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The unknown story of Garry Kasparov, the boy from Baku who became a world chess genius

2024-05-10 14:37:00, Blog CNA

The unknown story of Garry Kasparov, the boy from Baku who became a world chess

"Heydar Aljevi did not care that I was Armenian. What mattered was that I was born in Baku. Without his support, I would have been kicked out of the race."

World chess champion Garry Kasparov knows very well that his genius in front of the chessboard would never have been enough had he not been given a helping hand by the former president of the Soviet Republic of Azerbaijan and later of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

With the Kremlin backing its chess master, Anatoly Karpov, Aliev would start a war with Moscow to promote the talented boy from Azerbaijan, who only years later, after becoming a world chess icon, showed how a tour to Banja Luka, Yugoslavia in April 1979 had definitively changed his life.

The unknown story of Garry Kasparov, the boy from Baku who became a world chess

Gary Kasparov

He was 16 years old then, when the unknown master was allowed to participate in the tournament where 14 of the 16 participants were grandmasters. But Kasparov came out on top, undefeated, securing an overall victory with two rounds to go.

Banja Luka scored his first victory among the grandmasters, bringing him his first international accolade. His name resonated in the Soviet Union and after his return, Kasparov says: "It was a completely different situation. My mother and I visited Aljevi. He looked at the prospect. It didn't matter that I was Armenian, it mattered that I was born in Baku. They could have kicked me out of the race many times, or deprived me of opportunities to continue my career, but Aljevi's reception guaranteed me to have support from within. They built a base for me in Zagulba (coastal tourist area on the outskirts of Baku). It was the year 1980. On his order, we were also provided with an apartment."

It took many years afterwards for Kasparov to tell how he did it: “All of Alyev's help from 1979-1985 was like a protective shield. The Soviet system had no interest in replacing the Russian champion with a mixed blood (Armenian-Jewish) from Baku. Therefore, Aljev's help was important, because I was provided with training conditions and Heydar Aljev was my protector", recalls Kasparov about the former president of Azerbaijan, who not only supported him as a sportsman, but was also a father figure for the boy. talented. Gary lost his father when he was 7 years old.

The Soviet Union had a very strong support system for the education of the sport of chess, something that continued in the post-dissolution states.

The Baku chess school was and remains one of the leading ones worldwide with a number of champions of various tournaments. During the last European Women's Championship in Greece, the Azerbaijani chess player, Ulvija Fataliyeva, won the gold medal and 5 of the top 20 of the tournament were from Azerbaijan.

Thus, Geri's parents decided to enroll him in the Yuri Gagarin Palace of Pioneers in Baku.

In June 1972, despite not being tall enough to sit at the chess table, the 9-year-old Kasparov reached the finals of an adult competition earning the nickname "the child prodigy from Baku" by the East German newspaper Neues Deutschland. He became the youngest undisputed world champion in 1985, when he was just 22 years old, defeating then champion Anatoly Karpov to defend the title against his Russian rival three times: in 1986, 1987 and 1990. /CNA