Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Encyclopedia
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko (born 18 July 1933) is a Soviet and Russian
poet. He is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.
in a small town called Zima Junction
on 18 July 1933 to a peasant family of mixed Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar heritage. "His great-grandfather, Joseph Yevtushenko, a suspected subversive, was exiled to Siberia after the 1881 assassination of Emperor Alexander II and died en route. Both of Yevtushenko's grandfathers were arrested during Stalin's purges as "enemies of the people" in 1937." His maternal grandfather, Ermolai Naumovich Yevtushenko, had been a Red Army officer during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. Yevtushenko's father, Aleksandr Rudolfovich Gangnus, was a geologist, as was his mother, Zinaida Ermolaevna Yevtushenko, who later became a singer. The boy accompanied his father on geological expeditions to Kazakhstan in 1948, and to Altai, Siberia, in 1950. Young Yevtushenko wrote his first verses and humorous songs "chastushki" while living in Zima, Siberia. "His parents were divorced when [he] was 7 and he was raised by his mother." "By age 10 he had cranked out his first poem. Six years later a sports journal was the first periodical to publish his poetry. At 19, he published his first book of poems, The Prospects of the Future."
After the Second World War, Yevtushenko moved to Moscow. From 1951–1954 he studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow
, from which he dropped out. He published his first poem in 1949 and his first book three years later. In 1952 he joined the Union of Soviet Writers after publication of his first collection of poetry. His early poem So mnoyu chto-to proiskhodit (Something is happening to me) became a very popular song, performed by actor-songwriter Aleksandr Dolsky. In 1955 Yevtushenko wrote a poem about the Soviet borders being an obstacle in his life. His first important publication was the poem Stantsiya Zima (Zima Junction 1956). In 1957, he was expelled from the Literary Institute for "individualism". He was banned from traveling, but gained wide popularity with the Russian public. His early work also drew praise from the likes of Boris Pasternak
, Carl Sandburg
and Robert Frost
.,
(Khrushchev declared a cultural "Thaw" that allowed some freedom of expression). In 1961 he wrote what would become perhaps his most famous poem, Babi Yar
, in which he denounced the Soviet
distortion of historical fact regarding the Nazi
massacre of the Jewish population of Kiev
in September 1941, as well as the antisemitism still widespread in the Soviet Union. The usual Soviet policy in relation to the Holocaust
in Russia was to describe it as atrocities against Soviet citizens, and to avoid mentioning that it was a genocide
specifically of the Jews. Therefore, Yevtushenko's work Babi Yar
was quite controversial and politically incorrect
, "for it spoke not only of the Nazi atrocities, but the Soviet government's own persecution of Jewish people." Following a centuries-old Russian tradition, Yevtushenko became a public poet. The poem achieved widespread circulation in the underground samizdat
press, and later was set to music, together with four other Yevtushenko poems, by Dmitri Shostakovich
in his Thirteenth Symphony
, subtitled Babi Yar. Publication of the poem in the state-controlled Soviet press was delayed until 1984. Reportedly, the poem "was published abroad and appeared in clandestine fashion in the Soviet Union." Alternatively, some note that the poem was published in a major newspaper "Literaturnaya Gazeta
" and achieved widespread circulation in numerous copies. Of Yevtushenko’s work, Shostakovich has said, “Morality is a sister of conscience. And perhaps God is with Yevtushenko when he speaks of conscience. Every morning, in place of prayers, I reread or repeat by memory two poems by Yevtushenko: ‘Career’ or ‘Boots.’”
In 1961, Yevtushenko also published Nasledniki Stalina (The Heirs of Stalin), in which he stated that although Stalin was dead, Stalinism
and its legacy still dominated the country; in the poem he also directly addressed the Soviet government, imploring them to make sure that Stalin would "never rise again". Published originally in Pravda
, the poem was not republished until a quarter of a century later, in the times of the comparatively liberal party leader Mikhail Gorbachev
.
Yevtushenko became one of the best known poets of the 1950s and 1960s in the Soviet Union. He was part of the 1960s generation, which included such writers as Vasili Aksyonov, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky
; as well as actors Andrei Mironov
, Aleksandr Zbruyev
, Natalya Fateyeva, and many others. During the time, Anna Akhmatova
, a number of whose family members suffered under the communist rule, criticised Yevtushenko's aesthetic ideals and his poetics. The late Russian poet Victor Krivulin quotes her saying that "Yevtushenko doesn't rise above an average newspaper satirist's level. Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky's works just don't do it for me, therefore neither of them exists for me as a poet."
Alternatively, Yevtushenko was much respected by others at the time both for his poetry and his political stance toward the Soviet government. "Dissident Pavel Litvinov
had said that '[Yevtushenko] expressed what my generation felt. Then we left him behind.'" In 1963 (until 1965), for example, Yevtushenko, already an internationally recognised littérateur, was banned from traveling outside the Soviet Union.
Generally, however, Yevtushenko was still the most extensively travelled Soviet poet, possessing an amazing capability to balance between moderate criticism of Soviet regime, which gained him popularity in the West, and, as noted by some, a strong Marxist-Leninist ideological stance, which allegedly proved his loyalty to Soviet authorities.
