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tory came in 1969 when he won the World
Junior Championship. The following year after
several victories in major chess tournaments, he
obtained the title of international grandmaster.
Karpov became the subject of world attention in
1974 when he won the right to challenge the
then-world champion Bobby Fischer for the
title. When Fischer refused to play Karpov, the
International Chess Federation (FIDE) deposed
him and named Karpov the new world cham-
pion. At the peak of his game, Karpov proceeded
to win seven major tournaments in the next two
years, then to successfully defend his world title
twice against Viktor Korchnoi in 1978 and 1981.
The matches with Korchnoi were fiercely con-
tested and framed in a cold war context, as
Korchnoi was a Soviet defector, while Karpov, a
COMMUNIST PARTY
member, had long been an
emblem of the Soviet chess establishment. A sim-
ilar context framed Karpov's title defense in
1984-85, when he faced Garry
KASPAROV
, a Soviet
Jewish player at a time when the Soviet Union
was embarking on the reformist era of the
GOR
-
BACHEV
years. While the staid Karpov again sym-
bolized to many the old regime, the brash and
younger Kasparov represented to many the new
Soviet Union that was beginning to emerge after
the long
BREZHNEV
rule. The match was sur-
rounded by controversy, when Karpov was saved
from near defeat by the intervention of the FIDE
president, who arranged for a new championship
match later in 1985. In November 1985, Karpov
lost his title to Kasparov. Two attempts to regain
the crown from Kasparov in 1987 and 1990 were
unsuccessful. In 1993, Karpov failed to qualify as
the official challenger to Kasparov. He did con-
tinue to win important tournaments, with his
most impressive victory coming in 1994 at an
international tournament in Spain, which he
won without losing a single game.
Ballets Russes. After studying at the Imperial
Ballet School, she made her debut in 1902 and
became prima ballerina for the Mariinskii The-
ater in St. Petersburg. In 1909 she joined
DIAGHILEV
for the first season of the Ballets
Russes. Her most famous roles over the succeed-
ing years included
Le Spectre de la Rose,
which she
danced with
NIJINSKY
,
The Fire Bird,
and
Giselle.
After the Russian Revolution, she settled in Lon-
don in 1918, where she helped found the Royal
Academy of Dancing. In the following decades
Karsavina performed to great acclaim all over
the world, charming audiences with her
supreme artistry, her diversity, her sensitivity,
and her beauty. In 1930 she published an early
autobiography,
Theatre Street.
Later works such as
Ballet Technique
(1956) and
Classical Ballet: The
Flow of Movement
(1962) focused on dancing the-
ory and technique. Her older brother Lev
Platonovich Karsavin (1882-1952) was a histo-
rian and philosopher who in
Vostok, zapad i
russkaia idea
(
East, West and the Russian Idea
) (1922)
articulated the basic position of the “Eurasian”
school that emphasized the anti-European
nature of Russian culture. He was expelled from
Russia in 1922, settling in Germany then Lithua-
nia, which was annexed by the Soviet Union in
1940. Arrested in 1948, he died in a labor camp.
Kasparov, Garry Kimovich
(1963-
)
chess master
One of the most dazzling and controversial play-
ers in contemporary chess, Kasparov became the
youngest world chess champion in history in
1985 at the age of 22. Kasparov was born in
Baku, in the then Soviet republic of Azerbaijan.
He first caught the attention of the chess world in
1975, when at the age of 12 he won the Azerbai-
jan championship, followed by the world junior
championship four years later. In 1982, at the age
of 19, he became a candidate for the world
championship, and two years later he first won
the right to challenge the reigning world cham-
pion, Anatoli
KARPOV
, for the title. For nearly the
next decade Kasparov and Karpov's battles for
chess supremacy took place in the context of
Karsavina, Tamara Platonovna
(1885-1978)
ballerina
One of the leading ballerinas of her time,
Karsavina was a founding member of Diaghilev's
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