Natan Sharansky — Transcript

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1. 0:20in the meantime i met um victor
2. 0:21corchenoy and anatoly lin has spoken to
3. 0:24me a number of times about chess and
4. 0:28yes and he's in europe no he's in europe
5. 0:31now but they come to the united states i
6. 0:33was in las vegas and played in a
7. 0:35tournament and talked to richard
8. 0:36korchner and his wife was there
9. 0:38attending for a number of
10. 0:39um hours and i also ended tony lynn
11. 0:42um this was two three four years ago
12. 0:46and they mentioned that the
13. 0:49old style of chess soviet chess much
14. 0:53harder much different than the newer
15. 0:55style of chess and i was wondering if
16. 0:57you could expand on it because i'm sure
17. 0:59he had
18. 1:00exposure to bortis baskets mislove
19. 1:03michael baffin
20. 1:05my hero was michelle tyler
21. 1:08oh
22. 1:10riga really really yeah
23. 1:12but i have to say yeah so i was
24. 1:15different but
25. 1:18i can't say that i really belong to him
26. 1:20because
27. 1:21i
28. 1:24polished it while i was in prison i
29. 1:26don't know if no one yes
30. 1:28yes
31. 1:30chess was a great quality for me when i
32. 1:32was a young boy i
33. 1:34was dreaming to be a gold champion some
34. 1:35more to understood that probably i will
35. 1:37not become so it became a mathematician
36. 1:40he wanted to be the best mathematician
37. 1:42in the world at some moment in this pro
38. 1:44label
39. 1:45and he was looking away can be the best
40. 1:47to decide that they can be great
41. 1:48prisoners
42. 1:52and while i spent my life i spent a lot
43. 1:55of time it was political prison so yes
44. 1:58so
45. 1:59a lot of time in
46. 2:01solitary confinement not only in
47. 2:03solidarity environment and punishing
48. 2:04self-punching so you cannot have chance
49. 2:06you can't have a
50. 2:08newspaper it's dark
51. 2:10cold
52. 2:12so
53. 2:13and the idea was that looking
54. 2:15intellectually
55. 2:17weakening yourself
56. 2:19they tried to break you oh yeah
57. 2:37and
58. 2:38so what i was doing there i was playing
59. 2:40chess in my in my head
60. 2:42so you know i played
61. 2:44thousands of games i won all of them
62. 2:50next
63. 2:51game you are playing for the other side
64. 2:53improving the previous one so right
65. 2:55they want you to
66. 2:57to be weak and weak intellectually you
67. 3:00feel yourself strong and strong
68. 3:02so that was my great weapon
69. 3:05um so that's why i can't say that it's
70. 3:07really a soviet school of chess
71. 3:10but the result was that when i was
72. 3:12released and when
73. 3:15gary kasparov came
74. 3:19we just went over your game earlier we
75. 3:20went over your game five minutes ten
76. 3:23minutes before you arrived oh yeah the
77. 3:25the sack on f2 was brilliant
78. 3:28so but let's say we became a great
79. 3:31friend because kim then became listening
80. 3:34but
81. 3:34he cannot take easy
82. 3:37remorse
83. 3:38so he became very upset and he said to
84. 3:41him
85. 3:42harry was so upset after all you didn't
86. 3:58one of the reasons why i'm here is i'm
87. 3:59doing a graduate program on using chess
88. 4:02to rehabilitate major city schools in
89. 4:04the united states inner city yeah
90. 4:07and
91. 4:09when mg mentioned to me that you were
92. 4:11here i'd like to beg them i have to be
93. 4:13there to ask him um a number of
94. 4:15questions of whether or not you think
95. 4:17chess can be used
96. 4:19because i think chess was used to build
97. 4:21the soviet society
98. 4:23back then in that era can it be used in
99. 4:26major school districts inner city
100. 4:28schools where i came from i learned at
101. 4:30seven years old and i was beating adults
102. 4:32by the time i was nine
103. 4:33and i think it really helped me to be
104. 4:35where i'm at right now
105. 4:36thinking and making correct decisions do
106. 4:38you think chess would be or can you talk
107. 4:41about using chess as a method of
108. 4:44training
109. 4:45under privilege yes well
110. 4:49first of all yes and we need to have the
111. 4:52same experience and when
112. 4:54the performance of this former soviet
113. 4:56union
114. 4:57one million people came and from them by
115. 5:00the chess players so suddenly there was
116. 5:02abundance of chess players in israel
117. 5:05so what they could do
118. 5:06but some of them became trainer training
119. 5:09in the schools and sunday israelis
120. 5:11discovered that
121. 5:13it can help to take a lot of kids from
122. 5:15the streets
123. 5:17yeah
124. 5:18so they did that in israel
125. 5:20in the last 15 years yeah
126. 5:23and well i can't say that we had a huge
127. 5:25problem but still
128. 5:26no
129. 5:27uh chess as the game was not so popular
130. 5:31in israel and when you have a lot of
131. 5:33kids that you want to involve them
132. 5:48creating this
133. 5:50school
134. 6:00and all from my experience
135. 6:05i described it in my book fear no evil
136. 6:07about my prayers and memories so when i
137. 6:10was arrested and in the first days
138. 6:14and i was accused of high terrorism so
139. 6:16they say they
140. 6:17i can be sentenced to this and i really
141. 6:20felt
142. 6:21that i couldn't con i know i was
143. 6:23preparing myself for years that they'll
144. 6:25be arrested at the moment when they
145. 6:27arrested you and
146. 6:28they
147. 6:30accuse you in high treason
148. 6:32and you understand that that can be
149. 6:33there you
150. 6:35i feel i cannot concentrate i can't
151. 6:37force myself to
152. 6:39to think rationally
153. 6:41and then and uh
154. 6:44in some ways
155. 6:45read the rules
