Two years ago, Soviet Poet Robert Rozhdestvensky, 32, was the idol of rebellious Communist youth. Sharing a platform with Evgeny Evtushenko and other young poets, Rozhdestvensky declaimed against the cult of Stalinism.
How could we
An atheist people
Be servants of a cult?
he cried, and the people cheered.
But Khrushchev said tut-tut to all that, and Rozhdestvensky rather readily switched his blank-verse sermonizing from anti-Stalinism to anti-Americanism. Imagining himself a U.S. Indian in wild West days, he asked:
What if . . . we should once more hear the warpath's call?
How the tomahawk would glint in the dew.
What scalps would steam in our hands.
Even steamier...