Russia's Kasparov Plots His Next Move

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov is too busy on the phone to answer the door of his mother’s apartment just off Moscow’s historic Old Arbat street. Instead, his elegantly attired mother, Klara, appears. Fifty minutes later she announces the interview’s end, and Kasparov rushes off to another meeting to plan a soft revolution against his nemesis, Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin.

Five years ago, Russia ignored Kasparov’s warnings against Putin’s creeping authoritarianism: The sparsely attended rallies his group organized were brutally broken up by police. In 2008 he and other reformers founded Solidarity, an umbrella group of liberal opposition movements. Kasparov pressed on, attacking the regime on his blog and website as well as on radio.