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
Vazif Meylanov years later, when, even without knowing it, I was living the last months in prison, sitting together with Meylanov in punishment cell, he also stood firm on his own, as at the beginning. The years of punishment cells and prisons fell behind, his health was destroyed, but KGB didn’t manage to break his spirit. In the political prisons there were a lot of resistant dissidents, but even on their background Meylanov stood out due to his enduring perseverance». — Natan Sharansky, "Fear no evil", 1991 Vazif Meylanov Vazif Sirazhutdinovich Meylanov (, 15 May 1940, Makhachkala, Dagestan ASSR, RSFSR, USSR –