Soviet Author of ‘baby Yar’ Novel Criticized in Russia for Describing Nazi Collaborators

A writer in Sovetsky Voin, a journal issued by the Soviet army, received here today, has denounced Anatoly Kuznetsov for his documentary novel, “Babi Yar.” in which the author reported details of the execution by the Nazis of thousands of Jews, during World War II, in Babi Yar, a ravine in Kiev.

In the work, which has been widely acclaimed not only throughout the world but even in the USSR, the author had also reported that Russians, Ukrainians and other Soviet citizens in Kiev had collaborated with the Nazi regime during the occupation of the Ukrainian capital. Mr. Kuznetsov had been a boy of 12, living in Kiev, at the time the Babi Yar atrocities were committed.

Aleksei Yegorov, writing in Sovetsky Voin. gave Mr. Kuznetsov “credit” for avoiding the “sad error” committed by the famous Soviet poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko who, in his poem entitled “Babi Yar,” had suggested that the lack of a monument to the Jewish victims buried at Babi Yar reflected lingering anti-Semitism in the Soviet Union. However, the author was criticized in the army journal for reporting eyewitness accounts of collaboration by citizens of Kiev with the Nazis, and for not giving enough details about the Nazi atrocities against non-Jews.