On Yevtushenko's Babi Yar
Your poem aroused the conscience of your nation.
Before you wrote,
there was no monument to the dead of Babi Yar.
One thing puzzles me, however.
Why did you write of Russian guilt for the crime?
You speak of
“jeers of 'Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!'
and you say
“There is no Jewish blood that's blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that's corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!”
Quite correctly, you declare:
“O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature”.
You express the hope:
“May 'Internationale' thunder and ring
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.”
But there is a strange omission here.
You rightly identify true patriotism with internationalism.
But you ignore the corollary.
And Babi Yar is such evidence of its opposite:
how nationalism and racism can go hand in hand.
For while there is no evidence that Russians participated in the crime,
it would have been impossible without the enthusiastic co-operation
of Ukrainian nationalists.
Not only the black-clad Ukrainische Hilfspolizei Schutzmannschaft,
but also the ordinary folk
who overloaded the Nazi postal system
with denunciations of their Jewish neighbours,
the ones who summoned the Germans to recapture
the few who escaped from Babi Yar
and turned to them for sanctuary,
even a child of ten.
Today, when the cross of St George is being appropriated by English fascists,
we need to learn the lessons of Babi Yar.
There is no danger from the Ukrainians
who gather in our markets to talk,
whose delicatessens sell us sausages and exotic pickles.
The danger lies in our own hearts.
Your verse identifies with the Jewish victims of the holocaust,
and it is right that you should do this.
But we need to identify also
with the canker in our own souls
that could permit us,
at the very least,
to close our eyes to what has happened in Srebrenica,
and even as I write,
in the refugee camps of Jenin.
