The murder of a campaigning woman journalist has plunged the world of international chess into crisis with only weeks to go before more than a thousand international players gather in a dusty steppe region of southern Russia for the 1998 Chess Olympics, James Meek reports
A coalition of Russian civil rights organisations has appealed to national chess federations not to send teams to the Olympics, due to be held in September in Kalmykia, a semi-desert territory on the shores of the Caspian Sea ruled over by Mr Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, head of the main world chess body, FIDE.
The journalist, Larissa Yudina, editor of the only opposition newspaper in Kalmykia, was murdered on June 7th. Her paper had been consistently critical of Mr Ilyumzhinov, accusing him of corruption and incompetence on a massive scale.
In turn he persecuted her, forcing her to print the paper in another part of Russia. One of the men arrested and charged with her murder was a former Ilyumzhinov aide.
The appeal, signed by 14 of Russia's most prominent civil rights campaigners, said that the newly-built "Chess City" in the Kalmyk capital, Elista, where Olympic players and officials will stay during the tournament, had been built with Russian government money intended for social security and investment in the industry and agriculture of the desperately poor region.
"When you look out of the windows of Chess City to the nearby Amber Pond, you should know that several months ago, in this very pond, the mutilated body of the editor of Kalmykia's only opposition newspaper was found," the appeal says.
Mrs Yudina had often written about the crooked means used to channel money into chess, it went on. "The winners will receive prizes. But these prizes are paid for by illegal requisitions from the people of Kalymkia - every citizen of the region is obliged to invest money in the Olympics."
Mr Ilyumzhinov, first elected in 1993, held fresh elections in 1996 which were illegal under the Russian constitution. No action has been taken against him by the Kremlin, grateful for stability in the republic and Mr Ilyumzhinov's ability to deliver votes when necessary, and fearful of a new Chechnya among the historically Buddhist, ethnically non-Slavic Kalmyks.
The British Chess Federation is planning to send a men's and women's team, 12 people in all, to the Olympics, which begin on September 23rd.
Despite the attempt by Gary Kasparov, considered the world's best player, to set up a rival world chess body, FIDE is still the main international chess organisation.
World chess has been dogged by relations with unsavoury regimes throughout the 1990s. In 1992 Boris Spassky and Bobby Fischer fought a rerun of their infamous Icelandic encounter on an island off the coast of sanctions-bound Serbia, and in 1996 Mr Ilyumzhinov wanted his friend, President Saddam Hussein, to host a FIDE event in Iraq.