To understand this poem of Yevtushenko's, it is essential to realize that the word “Bratsk,” the name of the gigantic complex of inland sea and hydroelectric station and factories in Siberia, two thirds of the way from Moscow to Vladivostok, also refers to “brotherhood” in Russian, through the adjective “Bratskiy,” “brotherly.” It is obviously impossible to reproduce this in English with such grotesqueries as “The Brotherly Hydroelectric Station.” Therefore, throughout this English translation, only the words “Bratsk Station” have been used. But the dual meanings of the name, as also of “light” meaning both “light” and “enlightenment,” are basically and intricately linked throughout the whole poem.

Yevtushenko is one of the greatest poets of the modern age. He is important not only because of the intrinsic quality of his poetry, of such masterpieces as “Zima Junction,” but for his unique stature as a poetic force in both East and West. A passionately patriotic Russian, he is also a highly sophisticated and much traveled man. Editions of his poems sell by hundreds of thousands in Russia, and millions listen to his readings; but he has also drawn vast crowds on his visits to the United States, England and Italy. He is not a member of the Communist Party, but a fervent believer in the ideals of Lenin, in what he calls throughout “Bratsk Station” the “Commune.” Giving the word its original French impetus, he demonstrates its workings in Russian history and holds out the ideal of the future commune of mankind, the brotherhood of nations.

“Bratsk Station” gives, as no other work has done, the essence of modern Russia. It gives it all, the great writers and rebels and revolutionaries under the Tsars; Lenin; the Revolution; some of the evils of Stalinism; the corruption of some Stalinist bosses; the priggishness of some examples of modern Soviet man.

Siberia, the ground on which the whole poem lives, is both the endless prison which engulfed intellectuals under the Tsars and political prisoners under Stalin, and today the source of light from Bratsk, built out of the virgin taigá, the Siberian forest, by people who now actually go to Siberia of their own free will, much to the astonishment of those who remember the prison camps.

In “Bratsk Station” Yevtushenko speaks in several voices: his own and those of the Bratsk Station and the Egyptian Pyramid, young and old Russians, the Angara River, a Jew. Some are idealistic, some cynical, some wise with suffering or age, some innocent. The flatness of tone and banality of thought in certain sections would seem to be quite deliberate, when seen in the context of the whole poem; it is a poem that must be read as a whole. Yevtushenko is a highly aware writer, and a master of organization. The enthusiasm and rhetoric of some of his idealistic poems may likewise seem naïve to us non-Communists, though God (or rather Lenin) only knows how the grinding pessimism and mincing ironies of some Western poetry must sound to the Russians. But Yevtushenko is desperately anxious to show that “affirming flame” which W. H. Auden begged for in 1939. It would be easier, or more natural perhaps, for a Russian to be a cynic or a nihilist, after the appalling destruction of a civil war and two world wars in thirty years. Even today it does not seem to be generally realized that in the Second World War alone twenty million Russians were killed, as against about half a million in the British Commonwealth, and three hundred thousand in the United States. In “Bratsk Station” the voices of the dead sound constantly behind those of the living.

It is extremely difficult to give any true impression in English of the range and quality of Yevtushenko's poetry. He uses every sort of idiom, from classical poetic diction to the colloquialisms of the different times about which he is writing. He uses a very wide variety of forms of versification, and his rhymes are so subtle that it is better not to risk trying to copy them in English, which in any case has different facilities for rhyme from Russian. Yevtushenko also writes in the style of popular songs, and parodies the solemn efforts of amateur poets (which he admires nonetheless, for the genuine feeling behind them). There are many ironical passages. He loves to play with the multiple meaning of words, and indeed, as has been said, the whole poem is based on a play on the words “Bratsk” and “light.”

Grateful thanks are due to Igor Mezhakoff-Koriakin and Rosh Ireland for help in checking the translation.