At that time the KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny
and the next KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov
reported to the Communist Politburo on the "Anti-Soviet activity of poet Yevtushenko." Nevertheless, some nicknamed Yevtushenko "Zhenya Gapon," comparing him to Father George Gapon
, a Russian priest who at the time of the Revolution of 1905 was both a leader of rebellious workers and a secret police agent.
, Kornei Chukovsky, Jean-Paul Sartre
and others and co-signed the letter of protest against the unfair trial of Joseph Brodsky
(a fellow poet influenced by Anna Akhmatova) as a result of the court case against him initiated by the Soviet authorities. He subsequently co-signed a letter against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
in 1968.
Nevertheless, "when, in 1987, Yevtushenko was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Brodsky himself led a flurry of protest, accusing Yevtushenko of duplicity and claiming that Yevtushenko's criticism of the Soviet Union was launched only in the directions approved by the Party
and that he criticised what was acceptable to the Kremlin, when it was acceptable to the Kremlin, while soaking up adulation and honours as a fearless voice of dissent." Further, of note is "Yevtushenko's protest of the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky
and Yuli Daniel
, an event now credited with inaugurating the modern dissident movement and readying the national pulse for perestroika. Both writers had toiled under pseudonyms and stood accused, in 1966, of "anti-Soviet activity" for the views espoused by their fictional characters. But Yevtushenko's actual position was that the writers were guilty, only punished too severely." "Yevtushenko was not among the authors of the "Letter of the 63" who protested [their convictions]."
Moreover, "when Yevtushenko was nominated for the poetry chair at Oxford in 1968, Amis, Bernard Levin
, and the Russian-Hungarian historian Tibor Szamuely
led the campaign against him, arguing that he had made life difficult for his fellow Soviet writers."
' ('Stalin's Funeral', 1990) deal with life in the Soviet Union.
. In 1991, he supported Boris Yeltsin
, as the latter defended the parliament of the Russian Federation during the hardline coup that sought to oust Gorbachev and reverse "perestroika"., Later, however, when Yeltsin sent tanks into restive Chechnya
, Yevtushenko reportedly "denounced his old ally and refused to accept an award from him."
In the post-Soviet era Yevtushenko actively discussed environmental issues, confronted Russian Nationalist writers from the alternative Union of the Writers of Russia, and campaigned for the preservation of the memory of victims of Stalin's Gulag
. In 1995 he published his huge anthology of contemporary Russian poetry entitled Verses of the Century. Reviewing this anthology, Russian poet Alexey Purin referred to it as "a huge book, a huge flop. Really, a collection of names rather than a collection of good poetry." Purin (himself a traditionalist) mentioned that Yevtushenko included only mainstream poetry written according to "good old canons", and totally ignored nearly all of the avant-garde
authors, notably Gennady Aigi, Vladimir Earle and Rea Nikonova. More recently, Yevtushenko has been criticised for refusing to speak out against Russian President Vladimir Putin
's liberties during his presidency. Yevtushenko responded by saying that "Putin, like Russia, is struggling to find his way in a time when ideals have been shattered and expedience reigns."
in Oklahoma
and at Queens College
of the City University of New York
. In the West he is best known for his criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy and appeals for getting rid of the legacy of Stalin
. He is now working on a three-volume collection of Russian poetry from the 11th–20th century, and plans a novel based on his time in Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis (he was, reportedly, good friends with Che
, Salvador Allende
and Pablo Neruda
). In October 2007 he was an artist-in-residence with the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park
, and recited his poem Babi Yar before a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich
's Symphony No. 13
, which sets five of his poems, by the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the men of the UM Choirs, with David Brundage as the bass soloist. The first performance of the two works on the same program that Shostakovich set to Yevtushenko texts, "Babi Yar" (Symphony 13) and "The Execution of Stepan Razin," with Yevtushenko present, took place at the University of Houston's Moore's School of Music in 1998, under the baton of Franz Anton Krager.
in the United States, near the University of Tulsa, where Yevtushenko himself spends half the year, lecturing on poetry and European cinema.
, Romania, in recognition of his body of work.
put it in a 1974 profile: 'The writers who had briefly flourished [under Khrushchev's thaw] went two different ways. Solzhenitsyn and his like into silenced opposition; Yevtushenko and his like, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in the hope of still influencing matters a little, into well-rewarded collaboration.'" Some argue that before the appearance of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
, Andrei Sakharov
and the dissident movement in Russia, Yevtushenko, through his poetry, was the first voice to speak out against Stalinism (although Boris Pasternak is often considered "to have helped give birth to the dissident movement with the publication of his 'Doctor Zhivago'"). Colp adds: "Sovietologist Stephen Cohen of Princeton University contends that Yevtushenko was among those Soviets who didn't become dissidents but in their own way tried to improve conditions and prepare the way for reform, [saying that] 'They exhibited a kind of civic courage that many Americans didn't recognize.'" Kevin O'Connor, in his Intellectuals and Apparatchiks, noted that Yevtushenko was "a popular liberal who never experienced the sort of intimidation that characterized regime's treatment of dissident writers Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Voinovich
(each of whom was forced to leave the USSR)."
