SOURCE: Sidorov, Yevgeni. “Yevgeni Yevtushenko's Solo: On His 50th Birthday.” Soviet Literature 7, no. 424 (1983): 130-37.

In the following essay, Sidorov considers the characteristics of Yevtushenko's poetry, praising him for his contributions to Russian literature.

Yevgeni Yevtushenko was born in Siberia at Zima Junction near Irkutsk. The poet's father was a geologist and wrote verse all his life. I knew him and heard him recite his poems. They had something to them, no doubt about that, a kind of romanticism à la Siberian Kipling. It was the father who taught the son to love poetry.

Before the war Yevgeni lived for a while with his mother in Moscow. When war broke out he was evacuated back to Zima to his grandmother's.

Yevtushenko's poems about childhood in wartime Siberia were his first serious literary efforts. He wrote these poems after returning to Moscow, while studying in a poetry circle at the local...