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rapid change in Soviet life, and the two players
were made to represent two sides of these
changes. Kasparov's youth and his brash playing
style contrasted with the cautious style of Karpov
to produce a celebrated contest in which Karpov
was portrayed to represent the Soviet chess
establishment under challenge by a new genera-
tion of players like Kasparov. The 1984 match
went on for 16 months without a decision until
stopped by the president of the International
Chess Federation (FIDE). The following year in a
rematch, Kasparov defeated Karpov to become
world champion. Another battle for the world
championship in 1986 ended in a draw, with
Kasparov retaining his title under international
rules. In 1990 Kasparov defeated Karpov once
again in the last of the major matches between
the two Soviet champions. In the final years of
the Soviet Union, Kasparov participated in poli-
tics and was elected to the Congress of People's
Deputies on a reformist slate. The 1990s brought
many changes to the world of international
chess, with Kasparov always at the center. In
1993, Kasparov, still the world champion, and
the British challenger Nigel Short challenged the
dominance of FIDE by holding a championship
match under the sponsorship of the Professional
Chess Association. In turn, his old nemesis, Kar-
pov, won the FIDE championship held to fill in
the vacancy left by Kasparov. By the mid-1990s
both Kasparov and Karpov were claiming the title
of world champion. Most recently, Kasparov was
in the public eye in connection with his competi-
tion against Deep Blue, a chess computer created
by International Business Machines (IBM). In
1996, Kasparov went from a loss in the first
game—the first time a computer had defeated a
world championship under chess match condi-
tions—to win the entire match by a score of four
to two. In 1997, however, Kasparov was defeated
in a six-game series by an upgraded version of
Deep Blue that could process 200 million chess
positions per second. By 2000, the breach with
FIDE had been healed, but Kasparov lost the
world championship to a new challenger, his for-
mer pupil, Vladimir Kramnik. In early 2003, Kas-
parov announced plans to play another com-
puter, known as Deep Junior.
Katyn Forest Massacre
(1940- )
Katyn Forest, about 12 miles west of Smolensk,
was the site of a mass slaughter of Polish officers
by Soviet NKVD (secret police) troops, estimated
to have taken place in the spring of 1940. Knowl-
edge of the massacre first became public in April
1943, when Nazi German radio announced the
discovery of eight mass graves in the area with
the bodies of over 4,000 officers, bound and shot
in the back. The bodies were believed to be part
of a contingent of 15,000 Polish officers and sol-
diers captured and deported to Soviet prison
camps in late 1939, when Soviet troops marched
into eastern Poland as part of the
NAZI
-
SOVIET
PACT
. The other 11,000 bodies have never been
accounted for. Although the Soviets denied the
charge and blamed the Germans for the mas-
sacre, all signs pointed to NKVD responsibility.
When the Polish government-in-exile called for
an International Red Cross investigation, the
USSR broke diplomatic relations. Public discus-
sion of the massacre in Poland and the Soviet
Union was suppressed during the cold war, but
the issue simmered just under the surface, con-
tributing to the distrust and resentment Poles felt
toward the Soviet Union as a client Communist
state. Finally, in 1987, in the spirit of glasnost
promoted by Mikhail
GORBACHEV
, a joint Soviet-
Polish commission was established to investigate
the massacre. In 1990, the Soviet government
admitted that NKVD units were responsible for
the crime. A joint Polish-Russian collection of
documents, with a foreword by Alexander
YAKOVLEV
, was published in 1997.
Kazakov, Aleksei
(1891-1919)
fighter pilot
Widely considered Russia's most successful
fighter pilot during World War I, Kazakov was
born in the province of Kherson. He began his
career in the cavalry but in 1915 joined the
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