ABSTRACT
Yessenin’s name has been made a symbol by the Bool-sheviks for any sign of disheartenment, or loss of ardor among the youth in the great task of building socialism —especially such loss of ardor as resorts to drunkenness or sexual debauchery in the border-lands between Bohemia and the underworld. Important conferences of party chiefs have been dedicated to “Yesseninism,” and many resounding speeches made and learned dissertations published on the subject. The word is firmly fixed in the new Soviet language. In the Literary Encyclopedia, a considerable space is devoted to its meaning, and here the suicide of poets plays the major role. After mentioning erotic aberrations as one marked element in the meaning of Yesseninism, the learned work continues: “Yesseninism expressed itself still more sharply in the suicides which removed several poets from our literature.” And lest the reader should attribute a political, or perhaps even a “proletarian,” cause to this unusual epidemic, it quickly adds: “The majority of them were of peasant origin, were not engaged in any social work, and found in the poems of Yessenin support and justification for the development of individualistic experiences within themselves.”
