Books: Poetry, then Vodka

A PRECOCIOUS AUTOBIOGRAPHY by Evgeny Evfushenko. 124 pages. Duffon. $3.50.

Published in English at last is the unauthorized life story that got Russian Poet Evtushenko in so much trouble with the Kremlin bosses last winter. He comes out of it a highly subjective, idealistic Communist determined to revitalize the Revolution by healing Stalinist scars. That alone would have been enough to infuriate Moscow’s angry old men. The poet is arrogantly vain and recklessly honest. “It is the bastards who are in danger, not I,” he boasts. “What mattered were all those young eyes waiting expectantly” to hear the young Evtushenko read his flaming verses at mass meetings.

Nowadays Evtushenko reads nothing in public. He was recently spotted in a Moscow gastronom buying vodka while his wife Galina pleaded: “You’ve had too much. It’s bad for you. Come home.” But drunk or sober, Evtushenko has yet to recant the verse that could well be his epitaph:

I am not retreating one damned step

It is good to be angry at untruth.