Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov
Кирса́н Никола́евич Илюмжи́нов
Kirsan
Ilyumzhinov is a Russian businessman and politician. He was the
President of the Republic of Kalmykia in the Russian Federation from
1993 to 2010, and was president of FIDE, the international governing
body for the game of chess, from 1995 to 2018. 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. He has been an honorary
president of the former Kalmykian FC Uralan.
Ilyumzhinov was
born in 1962 in Elista, Kalmykia. His parents were subject to the
Kalmyk deportations of 1943 when the entire Kalmyk population was
deported to Siberia – Kirsan's own family had an impeccable record
fighting the Germans (he was named after a great-uncle who served in
the Red Army during the Russian Civil War and committed suicide after
having been ordered to execute large numbers of captured Whites). He
grew up in Elista, after the Kalmyks were allowed to return following
Stalin's death. From a young age he became interested in chess, and he
won the Kalmykian national chess championship in 1976 at the age of 14.
From 1979 to 1980 Ilyumzhinov worked as a mechanic-fitter at the Zvezda
plant in Elista. After serving two years with the Soviet Army, he
returned to the plant as a mechanic for a year, and then studied at the
Moscow State Institute of Foreign Relations from 1983 to 1989. Between
1989 and 1990 he was a sales manager for the Soviet-Japanese automobile
company "Liko-Raduga" in Moscow, and from 1990 until 1993 he was
President of SAN Corporation in Moscow.
Ilyumzhinov has
spent millions of dollars on chess and supporting religion. He built a
Catholic church after a visit with Pope John Paul II. He says has also
built a mosque, a synagogue, 22 Orthodox churches, and 30 Buddhist
temples.
Ilyumzhinov has
drawn worldwide attention for claiming that in September 1997 he was
taken from his flat by aliens and travelled in their spaceship,
visiting another planet. He claims three of his staff searched his flat
during this, failing to find him, and could not explain how he then
reappeared in his bedroom an hour later. A Chess Notes feature article
by Edward Winter provides a comprehensive collection of Ilyumzhinov's
own words on his alleged encounters with aliens.
In addition to
his native Kalmyk and Russian, he is fluent in English, Japanese, and
speaks a little Korean, Mongolian and Chinese.
