Yevgeni Yevtushenko (b. 1933) is a leader among modern Soviet poets. He is especially popular with students and young people. Yevtushenko’s poetry is imbued with a sense of civic responsibility, it is publicistic in character, and constantly focused on the main problems of the day. At the same time it has the lyrical quality of an infinitely sincere confession. Yevtushenko travels a great deal, and has been to many countries in Europe, Asia and both North and South America. The bourgeois press at one time linked his youthful revolt against rigid dogmas with the mutiny of the Angry Young Men in the West. Yevtushenko himself has refuted this comparison. He is a consistent and ardent champion of revolutionary ideas and principles. An innovator in his own right, he develops certain of Mayakovsky’s techniques especially as regards assonant rhyming.