Yevgeny
Yevtushenko was born in Zima, Irkutsk, on 18th July, 1933. He was
the descendant of a family exiled to Siberia. Influenced by the work
of Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei
Yesenin, he began writing poetry and achieved fame with his long
narrative poem, Stantsiya Zima
(1956).
His poem,
Baby Yar (1961) dealt with the Nazi massacre of 34,000
Ukrainian Jews. Some critics saw this poem
as an attack on Soviet anti-Semitism.
In 1962
the official party newspaper published his poem Heirs
of Stalin. The poem describes the burial of Stalin but
at the end suggests that the problems are not yet over: "Grimly
clenching his embalmed fists, just pretending to be dead, he watched
from inside. He was scheming. Had merely dozed off. And I, appealing
to our government, petition them to double, and treble, the sentries
guarding the slab, and stop Stalin from ever rising again."
Books by
Yevtushenko include Precocious Autobiography
(1963), Bratsk Station (1966),
Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty
(1972) and Wild Berries (1984).
Available from Amazon Books
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