Anti-Climacus

LINK: Interview in the Wall Street Journal with Garry Kasparov about his attempt to form a coalition to oppose Putin:

""The Other Russia" is the name of the unlikely left-right coalition conceived by Mr. Kasparov in 2005 and founded last year. It is composed of groups that would normally be at political odds--democrats like Mr. Kasparov, nationalists, socialists, even Bolsheviks. Mr. Kasparov predicts that the Communist Party will join up before the end of the year. "There's still a lot of distrust," he says, with more than a modicum of understatement. "It's a problem, but I don't think it's insurmountable. The big advantage of the Other Russia, and I think it's our biggest accomplishment, is that we've established the principle of compromise, which was not yet seen in Russian politics. It was always confrontation. It was a mentality of a civil war. We eliminated it."

A declaration at the time of the Other Russia's organizing conference last summer reads, "We are gathering together because we are united in our disagreement with the current political course of the Kremlin and united in our alarm for the present and future of our country." The group's sole objective is to find a candidate to run--and win--in the March 2008 presidential elections. Or as Mr. Kasparov puts it with characteristic bluntness: "When a liberal democracy is re-established, everybody goes his or her way.""