Brodsky repeatedly criticised Yevtushenko for what he perceived as his "conformism", especially after the latter was made member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Commenting on this controversy in A Night in the Nabokov Hotel, an anthology of Russian poetry in English translation, Anatoly Kudryavitsky
wrote the following: "A few Russian poets enjoyed the virtual pop-star status, unthinkable if transposed to other parts of Europe. In reality, they were far from any sort of protest against Soviet totalitarianism and therefore could not be regarded as anything else but naughty children of the regime." Furthermore, some criticized Yevtushenko regarding Pasternak's widow, given that "when Pasternak's widow, Olga Ivinskaya
, was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of illegally dealing in foreign currency, Yevtushenko publicly maligned her [and added] that 'Doctor Zhivago' was not worth publishing in the Soviet Union."
Moreover, "the poet Irina Ratushinskaya
, upon her release from prison and arrival in the West, dismissed Yevtushenko as an official poet and the novellist Vasily Aksionov has also refused contact [with Yevtushenko]." Responding to the criticism, Yevtushenko reportedly said:
Yevtushenko further notes that "in several cases [he] personally rose to the defense of these writers, interceding privately for Ratushinskaya's release from a prison, defending Mr. Aksionov and others who were expelled from the Writers Union."
Critics differ on the stature of Yevtushenko in the literature world, with "most Western intellectuals and many Russian scholars extol[ing] him as the greatest writer of his generation, the voice of Soviet life." They "acknowledge that his speaking tours have won him converts among audiences impressed with his dramatic readings and charismatic personality. Tina Tupikina Glaessner (1967) refers to him as “one of the greatest poets of the modern age.” She states that “Bratsk Station” offers the greatest insight into Soviet life of any other work in modern Russian literature. Two decades later, in his 1988 article, Michael Pursglove echoes her sentiments referring to Stantisiya Zima as “one of the landmarks of Soviet literature."
Others, however, notably Russian critics like "Patricia Pollock Brodsky (1992) takes issue with the interpretation that Yevtushenko has been persecuted by the Russian government." "And most scathing, Tomas Venclova asserts, in his 1991 essay, that few in the Russian literary community “consider his work worthy of serious study." Furthermore, when in 1972, Yevtushekno criticized U.S.'s government, "Allen Tate
called him a 'ham actor, not a poet,' and others not unsympathetic to criticisms of Washington found his frequent condemnations of American 'imperialism,' and comparatively footling criticisms of the Russian police state, thoroughly repulsive."
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
poet. He is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.
Early life
Yevtushenko was born Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Gangnus (later he took his mother's last name, Yevtushenko) in the Irkutsk region of SiberiaSiberia
Siberia is an extensive region constituting almost all of Northern Asia. Comprising the central and eastern portion of the Russian Federation, it was part of the Soviet Union from its beginning, as its predecessor states, the Tsardom of Russia and the Russian Empire, conquered it during the 16th...
in a small town called Zima Junction
Zima (town)
Zima is a town in Irkutsk Oblast, Russia, situated on the intersection of the Trans-Siberian Railway with the Oka River. It serves as the administrative center of Ziminsky District, although it is not administratively a part of it. Population: -History:...
on 18 July 1933 to a peasant family of mixed Russian, Ukrainian and Tatar heritage. "His great-grandfather, Joseph Yevtushenko, a suspected subversive, was exiled to Siberia after the 1881 assassination of Emperor Alexander II and died en route. Both of Yevtushenko's grandfathers were arrested during Stalin's purges as "enemies of the people" in 1937." His maternal grandfather, Ermolai Naumovich Yevtushenko, had been a Red Army officer during the Russian Revolution and the Civil War. Yevtushenko's father, Aleksandr Rudolfovich Gangnus, was a geologist, as was his mother, Zinaida Ermolaevna Yevtushenko, who later became a singer. The boy accompanied his father on geological expeditions to Kazakhstan in 1948, and to Altai, Siberia, in 1950. Young Yevtushenko wrote his first verses and humorous songs "chastushki" while living in Zima, Siberia. "His parents were divorced when [he] was 7 and he was raised by his mother." "By age 10 he had cranked out his first poem. Six years later a sports journal was the first periodical to publish his poetry. At 19, he published his first book of poems, The Prospects of the Future."
After the Second World War, Yevtushenko moved to Moscow. From 1951–1954 he studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature in Moscow
Maxim Gorky Literature Institute
The Maxim Gorky Literature Institute is a higher education institute in Moscow. It is located at 25 Tver Bulvar in Central Moscow.It was founded in 1933 on the initiative of Maxim Gorky, and received its current name at Gorky's death in 1936....
