Yevgeny Yevtushenko
(b. 1933)

Born in Zima Junction, Siberia, the renowned Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko was talented even as a young man. While still in college, Yevtushenko published the first of his books of poetry, Prospectors of the Future (1952). In 1953, after the death of Stalin, Yevtushenko wrote "Zima Junction," which critics commend as one of his finest poems.

Yevtushenko traveled the globe to perform his poetry for audiences, often leaving them stunned with admiration when he was finished. His entrancing voice paired with dramatic body language gave life and texture to the words he had written. In 1961, Yevtushenko published "Babi Yar," the highly controversial poem that memorialized the multitude of Jews brutally killed by the Nazis near Kiev during World War II. This controversy was rooted in the poem's disclosure of the anti-Semitism that still existed in Russia at the time.

His art continued to find political inspiration after he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in 1989. There he was an advocate for Mikhail Gorbachev's perestroika—a plan to reconstruct the Soviet Union. In response to this social change, Yevtushenko wrote the successful Don't Die Before You're Dead in 1993. Three years later, he moved to New York to teach Russian literature and poetry at Queens College.

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