Evtushenko on Stalin's Heirs

Evgenii Evtushenko, Stalin's Heirs. October 21, 1962

During 1962 liberal sentiment began to assume the proportions of outright dissidence, though remained within the bounds of "socialist humanism." Then, in October, two writers went considerably further: Viktor Nekrasov, in his travel commentary, Both Sides of the Ocean, and Yevtushenko, in "The Heirs of Stalin," his powerful assault on the persistence of neo-Stalinism and the possible revival of a full-fledged Stalinism. Their daring was seen as a challenge to the Party and the depth of its de-Stalinization campaign.

Original Source: Pravda, 21 October 1962.

The marble was silent.
The glass glistened silently.
The guards stood silent,
Bronzing in the sun.
But the coffin gave off a faint vapor.
Breath leaked through a crack
When they took it through the Mausoleum doors.
The coffin slowly floated past,
Its corners touching the bayonets.
He too was silent too! -
But frighteningly silent.
Sullenly clenching
Embalmed fists,
inside, the man pretending death
Pressed against the crack.
He wanted to remember all those
Who were carrying him out:
Young Ryazan and Kursk recruits, So that afterward somehow
He might gather the strength for a sally
And rise from the earth
And get at these rash persons.
He had thought of something.
He had merely nestled down for a rest.
And I appeal to our government
With the request
To double,
To triple
The guard at this slab
So that Stalin may not rise,
And, with Stalin,
the past.
I am not speaking of that treasured, valorous past Which was Turksib,
Magnitka
And the flag over Berlin.
Here
I mean by the past
The ignoring of the people's welfare,
The calumnies,
The arrests of the innocent.
We sowed honestly.
We poured steel honestly
And we marched honestly,
Lining up in soldiers' ranks.
But he feared us.
Believing in a great goal, he did not believe
That the means
Should be worthy of the great goal.
He was farsighted.
Skilled in the laws of battle,
He left many heirs on the face of the globe.
I dream
that a telephone has been placed in the coffin:
Stalin sends his instructions
to Enver Hoxha.
Where else does the line from the coffin run?
No-Stalin has not given up.
He considers death remediable.
We rooted him
out of the Mausoleum.
But how to root Stalin
out of Stalin's heirs?!
Some of the heirs snip roses in retirement
and secretly consider the retirement temporary.
Others
even condemn Stalin from the platform,
But themselves
at night pine for the old days.
Evidently not for nothing do Stalin's heirs today
suffer heart attacks.
They, once his lieutenants,
do not like these times
When the camps are empty
And the halls where people listen to poetry Are crowded.
The Party
ordered me not to be quiet.
Let some repeat over and over:
"Relax! "--I cannot be calm.
As long as Stalin's heirs exist on earth
It will seem to me
that Stalin is still in the Mausoleum.

Source: Current Digest of the Soviet Press. Vol. XIV, No. 40 (1963), p. 5