David Rem­nick, the edi­tor of the New York­er and author of the Pulitzer Prize-win­ning book, Lenin’s Tomb, has recent­ly revis­it­ed the coun­try he knows so well. And what he has to show for it is an exten­sive piece on Gar­ry Kas­parov, arguably the best chess play­er in his­to­ry, and his dan­ger­ous move into the polit­i­cal are­na. In Vladimir Putin’s Rus­sia, nei­ther polit­i­cal dis­sent nor polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion goes over ter­ri­bly well. Since he took the reins of pow­er in 2000, more than a dozen jour­nal­ists crit­i­cal of Putin have turned up dead. So have some politi­cians. Then there was the dra­mat­ic case of Alexan­der Litvi­nenko, the for­mer KGB agent turned Putin crit­ic, who died of radi­a­tion poi­son­ing in Lon­don last fall. All of the cas­es remain “unre­solved.”

At great per­son­al and finan­cial cost, Kas­parov is try­ing to lay the foun­da­tion for a legit­i­mate polit­i­cal oppo­si­tion. Get­ting there, how­ev­er, won’t be easy. For one, Putin, hav­ing shored up Rus­si­a’s econ­o­my and nation­al psy­che, is immense­ly pop­u­lar, hav­ing upwards to an 80% pop­u­lar­i­ty rat­ing. Even the old dis­si­dent Alek­san­dr Solzhen­it­syn likes him. Then, there’s the fact that Putin has almost a tsarist, “L’État, c’est moi” kind of grip on pow­er. In a pod­cast­ed inter­view (iTunes — Feed — Web Site) that grew out of Rem­nick­’s arti­cle, Kas­parov talks about his expec­ta­tions for the next pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Rus­sia, when Putin is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly required to cede pres­i­den­tial pow­ers to anoth­er politi­cian. Here, he tells Rem­nick that Putin will con­tin­ue call­ing the shots because, as he puts it, Rus­si­a’s polit­i­cal elite is so feck­less that they would “vote to make Putin’s dog the prime min­is­ter.” This strikes the lis­ten­er as a strange but time­ly com­ment, espe­cial­ly in light of Putin’s announce­ment yes­ter­day that he may seek to become Rus­si­a’s prime min­is­ter, which would essen­tial­ly give him the chance to con­tin­ue exer­cis­ing pow­er from what one diplo­mat has called “a par­al­lel struc­ture.” That’s a move that should prove hard for Kas­parov or any oth­er Putin oppo­nent to par­ry.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

• The New York­er Mag­a­zine Cross­es the Dig­i­tal Divide
• The New York­er Mag­a­zine’s Famous Car­toons Now Avail­able on Pod­cast
• My Trip to Al Qae­da: A New York­er Video

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Social net­work­ing is doing some good. In a mat­ter of days, over 110,000 users have joined the Sup­port the Monks’ Protest in Bur­ma group on Face­book, with the larg­er goal of mobi­liz­ing sup­port for the Bud­dhist monks who have launched a peace­ful, “saf­fron” protest against the mil­i­tary regime that seized pow­er in 1962 and has held on ever since. As expect­ed, the gov­ern­ment is crack­ing down on the peace­ful pro­test­ers, break­ing into monas­ter­ies at night, tor­tur­ing monks and throw­ing them in jail. The Face­book Group offers a spe­cif­ic action plan, and it’s effec­tive­ly bring­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty to this human rights issue. Log into Face­book (or cre­ate an account), join the group here and sup­port democ­ra­cy in Bur­ma.

For a more gen­er­al account of the human rights abus­es in Bur­ma, click here; for dai­ly accounts of what’s cur­rent­ly hap­pen­ing in Bur­ma right now, click here.

Also please note: Inter­na­tion­al blog­gers are prepar­ing an action to sup­port the peace­ful rev­o­lu­tion in Bur­ma. On Octo­ber 4, blog­gers will refrain from post­ing to their blogs and just put up one Ban­ner under­lined with the words “Free Bur­ma!” Get more infor­ma­tion at www.free-burma.org, and if you’re a blog­ger par­tic­i­pate and help turn up the pres­sure.

The MacArthur Foun­da­tion recent­ly announced its lat­est crop of “genius grant” recip­i­ents. Each win­ner receives $500,000 “with no strings attached” and they can use the mon­ey to live, to fund research, or to buy a very mod­est con­do in the Bay Area. As usu­al, the recip­i­ents come from a wide range of fields and back­grounds. Review­ing the bios and mul­ti­me­dia clips of these incred­i­bly gift­ed peo­ple, I can’t help but be remind­ed of a great Tom Lehrer quote: “When Mozart was my age, he had been dead for two years.”

There was a lot of hand-wring­ing lead­ing up to Mah­moud Ahmadine­jad’s appear­ance at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty on Mon­day. But, as it turns out, free­dom of speech seem­ing­ly worked as it was intend­ed. Ahmadine­jad entered the mar­ket­place of ideas and quick­ly came out the wrong side of the exchange. (You can watch the full video of his appear­ance here or read the tran­script here.) The decid­ing fac­tor was­n’t so much the unbe­com­ing intro­duc­tion offered by Lee Bollinger, Columbi­a’s pres­i­dent. It was more just a mat­ter of giv­ing Ahmadine­jad enough rope to hang him­self (i.e., let­ting him doubt the exis­tence of the Holo­caust and also gays in Iran) and then sit­ting back and watch­ing it hap­pen.

Of course, the “mar­ket­place of ideas” metaphor only goes so far when you’re deal­ing with inter­na­tion­al pol­i­tics. Ahmadine­jad’s speech was­n’t about win­ning a com­pe­ti­tion at Colum­bia. It was most­ly about play­ing to an audi­ence at home, one for whom his rhetor­i­cal strate­gies score points. But then there are the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences to con­sid­er. Far bet­ter than a dis­cred­it­ed Bush admin­is­tra­tion ever could, Ahmadine­jad real­is­ti­cal­ly soft­ened up the Amer­i­can pub­lic to any mil­i­tary plans that the US gov­ern­ment has on the table. At the very least, this has to qual­i­fy for a Dar­win Award. I’ll save fur­ther analy­sis for the pun­dits and talk­ing heads since I know that pol­i­tics and polit­i­cal opin­ions only go so far on this blog.

Relat­ed Note:

Last week, KQED’s Forum here in San Fran­cis­co had a good con­ver­sa­tion about free speech in the uni­ver­si­ty. It touched on Ahmadine­jad’s appear­ance at Colum­bia, but also Don Rums­feld’s invi­ta­tion to Stan­ford’s Hoover’s Insti­tu­tion and Lar­ry Sum­mers can­celed invi­ta­tion to speak before the UC Board of Regents. Lis­ten here: iTunes — Feed — Mp3 — Web site.