, from which he dropped out. He published his first poem in 1949 and his first book three years later. In 1952 he joined the Union of Soviet Writers after publication of his first collection of poetry. His early poem So mnoyu chto-to proiskhodit (Something is happening to me) became a very popular song, performed by actor-songwriter Aleksandr Dolsky. In 1955 Yevtushenko wrote a poem about the Soviet borders being an obstacle in his life. His first important publication was the poem Stantsiya Zima (Zima Junction 1956). In 1957, he was expelled from the Literary Institute for "individualism". He was banned from traveling, but gained wide popularity with the Russian public. His early work also drew praise from the likes of Boris Pasternak
Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak was a Russian language poet, novelist, and literary translator. In his native Russia, Pasternak's anthology My Sister Life, is one of the most influential collections ever published in the Russian language...
, Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
and Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
.,
During the Khrushchev thaw
Yevtushenko was one of the authors politically active during the Khrushchev ThawKhrushchev Thaw
The Khrushchev Thaw refers to the period from the mid 1950s to the early 1960s, when repression and censorship in the Soviet Union were partially reversed and millions of Soviet political prisoners were released from Gulag labor camps, due to Nikita Khrushchev's policies of de-Stalinization and...
(Khrushchev declared a cultural "Thaw" that allowed some freedom of expression). In 1961 he wrote what would become perhaps his most famous poem, Babi Yar
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
, in which he denounced the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
distortion of historical fact regarding the Nazi
Nazism
Nazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
massacre of the Jewish population of Kiev
Kiev
Kiev or Kyiv is the capital and the largest city of Ukraine, located in the north central part of the country on the Dnieper River. The population as of the 2001 census was 2,611,300. However, higher numbers have been cited in the press....
in September 1941, as well as the antisemitism still widespread in the Soviet Union. The usual Soviet policy in relation to the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
in Russia was to describe it as atrocities against Soviet citizens, and to avoid mentioning that it was a genocide
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
specifically of the Jews. Therefore, Yevtushenko's work Babi Yar
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and a site of a series of massacres carried out by the Nazis during their campaign against the Soviet Union. The most notorious and the best documented of these massacres took place on September 29–30, 1941, wherein 33,771 Jews were killed in a...
was quite controversial and politically incorrect
Political correctness
Political correctness is a term which denotes language, ideas, policies, and behavior seen as seeking to minimize social and institutional offense in occupational, gender, racial, cultural, sexual orientation, certain other religions, beliefs or ideologies, disability, and age-related contexts,...
, "for it spoke not only of the Nazi atrocities, but the Soviet government's own persecution of Jewish people." Following a centuries-old Russian tradition, Yevtushenko became a public poet. The poem achieved widespread circulation in the underground samizdat
Samizdat
Samizdat was a key form of dissident activity across the Soviet bloc in which individuals reproduced censored publications by hand and passed the documents from reader to reader...
press, and later was set to music, together with four other Yevtushenko poems, by Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
in his Thirteenth Symphony
Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich)
The Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor by Dmitri Shostakovich was first performed in Moscow on 18 December, 1962 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the basses of the Republican State and Gnessin Institute Choirs, under Kirill Kondrashin . The soloist was Vitali Gromadsky...
, subtitled Babi Yar. Publication of the poem in the state-controlled Soviet press was delayed until 1984. Reportedly, the poem "was published abroad and appeared in clandestine fashion in the Soviet Union." Alternatively, some note that the poem was published in a major newspaper "Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta
Literaturnaya Gazeta is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and Soviet Union.- Overview :...
" and achieved widespread circulation in numerous copies. Of Yevtushenko’s work, Shostakovich has said, “Morality is a sister of conscience. And perhaps God is with Yevtushenko when he speaks of conscience. Every morning, in place of prayers, I reread or repeat by memory two poems by Yevtushenko: ‘Career’ or ‘Boots.’”
In 1961, Yevtushenko also published Nasledniki Stalina (The Heirs of Stalin), in which he stated that although Stalin was dead, Stalinism
Stalinism
Stalinism refers to the ideology that Joseph Stalin conceived and implemented in the Soviet Union, and is generally considered a branch of Marxist–Leninist ideology but considered by some historians to be a significant deviation from this philosophy...
and its legacy still dominated the country; in the poem he also directly addressed the Soviet government, imploring them to make sure that Stalin would "never rise again". Published originally in Pravda
Pravda
Pravda was a leading newspaper of the Soviet Union and an official organ of the Central Committee of the Communist Party between 1912 and 1991....
, the poem was not republished until a quarter of a century later, in the times of the comparatively liberal party leader Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
.
Yevtushenko became one of the best known poets of the 1950s and 1960s in the Soviet Union. He was part of the 1960s generation, which included such writers as Vasili Aksyonov, Andrei Voznesensky, Bella Akhmadulina, Robert Rozhdestvensky
Robert Rozhdestvensky
Robert Ivanovich Rozhdestvensky was a Soviet poet who in the broke with the Social Realism in 1950s–1960s and, along with such poets as Andrey Voznesensky, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and Bella Akhmadulina, pioneered a newer, fresher, and freer poetry in the Soviet Union.-Life:Robert Rozhdestvensky...
; as well as actors Andrei Mironov
Andrei Mironov
Andrei Alexandrovich Mironov was a Soviet theatre and film actor who played lead roles in some of the most popular Soviet films, such as The Diamond Arm, Beware of the Car and Twelve Chairs...
