importance of this elec- printed it in neighboring Volgograd and spend agonizingly silent hours mulling tion, as the future of chess is at stake. Ei- then distributed copies from the trunk of over their next move, and replaced it with ther FIDE stays a cowboy organization, her car. She had often accused the gov- “rapid chess,’’ in which a match lasts fifty mired in sleaze and shunned by corporate ernment of corruption, embezzlement, minutes. sponsors, or it becomes a modern, profes- and other crimes, and was investigat- “You need to attract sponsors,’’ he told sional sporting body committed to ex- ing the finances of Chess City when she me. “But sponsors and investors go where ploiting the game’s vast potential.” was killed. there is a good show, where there are a lot Ilyumzhinov doesn’t seem particularly Moscow officials, showing little of people watching. It’s interesting to concerned about the FIDE election. He is confidence in the local police, took over watch soccer, right? When people are far more consumed with international— the investigation, and soon arrested two running around for forty-five minutes, for and intergalactic—politics. During our men: both were former aides to Kirsan two halves, right? Or basketball. But with conversation in his office, he compared Ilyumzhinov, both confessed to the mur- chess, when you have people playing one George Bush to Genghis Khan, approv- der, and both were convicted. “You think game for two, three days—who’s going to ingly: “Bush is creating order, conquering that is so shocking?’’ Sergey Mitrokhin watch that on TV?’’ countries, territories, new oil wells, he had asked me in Moscow the day before There will be an election for the FIDE hands them over to rich oil companies, they’re rich and getting even richer— that’s O.K. Bush has an army, he has a Congress that doles out a supplementary hundred billion dollars, he has a Senate, he has a Court. Maybe soon there’s going to be a big American state. I haven’t ruled out the possibility that, in our lifetime, we will all be living in an American state. But, as long as there’s order and discipline, what’s the difference?’’ Saddam Hussein was his friend. Was Ilyumzhinov not angry about the war in Iraq? “You have American soldiers dying there,” he said. “Why are they dying? Are they establish- ing freedom? Human rights? Well, we’ll see.’’ He then returned to his conviction that the human experience might end soon anyway. “Tomorrow, aliens will fly down here and say, ‘You guys are misbe- having,’ and then they will take us away from the earth. They’ll say, ‘Why are you fighting down here? Why are you eating “And to your right you’ll see an extremely troubled young each other?’ And they’ll just put us in their woman who thinks she’s a tour guide.” ships and take us away.” ♦

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