And the rest of the article read like everything you’ve read in the past 10-15 years about a journalist’s only trip to some corner of the Russian provinces – incessant ridiculing of the local leader and his quirky ways, etc. Whatever. Making fun of Kirsan is like shooting fish in a barrel, and at some point it got old – it almost made me feel bad for the guy. The New Yorker is the only weekly print magazine I read on a regular basis these days (the folks at the Economist haven’t been able to make the US mail work so far in 2 months of trying), and it’s usually a pleasure to read, so I was a bit disappointed.

OK, thanks for letting me get that somewhat off-topic rant off my chest. Nathan, I hope you’ve been well, it’s been a while.

“Smells like Uzbekistan. Russia – 28 federal subjects, Uzbekistan – 14 regional subjects.”

Otherwise, I agree with everything you say.

“Michael Specter reports from Kalmykia, one of the smallest of Russia’s twenty-one republics, on its enigmatic leader, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, who, Specter writes, “is not your typical post-Soviet millionaire Buddhist autocrat” (“Planet Kirsan,” p. 112). Ilyumzhinov is also the president of the Fédération Internationale des Échecs, or fide, the governing body of world chess, and he is attempting to change his country’s fortunes by making it a chess capital. Specter writes, “Ilyumzhinov functions a bit like the Wizard of Oz…. In Kalmykia … his picture dominates the airport arrivals hall, and billboards … show him on horseback or next to various people he regards as peers—Vladimir Putin, the Dalai Lama.” Ilyumzhinov says, “Everything here comes from my image…. I am lifting the republic up.” Specter writes, “Many people dispute the last part of that assertion, but nobody questions the first.” Ilyumzhinov was elected President in 1993, at the age of thirty-one. He immediately abolished the parliament, altered the constitution, and lengthened his term of office. Specter notes, “He finds little beauty in democracy and readily concedes that his republic is corrupt,” and he counts Saddam Hussein, Ghenghis Khan, and Bobby Fischer among his friends and heroes, along with the Dalai Lama. He says of Saddam, “He did hold it all together. In Iraq, you have the Sunnis, the Shiites, the Kurds. So many problems. But it was quiet then. You had to negotiate with him, but that’s politics. Of course, I’m a Buddhist. When there’s torture going on and blood flowing, I don’t like it.” Ilyumzhinov has sunk millions of his own money into the construction of Chess City—as he has done for thirty-eight Buddhist temples, twenty-two Orthodox churches, a Polish Catholic cathedral, and a mosque—and chess is a vital part of any Kalmyk child’s education. Yet, Specter writes, as much as seventy per cent of the labor force is unemployed, and few believe that chess will do much to change that. During one conversation with Specter, Ilyumzhinov compared George W. Bush to Genghis Khan, approvingly: “Bush is creating order, conquering countries, territories, new oil wells, he hands them over to rich oil companies, they’re rich and getting even richer—that’s O.K. Bush has an army, he has a Congress … he has a Senate, he has a Court. Maybe soon there’s going to be a big American state…. But, as long as there’s order and discipline, what’s the difference?’’ He then returned to his conviction that the human experience might end soon anyway. “Tomorrow, aliens will fly down here and say, ‘You guys are misbehaving,’ and then they will take us away from the earth.”