Garry Kasparov talks about his life

Garry Kasparov: "The thing about jail is the sound when they lock the door"

By Rich Pelley

The chess grandmaster, 58, on growing up in Baku, Putin’s bloody dictatorship and losing to Deep Blue

My mother was Armenian, my father Jewish. My father died when I was seven and my mother never remarried. She lived the rest of her 50 years for me. It’s the greatest thing that happened to me – I had a mother who dedicated her entire life to her only son.

I grew up in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the deep south of the USSR. Everybody spoke Russian because it was an imperial city. At 10, I was sent to the Young Pioneer Palace in Baku to learn how to play chess. It didn’t take long for me to see the gap between reality and propaganda.

I was the first from my class to take a trip abroad, to France, when I was 13. Travelling was a big deal, even inside the Soviet Union. Travelling to other, capitalist countries was unheard of.

Whether you spell Garry with a G or an H in Russian, you still pronounce it with a strong G. I was named after President Truman – Harry – whom my father admired for taking a strong stand against communism. It was a rare name in Russia, until Harry Potter came along.

See the entire article at The Guardian...