Tag: Yevgeny Yevtushenko

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Another letter to President Putin

The President of the Russian Federation

Presidential Administration Office

23 Ilyinka Street

Moscow, 103132

Russian Federation

April 4, 2022

Your Excellency, President Vladimir Putin!

I emailed you last year through the Kremlin website. It seemed risky for several reasons, but Alexei Navalny and many others have risked much more in these shadow years of winter.

In my email, I said only you can save Navalny’s life, that you can change the course of history. This is still true. Your position on Navalny and Ukraine may feel fixed in stone, immovable and permanent, like a monument in the making.

The Palace of the Soviets would have been the world’s tallest skyscraper, but unchecked ambition crushed progress and the installed steel was disassembled to support unrelated construction.

The Palace of the Soviets doesn’t exist and obedience forced from dissenting minds can’t last.

From “Dwarf Birches” by Yevgeny Yevtushenko,

Constraint bears the form of rebellion.

For Alexei Navalny and Roman Protasevich, for others like them in Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia, for all persons bent down,

eternal frost can’t last.

Its horror will yield.

Our right to stand upright will come.

Should the climate change, won’t

our branches at once grow

into shapes that are free?

President Putin, won’t you lead this welcome change of seasons?

Spring is coming. 

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Free Aleksei Navalny

Amnesty International campaign for Aleksei Navalny

The President of the Russian Federation
Presidential Administration Office
23 Ilyinka Street
Moscow, 103132
Russian Federation

Your Excellency, President Vladimir Putin!

In the matter of Aleksei Navalny, only you can save his life, which is to say only you can change the course of history.  

To free Navalny is to lead humanity as we’ve never seen before. You have the power to change the world.

In the words of Yevgeny Yevtushenko, excerpted from “Dwarf Birches” translated by

Vera Dunham:

"Of course, you command more freedom.
But, for all that, our roots are more strong.
Of course, we don’t dwell in Paris,
but we are valued more in the tundra.

"We are dwarf birches.
We have cleverly made up our poses.
But all this is largely pretense.
Constraint bears the form of rebellion.

"We believe, bent down forever,
eternal frost can’t last.
Its horror will yield.
Our right to stand upright will come.

"Should the climate change, won’t
our branches at once grow
into shapes that are free?
Yet we’re now used to being maimed.

"And this worries and worries us,
and the frost twists and twists us,
but we dig in, like splinters,
we-dwarf birches!"

Spring is coming.