Kirsan Ilyumzhinov

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Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov (Russian: Кирса́н Никола́евич Илюмжи́нов) (born April 5, 1962) is a Buddhist Kalmyk multi-millionaire businessman and politician. He is the President of the Republic of Kalmykia of the Russian Federation, and has been the President of FIDE (or the "World Chess Federation"), the world's preeminent international chess organization, since 1995.

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[edit] Early life

From a humble beginning - his parents, as with other Kalmyks - were deported by Joseph Stalin in World War II, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov grew up in Elista after the Kalmyks were allowed to return following Stalin's death. He won the Kalmykian national chess championship in 1976 at the age of 14.[1] From 1979-80 Ilyumzhinov was a mechanic-fitter at the Zvezda plant in Elista. After two years in military service for the Soviet Army, he returned to the plant as a mechanic for a year, and then studied at the Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations from 1983-89. From 1989-90 he was selling cars as manager of the Soviet-Japanese company "Liko-Raduga" in Moscow, and from 1990-93 he was President of SAN Corporation in Moscow. Ilyumzhinov acquired his wealth in the economic free-for-all which followed the collapse of the USSR. He now owns a private jet and six Rolls Royces; he has a black limousine in Moscow, but prefers his white one at home.[2]

[edit] Political career

On April 12, 1993, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov was elected as the first president of the Republic of Kalmykia, and has been running the state since then. Soon after his election, Ilyumzhinov introduced presidential rule, concentrating power in his own hands. He called early elections on October 15, 1995 and was re-elected unopposed - this time for a 7-year term. He won re-election in 2002.[3] According to the BBC,[4] Ilyumzhinov's election platform for the presidency of Kalmykia included promising voters $100 each, a promise of a mobile phone for every shepherd. He once campaigned under the slogan "a wealthy president is a safeguard against corruption." He also pledged to introduce what he called an "economic dictatorship" in the republic, as well as to promote chess in Kalmykia, in Russia and to the wider world. He speaks English relatively fluently.[5]

After his reelection in 1995, Ilyumzhinov reportedly told a journalist from the Russian daily Izvestia, "Irrespective of what I tell people, I give them instructions on a sub-conscious level, a code. I do the same thing when I communicate with Russian citizens from other regions. I am creating around the republic a kind of extra-sensory field and it helps us a lot in our projects."[6]

Ilyumzhinov has striven to become an "Asian values" authoritarian like his Singaporean, Korean, and Chinese role models (even though his republic is in the southern European portion of Russia). He has spent millions of dollars on chess and religion, building a Catholic church at the instigation of the Pope John Paul II.[7][8] He has also built a mosque, a synagogue, 22 Orthodox churches, and 30 Buddhist temples. Chess was made a compulsory subject in the first three years of elementary school - the only place in the world where this is the case; the region now has numerous champions. The Dalai Lama has visited Kirsan on many occasions, and has blessed a number of the temples in Elista. Ilyumzhinov denies persistent accusations of diverting the republic's resources for his own use (in fact he does not draw a salary as president), as well as of suppressing media freedom. In 2004 police dispersed a small group of demonstrators who accused him of human rights violations and demanded his resignation. When Australian journalist Eric Campbell interviewed people in Elista about Ilyumzhinov, he found that many were happy that he had managed to gain widespread attention for Kalmykia through chess, although one was slightly critical of the money invested in chess projects. [9]

On 8 June 1998, Larisa Yudina, a publisher of an opposition newspaper, was stabbed to death in Elista. Both people convicted in the murder were Kalmykian government aides, and one was an advisor to Ilyumzhinov. One other person was acquitted by offering evidence to help in the conviction. Ilyumzhinov denied any involvement with the murder - and indeed it was fully investigated by the local and the Russian authorities.[10][11]

[edit] Claim of being abducted by an Unidentified Flying Object

Two newspaper journalists relate - although this is not in his autobiography - that Ilyumzhinov maintains that in 1997 while he was on a business trip to Moscow he was forced onto a UFO. "They took me from my apartment and we went aboard their ship. We flew to some kind of star. They put a spacesuit on me, told me many things and showed me around. They wanted to demonstrate that UFOs do exist."[12] He predicts that, "The day will come when [the extra-terrestrials] land on our planet and say: 'You have behaved poorly. Why do you wage wars? Why do you destroy each other?.' Then they will pack us all into their spaceships and take us away from this place."[13]

[edit] FIDE career

Preceded by
Florencio Campomanes		 FIDE President
1995 – present		 Incumbent

From November 1995 to present Ilyumzhinov has been President of the World Chess Federation, investing a large amount of his private fortune into the game. He has been enthusiastic about attracting international tournaments to Kalmykia. His flamboyant plans to build an extravagant Chess City in the republic have led to protests by its impoverished citizens. The 1996 bout was scheduled between Gata Kamsky and Anatoly Karpov for Baghdad, after negotiations with Saddam Hussein. However the international response was so harsh, however, that FIDE moved the match to Elista.

In other developments during that time, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov encountered opposition from rivals in the European chess federations, the U.S., and Canada. Some of these managed to a special meeting in Utrecht, Netherlands, on April 27-28. The meeting called for equal treatment for Kamsky and Karpov, the restoration of the traditional FIDE cycle of qualifying contests leading to the world title match, and a shake-up in FIDE. To reinforce this reformation the Utrecht partners supported a candidate to challenge Ilyumzhinov at the FIDE Congress that took place alongside the World Chess Olympiad. The candidate was Jaime Sunye Neto, a grandmaster from Brazil. Ilyumzhinov was successful in mustering support from the Third World and from Russia, and he won the election 87-46. There was no restoration of the traditional qualifying cycle, and Ilyumzhinov's own preference for a $5 million knockout contest for the world's top 100 players was deferred from December 1996 until December 1997 with no definite sponsor announced.

