Sunday, October 10, 2004

FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

This month's issue of Chess Life arrived in my mailbox yesterday, and I just had a chance to look at it. Very apropos of my last post about the Kasimdzhanov-Kasparov match, Larry Evans (p. 44) has this to say about the FIDE President:
FIDE President Kirsan Ilyumzhinov rules Kalmykia with an iron fist and is credibly accused of imprisoning and killing dissidents.
I guess trying to mooch some first-class accomodations from the World Championship match organizers is one of the nicer things he's done. This guy makes Florencio Campomanes look like a Boy Scout.

How does professional chess end up with people like this in charge?!

2 comments:

UnknownVariable said...

Did you know this guy is also president of the russian Republic of Kalmykia (pop 292k)? Hell, I didnt know that the RoK even esisted till I looked it up.

Apparently this guy does rule with an iron fist. He had the editor if an opposition newpaper liquidated.

According to Wiki, this guy really likes his soccer team which "he lavishes three times as much as on the republic's education budget."

ALD said...

Did you know this guy is also president of the russian Republic of Kalmykia (pop 292k)?

I did not know that this guy was president of Kalmykia until I saw it in Evans's column. In fact, when I read that, I thought "Kalmykia? Wth?" I had never even heard of that republic. I did some quick Googling and learned that it is one of the autonomous republics within the Russian Federation. I knew that there were such political subdivisions within Russia; I had just never heard of this one before last Sunday.