Jump to Content

> Home > Stanford University > Manuscripts Division
Collection Guide
∞ https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/tf8s20072m/
Collection Title:
Collection Number:
Get Items:
Yevtushenko (Yevgeny) Papers
M1088  
No online items No online items       Request items ↗
Collection location Contact Stanford University::Manuscripts Division
View entire collection guide What's This?
Search this collection
Entire Collection Guide
Online Items
Collection Details
 
Table of contents What's This?
  • Conditions Governing Access
  • Immediate Source of Acquisition
  • Biographical / Historical
  • Preferred Citation
  • Scope and Contents
  • Items transferred to the Rare Book Division
  • Conditions Governing Use
    • Language of Material: English
    Contributing Institution: Department of Special Collections and University Archives
    Title: Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko papers
    Identifier/Call Number: M1088
    Physical Description: 100 Linear Feet (approx. 149 containers)
    Date (inclusive): circa 1920-2006
    Date (bulk): 1945-1997
    Abstract: Russian poet.

    Conditions Governing Access

    Open for research; material must be requested at least 36 hours in advance of intended use. Audiovisual materials are not available in original format, and must be reformatted to a digital use copy.

    Immediate Source of Acquisition

    Purchased, 1999-2019.

    Biographical / Historical

    Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Yevtushenko was born on June 18, 1933 in Zima Junction, Siberia. His father, Aleksandr Gangnus, was a geologist who wrote poetry and taught Yevtushenko to love books. His mother, Zinaida Ermolayevna Yevtushenko, was a geologist and a singer. Both of Yevtushenko's grandfathers were victims of Stalin's purges in the late thirties.
    After Yevtushenko's parents separated, he went to Moscow with his mother, whose surname he adopted. In the early years of World War II, Yevtushenko and many other children in Moscow were evacuated to Siberia. He returned to Moscow in 1944. After being expelled from school at the age of 15, Yevtushenko briefly joined his father on a geological expedition in Kazakhstan.
    Yevtushenko's literary career took off in 1949 with the publication of his first poem in the journal Sovetskii Sport (Soviet Sport). His first book of poetry was published in 1952. He became the youngest member of the Soviet Writer's Union and was admitted to Moscow's Literary Institute, which was highly unusual for someone without a school certificate. However, he eventually left the Literary Institute without graduating.
    Stalin's death in 1953 had a tremendous impact on Yevtushenko and his poetry. He witnessed the crowd that resulted in the trampling death of 150 mourners gathered in Moscow's Trubnaia Square. Yevtushenko's shock translated into disillusionment with Stalin and an appreciation for the importance of greater individual responsibility. His subsequent poetry was less conformist, largely anti-Stalinist, and blended public and private themes. Yevtushenko became the most visible of a generation of young, post-Stalinist poets that included Andrei Voznesenskii and Bella Akhmadulina. They revived the Russian tradition of popular poetry readings, attracting tens of thousands of fans to readings in sports stadiums and public squares.
    In 1961 Yevtushenko wrote perhaps his best-known work, "Babii Iar." Babii Iar is a ravine in the suburbs of Kiev where tens of thousands of Russian Jews and others were slaughtered by the Nazis during World War II. In his poem Yevtushenko noted the absence of a monument to these victims of Nazism and attributed this fact to Russian anti-Semitism. The poem was immensely popular in the Soviet Union, and the Soviet composer Shostakovich developed his Thirteenth Symphony around it and other poems by Yevtushenko. Despite the popularity of "Babii Iar," Yevtushenko was not allowed to give a public reading of the poem in Ukraine until the 1980s.
    Yevtushenko's favor with the Soviet government fluctuated. As a result of his defense of Dudintsev's critical novel Not by Bread Alone, Yevtushenko was expelled from the Literary Institute and the Communist Party's youth organization in 1957. He was reinstated under Khrushchev's thaw and given permission to travel and read his verse abroad, where he had gained wide acclaim. He gave poetry readings throughout Eastern and Western Europe, the United States, Cuba, Africa, and Australia. However, after Yevtushenko published his uncensored autobiography in France in 1963, the Soviet government curtailed his public readings and revoked his travel privileges until 1966.
    Yevtushenko enjoyed mixed support among Soviet writers and dissidents. Many criticized him for collaborating with the state, largely because he managed to stay out of prison, psychiatric hospitals, and labor camps. However, on numerous occasions Yevtushenko defended fellow writers, including Solzhenitsyn.
    In the seventies Yevtushenko ventured into other art forms. He produced a play entitled Pod kozhei statui svobody (Under the Skin of the Statue of Liberty) in 1972 and published his first novel, Iagodnye Mesta (Wild Berries), in 1981. He played the leading role in Savva Kulish's 1979 movie Vzlet (Takeoff). He also turned to photography, publishing three books of photographs and exhibiting his work around the world. Yevtushenko wrote and directed two films, Detskii Sad (Kindergarten) and Pokhorony Stalina (Stalin's Funeral).
    With the coming of Gorbachev, Yevtushenko became a prominent spokesperson for glasnost. In 1988 he helped establish the Memorial Society with Sakharov to honor the victims of Stalinist repression. In 1989 he was elected to the Congress of People's Deputies in Kharkov, Ukraine. During the 1991 August coup, Yevtushenko joined Yeltsin in the defense of the White House, reciting his hastily written poem "August 19th."
    Yevtushenko was elected an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1987. He has published over 40 books of poetry and his work has been translated into 72 languages. Yevtushenko has been married to the poet Bella Akhmadulina, to literary translator Galina Semyonovna Sokol, with whom he has one son, and to British translator Jan Butler, with whom he has two sons. He currently lives with his fourth wife, Maria Novikova, and two youngest sons in Moscow and Oklahoma. Yevtushenko teaches at the University of Tulsa in Oklahoma and at Queens College in New York.
    Note: this biographical sketch draws heavily on the biography of Yevtushenko published in the 1994 Current Biography Yearbook.

