Garry Kasparov was born in Baku, Azerbaijan, in the USSR in 1963. Kasparov became the youngest world chess champion in history in 1985. In 2005, still ranked #1, he retired to form the Russian pro-democracy opposition against the rising dictatorship of Vladimir Putin. Facing imminent arrest during Putin’s crackdown, Kasparov moved from Moscow to New York City in 2013.