Spend an evening with Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko at 7:30 p.m. Friday, March 26, in Polsky Theatre of the Carlsen Center, JCCC. The presentation, part of JCCC's scholar-in-residence program, is free and open to the public, but reservations are required. Make reservations by calling the JCCC box office at 913-469-4445.

The biography of Yevtushenko reads like an epic Russian novel. Born in a lumber station in the Irkutsk region of Siberia in 1933, the celebrated Russian poet has weathered Russian politics and culture to become a worldwide literary superstar who has also gained notoriety as an actor, director, screenwriter, political activist and teacher. Through his poetry, Yevtushenko was one of the first Soviet voices to speak out against Stalinism.

Following Stalin's death, Yevtushenko's reading of his revolutionary poem Zima Junction at a Moscow bookstore was enthusiastically received by 1,500 youth. He revived the Russian tradition of poetry reading, attracting stadium crowds of up to 30,000.

In 1960, he was the first Russian poet to pass through the Iron Curtain and recite his poetry in the West. In 1961, Time magazine featured him on the cover calling him a combination of "angry young man, international playboy and heir to the great Russian poets."

Occasionally, Yevtushenko overstepped his privileges with the Soviet authorities and was reprimanded. That was in the case with his 1961 poem Baba Yar, in which he denounced the Soviet distortion of historical fact regarding the Nazi massacre of the Jewish population of Kiev in September 1941. He was also censored for his condemnation of the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia and for a telegram to Soviet official Leonid Brezhnev expressing concern for the safety of Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn after the latter's arrest.

After serving in the first freely elected Parliament of the USSR in 1989, Yevtushenko fought against censorship. He recited his poetry from the balcony of the Russian Parliament Building before 200,000 defenders of freedom during the attempted Communist coup d'état in August 1991.  He received the "Defender of Free Russia" medal for resisting the coup. However, when he was invited to the Kremlin in 1994 to receive the highest Russian decoration from Yeltsin, Yevtushenko refused to accept it because of the bloodshed in Chechnya. The poet also protested the Soviet War in Afghanistan.

Yevtushenko, who now divides his time between Russia and the United States, teaches Russian and European poetry and the history of world cinema at the University of Tulsa, Okla., and Queens College, City University of New York. He is working on a three-volume collection of Russian poetry from the 11^th-20^th century and plans a novel based on his time in Havana during the Cuban missile crisis.

JCCC's Scholar in Residence program is designed to bring visiting scholars to students, faculty and the public. Yevtushenko's residency is sponsored by Tatiana Scanlan, adjunct associate professor, English and languages. For more information about Yevtushenko's residency, contact Scanlan at 913-469-8500, ext. 5362, or tscanla1@jccc.edu, or Pat Decker, program facilitator, honors program, at 913-469-8500, ext. 2512, or pdecker5@jccc.edu.