In the summer of 1998, the controversial president of FIDE announced his possible candidacy for the Russian presidency. At the same time he was embroiled in turmoil over his plan to introduce an annual knockout FIDE world title system. The plan was resisted by Anatoly Karpov on the grounds that his contract with FIDE stipulated that the winner of the 1998 Karpov-Anand match would hold the title for two years. Karpov's successful advocacy of his rights led to the cancellation of a planned world title knockout series in Las Vegas, Nevada, late in the year. Since Karpov had an unsuccessful year apart from the Anand match, he was unable to resist the plan that he would have to enter this knockout, whenever it came to be organized, at a far earlier stage.

Ilyumzhinov was involved in further controversy when some groups made attempts to persuade the 140 member countries of FIDE to boycott the main team event of the year, the World Chess Olympiad, scheduled to start in late September 1998 in Elista, the capital of Kalmykia. The event started late due to the failure to complete the new venue in time, but it attracted 110 teams to the main event, a Swiss-system contest shortened to 13 rounds to allow for the delay.

[edit] Libyan tournament controversy

Ilyumzhinov arranged to hold the 2004 World Championship in Tripoli, Libya, at the urging of Muammar al-Gaddafi. The 2004 World Championship was held in Libya, and Boris Gulko who had previously not wanted to attend, being qualified to play. He accepted the invitation but President Qadafi’s son, who was also the President of the Libyan Organizing Committee, reportedly announced: "We did not and will not invite the Zionist enemies to this championship." FIDE clarified that this statement was never made and it was only a rumour.[14] Even so, Gulko, along with other Jewish players from Israel and the United States, declared that they will not participate. Gulko sent a strong letter[15] to Ilyumzhinov, saying "I implore you not to be the first president of FIDE to preside over the first world chess championship from which Jews are excluded. Our magnificent and noble game does not deserve such a disgrace." The tournament went on as scheduled, without Gulko.[16]

[edit] Re-election controversy

On June 2, 2006, Ilyumzhinov was reelected as FIDE President by a margin of 96-54 against his opponent Bessel Kok.[17] In an October 2006 Wall Street Journal article Gary Kasparov harshly criticized Ilyumzhinov FIDE's leadership stating: "(Ilyumzhinov) has created a vertical column of power that would be familiar to any observer of Russia today. He runs the chess world in the same authoritarian way he runs his impoverished republic. After a decade of such mistreatment, the only place that could be found to host the (chess world champion unification) match was his own capital. Some sponsors boycotted the organization, and tried to set up a rival one."[18] Nigel Short, the British grandmaster who supported Kirsan's rival for the leadership of FIDE, was critical of Ilyumzhinov's victory and said that "either FIDE stays a cowboy organisation mired in sleaze and shunned by corporate sponsors, or it becomes a modern, professional sporting body."[19] Anatoly Karpov, the former world champion, and onetime supporter of Kirsan, has now turned against him.[20]

[edit] Publications

[edit] Autobiography

Ilyumzhinov called his autobiography, published in 1998, The President’s Crown of Thorns. Chapter titles included "Without Me the People Are Incomplete," "I Become a Millionaire," and "It Only Takes Two Weeks to Have a Man Killed" - the latter being about the problems with rising crime in some parts of Russia.

[edit] Mentions in literature

Ilyumzhinov features prominently in three recent books:

  • Curse of Kirsan: Adventures in the Chess Underworld, by Sarah Hurst (ISBN 1-888690-15-1) (privately published by Russell Enterprises Inc.).
  • The Chess Artist, by J. C. Hallman (ISBN 0-312-27293-6).
  • Absurdistan: a bumpy ride through some of the world’s scariest, weirdest places, by Eric Campbell (ISBN 0732279801).

Ilyumzhinov also has a whole chapter devoted to him in The Lost Cosmonaut by Daniel Kalder. (ISBN 9780571227815) (Faber, 2006).

See also a brief biographical account on http://www.kalmykiaembassy.ru/html/egov.html.

[edit] References

  1. ^ The Dictator and His Hobby: Kalmykian Leader Makes Farce of Chess Championships - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
  2. ^ The Dictator and His Hobby: Kalmykian Leader Makes Farce of Chess Championships - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
  3. ^ [Kalmyk Embassy in Moscow, http://www.kalmykiaembassy.ru/html/egov.html.]
  4. ^ BBC NEWS | Europe | Game of kings takes centre stage
  5. ^ [1]
  6. ^ No cheque mate
  7. ^ The man who bought chess | Special reports | guardian.co.uk Sport
  8. ^ Letter from Russia: Planet Kirsan: The New Yorker
  9. ^ [Eric Campbell. Absurdistan.]
  10. ^ The man who bought chess | Special reports | guardian.co.uk Sport
  11. ^ Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Europe's only Buddhist republic, talks to Tom Parfitt | World news | The Guardian
  12. ^ Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Europe's only Buddhist republic, talks to Tom Parfitt | World news | The Guardian
  13. ^ The Dictator and His Hobby: Kalmykian Leader Makes Farce of Chess Championships - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News
  14. ^ ChessBase.com - Chess News - FIDE says Israelis can play in Libya
  15. ^ GrandMaster Square >>> An Open Letter from Boris Gulko to Kirsan Ilyumzhinov
  16. ^ The United States Chess Federation
  17. ^ FIDE Online. FIDE News: Kirsan Reelected by Wide Margin, 96 vs. 54
  18. ^ ChessBase.com - Chess News - Kasparov on Elista in the Wall Street Journal
  19. ^ Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of Europe's only Buddhist republic, talks to Tom Parfitt | World news | The Guardian
  20. ^ Letter from Russia: Planet Kirsan: The New Yorker

[edit] External links