Internationally the best-known poet of the post-Stalin generation of Russian poets. His early poems show the influence of Mayakovsky and loyalty to communism, but with such work as The Third Snow (1955) Yevtushenko became a spokesman for the young generation of Russians. Throughout the Khrushchev and the Brezhnev periods he travelled widely abroad, giving readings as a symbol of the new freedom in the Soviet Union. The 6-foot-3-inch Siberian poet received much attention in the United States.

"Why is that in folk songs of all nations and all ages people express the desire to become birds? Because birds know no borders. People are mortally envious of animals for their freedom, and probably that is why we try to deprive them of it by forcing borders on them - be they the barriers of zoo, the bars of a circus cage, or the transparent but still prison like walls of an aquarium. People insult their one God-given planet with impassable fences (which Robert Frost described with such a bitter irony) - with barbed wire, with iron or newspaper curtain. The division, the separation of the earth's surface, turns into mutual verbal and physical cannibalism. Our lack of knowledge of each other is like that of a blind sculptor, dangerous in his aggressive naiveté, who creates figures of so-called enemies."
(from Divided Twins, 1988)

Yevgeny Yevtushenko was born in Zima in Irkutsk, a fourth-generation descendant of Ukrainians exiled to Siberia. In 1944 he moved with his mother to Moscow, where he studied at the Gorky Institute of Literature from 1951 to 1954. In 1948 he accompanied his father on geological expeditions to Kazakhstan and to Altai in 1950. His first important narrative poem Zima Junction was published in 1956, but Yevtushenko found international fame with Babi Yar, in which he denounces the Nazis and at the same criticizes anti-Jewish feeling in his own country. It is one of a number of literary treatments that centres on a massacre of Jews in occupied Kiev on 29 September 1941. Composer Dimitri Shostakovich set the words to music as part of his Thirteenth Symphony. The poem was not published in Russia until 1984, although it was frequently recited in both Russia and abroad.

The Heirs of Stalin (1961), published presumably with Party approval in Pravda, was not republished until 1987. The poem contains a warning that Stalinism has long outlived its creator. Yevtushenko's demands for a greater artistic freedom, attacks on Stalinism and bureaucracy in the late 1950s and 60s made him a leader of Soviet youth. Surprisingly, he was allowed to travel widely in the West until 1963. He then published A Precocious Autobiography in English, and his privileges and favours were withdrawn, but restored two years later. In 1968 he denounced the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in the poem 'Russian Tanks in Prague'.

In 1972 Yevtushenko gained a huge success with his play Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty. Since the 1970s he has been active in many fields of culture, writing novels, engaging in acting, film directing, and photography. He has also remained politically outspoken and in 1974 supported Solzhenitsyn when the Nobel Prize Winner was arrested and exiled. He sent an immediate telegram of protest to Brezhnev, in which he said that while he disagreed with Solzhenitsyn on many points, the author's explosive study Gulag contained "terrible documented pages about the bloody crimes of the Stalinist past."

In the West Yevtushenko was often criticized for being too "adaptable," but KGB records have shown him to be absolutely firm in supporting Solzhenitsyn. He wrote to KGB chief Yuri Andropov, the future general secretary of the Communist Party: "There is only one way out of this situation, but nobody will dare choose it: recognize Solzhenitsyn, restore his membership in the Writers' Union, and afterward, just declare suddenly that Cancer Ward is to be published." Later he also suggested that Boris Pasternak's Nobel Prize for Literature, which the author rejected under pressure by the Soviet Government, should be posthumously restored. "He earned it with his entire life and work," Yevtushenko wrote in an article. His own speeches were constantly censored in magazines. In 1985, when Mikhail S. Gorbachev had just risen to power, Literaturnaya Gazeta, published by the Soviet Writers' Union, left out several major sections of Yevtushenko's remarks about Stalin's purges, the evils of collectivisation, and the privileges of the elite. Yevtushenko himself declined to criticize the editing.

Yevtushenko's first novel Wild Berries (1981) was attacked by critics but it became a huge success among readers. In the story, which fuses the past and future, history and fantasy, Yevtushenko deals with among others Stalinist collectivisation of agriculture and the elimination of the kulaks, land-owning peasants. The author was advises to stick to poetry. In 1989 Yevtushenko became a member of the Congress of People's Deputies and the following year he was appointed vice president of Russian PEN. In 1987 when Yevtushenko was appointed honorary member of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Russian-born poet Joseph Brodsky resigned in protest - he considered his colleague a Communist Party 'yes man.' Brodsky bitterly stated: "He throws stones only in directions that are officially sanctioned and approved." Yevtushenko's readers, however, defended the poet faithfully, stating, "you can't blame him that he survived." In 1993 Yevtushenko received a medal as 'Defender of Free Russia,' awarded to those who took part in resisting the hard-line Communist coup in August 1991.

