World Notes Soviet Union

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the Soviet Union's best-known living poet, knows all too well that it is one thing to criticize dead or deposed leaders and quite another to chastise those in power. Last week Yevtushenko, 52, who once was considered a daring anti-Establishment voice in his country, demonstrated anew his recognition of that crucial difference. Pravda, the Communist Party newspaper, published a Yevtushenko poem that condemns the sluggish bureaucracy that General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev repeatedly has blamed for blocking economic progress. Wrote Yevtushenko: "They jammed sticks/ in the wheels of the first locomotive/ to make sure it wouldn't work,/ quacks gripped the surgeon's knife/ when he cut on a heart/ to save a man's life . . ./ 'Because it might not work out right.'/ And they mumbled about airplanes/ and electric light . . ./ 'Because it might not work out right.' "

In the same breath, Yevtushenko mocked some of the policies of Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Said a Western diplomat in Moscow: "Yevtushenko has always been very adept at knowing which way the political winds are blowing. Clearly, he has lent his literary voice to Gorbachev's campaign."