1991 Keeper of the Flame Award: Garry Kasparov

In a major public address this evening, Garry Kasparov — the World Chess Champion and champion of democracy in the former Soviet Union — expressed grave concerns about the anti-democratic effects of continued U.S. and Western support for Mikhail Gorbachev and Moscow center. Noting that “[while] Soviet communism is dead … its advocates are still very powerful in the West,” Kasparov urged Washington and its allies to provide humanitarian aid and technical advice to the Soviet people — but no financial assistance to the Soviet central authorities.

In remarks offered on the occasion of his receiving the Center for Security Policy’s annual “Keeper of the Flame” award, Kasparov spoke of the decisive role in the destruction of Soviet communism played by President Harry Truman’s policy of containment and President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. Observing that the former “halted communism” while the latter “fatally wounded it,” he expressed his gratitude and that of many democrats in Russia for such decisive leadership.

Kasparov compared these examples of principled and constructive policies with the Western practice of recent years. Deals struck by Helmut Kohl and Francois Mitterand — designed to help the Soviet center remain a going concern — have represented “behind-the-scenes deals at the [Russian people’s] expense.” What is more, they amounted to “bet[ting] on the wrong horse,” an egregious political mistake for which they should be held fully accountable.

Kasparov also expressed grave reservations about the United States government’s current policy approach:

“Intentionally or not, the U.S. Secretary of State is playing a highly unseemly role in a dangerous international poker game — one in which the stakes are paid in human lives! It is not difficult to discover the basic rule of this political poker: ‘Stability’ and ‘order’ beat democracy and freedom. As Abe Rosenthal observed in one of his recent columns: ‘Dictatorships seem so much easier to deal with than messy democracies.'”

The Center’s ‘Keeper of the Flame’ Award was inaugurated in 1990 to bestow recognition on individuals who devote their public careers to the propagation of democracy and the respect for individual rights throughout the world. The Award is meant both to acknowledge the past contributions of its recipients and to remind others who share their commitment to freedom and economic opportunity of the work yet to be done. Its first recipient was former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger.