As the so-called Poet of the Revolution, Vladimir Maiakovsky embodies the misfortunes and controversies of twentieth-century Russian history. He strove to invent a voice that was truly revolutionary; his poems read as exciting displays of verbal mastery. Yet, the bourgeoisie who had been shocked by his work before 1917 were replaced after the October Revolution by Communist government functionaries of more questionable taste, causing even more problems for the poet. Maiakovsky's suicide in 1930 at the age of thirty-six made the continuing arguments against him one-sided and somewhat moot. Five years later, in 1935, Joseph Stalin made a simple pronouncement, which he scribbled in the margins of a letter: "Maiakovsky was and remains the best and most talented poet of our Soviet epoch. Neglect of his memory is criminal." For the next fifty-six years official Soviet culture submissively held Maiakovsky up as the ideal Soviet poet; but--as the Soviets did with...