The general reader as well as the specialist in Russian literature will find [Le betullenane] extremely valuable. Although Yevtushenko is probably the Soviet poet best known abroad, several of the poems included in this collection are published for the first time outside of the Soviet Union….

Yevtushenko, caught between [poles of eradicated traditions and anticipated phenomena], voices the "Soviet" anguish of the individual, whose ideological opposition to the old beliefs is frustrated by the absence of new positive values. In the search for new values, he alternately rejects and accepts official Soviet dogmatism and the pseudo-ideals of Western consumer society. This suffered uncertainty, far from being the reflection of a calculated compromise (as it has often been considered), reveals the full measure of his moral and artistic integrity. As a "dwarf birch" (the image which gives the title to the collection) tenaciously rooted in its inhospitable, frozen ground...