Putin the President and Yevtushenko the Poet

Yevgeny Yevtushenko - or YevYev, as I like to call him - is one of Russia's leading poets, a man widely known for his progressive-liberal political stance, his keen intelligence and his long string of wives. Vladimir Putin is the President of Russia. He is known for his questionable human rights record, his downright hypocritical attitude to free speech and his often shirtless defiance of the boundaries of good taste. One would expect that YevYev would join the majority of dissident or morally driven writers in an outspoken denunciation of Putin's regime. But no, he is surprisingly soft on his president. Vlad is a man who is merely struggling to find his way, YevYev says, implying that he is to be pitied, helped through a rough patch. But have a look at the photos of Putin with the fishing rod and the bare chest. Does that look like a man who has lost his way?

I've thought about why YevYev is so soft on VP and here is my theory. YevYev is sitting in an expensive cafe in some or other middle-class Prospekt in Moscow. He's writing about politics and eating a piece of millionaire's shortbread which should be good, given the cost, but actually tastes like Play-Doh. He is at that stage of his life, he thinks, where he has come to know what Play-Doh tastes like. He thinks of Putin, and how he too must have reached that same stage of his life by now. Despite the tough-guy image, the guns, the tigers, Putin is a man who knows what Play-Doh tastes like.

So, what YevYev is really saying when he says that Putin is struggling to find his way is that the two of them are similar in many respects and it's hard to denounce someone similar to yourself without denouncing yourself, which is something no self-respecting Russian (except perhaps Daniil Kharms) would do.

This is where I come in. It's here that I infer that, by saying Putin is struggling to find his way, YevYev is implying the same thing about himself. I hope he can forgive me this conjecture - after all, he is a writer too. I'd also like to think that he can forgive me for disagreeing with him, for me saying that Putin has not merely lost his way, that he has done so much more that is wrong. But what do I know, I who have yet to learn or relearn the taste of Play-Doh.