, Aleksandr Zbruyev
Aleksandr Zbruyev
Aleksandr Viktorovich Zbruyev is Soviet and Russian theatrical and cinema actor.-Selected filmography:*Big School-Break *Black Rose Is an Emblem of Sorrow, Red Rose Is an Emblem of Love...
, Natalya Fateyeva, and many others. During the time, Anna Akhmatova
Anna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
, a number of whose family members suffered under the communist rule, criticised Yevtushenko's aesthetic ideals and his poetics. The late Russian poet Victor Krivulin quotes her saying that "Yevtushenko doesn't rise above an average newspaper satirist's level. Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky's works just don't do it for me, therefore neither of them exists for me as a poet."
Alternatively, Yevtushenko was much respected by others at the time both for his poetry and his political stance toward the Soviet government. "Dissident Pavel Litvinov
Pavel Litvinov
Pavel Litvinov is a Russian physicist, writer, human rights activist and former Soviet-era dissident. He is the grandson of Maxim Litvinov, Joseph Stalin's foreign minister during the 1930s, and as such was born and raised amongst the Soviet elite...
had said that '[Yevtushenko] expressed what my generation felt. Then we left him behind.'" In 1963 (until 1965), for example, Yevtushenko, already an internationally recognised littérateur, was banned from traveling outside the Soviet Union.
Generally, however, Yevtushenko was still the most extensively travelled Soviet poet, possessing an amazing capability to balance between moderate criticism of Soviet regime, which gained him popularity in the West, and, as noted by some, a strong Marxist-Leninist ideological stance, which allegedly proved his loyalty to Soviet authorities.
At that time the KGB Chairman Vladimir Semichastny
Vladimir Semichastny
Vladimir Yefimovich Semichastny was the head of the KGB from November 1961 to April 1967....
and the next KGB Chairman Yuri Andropov
Yuri Andropov
Yuri Vladimirovich Andropov was a Soviet politician and the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 12 November 1982 until his death fifteen months later.-Early life:...
reported to the Communist Politburo on the "Anti-Soviet activity of poet Yevtushenko." Nevertheless, some nicknamed Yevtushenko "Zhenya Gapon," comparing him to Father George Gapon
George Gapon
Georgiy Apollonovich Gapon was a Russian Orthodox priest and a popular working class leader before the Russian Revolution of 1905.-Early life:...
, a Russian priest who at the time of the Revolution of 1905 was both a leader of rebellious workers and a secret police agent.
Controversy
In 1965, Yevtushenko joined Anna AkhmatovaAnna Akhmatova
Anna Andreyevna Gorenko , better known by the pen name Anna Akhmatova , was a Russian and Soviet modernist poet, one of the most acclaimed writers in the Russian canon.Harrington p11...
, Kornei Chukovsky, Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Sartre
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, particularly Marxism, and was one of the key figures in literary...
and others and co-signed the letter of protest against the unfair trial of Joseph Brodsky
Joseph Brodsky
Iosif Aleksandrovich Brodsky , was a Russian poet and essayist.In 1964, 23-year-old Brodsky was arrested and charged with the crime of "social parasitism" He was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1972 and settled in America with the help of W. H. Auden and other supporters...
(a fellow poet influenced by Anna Akhmatova) as a result of the court case against him initiated by the Soviet authorities. He subsequently co-signed a letter against the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia
On the night of 20–21 August 1968, the Soviet Union and her main satellite states in the Warsaw Pact – Bulgaria, the German Democratic Republic , Hungary and Poland – invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic in order to halt Alexander Dubček's Prague Spring political liberalization...
in 1968.
Nevertheless, "when, in 1987, Yevtushenko was made an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, Brodsky himself led a flurry of protest, accusing Yevtushenko of duplicity and claiming that Yevtushenko's criticism of the Soviet Union was launched only in the directions approved by the Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
and that he criticised what was acceptable to the Kremlin, when it was acceptable to the Kremlin, while soaking up adulation and honours as a fearless voice of dissent." Further, of note is "Yevtushenko's protest of the trial of Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Sinyavsky
Andrei Donatovich Sinyavsky was a Russian writer, dissident, political prisoner, emigrant, Professor of Sorbonne University, magazine founder and publisher...
and Yuli Daniel
Yuli Daniel
Yuli Markovich Daniel was a Soviet dissident writer, poet, translator and political prisoner.He frequently wrote under the pseudonyms Nikolay Arzhak and Yu. Petrov .-Early life and World War II:...
, an event now credited with inaugurating the modern dissident movement and readying the national pulse for perestroika. Both writers had toiled under pseudonyms and stood accused, in 1966, of "anti-Soviet activity" for the views espoused by their fictional characters. But Yevtushenko's actual position was that the writers were guilty, only punished too severely." "Yevtushenko was not among the authors of the "Letter of the 63" who protested [their convictions]."
