YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO DAY

WHEREAS, Yevgeny Yevtushenko is the Poet Laureate of Russia who was born in Siberia in 1933; and

WHEREAS, At the age of seven, with both parents away fighting the Nazis, Yevgeny Yevtushenko sang on the local train platform for food, an occurrence that may have sparked his life-long passion for poetry and political awareness; and

WHEREAS, Yevgeny Yevtushenko's poetry became a powerful democratic influence in the former Soviet Union; he raised the first lonely voice against Stalinism in the 1950s and became the first Russian poet to break the Iron Curtain and recite his poetry in the West in the 1960s; and

WHEREAS, Yevgeny Yevtushenko's sensational poem against anti-Semitism, "Babii Yar," was the inspiration for the great Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's 13th Symphony; and

WHEREAS,  Yevgeny Yevtushenko, at great personal risk, protested many times against dissidents' trials in the USSR, the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, and the war in Afganistan; and

WHEREAS, as a member of the first freely-elected Parliament of the USSR, Yevgeny Yevtushenko fought against censorship and other political restrictions, and he refused to accept the coveted Russian decoration of the Order of Friendship Between Peoples because of the bloodshed in Chechnya; and

WHEREAS, the poetry of Yevgeny Yevtushenko has been translated into 72 languages, and he is an honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters and currently teaches at the University of Tulsa in Tulsa, Oklahoma; and

WHEREAS, Yevgeny Yevtushenko is visiting Madison on March 19-21, 2001 as the guest of Edgewood College where he is speaking with students and performing a free public reading of his poetry, and delivering the luncheon address at the Downtown Rotary.

NOW, THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that I, Susan J.M. Bauman do hereby declare Yevgeny Yevtushenko an honorary citizen of the City of Madison, and proclaim Wednesday, March 21, 2001 as

YEVGENY YEVTUSHENKO DAY

in the City of Madison.

Susan J.M. Bauman, Mayor

Signed and sealed this 14th day of March 2001 at Madison, Wisconsin.

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