Natan Sharansky and Technology. As a child, he was a chess prodigy. He performed in simultaneous and blindfold displays, usually against adults. At the age of 15, he won the championship in his native Donetsk. When incarcerated in solitary confinement, he claims to have maintained his sanity by playing chess against himself in his mind. Sharansky beat the world chess champion Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition in Israel in 1996. He took his current Hebrew name in 1986, when he was freed from Soviet incarceration as part of a prisoner exchange and received an Israeli passport with his new name. Natan
Sharansky District Sharansky District Sharansky District (; ) is an administrative and municipal district (raion), one of the fifty-four in the Republic of Bashkortostan, Russia. It is located in the west of the republic and borders with Bakalinsky District in the northwest and north, Chekmagushevsky District in the northeast, Buzdyaksky District in the southeast, Tuymazinsky District in the south, and with the Republic of Tatarstan in the west. The area of the district is . Its administrative center is the rural locality (a "selo") of Sharan. As of the 2010 Census, the total population of the district was 22,514, with the population