SOURCE: A review of Fatal Half Measures, in World Literature Today, Winter, 1992, p. 159.

In the following review, Croft vaunts the rich detail and informed perspective of Soviet society in Fatal Half Measures.

Yevgeny Yevtushenko has been particularly blessed by the glasnost era in Soviet politics. Now he is able to shed every vestige of compromise and live his own legend. He has become a truly uncompromising man, and he has decided to use his fame as a poet and his powers of persuasion for political effect. This is a switch, to be sure. Soviet poets have long attempted, albeit futilely, to remain apart from politics. However, Yevtushenko was elected to the Soviet Congress of People's Deputies in 1989, and he has by now clearly become one of the leaders of the Soviet democratic movement. During the attempted coup of August 1991, he was among those who opposed a return to...