SOURCE: "Yevtushenko-Poet of Love and Politics," in Vancouver Sun, May 6, 1995, p. D2.

In the following essay, the critic profiles Yevtushenko's life and career with respect to the poet's politics and literary themes.

Nikita Khrushchev called him ungovernable—but left him alone (more or less) to write the scathing poetic outbursts of moral indignation against Communist oppression that made him the voice of his generation.

Envious writer colleagues, watching his rise to fame in Russia and (more importantly) abroad, called him a licensed dissenter—one who sold out to the authorities as a tame tiger in exchange for privilege and foreign travel.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko calls himself an independent-minded loyalist.

He stood on the Moscow barricades alongside the defenders of Russia's precarious democracy during the attempted White House coup by military hard-liners in 1991 and versified eloquently about it from the balcony.

Yet his moral anger at the slaughter in Chechnya...