    Preferred Citation

    [identification of item],Yevgeny Yevtushenko papers (M1088). Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

    Scope and Contents

    The Yevtushenko Papers include personal and professional papers of Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Although not complete, the collection provides substantial material on Yevtushenko's personal and literary career, which cannot be separated from the political context of the time.
    The papers were received in very little order. Where materials were identified and categorized by Yevtushenko, that arrangement has been preserved and expanded to include uncategorized portions of the collection. The collection consists of nine series: 1. Correspondence, 2. Political Papers, 3. Manuscripts, 4. Manuscripts by Others, 5. Performances and Exhibits, 6. Personal Papers, 7. Photographs, 8. Audiovisual Materials, and 9. Clippings. The collection also includes books by Yevtushenko and books from his library, many with inscriptions to Yevtushenko from the authors.
    Names and titles have been transliterated according to the simplified American Library of Congress standard. Exceptions include those names for which a standard exists; for example, Yevtushenko is used rather than Evtushenko, and Yeltsin instead of El'tsyn.
    Please note that some accessions may not be fully processed or described.

    Items transferred to the Rare Book Division

    Published books and periodicals have been transferred from the collection to the Rare Book Division where they are being individually cataloged and identified as part of this collection.
    A complete list of these items follows:
    1. Title: Alcalay, Ammiel, The Cairo Notebooks, Singing Horse Press
      Date: 1993
    2. Title: Ball, Angela. Quartet. Carnegie Mellow University Press
      Date: 1995
    3. Title: Bashevis Singer, Isaac. Reaches of Heaven. Farrar-Straus-Giroux
      Date: 1980
    4. Title: Brutus, Dennis. Still the Sirens. Pennywhistle Press
      Date: 1993
    5. Title: Camner, Howard. Bed of Nails. Camelot Publishing Co.
      Date: 1995
    6. Title: Codrescu, Andrei. The Disappearance of the Outside. Addison-Wesley Publishing, Inc.
      Date: 1990
    7. Title: Collection of Works by and About Alexander Pushkin. Queens College
      Date: 1999
    8. Title: Cornillot, Francois. Le Nautonier de la Supreme Nostalgie. Editions Librarie du Globe
      Date: 1995
    9. Title: Dementiev, Andrei. Sneg v Ierusalime. Imprint-Golfarim
      Date: 1993
    10. Title: Dingman Watson, Nancy. Bluberries Lavender. Addison-Wesley
      Date: 1977
    11. Title: Dorfman, Ariel. La Muerte y la Doncella. Ollero & Ramos Editores
      Date: 1995
    12. Title: Ferguson, Marilyn. The Aquarian Conspiracy. J.P. Tarcher, Inc.
      Date: 1980
    13. Title: Flynn, Tony. Body Politic. Bloodaxe Books
      Date: 1992
    14. Title: Gertsman, Valentin l. Houston: Image and Imagination [exhibit catalog]
      Date: 1991
    15. Title: Havel, Vaclav. Open Letters. Faber & Faber
      Date: 1991
    16. Title: Hazo, Samuel. The Past Won't Stay Behind You. University of Arkansas Press
      Date: 1993
    17. Title: Higginbotham, Jay. Old Mobile. Museum of the City of Mobile
      Date: 1977
    18. Title: Iswolsky, Helene. No Time to Grieve. The Winchell Company
      Date: 1985
    19. Title: Keeney, Patricia. Selected Poems of Paricia Keeney, with introduction by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. Oberon Press
      Date: 1996
    20. Title: Klemm, Barbara. Blick nach Osten. Fischer Verlag
      Date: 1995
    21. Title: Legge, Ludwig. Untermorgen Ubergestern. Truutvetter & Fischernacht
      Date: 1979
    22. Title: Lodge, Kristen. Sword Become Words.
    23. Title: Lown, Bernard, M.D. The Lost Art of Healing. Ballantine Books
      Date: 1990
    24. Title: Nekhoroshev, Yuri. Yevgenii Yevtushenko: Bibliograficheskii Ukazat'el. Chelyabinskii Pedinstitut
