SOURCE: A review of Twentieth Century Russian Poetry, in New Statesman & Society, Vol. 6, No. 273, October 8, 1993, p. 42.

In the following review, Tonkin commends the selections of Twentieth Century Russian Poetry.

"The history of the Russian and Soviet peoples in the 20th century is a bizarre, fantastic fable that could not have been invented by the wildest imagination." As I read that, the heroic defender of Russian liberty in August 1991 turned his tanks on the parliament. In Moscow's tragic pantomime of role-reversal, each new turn upstages the army of journalists who try to fix in print the chaos of post-communism.

While punditry fades in the light of tomorrow's headlines, poetry keeps its bloom. This year's most enticing book about Russia will be Yevgeny Yevtushenko's magnificent anthology of Twentieth Century Russian Poetry (edited by Albert C Todd and Max Hayward). Its 1,000-plus pages close with a poem by Ilya Krichevsky, killed...