People, Sep. 17, 1979

Soviet Poet Yevgeni Yevtushenko has turned to that most blatantly capitalistic of occupations, making movies. He stars in Take-Off, a film about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, celebrated by the Soviets as a pioneer of space travel. One Moscow critic called Yevgeni's performance patchy. Nevertheless, Yevtushenko gushed that playing the rocket man "left a tremendous imprint on my own destiny." It was tough, declared Moscow's Establishment poet, to play someone "far more interesting, better and more important than I am. I had to concentrate all my inner resources, find everything good in my soul, and try...

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