Fatal Half Measures: The Culture of Democracy in the Soviet Union

This astonishingly rich collection of essays, articles, manifestos and speeches gets off to a slow start, with many incidental pieces addressed to a Soviet audience, and with poet Yevtushenko's self-serving analysis of the poetry of his generation as ``the cradle of glasnost .'' But Yevtushenko, now a congressman from the city of Kharkov, proves himself a tireless, outspoken exponent of democratic reforms, as well as a world citizen. He links the ``mass psychosis'' of Stalinism to its present-day residue, ``fear of glasnost .'' He rails against chauvinism, racism and anti-Semitism, and deems superpower ``a disgusting term'' because it places ``two nations above all other countries.'' Along with a discussion of the unequal status of Soviet women and travel pieces on Alaska/Siberia (``unjustly divided twins''), Thailand and Moscow, there are encounters with Robert Kennedy, Pasternak and Picasso, and uncanny appreciations of Tolstoy, Shostakovich, poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Marina Tsvetayeva. (Mar.)