The President's Crown of Thorns

Autobiography of Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, President of the World Chess Federation ("FIDE") from 1995 to the Present. This is an amazing book because it describes the break-up of the Soviet Union and provides an autobiography of how a man realizing the huge changes in the process of taking place in Russian society was able to become a millionaire.

Most of the public commentary about this book has been concerned with the title to Chapter 8: "It only takes two weeks to have a man killed". However, this has been misrepresented out of context. The correct context is that in 1993, following the break-up on the Soviet Union, free elections were going to be held for the first time in Kalmykia. Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, a young businessman, decided to run on the platform that he was going to abolish the KGB. This made a lot of people unhappy, especially the KGB, and Kirsan received a threatening telephone call.

Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov was born on April 5, 1962. He is a Kalmyk multi-millionaire businessman and politician. He was the President of the Republic of Kalmykia in the Russian Federation from 1993 to 2010, and he has been the President of FIDE (or the "World Chess Federation"), the world's pre-eminent international chess organization, since 1995. He has also been in the forefront of promoting chess in schools in Russia and overseas. He is the founder of Novy Vzglyad Publishing House. In addition to his native Kalmyk, he is fluent in Russian, English, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian and Korean.