Poet critic of Soviet tyranny, prejudice

OKLAHOMA CITY — Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny

A. Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84.

Ginny Hensley, a spokesman for Hillcrest Medical Center in Tulsa, confirmed Yevtushenko’s death. Roger Blais, the provost at the University of Tulsa, where Yevtushenko was a longtime faculty member, said he was told that Yevtushenko died Saturday morning.

Yevtushenko’s son, Yevgeny Y. Yevtushenko, said his father died about 11 a.m. and that doctors said he was suffering from stage 4 cancer.

Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with “Babi Yar,” the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union.

At the height of his fame, Yevtushenko read his works in packed soccer stadiums and arenas, including to a crowd of 200,000 in 1991 that went to listen during a failed coup attempt in Russia. He also attracted large audiences on tours in the West.

“He’s more like a rock star than some sort of bespectacled, quiet poet,” said former University of Tulsa President Robert Donaldson, who specialized in Soviet policy during his academic years at Harvard.

Donaldson extended an invite to Yevtushenko to teach at the university in 1992. Blais, the university provost, said Yevtushenko remained an active professor at the time of his death.

Years after he moved to Oklahoma, Yevtushenko’s death inspired tributes from his homeland.

Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said on the Russian social media site Vkontakte: “He knew how to find the key to the souls of people, to find surprisingly accurate words that were in harmony with many.”

A spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the poet’s legacy would remain “part of Russian culture.”