Yevtcshenko Says Russian People Cheer His Criticism of Anti-semitism

The Russian people in the Soviet Union–as distinct from Government and Communist Party officials–have shown overwhelming approval of the poem Babi Yar, by the rebel Soviet poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, thus taking their stand against government condoned anti-Semitism, it was indicated today in an article by Yevtushenko, published in the Saturday Evening Post.

According to Yevtushenko, he was “showered with letters” from all over the Soviet Union as soon as the poem appeared in the Literary Gazette, a Moscow daily, in September 1961. The day that journal appeared on the newsstands in Moscow, he wrote, “every copy was sold out in a matter of minutes. By that afternoon, I was getting batches of telegrams from strangers congratulating me.” When the letters started coming in, he declared” out of 20,000, only 30 or 40 were abusive, and they were all unsigned and in obviously disguised handwriting.”

In his article, entitled “A Precocious Autobiography,” Yevtushenko made it clear that his intent was to attack anti-Semitism when he wrote Babi Yar. He stated in his autobiography:

“I had long wanted to write a poem on anti-Semitism. But only after I had been in Kiev and had seen Babi Yar (site of a Nazi massacre of Jews) with my own eyes did the poetic form come to me. I wrote the poem in only a few hours after my return to Moscow. That evening I gave a talk on Cuba at the Polytechnic Institute. After my talk I read Babi Yar for the first time.

“Ordinarily I recite my poems from memory, but this time I was so agitate J that I had to have the text in front of me. When I finished there was dead silence, I stood fidgeting with the paper, afraid to look up. When I did I saw that the entire audience bad risen to their feet; then applause exploded and went on for 10 minutes. People leaped onto the stage and embraced me. My eyes were full of tears.”

Yevtushenko’s article in the current issue of the Saturday Evening Post did not mention the fact that the poet was subsequently forced by the Communist Party in the USSR to add some stanzas to Babi Yar, somewhat softening the anti-Semitic accusation against Russian Communists. Nor did the article note that the Soviet Union’s Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, criticized the poet for the manner in which he treated the anti-Semitic theme in Babi Yar. However, an introduction to the Yevtushenko autobiography in the Post, written by Allen W. Dulles, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency, noted that “despite the urgings of his fellow liberals to stand firm. Yevtushenko had already compromised and agreed to changes in his most famous poem, Babi Yar.”