The Icon and the Axe

two elderly and idiosyncratic figures with little apparent influence on the rising generation. Yet this new literary production has a freshness and vitality of its own. Ever since the publication just after Stalin's death of Pomerantsev's much-discussed essay, "On Sincerity in Literature," which, among other things, contrasted the honesty and resourcefulness of a Siberian peasant woman with the mechanical falsehoods of authority, there had been a rising tide of what might be called neo-populist literature. Stories like Yashin's "Levers" and Nagibin's "Light in the Window" emphasized the contrast between corrupt officialdom and the uncorrupted people.32 Sometimes an idealistic scientific worker is substituted for a simple muzhik as the contrasting force to Communist bureaucracy, as in Granin's "My Own Opinion" or Dudintsev's much-discussed novel, Not by Bread Alone. Sometimes the editorial point is made quite bluntly, as in the poem "Careful People," whose title is an ironic comment on the omnipresent "Careful Pigeons" signs which Stalin scattered through Russia at -the very heights of his Neronian bloodbaths.33

The literature of protest in 1956 proved to be only the harbinger of still more blunt and pointed social criticism which came late in 1962, with the publication of Alexander Solzhenitsyn's portrayal of a Soviet concentration camp in One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Fedor Abramov's scathing depiction of collective farm life in One Day in the "New Life." All in all, a remarkable amount of stylistically conventional but ideologically exciting fiction has been produced in the USSR since the death of Stalin. At the same time, traces have begun to appear of that even more daring literature which is written "for the drawer" or "for the soul" and circulates in manuscript or typewritten copies within the USSR (along with innumerable bootlegged copies of proscribed Western publications and private translations thereof). Some of this literature appears in the leaflet-sized papers that are illegally produced and distributed in the USSR, and some of it has found its way to publication in the West.

Even more important than the novels and short stories of the new generation is the extraordinary revival of two of the most public and yet most personal of all literary forms: poetry readings and the theater. These media-in which Soviet men and women communicate directly with fellow Russians about problems of common concern-have done much to create such sense of communal purpose and aspiration as has come to animate the young generation.

The poetry readings have attracted considerable public attention because of the magnetic appeal of Evtushenko and the causes celebres that have grown up around his name-the first in T960 following the publication

of "Babi-Yar," and the second in 1963, following the publication while abroad of autobiographical sketches and reflections.

It is doubtful if anything written by Evtushenko will find its way into the anthologies of the world's great poetry. Yet well before he was thirty, he was assured an important niche in Russian cultural history, as the recognized spokesman of his generation. His direct and easily understood poems of protest and self-affirmation, his handsome appearance, his simple love of travel and of love itself-all made him a kind of romantic idol. His exploits in forcing open previously closed doors and weaving his way in and out of official favor were followed vicariously by thousands; and he, in turn, shared with the thousands who flocked to his poetry readings verses, comments, and innuendos that he did not dare commit to print.

"Each man has his secret personal world," he wrote in the first poem of a Soviet edition of his printed works;34 and Evtushenko appeared as the defender of that colorful, uninhibited world against the drab and stereotyped world of "Stalin's heirs." His poem "The Nihilist" tells how someone derisively labeled a nihilist in official circles was capable of more noble human actions than his more conformist contemporaries. His ode "To Humor" praises this quality for its power to scourge tyranny.