Yevgeny Yevtushenko who wrote this denunciation of Russian anti-semitism, was the USSR's licensed-rebel poet in...the late 50s and early 60s.
"Over Babiy Yar/ there are no memorials....I am frightened...Dreyfus. I am he...I am also a boy in Belostok...the public-bar heroes are rioting...the corn-chandler is beating up my mother..."
Yevgeny Yevtushenko, who wrote this denunciation of Russian anti-semitism, was the USSR's licensed-rebel poet in the period of the liberalising "thaw" during the late 50s and early 60s, under Nikita Khruschev.
In his autobiography Yevtushenko says that he had been a vehement anti-semite, typical of his group of young "communists" in the late 40s and early 50s. Those were the years when Stalin publicly rehabilitated Russian anti-semitism - which had been so central a part of the Christian ideology of Tsarist Russia - and made it official again, thinly disguised as "anti-Zionism". Amongst ordinary Russians Stalin's "anti-Zionism" translated into a recognisable variant of the old idea: the Jews were still the enemies of Russia even though the Christian God and the Tsar had both officially gone out of fashion, to make way for the man-god Joseph Stalin.
Written in 1961, Yevtushenko's poem Babiy Yar seems to me to have jarring false notes. Even a "rebel" Russian poet had to pay homage to Official Truth. Thus lines like: "O my Russian people, I know you/Your nature is international", etc. But the core of it is real and sincerely felt, and Babiy Yar was a courageous challenge to the official and semi-official racism rampant in the Stalinist states.
It was as one who knew something about Russian antisemitsm that Yevtushenko wrote: "When the last anti-semite on earth/ is buried forever/let the International ring out".
Babiy Yar is the name of a ravine near Kiev where thousands of Jews massacred by the Nazis during the Second World War were buried.
Dreyfus was an officer in the French army convicted of espionage because of anti-Jewish prejudice and jailed.
Anne Frank was a young Jewish girl who lived in hiding for three and a half years in Nazi-occupied Europe. before being captured and sent to a concentration camp, where she was murdered.
After 1881 anti-Jewish pogroms were regular occurrences in Russia, organised by the Christian-monarchist Society of the Russian Race, the notorious "Black Hundreds". One of their slogans was "Thrash the kikes (Jews) and save Russia". The Black Hundreds ran in tandem with the Tsarist police, whose political section, the Okhrana, forged the notorious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which purported to outline the Jewish plan for world domination.
This document has been well described as a "warrant for genocide".
Paddy Dollard
Babiy Yar
Over Babiy Yar
there are no memorials.
The steep hillside like a rough inscription.
I am frightened.
Today I am as old as the Jewish race.
I seem to myself a Jew at this moment.
I, wandering in Egypt.
I, crucified, perishing.
Even today the mark of the nails.
I think also of Dreyfus. I am he.
The Philistine my judge and my accuser.
Cut off by bars and cornered,
ringed round, spat at, lied about;
the screaming ladies with the Brussels lace
poke me in the face with parasols.
I am also a boy in Belostok,
the dropping blood spreads across the floor,
the public-bar heroes are rioting
in an equal stench of garlic and of drink.
I have no strength, go spinning from a boot?
shriek useless prayers that they don't listen to;
with a cackle of "Thrash the kikes and save Russia!"
the corn-chandler is beating up my mother.
I seem to myself like Anna Frank
to be transparent as an April twig
and am in love, I have no need for words,
I need for us to look at one another.
How little we have to see or to smell
separated from foliage and the sky,
how much, how much in the dark room
gently embracing each other.
They're coming. Don't be afraid.
The booming and banging of the spring.
It's coming this way. Come to me.
Quickly, give me your lips.
They're battering in the door. Roar of the ice.
Over Babiy Yar
rustle of the wild grass.
The trees look threatening, look like judges.
And everything is one silent cry.
Taking my hat off
I feel myself slowly going grey.
And I am one silent cry
over the many thousands of the buried;
am every old man killed here,
every child killed here.
O my Russian people, I know you.
Your nature is international.
Foul hands rattle your clean name.
I know the goodness of my country.
How horrible it is that pompous title
the anti-semites calmly call themse1ves,
Society of the Russian Race.
No part of me can ever forget it.
When the last anti-semite on the earth
is buried for ever
let the International ring out.
No Jewish blood runs among my blood,
but I am as bitterly and hardly hated
by every anti-semite
as if I were a Jew. By this
I am a Russian.