Bards of the 20th Century RUSSA.

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Years back one of my friends who is also a very good poem in his vernacular has presented me a Russian book of twentieth century modern verse. That was a single volume book and I must admire the sincerity noticed behind the publication of such one. It was a piece with beautiful printing and binding and with very good paper and it was in the Russian language and a rendering in English beside. Block was there and Pasternak too and many of my favorite Russian modern bards. But there was one thing to make me sad and fill my mind with remorse and that is the reason for my writing these lines. Below each verse there was an introduction of the concerned poet. A good attempt. There was despite a knife for me and not hidden. It was an information that did state that the concerned son of poetry had either got killed or the reason of his death could not be known or he had committed suicide or had gone absconded and thus others. And all these were really shocking. It was not at all believable. I was stunned. I was stunned to accept that those persons had no freedom at all, I mean, the freedom of expression and freedom of life in the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republic. Yes, you will not have any space, that pluralism affords, in the socialist system.