The Contexts and American Epitext of Evgenii Evtushenko’s A Precocious Autobiography

Abstract

The Soviet Russian poet Evgenii Evtushenko, just thirty years of age, first published A Precocious Autobiography (1963) in translation in western European periodicals. This was his attempt to speak directly to international audiences, bolstering his global reputation while responding to critics. I offer new facts

about the circumstances of this autobiography’s publication and Evtushenko’s subsequent defence of his actions in the face of Soviet criticism. American appropriations of this autobiography are of special interest. The text, but especially the polemical back-and-forth between Evtushenko and his critics, which nourished the autobiography’s epitext, riveted American political elites (including Allen Dulles and Sargent Shriver) in the summer and autumn of 1963.

This narrative of literary reception refines our understanding of Soviet tamizdat and its early history; it also reveals Evtushenko’s prominence as a global literary figure in US public debates in the early 1960s.