[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 170 (Friday, November 21, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E2370]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


    RECOGNIZING THE LIFE AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS OF YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO

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                         HON. GINNY BROWN-WAITE

                               of florida

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, November 20, 2003

  Ms. GINNY BROWN-WAITE of Florida. Mr. Speaker, ``A poet in Russia is 
more than a poet.'' Yevgeny Yevtushenko was speaking of poetry's unique 
role in Russia, but the words apply equally to Yevtushenko himself--the 
world's most famous living poet, and also prose writer, photographer, 
filmmaker, congressman, professor, world traveler. In the civic 
tradition of Russian poetry, the poet is the voice of the people, the 
ombudsman, the champion of truth and justice, and the catalyst for 
social change. Because poets express the strivings and needs of the 
people, they are revered in Russia as nowhere else. In the Soviet 
Union, the message had to be elliptic, and poetry was read closely, 
between the lines.
  Yevgeny Yevtushenko, born in Zima Junction, Siberia in 1933, burst 
onto the scene when very young, his first poems published in 1949, when 
he was just sixteen. He and his peers, Akhmadulina, Voznesensky, 
Rozhdestvensky, drew enormous, agitated crowds to their readings, and 
their popularity could be compared only to that of rock stars. They 
shaped an entire generation, the generation of Gorbachev and Yeltsin, 
who began the changes that ultimately brought an end to the Soviet 
Union.
  His famous poem ``Babi Yar,'' against anti-Semitism, was written in 
1961 and set to music by Shostakovich. In 1952, Yevtushenko wrote ``the 
Heirs of Stalin,'' with a call to throw off the oppressive shadow of 
the tyrant. He began his nonpoetic political protest activity with a 
telegram to Brezhnev condemning the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia 
in August 1968. Thirty years later, his political activity was 
channeled into a formal democratic role--he was elected a congressman 
with an overwhelming 74.9 percent of the vote (in a field of nine 
candidates). There was a national write-in-vote to select the 
cochairmen to join Andrei Sakharov in leading the Memorial Society, 
dedicated to the memory of the victims of Stalinism. Yevtushenko was 
one of the three co-chairmen selected, further evidence of the faith in 
his integrity and appreciation of his outspokenness among his 
countrymen.
  Yevgeny Yevtushenko traveled extensively, and he brought the world to 
the Soviet Union through his writing, but he also brought Russia to the 
world. In 1960, he was the first Russian poet to break through the Iron 
Curtain and to recite his poetry in the West, where he was befriended 
by Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Henry Moore, Federico Fellini, John 
Steinbeck, Graham Greene, Heinrich Boll, T.S. Eliot and Gabriel Garcia 
Marquez. Over the years, Yevtushenko has toured 94 countries, all of 
the republics of the USSR, and all of the states of the U.S.A. He has 
recited his poetry in sports arenas from Russia to Santiago, Chile 
(where he appeared with Pablo Neruda), in the Opera di Roma, in 
London's Albert Hall, in the Library of Congress, Smithsonian 
Institution, and National Cathedral in Washington, D.C, and in Madison 
Square Garden, Carnegie Hall, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and 
Lincoln Center in New York. His works have been translated into 72 
languages. Eighteen of his books have been translated into English. 
Most of his readers in France, Cambodia, Africa, Greenland, Australia, 
Germany, and China--among other places--have never been to Russia but 
they know and love Russian poetry.

  Yevtushenko has been in the center of the action for fifty years. Yet 
his insatiable curiosity about the human experience and his monumental 
energy remain at their highest levels. He celebrated his seventieth 
birthday in Moscow this July, reading to enormous, adoring crowds, and 
then continued the extravaganza across the country, reaching out to his 
readers. His life is heartening proof that one man's voice, raised high 
and often, can alter the course of events.
  Welcome all over the world, Yevgeny Yevtushenko and his wife, Masha, 
have chosen to divide their time between Russia and the United States, 
where they are bringing up their family. He is Distinguished Visiting 
Professor at The University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and tenured at Queens 
College, in New York City. He has received numerous international 
prizes in literature and the arts. In addition to receiving four 
honorary degrees, he was elected an honorary member of the American 
Academy of Arts and Letters and a member of the European Academy of 
Arts and Sciences, was awarded The American Liberties Medallion of the 
American Jewish Committee, and in 1999 was appointed Poet-in-Residence 
of the Walt Whitman House Museum in Long Island, New York. Naturally, 
he is writing poetry and a new novel and is in the finishing stages of 
a major anthology of Russian poetry. We are fortunate to have Yevgeny 
and Masha Yevtushenko in our country and even more fortunate to have 
them here at the Russian Fireworks gala.

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