People: Jun. 24, 1985

Before the chill in U.S.-Soviet relations, poetry rather than politics was the symbol of the Soviet Union's break with Stalinism, and at lecture halls across America in the 1960s and '70s, Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky were Russian poetry's most distinguished ambassadors. This month Yevtushenko, 51, and Voznesensky, 52, are in the U.S. on an unofficial but widely praised visit. Voznesensky, his country's greatest living poet, took the opportunity to accept belatedly a 1984 honorary degree from Oberlin College, where he inveighed against "barbarians of every age," and intoned: "For an artist trueborn/ revolt is second nature:/ he is both tribune/ and troublemaker." Meanwhile, Yevtushenko has been traveling across the country performing an environmentalist "Concert for the Earth" with American Jazzman Paul Winter. Last week both men of Soviet letters were in New York City for a special reading and concert at Carnegie Hall that expressed their shared hopes for peace. Says Yevtushenko: "The trouble with people who can push the button is that they can't see people's faces. As for me, I am going home with a whole sackful of American faces."