156. 6:46in the cell and they read that there
157. 6:49every cell has the right to have a
158. 6:51chessboard it's not punishing celebrity
159. 6:54so i made a longer say here the rules
160. 6:56are written that i have the right to
161. 6:57have chess
162. 6:59he said but you are
163. 7:01yourself
164. 7:02they are not used to this you don't have
165. 7:04money but there will be somebody else
166. 7:06then you
167. 7:07will give your children
168. 7:08i said it is not written on your rules
169. 7:11that
170. 7:12there must be two
171. 7:14i demand because it's written
172. 7:16so it's really just how broken works
173. 7:19they meant to consult
174. 7:21the rules are the rules okay we'll give
175. 7:22you
176. 7:23so i immediately started to believe
177. 7:26uh it was like in
178. 7:27poetic thinking i couldn't concentrate
179. 7:30but here's that so i think okay there is
180. 7:33one variant of french defense which
181. 7:35i was once playing yeah
182. 7:39many years ago and they
183. 7:43couldn't find the best move
184. 7:45no
185. 7:48that is very rare thing
186. 7:52usually it's believed to be very bad for
187. 7:54black but i like to play it so i started
188. 7:57analyzing and they analyze very quickly
189. 8:00but i can't stop
190. 8:02i go very quickly to the end okay
191. 8:05i have to do it again again and after
192. 8:08half an hour or whatever i start doing
193. 8:10it slower and slower because they think
194. 8:12i think and then in a couple of hours
195. 8:15they really became very calm and they
196. 8:16were stuck thinking logically and they
197. 8:19said okay now let's
198. 8:21let's concentrate what should be my
199. 8:25defense against kgb
200. 8:27and started thinking about the rules
201. 8:29that i
202. 8:30really
203. 8:31wrote the tree of aims and means
204. 8:34of
205. 8:35what that i should my aim should
206. 8:38be not to help them to to to
207. 8:42unmask them to learn their methods okay
208. 8:45how i'm doing it by giving these answers
209. 8:48and refusing to give these answers
210. 8:50and i really built logic of all my then
211. 8:53for a year and a half of interrogations
212. 8:55i was all the time thinking logically
213. 8:57but what helped me to come to this was
214. 8:59from this absolutely
215. 9:04furious state of mind
216. 9:07they just
217. 9:09took me back to the normal logic the
218. 9:12thing that i really understand when i
219. 9:13analyze and then i try to apply it
220. 9:16so no doubt that
221. 9:18chess can discipline your
222. 9:20or your way of thinking and uh planning
223. 9:24your life for sure so it's not exactly
224. 9:26the case so from the meta kids but the
225. 9:29idea is the same how to help people to
226. 9:32to
227. 9:34make their life rational to make
228. 9:36decisions rationally and uh
229. 9:38correct decisions okay excellent i guess
230. 9:40my question to that is like i agree that
231. 9:43there are a lot of positive influences
232. 9:45in chess
233. 9:46it can make you think rationally but it
234. 9:47also makes some people kind of crazy and
235. 9:49think irrationally like why do you think
236. 9:51that happened bobby fischer yeah paul
237. 9:53murphy
238. 9:55i'll tell you i can't tell my wife
239. 10:12it is
240. 10:14the life is complicated
241. 10:16and
242. 10:17there are some risks there are problems
243. 10:20and here
244. 10:22playing chess
245. 10:23you can enjoy
246. 10:25the feelings of competition the
247. 10:28victory
248. 10:29you can go through all the
249. 10:32different feelings
250. 10:34that we
251. 10:34that make your life full
252. 10:36simply by playing one chess game so it
253. 10:39is
254. 10:39so easy to turn it's kind of place of
255. 10:42exile you exile from
256. 10:45the all these
257. 10:47challenges that you cannot face so you
258. 10:50are afraid that you will not be able to
259. 10:52and you go to the
260. 10:53the board and you
261. 10:55it is as if it is alive so there is
262. 10:57always danger that it can become instead
263. 10:59of the light so
264. 11:01the uh the line between when it helps
265. 11:04you to live or whether it replaces the
266. 11:07light it's very thin like life the way
267. 11:10that's one of the reasons why i didn't
268. 11:11become professional just because i
269. 11:13really
270. 11:14i thought some more that
271. 11:17everything
272. 11:19physics history whatever interests me it
273. 11:22will all can disappear from my life i
274. 11:24can
275. 11:25in order to be successful professionally
276. 11:27really have to
277. 11:29decide that that is your life it's a
278. 11:31very hard balance yeah america and it's
279. 11:33so easy to to to simply to
280. 11:36go into the chairs and never come back
281. 11:39well officially of course it's extremely
282. 11:42in israel when you're a
283. 11:44deputy minister in 2001 to 2004 or five
284. 11:47did you play that yes
285. 11:49yes definitely your deputy prime
286. 11:51minister and also your minister of
287. 11:53trade and a few other
288. 11:56major important groups
289. 11:58today also
290. 12:00uh
291. 12:01i have very little time to
292. 12:03play but but do you use it to exercise
293. 12:05your mind yeah yeah so look now there is
294. 12:08an opportunity which is in texas then
295. 12:10you can always go to a computer and to
296. 12:12find somebody in the world yeah this
297. 12:14moment is free to play and you can see
298. 12:17that his level is more or less what you
299. 12:18want and
300. 12:20that's that's something very very
301. 12:22dangerous my wife hates computers
302. 12:25because she can lose her husband's son
303. 12:30that's really dangerous but
304. 12:32but well look i
305. 12:43you