The Wolves

Like wolves in winter, the circle of Communist critics tightened around brash young Poet Evgeny Evtushenko last week. The Kremlin announced a full meeting of the Communist Party Central Committee next month to discuss "ideological" matters--meaning the crackdown on Evtushenko and other maverick intellectuals. The official organ of the Moscow Writers Union, Literaturnaya Rossiya, backed a reader's suggestion that Evtushenko be thrown out of the union--a move that would reduce the high-living poet to poverty, since state publishing houses would no longer accept his work. Even Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin joined the wolf pack snarling at Evtushenko's heels. Following up earlier attacks on the poet for daring to evade Soviet censorship by publishing his autobiography in France, Gagarin said the act demonstrated "an unforgivable lack of responsibility."

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