Lindsborg ? School bands here are practicing the Russian national anthem. Detectives are conducting security checks. And preparations are being made for a parade.

All of it is for former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who will visit this predominantly Swedish community of 3,300 this weekend to launch a worldwide campaign of promoting peace through chess.

“Lindsborg has grown in reputation and has a bigger chess presence than many other larger cities,” said Wes Fisk, one of the organizers of the weekend events.

The town is home to a Karpov Chess School – named for seven-time world chess champion Anatoly Karpov – and has hosted international tournaments. This year, Karpov invited his friend, Gorbachev, to visit Lindsborg to start the Chess for Peace campaign.

Chess for Peace will include a series of Internet matches throughout the world. The winners will be invited to Lindsborg in June for a weeklong festival.

To honor Gorbachev – who will visit Manhattan on Friday to lecture at Kansas State University – Lindsborg will have a chess parade, a scholastic chess tournament and a match between Karpov and former world chess champion Susan Polgar. There will also be a formal dinner and keynote address by Gorbachev at Presser Hall on the Bethany College campus.

Kathy Richardson, owner of Small World Gallery in Lindsborg, said people are beginning to ask themselves what question they’ll ask Gorbachev if given the chance.

Richardson wants to ask: “Can you remember the exact moment when you knew you had to be the leader of the major change in your country? Was there a moment, meeting, evening, one place that made you think, ‘Yeah, we’ve got to do this’?”

Gorbachev is the most prominent dignitary to come to Lindsborg since 1976, when King Carl XVI Gustaf, of Sweden, visited.

Becky Anderson, owner of the Swedish Country Inn and The Old Grind, a local coffee shop, said everyone in the community is preparing for the visit.

“This is one of those once-in-a-lifetime type of things,” Anderson said. “I am so proud of this little town. We had the guts to invite someone like this and put on a show. And to do it, it takes the whole town.”