Soviet Union Speaking Up

For years Moscow's stringent ideological standards have kept Soviet artists and writers in a creative straitjacket. To some, however, Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev's recent calls for more "openness" and "grass-roots creativity" signaled that a new age was about to dawn. Apparently intent on extending that proposition to literature, Soviet Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko, 52, delivered a rousing speech before a congress of the Writers' Union of the Russian Federation objecting to the limitations placed on writers by the state. Judging by the official caution with which the Soviet press last week reported his address, he may have spoken up too soon.

Invoking the name of the founder of the Soviet state, Yevtushenko declared, "Lenin understood that speaking out is a purifying force. Today's long- awaited striving for improvement in life gives us confidence that it will become standard behavior for citizens to speak out. We writers will not be worth a cent if we merely record and extol the public transformations that are taking place apart from us." While alluding to the strict controls on Soviet artists, the poet never once used the word censorship.

Although Yevtushenko was branded a rebel in the late 1950s, he has since become an Establishment figure. This past September, the Communist Party newspaper Pravda printed a Yevtushenko poem, considered in step with Gorbachev's thinking, that attacked sluggish bureaucrats. In his address, Yevtushenko also condemned favors bestowed on the party elite. "Any form of closed food and commodity distribution is morally impermissible," he said, "including the special ration cards to visit souvenir booths that are in the pockets of all the delegates to this congress, myself included." He also indirectly denounced Stalin's reign of terror throughout the 1930s. "We do not have the right to remain silent about the fact that many middle- class farmers were trampled upon . . . that there was a merciless extermination of Bolshevik guards, the best commanders in the army and industrial officials."

By the time the speech was reported in the weekly newspaper Literaturnaya Gazeta, Yevtushenko had fallen victim to the very timidity he had criticized. The journal deleted his references to Stalin's murderous rule and party favoritism. Yevtushenko professed himself unconcerned by the heavy-handed editing. Said he: "My words were addressed to writers, not the party. I just wanted them to speak their minds."

checked by rod griffin, ext. 4179