From the 'music of the Revolution' that Blok detected, through the exhilaration and anguish that destroyed Esenin and Mayakovsky, from Pasternak's zest for life coupled with his child-like ability to rise above politics, on to Akhmatova's haunting poetic monument to the millions who died in Stalin's purges; then on to the exuberance, irreverence and candour that Evtushenko and Vznesensky stamped on Russia's own version of the 'swinging sixties' - this is the journey which culminates, in the 1980s and 1990s, in the greatest freedom that Russian literature has ever known. "Seven Soviet Poets" offers a foundation course in Russian poetry of the 20th century. The fact that several of these poets have been published in full in Russia only after the collapse of communism testifies to the endurance of their verse and its moral and cultural fibre. The book also includes an introduction, notes vocabulary and bibliography.