Editor's Note: With Russia hosting the 2018 World Cup, this is an op-ed on his native country from former world chess champion Garry Kasparov, chairman of the NY-based Human Rights Foundation and the author of 'Winter Is Coming: Why Vladimir Putin and the Enemies of the Free World Must Be Stopped'.

Sport can provoke human passion like nothing else, perhaps aside from true love. Every loss, every victory, can provoke heartbreak or exultation -- and that's only the fans. Sports fandom also has an unmatched ability to unite people across borders and boundaries of every kind. Young and old, rich and poor, all can be swept up together to celebrate excellence and competition that provides us an escape from the concerns of daily life.

Sports also creates bonds and memories that last a lifetime. I don't remember exactly how old I was when I learned to play chess, but I clearly remember the 1970 World Cup when I was 7. On our black-and-white TV in Baku, Azerbaijan, I watched Pele and the extraordinary Brazilian champions, the legendary semifinal between West Germany and Italy, and the controversial extra-time goal that eliminated the Soviet Union in the quarterfinals against Uruguay. (The ball was out!)

Forty-eight years later, the World Cup is taking place in Russia for the first time. I won't be there to enjoy it, however, having left my country in 2013. While the dictatorship of Vladimir Putin -- in my dictionary, the only accurate description when one man has been in total power unchallenged for 18 years -- is not hospitable for dissidents or democrats, it is very welcoming to grand sporting spectacles like the World Cup and the Olympic Games.

Just four years ago, Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi, a subtropical resort that required the most expensive Olympics in history (summer or winter) to slap together venues and residences that were falling apart even before the torch went out. Fifty-one billion dollars doesn't buy what it used to when so much of the money is funneled away. I joked at the time that most of the Sochi gold went to Switzerland, Panama, and the Cayman Islands even before the Games began.