Early political activities Kasparov's grandfather was a staunch communist, but the young Kasparov gradually began to have doubts about the Soviet Union's political system at age 13 when he travelled abroad for the first time in 1976 to Paris for a chess tournament. In 1981, at age 18, he read
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's
The Gulag Archipelago, a copy of which he bought while abroad. Nevertheless, Kasparov joined the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) in 1984, and was elected to the Central Committee of
Komsomol in 1987. In 1990, he left the party. In May 1990, Kasparov took part in the creation of the
Democratic Party of Russia. He left the party on 28 April 1991, after its conference. Kasparov was also involved with the creation of the "Choice of Russia" bloc of parties in June 1993. He took part in the election campaign of
Boris Yeltsin in 1996. In 2001, he voiced his support for the Russian television channel
NTV. After his retirement from chess in 2005, Kasparov turned to politics and created the
United Civil Front, a social movement whose main goal is to "work to preserve
electoral democracy in Russia." He has vowed to "restore democracy" to Russia by restoring the
rule of law. A year later the United Civil Front became part of
The Other Russia. Kasparov was instrumental in setting up this coalition, which opposes Putin's government and the
United Russia party. The Other Russia was boycotted by the leaders of Russia's mainstream opposition parties,
Yabloko and
Union of Right Forces, due to its inclusion of both nationalist and radical groups. Kasparov has criticised these two parties as being secretly under the auspices of the
Kremlin. In April 2005, Kasparov was in Moscow at a promotional event when he was struck over the head with a chessboard he had just signed. Immediately before the attack, the assailant was reported to have said: "I admired you as a chess player, but you gave that up for politics." Kasparov has been the subject of a number of other episodes since, including police brutality and alleged harassment from the Russian secret service. in
Saint Petersburg on 9 June 2007 Kasparov helped organise the
Saint Petersburg Dissenters' March on 3 March 2007 and
The March of the Dissenters on 24 March 2007, both involving several thousand people rallying against Putin and Saint Petersburg Governor
Valentina Matviyenko. Kasparov led a pro-democracy demonstration in Moscow in April 2007. Soon after it started, however, over 9,000 police descended on the group and seized almost everyone. Kasparov, who was briefly arrested, was warned by the prosecution office on the eve of the march that anyone participating risked being detained. He was held for some ten hours and then fined and released. He was later summoned by the
FSB for violations of Russian anti-extremism laws. Speaking about Kasparov in 2007, former
KGB defector
Oleg Kalugin remarked: "I do not talk in details – people who knew them are all dead now because they were vocal, they were open. I am quiet. There is only one man who is vocal, and he may be in trouble: world chess champion Kasparov. He has been very outspoken in his attacks on Putin, and I believe that he is probably next on the list."
Presidential candidate (2008) On 30 September 2007, Kasparov entered the
Russian presidential race, receiving 379 of 498 votes at a congress held in Moscow by The Other Russia. In October 2007, Kasparov announced his intention of standing for the Russian presidency as the candidate of the "
Other Russia" coalition and vowed to fight for a "democratic and just Russia". Later that month he travelled to the United States, where he appeared on several popular television programmes. In November 2007, Kasparov and other protesters were detained by police at an Other Russia rally in Moscow, which drew 3,000 demonstrators to protest against election rigging. Following an attempt by about 100 protesters to march through police lines to the electoral commission, which had barred Other Russia candidates from parliamentary elections, arrests were made. The Russian authorities stated a rally had been approved but not any marches, resulting in several demonstrators being detained. Kasparov was subsequently charged with resisting arrest and organising an unauthorised protest, and was given a jail sentence of five days. Kasparov appealed the charges, citing that he had been following orders given by the police. He was released from jail on 29 November. Putin castigated Kasparov at the rally for his use of English when speaking rather than Russian. In December 2007, Kasparov announced that he had to withdraw his presidential candidacy due to inability to rent a meeting hall where at least 500 of his supporters could assemble. With the deadline expiring on that date, he explained it was impossible for him to run. Russian election laws required sufficient meeting hall space for assembling supporters. Kasparov's spokeswoman accused the government of using pressure to deter anyone from renting a hall for the gathering and said that the electoral commission had rejected a proposal that would have allowed for smaller gathering sizes rather than one large gathering at a meeting hall.
Opposition to Putin administration (2010–2013) Kasparov was among the 34 first signatories and a key organiser of the online anti-Putin campaign "
Putin Must Go", started on 10 March 2010. Within the text is a call to Russian law enforcement to ignore Putin's orders. By June 2011, there were 90,000 signatures. While the identity of the petition author remained anonymous, there was wide speculation that it was indeed Kasparov. On 31 January 2012, Kasparov hosted a meeting of opposition leaders planning a
mass march on 4 February 2012, the third major opposition rally held since the
disputed State Duma elections of December 2011. Among other opposition leaders attending were
Alexei Navalny and
Yevgeniya Chirikova. Kasparov was arrested and beaten outside a Moscow court on 17 August 2012 while attending sentencing in the case involving the all-female punk band
Pussy Riot. On 24 August, he was cleared of charges that he had taken part in an unauthorised protest against the conviction of three members of the band. Judge Yekaterina Veklich said there were "no grounds to believe the testimony of the police." Kasparov later thanked all the bloggers and reporters who provided video evidence that contradicted the testimony of the police. Kasparov wrote in February 2013 that "fascism has come to Russia. ...Project Putin, just like the old Project Hitler, is but the fruit of a conspiracy by the ruling elite. Fascist rule was never the result of the free will of the people. It was always the fruit of a conspiracy by the ruling elites"! Kasparov denied rumours in April 2013 that he was planning to leave Russia for good. "I found these rumors to be deeply saddening and, moreover, surprising", he wrote. "I was unable to respond immediately because I was in such a state of shock that such an incredibly inaccurate statement, the likes of which is constantly distributed by the Kremlin's propagandists, came this time from
Ilya Yashin, a fellow member of the Opposition Coordination Council (KSO) and my former colleague from the Solidarity movement." He also accused prominent Russian journalist
Vladimir Posner of failing to stand up to Putin and to earlier Russian and Soviet leaders. However, Kasparov subsequently fled Russia less than three months later. On 6 June 2013, he announced that he had left his homeland on account of fear of persecution for his political views. Further, at the 2013 Women in the World conference, Kasparov told
The Daily Beasts
Michael Moynihan that democracy no longer existed in what he called Russia's "dictatorship".