Moreover, "when Yevtushenko was nominated for the poetry chair at Oxford in 1968, Amis, Bernard Levin
Bernard Levin
Henry Bernard Levin CBE was an English journalist, author and broadcaster, described by The Times as "the most famous journalist of his day". The son of a poor Jewish family in London, he won a scholarship to the independent school Christ's Hospital and went on to the London School of Economics,...
, and the Russian-Hungarian historian Tibor Szamuely
Tibor Szamuely (historian)
Tibor Szamuely was a Hungarian-born historian and polemicist. He left Hungary in 1963 and taught at the Kwame Nkrumah Institute of Economic and Political Sciences in Winneba, Ghana...
led the campaign against him, arguing that he had made life difficult for his fellow Soviet writers."
Films
He was filmed as himself during the 1950s as a performing poet-actor. Yevtushenko contributed lyrics to several Soviet films and contributed to the script of Soy Cuba (1964), a Soviet propaganda film. His acting career began with the leading role in Vzlyot (1979) by director Savva Kulish, where he played the leading role as Russian rocket scientist Tsiolkovsky. Yevtushenko also made two films as a writer/director. His film 'Detsky Sad' ('Kindergarten', 1983) and his last film, 'Pokhorony StalinaPokhorony Stalina
Pokhorony Stalina is a 1990 Soviet drama film written and directed by the famous poet, Yevgeni Yevtushenko. The film stars the British actress, Vanessa Redgrave.-Cast:*Vanessa Redgrave as English journalist*Aleksey Batalov...
' ('Stalin's Funeral', 1990) deal with life in the Soviet Union.
Post-Soviet period
In 1989 Yevtushenko was elected as a representative for Kharkov in the Soviet Parliament (Congress of Peoples Deputies), where he was a member of the pro-democratic group supporting Mikhail GorbachevMikhail Gorbachev
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev is a former Soviet statesman, having served as General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991, and as the last head of state of the USSR, having served from 1988 until its dissolution in 1991...
. In 1991, he supported Boris Yeltsin
Boris Yeltsin
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation, serving from 1991 to 1999.Originally a supporter of Mikhail Gorbachev, Yeltsin emerged under the perestroika reforms as one of Gorbachev's most powerful political opponents. On 29 May 1990 he was elected the chairman of...
, as the latter defended the parliament of the Russian Federation during the hardline coup that sought to oust Gorbachev and reverse "perestroika"., Later, however, when Yeltsin sent tanks into restive Chechnya
Chechnya
The Chechen Republic , commonly referred to as Chechnya , also spelled Chechnia or Chechenia, sometimes referred to as Ichkeria , is a federal subject of Russia . It is located in the southeastern part of Europe in the Northern Caucasus mountains. The capital of the republic is the city of Grozny...
, Yevtushenko reportedly "denounced his old ally and refused to accept an award from him."
In the post-Soviet era Yevtushenko actively discussed environmental issues, confronted Russian Nationalist writers from the alternative Union of the Writers of Russia, and campaigned for the preservation of the memory of victims of Stalin's Gulag
Gulag
The Gulag was the government agency that administered the main Soviet forced labor camp systems. While the camps housed a wide range of convicts, from petty criminals to political prisoners, large numbers were convicted by simplified procedures, such as NKVD troikas and other instruments of...
. In 1995 he published his huge anthology of contemporary Russian poetry entitled Verses of the Century. Reviewing this anthology, Russian poet Alexey Purin referred to it as "a huge book, a huge flop. Really, a collection of names rather than a collection of good poetry." Purin (himself a traditionalist) mentioned that Yevtushenko included only mainstream poetry written according to "good old canons", and totally ignored nearly all of the avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
authors, notably Gennady Aigi, Vladimir Earle and Rea Nikonova. More recently, Yevtushenko has been criticised for refusing to speak out against Russian President Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Putin
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...
's liberties during his presidency. Yevtushenko responded by saying that "Putin, like Russia, is struggling to find his way in a time when ideals have been shattered and expedience reigns."
Yevtushenko in the West
Yevtushenko, who now (October 2007) divides his time between Russia and the United States, teaches Russian and European poetry and the history of world cinema at the University of TulsaUniversity of Tulsa
The University of Tulsa is a private university awarding bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees located in Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA. It is currently ranked 75th among doctoral degree granting universities in the nation by US News and World Report and is listed as one of the "Best 366 Colleges" by...
in Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
and at Queens College
Queens College, City University of New York
Queens College, located in Flushing, Queens, New York City, is one of the senior colleges of the City University of New York. It is also the fifth oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning. The college's seventy seven acre campus is located in the heart of the...
of the City University of New York
City University of New York
The City University of New York is the public university system of New York City, with its administrative offices in Yorkville in Manhattan. It is the largest urban university in the United States, consisting of 23 institutions: 11 senior colleges, six community colleges, the William E...
. In the West he is best known for his criticism of the Soviet bureaucracy and appeals for getting rid of the legacy of Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
. He is now working on a three-volume collection of Russian poetry from the 11th–20th century, and plans a novel based on his time in Havana during the Cuban Missile Crisis (he was, reportedly, good friends with Che
Che
Che is a Spanish diminutive interjection commonly used in Argentina and Uruguay. A form of colloquial slang used in a vocative sense as "friend", and thus loosely corresponds to expressions such as "mate", "pal", "man", "bro", or "dude"; as used by various English speakers...
, Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende
Salvador Allende Gossens was a Chilean physician and politician who is generally considered the first democratically elected Marxist to become president of a country in Latin America....
and Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
). In October 2007 he was an artist-in-residence with the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Maryland, College Park
University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a top-ranked public research university located in the city of College Park in Prince George's County, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C...
, and recited his poem Babi Yar before a performance of Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Shostakovich
Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich was a Soviet Russian composer and one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century....
's Symphony No. 13
Symphony No. 13 (Shostakovich)
The Symphony No. 13 in B flat minor by Dmitri Shostakovich was first performed in Moscow on 18 December, 1962 by the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra and the basses of the Republican State and Gnessin Institute Choirs, under Kirill Kondrashin . The soloist was Vitali Gromadsky...
, which sets five of his poems, by the University of Maryland Symphony Orchestra and the men of the UM Choirs, with David Brundage as the bass soloist. The first performance of the two works on the same program that Shostakovich set to Yevtushenko texts, "Babi Yar" (Symphony 13) and "The Execution of Stepan Razin," with Yevtushenko present, took place at the University of Houston's Moore's School of Music in 1998, under the baton of Franz Anton Krager.
Personal life
Yevtushenko is known for his many alleged liaisons. Yevtushenko has been married four times: in 1954 he married Bella Akhmadulina, who published her first collection of lyrics in 1962. After divorce he married Galina Semenova. Yevtushenko's third wife was Jan Butler (married in 1978) (an English translator of his poetry with whom he visited Ireland several times), and fourth Maria Novikova (married in 1986). He has five children, all boys. His current wife teaches Russian at Edison Preparatory SchoolEdison Preparatory School
Thomas Edison Preparatory School is a public school located in midtown Tulsa, Oklahoma serving students from the sixth grade to the twelfth grade.-Overview:...
in the United States, near the University of Tulsa, where Yevtushenko himself spends half the year, lecturing on poetry and European cinema.
Honors
In 1962, Yevtushenko was featured on the cover of Time magazine. In 1993, Yevtushenko received a medal as 'Defender of Free Russia,' which was given to those who took part in resisting the hard-line Communist coup in August 1991. In July 2000 the Russian Academy of Sciences named a star in his honor. In 2001, his childhood home in Zima Junction, Siberia, was restored and opened as a permanent museum of poetry. Yevtushenko received in 1991 the American Liberties Medallion, the highest honor conferred by the American Jewish Committee. Laureate Of The International Botev Prize, 2006. In 2007, he was awarded the Ovid PrizeOvid Prize
The Ovid Prize, established in 2002, is a literary prize awarded annually to an author from any country, in recognition of a body of work. Past recipients include Orhan Pamuk, Andrei Codrescu, Amoz Oz, Jorge Semprún and António Lobo Antunes. It is named in honour of the Roman poet Ovid, who died in...
, Romania, in recognition of his body of work.
Criticism
It has been asserted that "Yevtushenko's politics have always been a complicated mixture of bravery, populism, and vulgar accommodation with dictatorship." Judith Colp of The Washington Times, for example, described Yevtushenko as "his country's most controversial modern poet, a man whose reputation is poised between courageous behind-the-scenes reformer and failed dissident." Indeed, "as the Sovietologist and literary critic Robert ConquestRobert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
put it in a 1974 profile: 'The writers who had briefly flourished [under Khrushchev's thaw] went two different ways. Solzhenitsyn and his like into silenced opposition; Yevtushenko and his like, sometimes reluctantly, sometimes in the hope of still influencing matters a little, into well-rewarded collaboration.'" Some argue that before the appearance of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Aleksandr Isayevich Solzhenitsyn was aRussian and Soviet novelist, dramatist, and historian. Through his often-suppressed writings, he helped to raise global awareness of the Gulag, the Soviet Union's forced labor camp system – particularly in The Gulag Archipelago and One Day in the Life of...
, Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Sakharov
Andrei Dmitrievich Sakharov was a Soviet nuclear physicist, dissident and human rights activist. He earned renown as the designer of the Soviet Union's Third Idea, a codename for Soviet development of thermonuclear weapons. Sakharov was an advocate of civil liberties and civil reforms in the...
and the dissident movement in Russia, Yevtushenko, through his poetry, was the first voice to speak out against Stalinism (although Boris Pasternak is often considered "to have helped give birth to the dissident movement with the publication of his 'Doctor Zhivago'"). Colp adds: "Sovietologist Stephen Cohen of Princeton University contends that Yevtushenko was among those Soviets who didn't become dissidents but in their own way tried to improve conditions and prepare the way for reform, [saying that] 'They exhibited a kind of civic courage that many Americans didn't recognize.'" Kevin O'Connor, in his Intellectuals and Apparatchiks, noted that Yevtushenko was "a popular liberal who never experienced the sort of intimidation that characterized regime's treatment of dissident writers Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Vladimir Voinovich
Vladimir Voinovich
Vladimir Nikolayevich Voinovich is a Russian writer and a dissident...
