University of Virginia Library

Yevtushenko Boycott Assailed:
Better Being Read Than Dead

By FRED HEBLICH

It is a curious characteristic
of the collective failure of the
American imagination that
Americans insist on judging a
foreign country by assuming
that American political,
economic and ideological
institutions are the absolute
epitome of what is good and
desirable.

The result of blind faith in
the institutional systems of THE
GOOD OLE U.S.A. is the
intolerance of America to
accept the existence of foreign
domestic political systems
when they don't measure up to
American standards. What is
worse is when Americans
irrationally condemn the
cultural and artistic product of
a nation because of the
conflicting political system of
the nation. The movement to
boycott the appearance of
Yevtushenko on Feb. 21 is
such an unfortunate example
of prejudice.

Yevtushenko is first and
foremost an artist. Next to
Solzhenitsyn he is perhaps the
most widely known Soviet
writer. Being a writer,
especially a government
approved writer, there are
several things which should
immediately be apparent.

Most important is the fact
that the only school of writers
above-ground in the Soviet
Union write in the Socialist
Realist tradition. Like
everything else in Russia, art
must serve in the cause to
further the achievements of
Communism. In other words
writing must conform to the
appropriate political
interpretations as determined
by the Soviet political leaders.

Yevtushenko and other
young Soviet writers including
Solzhenitsyn first became
visible to foreign observers in
the early 1960's under Khrushchev's
anti-Stalin campaigns.
The liberal trend ended when
Brezhnev and Kosygin assumed
power and cultural controls
tightened up considerably.
Since then Solzhenitsyn and
others have been denounced
and their works not published.
But Yevtushenko remained
published, read and approved.

Since the mid-1960's the
conservative leadership in
Moscow has followed an
unfortunate policy of
repressing and harassing
dissident intellectuals, but to a
Soviet Marxist it makes sense.

Marxist ideology is founded
in determinism. The way it
goes is that things are bound to
happen in a certain way leading
to the inevitable conclusion of
the fall of capitalism and
succeeding Utopia. The Soviet
leaders necessarily determine
the right path of things on the
road to Utopia, and since it is
the right way, it is the only
way and any deviation is a
crime against the people
because it may hamper or
delay the realization of the
Communist Utopia.

In such a scheme it is easy
to ask why the government
could take a dissident like
Bukovsky and declare him
"insane." But of course,
anyone who would stand in the
way of Utopia must be nuts.

It would be a mistake to
believe that dissenters like
Solzhenitsyn are violently
anti-Marxist. When he was
denied permission to travel to
Stockholm to receive the
Nobel Prize he was asked why
he didn't go anyway. He
answered that he was afraid he
would not be allowed to return
to Russia, the country he still
considered his homeland.
Solzhenitsyn has also rebuked
westerners for publishing his
novels outside the USSR
without his permission. In this
context it would be hard to
consider Solzhenitsyn
revolutionary, it would be
more correct to consider him
as anti-regime.

Solzhenitsyn's major fault
in the eyes of the government
has been his consistent
demands for uncensored
artistic freedom. He spoke out
in favor of Sinyavsky and
Daniel and wrote letters to
the Soviet writers Union
protesting censorship.

Yevtushenko on the other
hand has more or less played
ball with the political
leadership and hence he is
allowed to tour foreign
countries while Solzhenitsyn
is not even allowed to publish.

Regardless of Yevtushenko's
political leaning it would be
unfortunate to let the politics
get in the way of his writing
even though a good deal of his
writing is political in nature. It
doesn't make much sense to
condemn Yevtushenko for not
speaking out against the regime
as Solzhenitsyn, Bukovsky, and
others have done or to blame
him for the government's
policy of repression of
intellectuals.

Perhaps Yevtushenko is
hypocritical when he slams the
U.S. for being repressive (i.e.
Angela Davis, etc.), but given
the repression in this country it
is also hypocritical to harp on
the crude treatment used by
the Soviets to control radicals.
Yevtushenko should not be
judged by the failure of
domestic politics in the USSR
to protect civil liberties.

If people are going to ask
"Why doesn't Yevtushenko
speak out against the Soviet
regime and risk being
denounced and having his
artistic career ruined?" they
should ask themselves why
don't they work to end
repression in their own back
yard?

A boycott of Yevtushenko
would be a meaningless gesture
of protest of the Soviet
treatment of intellectuals, an
insult to an important artist,
and an unfortunate indication
of the intellectual quality of
the student body.

A more meaningful act
would be to boycott a
basketball game as a protest
against the apathetic, insipid
Gay Fifties atmosphere which
has made the talk of liberty,
equality, and fraternity mere
intellectual masturbation.