      Date: 1981
    25. Title: Ortiz Hill, Michael. Dreaming the End of the World. Spring Publication
      Date: 1994
    26. Title: Oz, Amos. Panther in the Basement. Harcourt Brace and Company
      Date: 1998
    27. Title: Peonides, Panos. Eva Allo Oboiporiko. Lemesos
      Date: 1995
    28. Title: Phillips, Michael J. Selected Love Poems. Hackett Publishing Co.
      Date: 1980
    29. Title: Pollastri, Georgia. Ciclo. Grafiche Biesse
      Date: 1995
    30. Title: Porter, Dorothy. The Monkey's Mask. Hyland House
      Date: 1994
    31. Title: Pulco, Carlo. Pittura Poesia. Italo-Latino Americana Palma Editrice
      Date: 1991
    32. Title: Pusche, Alk. Die Evtusenko-Vertonungen von Dmitrij Sostakovic.
    33. Title: Rain Crowe, Thomas. The Personified Street. New Native Press
      Date: 1993
    34. Title: Rebolledo, Francisco. Rasero. Louisiana State University Press
      Date: 1995
    35. Title: Saludos! Poemas de Nuevo Mexico. Pennywhistle Press
      Date: 1995
    36. Title: Schmidt-Macon, Klaus F. Aschenspur. Fotokunst-Verlag Groh
      Date: 1998
    37. Title: Schramm, Godehard. Grutz der Spatz als Papagei. Spatlese Verlag
      Date: 1985
    38. Title: Scott, Cyril. The Initiate. Samuel Weiser, Inc.
      Date: 1988
    39. Title: Stonov, Dmitri. In the Past Night. Texas Tech University Press
      Date: 1995
    40. Title: 10 Anni di Poesia. Grafic House Editrice
      Date: 1995
    41. Title: Vetrov, Boris. Ulibaites' , gospoda!. Liberty Publishing House, Inc.
      Date: 1998
    42. Title: Yevtushenko, Yevgeny. Izbrannaya proza. Eksmo-press
      Date: 1998
    43. Title: Jewtuschenko, Jewgeni. Der Wolfspass. Verlag Volk und Welt
      Date: 2000
    44. Title: Zagato, Franco. Che ne sai, povero poeta? Pellicanolibri,
      Date: 1992
    45. Title: CD The City of No and the City of Yes. Yevgeny Yevtushenko with Paul Winter Consort
    46. Title: CD So mnoyu vot chto proiskhodit. Nikitini, Tatyana i Sergei; lirics by Yevtushenko
    47. Title: CD So mnoyu vot chto proiskhodit. Nikitini, Tatyana i Sergei; lirics by Yevtushenko

    Conditions Governing Use

    While Special Collections is the owner of the physical and digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.

    Subjects and Indexing Terms

    Russian poetry.
    Russian literature -- 20th century
    Winters, Paul
    Salisbury, Harrison
    Tselkov, O.
    Ginsberg, Allen
    Todd, Albert
    Shostakovich, Dmitriéi Dmitrie
    Dutton, G.
    Adamovich, G.
    Collection Contents
    Series 1. Correspondence
    Subseries 1.1. General
    Subseries 1.2. Family
    Subseries 1.3. Friends
    Series 2. Political Papers
    Series 3. Manuscripts
    Subseries 3.1. Poetry
    Subseries 3.2. Notebooks
    Subseries 3.3. Prose
    Series 4. Manuscripts by Others
    Series 5. Performances and Exhibits
    Subseries 1. Performances
    Subseries 2. Exhibits
    Series 6. Personal Papers
    Subseries 6.1. Biographical and family material
    Subseries 6.2. Awards and Honors
    Subseries 6.3. Documents, address books, and miscellaneous material
    Series 7. Photographs
    Subseries 7.1. General
    Subseries 7.2. Abroad
    Subseries 7.3. Peformances
    Subseries 7.4. Portraits
    Subseries 7.5. Works
    Subseries 7.6. Family & Friends
    Subseries 7.7. Photographs taken by Yevtushenko
    Subseries 7.8. Unidentified photographs
    Subseries 7.9. Photograph albums
    Series 8. Audiovisual Materials
    Series 9. Clippings
    Series 11. Accession 2011-071
    Correspondence
    Manuscripts
    Manuscripts by others
    Performances and festivals, including invitations
    Personal papers
    Clippings
    Home | Contributing Institutions | Collection Guides | Browse Map | About OAC | FAQs | Contact Us | Privacy Statement | Terms of Use | Accessibility
    The Online Archive of California is a service of the UC Libraries, powered by the California Digital Library.