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

Kirsan Ilyumzhinov 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

From April 1993 to the present Ilyumzhinov has been President, Head since October 2005, of the Republic of Kalmykia. Soon after his election, Ilyumzhinov introduced presidential rule, concentrating power in his own hands. He called early elections in 1995 and was re-elected unopposed - this time for a 7-year term. He won re-election in 2002. According to the BBC,[3] Ilyumzhinov's election platform for the presidency of Kalmykia included promising voters $100 each, a promise of a mobile phone for every shepherd, and the affirmation of his belief that he had previously been abducted by aliens. 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.

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."[4]

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.[5][6] 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 region now has numerous champions. He denies persistent accusations of diverting the republic's resources for his own use, as well as of human rights abuses and of suppressing media freedom. In 2004 police dispersed demonstrators who accused him of human rights violations and demanded his resignation.

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.[7][8]

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

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."[9] 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."[10]

[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. 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. Ilyumzhinov scheduled the 1996 bout between Gata Kamsky and Anatoly Karpov for Baghdad, after negotiations with Saddam Hussein. 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 the European chess federations, the U.S., and Canada. They were so incensed by what they considered irregularities by FIDE that they held 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, which won him the election 87-46. The financial position of FIDE was not good. 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 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 human rights 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 another friend, Muammar Qaddafi. American Grandmaster Boris Gulko was denied the ability to play chess at the world championship because of his Jewish faith, and he appealed to Ilyumzhinov. The 2004 World Championship was held in Libya, and Gulko had 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.[11] 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[12] 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 and the other Jewish players.[13]

[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.[14] 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. Serious sponsors rarely want anything to do with Mr. Ilyumzhinov and his organization."[15] Nigel Short, the British grandmaster who also opposed him, warned before the vote that "either FIDE stays a cowboy organisation mired in sleaze and shunned by corporate sponsors, or it becomes a modern, professional sporting body."[16] "Even a dickhead would do a better job than Ilyumzhinov," Anatoly Karpov, the former world champion, said, when he was asked whom he supported.[17]

[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."

[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)
  • 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).

[edit] References

  1. ^ http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,442158,00.html
  2. ^ http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,442158,00.html
  3. ^ http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5377372.stm
  4. ^ http://www.indianexpress.com/res/web/pIe/ie/daily/19980111/01150574.html
  5. ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1931027,00.html
  6. ^ http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/24/060424fa_fact4?currentPage=3
  7. ^ http://observer.guardian.co.uk/osm/story/0,,1931027,00.html
  8. ^ http://sport.guardian.co.uk/chess/story/0,,1877426,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=7
  9. ^ http://sport.guardian.co.uk/chess/story/0,,1877426,00.html
  10. ^ http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,442158,00.html
  11. ^ http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=1634
  12. ^ http://www.gmsquare.com/gulkoletter.html
  13. ^ http://beta.uschess.org/frontend/player_32_42.php
  14. ^ http://www.fide.com/news.asp?id=1022
  15. ^ http://www.chessbase.com/newsdetail.asp?newsid=3396
  16. ^ http://sport.guardian.co.uk/chess/story/0,,1877426,00.html#article_continue
  17. ^ http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/24/060424fa_fact4?currentPage=6

[edit] External links

de:Kirsan Nikolajewitsch Iljumschinow es:Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov fr:Kirsan Ilioumjinov ko:키르산 일륨지노프 it:Kirsan Nikolaevič Iljumžinov mk:Кирсан Иљyмжинов nl:Kirsan Iljoemzjinov ja:キルサン・イリュムジーノフ no:Kirsan Iljumzjinov pl:Kirsan Ilumżynow ru:Илюмжинов, Кирсан Николаевич fi:Kirsan Iljumžinov sv:Kirsan Iljumzjinov

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