[--------] indicates indecipherable part, may be corrected at a later
date
Italicised things in square brackets are my notes.
Eleanor Wachtell: [Babii Yar] may be the single work by which you’re remembered. Can
you tell me about that poem, how you came to write it?
Yevgeny Yevtushenko: I met [--------] 1960, first I met one young prose writer, Anatoly Kuznetsov [writer of book "Babii Yar"]. And he was witness of this massacres when Nazis killed. Many thousand soldiers, nobody knows exact number. Probably between sixty and seventy thousand. I know when he told me this story, I was so moved, that I wrote poem same day. Very quick. I wrote it very quickly. And the next day, I already had poetry reading and I recited this poem. It was shock. Because Ukrainian authorities, they were trying to keep this fact hidden. Why? Because some Ukrainian politzei, politzeis, people who collaborated with Germans, and police, special police. They participated in this massacre too. That’s probably why. They try not to talk about it openly. So after this...
EW: So it wasn’t just a critique of the Nazis, it was...
YY: ...No, it was a poem against antisemitism in general, you know...
So I was summing up many different facts from many different areas...Babii Yar itself,
Dreyfus, pogrom, Jewish pogroms in Russia, everything. It was not my protest against
only the cruelty of the Nazis. Against general: against chauvinism, against nationalism. So,
and I was...afterwards, I was not permitted during more than twenty years to read my
poetry in the capital of Ukraine, Kiev, despite that I had many admirers, and supporters
amongst the Ukrainian readers. So when I came back to Ukraine for what is anniversary of
Babii Yar, in nineteen-ninety first, jogging that morning, I discovered some nasty slogans
on the fences, on the monuments, dedicated to Ukrainian-Russian friendship..."Yids and
Russians, get out from Ukraine". In this day...
EW: That’s 1991, that’s thirty years really after the poem...
YY: ...Yesterday, in this day, was written. And so, you know, I think that we as poets, of course we dream if our poems could be immortal. But sometimes I would like if some of my poems would be forgotten as soon as possible. But unfortunately, Babii Yar is still very actual now, because we have some nasty splashes of antisemitism, aggressive nationalism everywhere. So I decided that I would read Babii Yar, in all countries. Till antisemitism not. Disappear forever.
EW: The composer Shostakovich used Babii Yar for his 13th symphony. He was inspired by it. What did he tell you about it?
YY: He just called me once, I didn’t know him. And my mother took phone, and she
hooked it, she said look, someone probably making bad jokes, he called, he named himself
Shostakovich. But was second call, and so she understood what he [--------------] My
mother first thought it was him and he was incredibly polite, and he said, Dear,--in very
old-fashioned style,--Dear Yevgeny Aleksandrovich, I read not long ago your great poem
Babii Yar. Could you give me your kind permission to com-...create some music for it.
Yes, I explain, of course, why you ask. Of course, I’ll be happy. So...Thank you for your
kindness, my dear Yevgeny Aleksandrovich. Can you come over, because the music is
ready. [Laughter]
And I-- it was unforgettable, the first performance of Babii Yar when Shostakovich did it
with piano-- was orchestra, was soloist, was choir, was everything. Unfortunately, I didn’t
tape it. But when he was playing it this time he was crying.
EW: The first public performance of Shostakovich’s 13th symphony was also very...a fraught event, because it occurred just after Khrushchev had launched a virulent attack against artists, which you had protested.
YY: Yeah, I was only writer who protested against Khrushchev’s remarks about the abstract art. When Khrushchev...but you know one thing, afterwards I discovered when we opened KGB archives, that it was not Central Committee initiative to criticize Babii Yar. Was one man, a radio journalist. His name was Matukovsky. He wrote letter to Central Committee after performance of Babii Yar in the city of Minsk, Byelorussia. And letter was very strange, he full of paranoia. Ahh...he was saying in this letter that 13th symphony provoking new spashes of antisemitism in Russia. Terrible, you know, that’s paranoia, you know. And they picked up this idea. And they began to accuse me and Shostakovich that we are, we are provoking public disturbances in Russia.
More to come...