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AKHMADULINA
(his first wife) and Andrei Vozne-
sensky, who captured the imagination of a
poetry-loving public impatient with the strait-
jacket of Stalinist cultural policies. An interna-
tional literary celebrity since the early 1960s,
Yevtushenko was born in the Siberian town of
Zima near the city of Irkutsk, where his Ukrain-
ian ancestors had been exiled in the late 19th
century. In 1944 he moved to Moscow with his
mother, and in 1951 he enrolled in the Moscow
Literary Institute, from which he graduated three
years later. His first collection of poems,
Prospec-
tors of the Future
, was published in 1952. In his
first major narrative poem, “Zima Junction”
(1956), Yevtushenko evoked the setting of his
Siberian childhood in a clear, direct language
that, after decades of stifling socialist realism,
reminded audiences of early Soviet poets such as
Vladimir
MAYAKOVSKY
and Sergei
ESENIN
. In sem-
inal poems such as “Babi Yar” (1961) and “The
Heirs of Stalin” (1963), Yevtushenko spoke out
against highly politically sensitive topics such as
Soviet
ANIT
-
SEMITISM
and the persistence of Stal-
inism, at a time when the Soviet political climate
was beginning to change from the relative cul-
tural liberalism of the middle
KHRUSHCHEV
period.
The former poem, in particular, an attack on
Soviet anti-Semitism as part of a tribute to the
victims of the Nazi massacre of Ukrainian Jews
at
BABI YAR
near Kiev, had great resonance in
Soviet culture, inspiring, among others, Dmitrii
SHOSTAKOVICH
's Thirteenth Symphony. Politi-
cally charged poems, coupled with growing
celebrity status in the West and the 1963 publi-
cation in Paris of
Precocious Autobiography,
con-
tributed to greater official condemnation of his
work, but by 1966 Yevtushenko had regained the
favor of the literary establishment with the pub-
lication of
Bratsk Station
, a cycle of poems that
presented Soviet industrial initiatives in Siberia
in a favorable light. Criticized in some quarters
for having more flash than substance, he never-
theless took courageous stands during the
BREZH
-
NEV
years against the 1968
WARSAW PACT
invasion
of Czechoslovakia and the persecution of dissi-
dents such as Andrei
SAKHAROV
. Yevtushenko
successfully negotiated the literary currents of
the remainder of the Brezhnev years, emerging
as a strong liberal voice in support of Mikhail
GORBACHEV
's reform policies in the late 1980s. He
served in the Congress of People's Deputies from
1989 to 1991. During the
AUGUST COUP
of 1991
he showed his support of fledgling Russian
democracy when he recited poetry to the crowds
standing outside the Russian White House in
defiance of the attempts to restore the old Soviet
order. That same year, he published a novel,
Don't Die Before You Die
, depicting events in Soviet
history from the end of World War II. In addition
to the poems he is best known for, Yevtushenko
has written novels, political essays, and popular
songs and has directed two films. In the past
decade Yevtushenko has divided his time
between Russia and the United States, where he
is a distinguished professor of literature at Queens
College in New York City. He is a member of the
European Academy of Arts and Sciences and has
been awarded honorary membership in the
American Academy of Arts.
Yudenich, Nikolai Nikolaevich
(1862-1933)
general
The most consistently successful Russian general
of World War I, Yudenich later joined the anti-
Bolshevik White movement and almost cap-
tured the city of Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in
1919. A veteran of the
RUSSO
-
JAPANESE WAR
of
1904-5, Yudenich was appointed to the Cauca-
sus Army in 1907 as deputy chief of staff. Five
years later he became chief of staff of the Cau-
casian Military District. When World War I
reached the Caucasus in November 1914 with
the outbreak of war between Russia and Turkey,
Yudenich quickly made a name for himself with
a victory at Sarikamish in eastern Turkey in
December 1914. He was promoted to comman-
der in chief of the Caucasus army in January
1915, a position he retained even after Grand
Duke Nikolai was transferred to the Caucasus in
September 1915 as a face-saving maneuver fol-
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