'Advocate' Says Hope Dim For Russian Poet's Visit

The ADVOCATE has dropped preparations for the visit of Soviet writer Yevgeny Yevtushenko to Harvard, Terence Cogley '65, president of the ADVOCATE, said yesterday. Cogley explained that he has assumed on the basis of newspaper information that pressure from Soviet political authorities will force Yevtushenko to cancel his tour of U.S. college campuses.

Albert C. Todd, professor of Slavic Studies at Indiana University and sponsor of the tour, stated yesterday that the 29-year old "new wave" poet has not officially cancelled the U.S. trip. He therefore termed journalistic reports that Yevtushenko has already given up the tour "technically untrue," but added that these stories "may forecast what will eventually happen."

Yevtushenko had originally planned a six-week visit to this country, lasting from mid-April until the end of May. His stop in Cambridge, sponsored by the Advocate in conjunction with the Slavic Department, was to include a public lecture, with translator, on the role of the artist in society, and a reading of his poems in Russian.

Since the trip was scheduled, however, Yevtushenko's criticism of Russian society has drawn increasingly violent condemnation from the Soviet political leadership. At a March 3 meeting with artists and writers Premier Khrushchev singled out Yevtushenko and novelist Ilya Ehrenburg for severe censure.

Todd said yesterday that after this first attack Yevtushenko wrote the Indiana Slavic Department to say that he still planned to come to the U.S. More recently, however, the publication in the Paris weekly newspaper L'Express of Yevtushenko's outspoken autobiography has redoubled the anger of Soviet officials.

In denouncing the autobiography, articles in the Soviet press demanded last week that Yevtushenko and other young writers be prevented from making further trips abroad until they "mature politically."