Opposition to Putin from exile (2013–) Kasparov said at a press conference in June 2013 that if he returned to Russia, he doubted he would be allowed to leave again, given Putin's ongoing crackdown on dissenters. "So for the time being", he said: "I refrain from returning to Russia." He explained shortly thereafter in an article for
The Daily Beast that this had not been intended as "a declaration of leaving my home country, permanently or otherwise", but merely an expression of "the dark reality of the situation in Russia today, where nearly half the members of the opposition's Coordinating Council are under criminal investigation on concocted charges." He noted that the Moscow prosecutor's office was "opening an investigation that would limit my ability to travel", making it impossible for him to fulfil "professional speaking engagements" and hindering his "work for the non-profit Kasparov Chess Foundation, which has centres in New York City, Brussels and Johannesburg, to promote chess in education." Kasparov has been outspoken regarding
Putin's antigay laws, describing them as "only the most recent encroachment on the freedom of speech and association of Russia's citizens", which the international community had largely ignored. Regarding Russia's hosting of the
2014 Winter Olympics, Kasparov explained in August 2013 that he had opposed Russia's bid from the outset, since it would "allow Vladimir Putin's cronies to embezzle hundreds of millions of dollars" and "lend prestige to Putin's authoritarian regime." Kasparov did not support the
proposed Sochi Olympics boycott—writing that it would "unfairly punish athletes"—but called for athletes and others to "transform Putin's self-congratulatory pet project into a spotlight that exposes his authoritarian rule" to the world. In September, Kasparov called upon politicians to refuse to attend the games and the public to pressure sponsors and the media, such that
Coca-Cola, for example, could put "a
rainbow flag on each Coca-Cola can" and
NBC could "do interviews with Russian gay activists or with Russian political activists." Kasparov also emphasised that although he was "still a Russian citizen", he had "good reason to be concerned about my ability to leave Russia if I returned to Moscow." Kasparov spoke out against the
2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and has stated that control of
Crimea should be returned to Ukraine after the overthrow of Putin without additional conditions. Kasparov's website was blocked by the Russian government censorship agency,
Roskomnadzor, at the behest of the public prosecutor, allegedly due to Kasparov's opinions on the annexation of Crimea. Kasparov's block was made in unison with several other notable Russian sites that were accused of inciting public outrage. Reportedly, several of the blocked sites received an affidavit noting their violations. However, Kasparov stated that his site had received no such notice of violations after its block. In 2015, a whole note on Kasparov was removed from a Russian language encyclopaedia of greatest Soviet players after an intervention from "senior leadership". In October 2015, Kasparov published a book titled
Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped. In the book, Kasparov likens Putin to
Adolf Hitler and explains the need for the West to oppose Putin sooner, rather than appeasing him and postponing the eventual confrontation. According to his publisher, "Kasparov wants this book out fast, in a way that has potential to influence the discussion during the
primary season." In 2018, he said that "anything is better than Putin because that eliminates the probability of a
nuclear war. Putin is insane." Following reports of Russian ransomware attacks against American agencies and companies in 2021, Kasparov stated that "the only language that Putin understands is power, and his power is his money", arguing that the United States should target the
bank accounts of
Russian oligarchs to force Russia to rein in its
criminals' cyberattacks. Kasparov spoke out against the
invasion of Ukraine by Russia on Twitter: "The only way this really ends is the fall of Putin's regime by collapse of Russian economy and defeat in Ukraine." He also believed that "pressure must be kept up" in terms of
sanctions and condemnations against Russia's actions and joined with other prominent Russian figures-in-exile to form the
Anti-War Committee of Russia. He said that Russia should be "thrown back into the Stone Age to make sure that the oil and gas industry and any other sensitive industries that are vital for survival of the regime cannot function without Western technological support." On 20 May 2022, Kasparov was designated as "foreign agent" by the
Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation. In May 2023, along with a large group of fellow exiles, Kasparov participated in the drafting of
Mikhail Khodorkovsky's "Declaration of Russia's Democratic Forces". On 4 August 2023, Kasparov participated in the radio show
Open to Debate. In a debate with Charles Kupchan, he argued for Ukrainian admission into NATO and against any form of appeasement towards Putin. In March 2024, Russia placed Kasparov on its list of "terrorists and extremists". On 24 April 2024 an arrest warrant was issued by a court in Russia's Komi region charging Kasparov with creating and leading a "terrorist" group. In 2026, Kasparov was selected to be a participant in the
PACE Platform for Dialogue with Russian Democratic Forces. The platform met in
Strasbourg for its first session in January 2026. ==United States==