Russian Opposition Forms New Movement

Former chess champion Garry Kasparov and other prominent liberals launched a new anti-Kremlin movement in Russia on Saturday.

The organization, called Solidarity after the victorious Polish anti-communist movement, aims to unite the country's dysfunctional liberal forces and encourage a popular revolution similar to that seen in other ex-Soviet countries.

"We are fighting for victory because we have something to say to our people and something to offer them," Kasparov said at the founding congress Saturday in a Moscow-region hotel. "On this very day, we are in a position to take stock of past mistakes and act differently," he said. (...)

"One of the tasks of the Solidarity movement is to rehabilitate those basic principles that, unfortunately, for a significant or even overwhelming portion of our fellow citizens, have become associated with failure, misery or reduction of freedom," Kasparov said.