YEVIUSHENKO UNDER PEAVY FIRE
PARIS, April 22 = For several weeks now, Yevgenii Yevtushenke has been under heavy fire from various spokesmen of the Soviet bureaueracy: The Soviet poet was first strongly criticised by Khrushchey at. a March 8 meeting of writers and artists. Three weeks later, the. literary newspaper. Literetumays Gazeta published. a speech by Yuri — Zhukov. A minister for cultural relations with foreign countries, Zhukov is considered to be a leading spokesman for bureaucratic conservativicm on the “cultural front." A few weeks ago he wrote a fulminating article against Michel Tatu, Moscew sorrespondent of the Paris daily Le Monde. The attack read like any of the old-time Stalinist exercises in abuse and vilification. Finally, a broadside against Yevtushenko was printed in the Communist youth daily Komsonolares Pravda, over the signatures of three authors, including one or. @ paper's deputy chief editors. . = a
While Khrushchey‘s attack against Yevtushenko mentioned other. reasons for the bureaucracy’s wrath against the young poet, both. Zhukov's speech and the sppeogolaseys Prayda article single out. Yevtushenko's Precocious Memoirs as the poet's main "corpus délicti." These memoirs were publishe five installments in the Paris weekly L'Lxpress and Yevtushenke evidently gave them to that magazine while @ was in Paris, (His spectacular reception by the Parisian Communist and progressive youth was reported in the February 27 Internationalist. )
It 1s true that the editors of ET epeees coe their own titles and subtitles to Yevtushenko'’s manuscript, and thot some of these subtitles may have been misleading. However, if one analyses the, contents of the attacks against Yevtushenko, and especially if-one reads the full text of the Memoirs, it becomes very clear why the bureaucracy is both angered and frightened -- not by what. L’ixpress. added, but by what Yevtushenko himself said. we
According to the piteraturners Gezete. version of Zhukov's speech, this spokesman of the bureaucracy declared that Yevtushenko's © .
Hemgirs “abound in untrue and misleading statements and assessments not on
y of the literary but of the social life of our country," while the editors of Komsomolekaya Pravds charge Yevtushenko with having made “sacrilegious statements” about the Revolution. But the quotations used as substantiation for these accusations indicate that Yevtushenko's "sacrilege" was not against the October Revolution at all, which Yevtushenko venerates and which he defended again and again during his public appearance in Paris. What he spoke against ‘was some of the worst crimes of the Stalinist regime. When writing about the forced collectivisation and rapid industrialisation of the thirties, Yevtushenko wrote: ‘
“Russian people preferred to work rather than analyze. With heroio stubbornness rarely found in history they built power station after power station, factory after factory. They worked with bitter~ ness so that the roar of mechines, tractors and bulldozers muffled the erles and sighs that tore through the barbed wire of the Siberian concentration camps." —
This is in fact a true and realistic picture of the Soviet people's attitude during the thirties! . 8
But the spokesmen of the bureaucracy have not publicly attacked the parts of Yevtushenko's Hemoirs which are most damaging to then. These.are the parts in which Yevtushenko reveals himself to be a left-wine critic of Stalinism, upholding the tradition of Bolshevisn and the October Revolution and even speaking ina nearly. conscious way for the young generation which wants to link up with that tradition.
At least three important passages of the Memoirs point in that direction:
(1) Yevtushenko explains in his Memoirs that his maternal grandfather was a leading partisan fighter the Urais during the Civil War who was later sent to the Military Asademy while Trotsky was still Commissar for Defense, eventually becoming a general of the Red Army. Yevtushenko's grandfather was arrested and killed in the Stalin purge of 1935. The evening before his arrest he went to see his grandohild and spent the night singing revolutionary songs te him. This moving scene, as described by Yevtushenko, becomes almost symbolic in character, the spirit of the October Revolution being transmitted by the old fighter to the young generation over the heads of the “lost generation” which matured under Stalin.
(2) Yevtushenke tells the story of Stalin's funeral where dozens of people were crushed to death as 1 result of the GPU blecking the atreets with big trucks. A great crowd pressed against this barrier, trampling down those who happened to be in front. The poet tells hew he suddenly felt cold fury at seeing this waste of human beings in consequence of blind police obedience to senseless discipline that required them not to move the trucks. At thet moment, Yevtushenko relates, he started to hate Stalin as the incarnation of ‘that inhumen attitude towards people.
(3) Yevtushen!o tells the story of how his famous poem Bab Yar, denouncing anti-Semitism got printed. He had broutsht it to a Titerary magozine, whose editor hesitated a long time. But a delezgation of the printshop workers came to tell him that everybody in. the shop had read the poem and enthusiastically approved it. Yewbtushenko describes the rousing ovation he got when he first read this poem in public. When the session was over. he continues, an old man with a cane came to see him. He was very moved. "I have been a memdexr of the Farty since 1905. I*ve spent fifteen years in a forced labor . camp, but this evening I mow that notwithstanding all. betrayals Bolshevism is alive again. .-. "” : .
Yevtushenke made some self-criticisma after the heavy attacks he was subjected to. Te admitted that it wes a mistake to publish his liemoirs in a foreign magazine. But he didn't recant on any of the essential points of the liemoirs. . ,