Official rebel
LETTERS
From R. R. Milner-Gilliam!, Tibor SzamitelY, Robin Chichester-Clark, MP, W. A. P. Wad- dinagion, John Lamer, 'Ranter' Cobb, Andrew Sinclair, John Ashe, Nicolas Walter, John Denison, S. I. Latsis and Joanna Richardson.
Sir: As one who has played some part in estab- lishing Yevtushenko's 'shining image' in this country, I am charmed to learn from Mr Szamuely that I am a successful confidence trickster (22 November).
Do I detect the mirror-image situation (familiar to any student of Soviet affairs) where- by one accuses others most vigorously of what one is guilty of oneself? Mr Szamuely's picture of Yevtushenko 'the denouncer' is itself as scur- rilous a denunciation as anything I have read.
Of Yevtushenko's three simultaneous assail- ants, Mr Szamuely is the only one with a repu- tation as a Sovietologist. While Levin and Antis
leapt into the attack with an innocence born of ignorance (they appear to be already quietly
retreating from their more extreme positions), Mr Szamuely is at least well-placed to use Rus- sian source material that would serve to show the considerable debt which the Soviet 'liberal intelligentsia' owes to this so-called 'hack- propagandist.'
A hint that he is aware of this comes in his unobtrusive phrase 'for the past five or six years': one must take it that even Mr Szamuely recognises the extent of Yevtushenko's 'dedica- tion to the ideals of freedom' until then.
Well, and what has Yevtushenko been up to since 1962? He has stood up for his liberal col- leagues under attack—or does Mr Szamuely doubt the authenticity of his famous defence of the sculptor Neizvestny? Individual efforts of this sort are both more courageous and more likely to get results (even if they are less likely to get into western newspapers) than the signing of mass protests, which have proved in the Soviet Union to be counter-productive. He has publicly and privately objected to the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel, suggesting that. they should merely have been reprimanded by the Writers' Union (incredibly, Mr Szamuely twists this into a 'denunciation,. Finally, does Mr Szamuely really doubt that Yevtushenko protes- ted against the invasion of Czechoslovakia? His reported 'denial' was equivocal enough for any cub-Sovietologist to read another message into it (see the UPI communiqué at the time).
Meanwhile, he has travelled—irregularly, since he has by no means always been granted an exit visa—at the invitation and expense of foreign organisations (not the Soviet govern- ment); and he has got on with the business of a writer, which is writing. If his Autobiography is 'hack propaganda,' why is it unpublishable in the ussit? Does the same term include Letter to Yesenin, similarly unpublished, with its memor- able tirade against 'the Komsomol leader . . . trying to mould poets like wax'? If Mr Szamuely has done his homework, he will have read the booklet Vo ves' gobs and the article 'Kuda vedyot khlestakovshchina?'; and I challenge bin to deny that the veiled threats in these articles show Yevtushenko at 'personal risk.'
To pad out his thin case, MrSzamuely invites (unexpectedly) the support of the 'progressive anZ .revolutionary' Mexican students whose Guevarist—or is it Maoist?—language betrays the root of their dissatisfaction with the poet.
He also sets up his own Aunt Sally, the image of 'rebellious' Yevtushenko; not even we 'con- fidence tricksters' have ever presented him as other than a Soviet patriot—one with humanity, courage, ideas of his own, and dedicated to ex- tending the frontiers of freedom in his country : 'My voice no more than laughed at pompous falsity; I did no more than write, never denounced . . . doing what anyhow had to be done.'
Is it memory of those lines that motivates Mr Szamuely's sly attempts to build Yevtushenko up into 'hack-propagandist' and 'denouncer'?
R. R. Milner-Gulland The University of Sussex
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