Yevgeny Yevtushenko (b. 1933) I Would Like, People LINKS No links found. BIOGRAPHY Yevgeney Yevtushenko (b. 1933) Son of two geologists, Yevtushenko was born in Siberia. He attended Gorky Literary Institute from 1951 to 1954, and worked on a geological expedition, at the same time establishing himself as an influential Soviet poet. During the 1950s, his books were published regularly and he was allowed to travel abroad. In 1960, he gave readings in Europe and the United States, but was criticized by Russians for linking them with anti-Semitism in his poem "Babi Yar," the name of a ravine near Kiev where 96,000 Jews were killed by Nazis during World War II. Although considering himself a "loyal revolutionary Soviet citizen," he elicited official disapproval by opposing the 1968 occupation of Czechoslovakia (a performance of his play Bratsk Power Station [1967] was cancelled as a result) and for sending a telegram to then-Premier Brezhnev expressing concern for Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn after his arrest in 1974. His works include A Precocious Autobiography (1963), From Desire to Desire (1976), Fatal Half Measures: The Culture of Democracy in the Soviet Union (1991), an analysis of recent Russian history, and Don't Die Before You're Dead (1995), an autobiographical novel.