(each of whom was forced to leave the USSR)."
Brodsky repeatedly criticised Yevtushenko for what he perceived as his "conformism", especially after the latter was made member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Commenting on this controversy in A Night in the Nabokov Hotel, an anthology of Russian poetry in English translation, Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Anatoly Kudryavitsky
Anthony Kudryavitsky born in Moscow on 17 August 1954, better known by his pen name Anatoly Kudryavitsky , is a Russian-Irish novelist, poet and literary translator.-Biography:...
wrote the following: "A few Russian poets enjoyed the virtual pop-star status, unthinkable if transposed to other parts of Europe. In reality, they were far from any sort of protest against Soviet totalitarianism and therefore could not be regarded as anything else but naughty children of the regime." Furthermore, some criticized Yevtushenko regarding Pasternak's widow, given that "when Pasternak's widow, Olga Ivinskaya
Olga Ivinskaya
Olga Vsevolodovna Ivinskaya was the mistress of Boris Pasternak and the inspiration for the character of Lara in Pasternak's novel, Dr. Zhivago....
, was imprisoned on trumped-up charges of illegally dealing in foreign currency, Yevtushenko publicly maligned her [and added] that 'Doctor Zhivago' was not worth publishing in the Soviet Union."
Moreover, "the poet Irina Ratushinskaya
Irina Ratushinskaya
Irina Borisovna Ratushinskaya is a prominent Russian dissident, poet and writer.Irina was educated at Odessa University, the city of her birth, and was graduated with a Master's Degree in physics in 1976...
, upon her release from prison and arrival in the West, dismissed Yevtushenko as an official poet and the novellist Vasily Aksionov has also refused contact [with Yevtushenko]." Responding to the criticism, Yevtushenko reportedly said:
Who could sanction me to write Babi Yar, or my protests against the (1968 Soviet) invasion of Czechoslovakia? Only I criticised Khrushchev to his face; not even Solzhenitsyn did that. It is only the envy of people who couldn't stand against the propaganda machine, and they invented things about my generation, the artists of the '60s. Our generation was breaking the Iron Curtain. It was a generation crippled by history, and most of our dreams were doomed to be unfulfilled – but the fight for freedom was not in vain.
Yevtushenko further notes that "in several cases [he] personally rose to the defense of these writers, interceding privately for Ratushinskaya's release from a prison, defending Mr. Aksionov and others who were expelled from the Writers Union."
Critics differ on the stature of Yevtushenko in the literature world, with "most Western intellectuals and many Russian scholars extol[ing] him as the greatest writer of his generation, the voice of Soviet life." They "acknowledge that his speaking tours have won him converts among audiences impressed with his dramatic readings and charismatic personality. Tina Tupikina Glaessner (1967) refers to him as “one of the greatest poets of the modern age.” She states that “Bratsk Station” offers the greatest insight into Soviet life of any other work in modern Russian literature. Two decades later, in his 1988 article, Michael Pursglove echoes her sentiments referring to Stantisiya Zima as “one of the landmarks of Soviet literature."
Others, however, notably Russian critics like "Patricia Pollock Brodsky (1992) takes issue with the interpretation that Yevtushenko has been persecuted by the Russian government." "And most scathing, Tomas Venclova asserts, in his 1991 essay, that few in the Russian literary community “consider his work worthy of serious study." Furthermore, when in 1972, Yevtushekno criticized U.S.'s government, "Allen Tate
Allen Tate
John Orley Allen Tate was an American poet, essayist, social commentator, and Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1943 to 1944.-Life:...
called him a 'ham actor, not a poet,' and others not unsympathetic to criticisms of Washington found his frequent condemnations of American 'imperialism,' and comparatively footling criticisms of the Russian police state, thoroughly repulsive."
Further reading
- Henry Holt, "The Collected Poems 1952–1990."
- "Yevtushenko, Yevgeny: Introduction." Poetry Criticism. Ed. David Galens. Vol. 40. Gale Cengage, 2002. eNotes.com. 2006. 11 Jan 2009 <http://www.enotes.com/poetry-criticism/yevtushenko-yevgeny>
- Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems by M. Slonim (1967);
- 'The Politics of Poetry: The Sad Case of Yevgeny Yevtushenko' by Robert Conquest, in New York Times Magazine (30 September 1973);
- Soviet Russian Literature Since Stalin by Deming Brown (1978);
- Evgenii Evtushenko by E. Sidorov (1987);
- Soviet Literature in the 1980s by N.N. Shneidman (1989);
- Reference Guide to Russian Literature, ed. by Neil Cornwell (1998)
External links
- Biography Canadian Encyclopedia
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko online archive
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Collected Poems in English. Part 1
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Collected Poems in English. Part 2
- Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Zima Station Poem
- Chingiz Aitmatov on Yevgeny Yevtushenko
- Andrey Voznesensky's article on Yevgeny Yevtushenko
- Audio/Video recordings of a Poetry Reading by Yevgeny Yevtushenko at the University of Chicago