Yevgeniy Yevtushenko.

From geological expeditions with his father to Kazakhstan in 1948 and Altai in 1950, Yevgeniy Yevtushenko gathered material for his early poetry. He was born Yevgeni Aleksandrovich Gangnus on July 18, 1932 in Zima, Siberia, to geologist Aleksandr Rudolfovich Gangnus and singer Zinaida Ermolaevna Evtushenko. He later adopted his mother’s surname.

His 1956 poem Stantsiya Zima brought early success, but Babi Yar 1961 made him internationally known. Babi Yar protested the Soviet Union’s refusal to recognize the ravine near Kiev where Nazis massacred 33,000 Jews in September 1941. Yevtushenko and Dmitri Shostakovich collaborated on Symphony No. 13 titled Babi Yar, first performed on December 18, 1962 in Moscow under Kirill Kondrashin. The Soviet government banned him from travel in the 1960s, but he continued to publish, including Nasledniki Stalina in Pravda in 1961. He also acted, playing rocket scientist Tsiolkovsky in Vzlyot 1979, and wrote and directed Detsky Sad 1983 and Pokhorony Stalina 1990.

Yevtushenko married four times—to poet Bella Akhmadulina, Galina Semyonanova, Jan Butler, and Maria Nonikova—and had a son named Sasha. He taught Russian literature at the University of Oklahoma in Tulsa for several years and kept a home in Moscow.

The Babi Yar poem spurred creation of a memorial at the Babi Yar ravine. His collaboration with Shostakovich produced one of the 20th century’s major symphonic works. He received the USSR State Prize and multiple Russian orders. At the University of Oklahoma he taught and inspired a generation of Russian writers. His courage in speaking truth to power during the Soviet era defines his legacy.