After the accession of Gorbachev to power, Yevtushenko introduced to Soviet readers many poets repressed by Stalin in the journal Ogonek. He raised public awareness of the pollution of Lake Baikal, and when communism collapsed he supported the plan to erect a monument to the victims of Stalinist repression opposite the Lubianka, headquarters of the KGB. In Don't Die Before You're Dead (1995) Yevtushenko's gives his satirical account of the August 1991 coup, which eventually lifted Boris Yeltsin to power. In a scene the slain Grand Duchess Olga whispers her last poems into Yeltsin's ear. - Yevtushenko married four times: Bella Akhmadulina, Galina Semenova, Jan Butler, Maria Novika.

For further reading: Soviet Russian Literature: Writers and Problems by M. Slonim (1967); 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) - Translations: Yevtushenko's poems have been translated into English by such authors as James Dickey, Stanley Kunitz, John Updike, Richard Wilbur and Ted Hughes.

• RAZVEDCHIKI GRIADUSHCHEGO, 1952
• TRETI SNEG, 1955 - The Third Snow
• SHOSSE ENTUZIASTOV, 1956
• STANTSIYA ZIMA, 1956 - Zima Junction
• OBESHCHANIE, 1957
• LUK I LITRA, 1959
• STIKHI RAZNYKH LET, 1959
• CHETVERTAIA MESHCHANSKAIA, 1959
• IABLOKO, 1960
• BABY YAR, 1961
• translation: The Milky Way by D. Ulzytuev, 1961
• translation: A Network of Stars by T. Chiladze, 1961
• translation: Don't Fall to Your Knees! by G. Dzagorov, 1961
• POSLE STALINA, 1962
• VZMACH RUKI, 1962
• Selected Poems, 1962
• The Heirs of Stalin, 1962
• AUTOBIOGRAFIA, 1963 - A Precocious Autobiography
• Selected Poetry, 1963
• The Poetry of Yevgeny Yevtusenko, 1964
• BRATSKAYA GES, 1965 - The Bratsk Station
• KHOTIAT LI RUSSKIE VOINY? 1965
• Poems, 1966
• Yevtusenko Poems, 1966
• Yevtusenko's Reader, 1966
• KATER ZVIAZI, 1966
• KACHKA, 1966
• The Execution of Stepan Razin, op. 119, score by Dinitri Shostakovich, 1966
• Poems Chosen by the Author, 1966
• BRATSKAIA GES, 1968
• IDUT BELYE SNEGI, 1969
• KAZANSKII UNIVERSITET, 1971
• LA-SIBIRSKOI PORODY, 1971
• DOROKA NOMEN ODIN, 1972
• Stolen Apples, 1972, translated by James Dickey et al.
• IZBRANNYE PROIZVEDENIIA, 1975 (2 vols.)
• POIUSHCHAIA DAMBA, 1972
• POET V ROSSII - BOLSHE, CHEM POET, 1973
• INTIMNAIA LIRIKA, 1973
• OTTSOVSKII SLUKH, 1975
• V POLNYI ROST, 1977
• UTRENNYI NAROD, 1978
• The Face Behind the Face, 1979
• Ivan the Terrible and Ivan the Fool, 1979
• translation: Heavy Earth, 1979
• SVARKA VZRYVOM, 1980
• TALENT EST CHUDO NESLUCHAINOE, 1980
• TOCHKA OPORY, 1980
• ARDABIOLA, 1981 - transl.
• YAGODNYYE MESTA, 1981 - Wild Berries
• Invisible threads, 1981
• SOBRANIE SOCINENIY, 1982
• A Dove in Santiago, 1982
• MAMA I NEITRONAIIA BOMBA I DRUGIE POEMY, 1983
• VOINA - ETO ANTIKULTURA, 1983
• SOBRANIE SOCHINENII, 1983-84 (3 vols.)
• FUKU, 1985
• POCHTI NAPOSLEDOK, 1985 - Almost at the End
• POSLEDNIAIA POPYTKA, 1988
• POCHTI V POSLEDNII MIG, 1988
• NEZHNOST, 1988
• Divided Twins - Razdel'ennye bliznetsy, 1988
• POEMY O MIRE, 1989
• STIKHI, 1989
• GRAZHDANE, POSLUSHAITE MENIA... 1989
• LIUBIMAIA, SPI... 1989
• DETSKII SAD, 1989
• POMOZHEM SVOBODE, 1990
• POLITIKA PRIVILEGIIA VSEKH, 1990
• PROPAST - V DVA PSYZHKA?
• Fatal Half Measures, 1991
• The Collected Poems 1952-1990, 1991
• NE UMIRAI PREZHDE SMERTI, 1993 - Don't Die Before You're Dead
• MOE SAMOE-SAMOE, 1995
• PRE-MORNING. PREDUTRO, 1995