Soviet Union: Poet on a String

"I am a Soviet writer, a human being made of flesh and blood, not a puppet to be pulled on a string." So wrote Andrei Voznesensky in a 1967 letter to Pravda protesting censorship. Pravda pigeonholed the letter, but it appeared in the West, and since then Russia's most brilliant young poet has been scarcely published in his own country, and he has repeatedly been refused permission to travel to the West. The author's latest play, Look Out for Your Faces, was in rehearsal for nine months while awaiting clearance from the...