Earlier the award was handed over to maestro Valery Gergiev, cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, translator Tatyana Kudryavtseva, choreographer Igor Moiseyev, American pianists David Brubeck and Van Cliburn, and the director of Library of Congress James Billington, who plans to give a dinner in the honor of the Russian poet on Wednesday.

Today’s reception at the embassy in Washington is dedicated to the termination of the 10-year-old project of installing a monument to Aleksandr Pushkin in the American capital (this statue was raised on the campus of George Washington University in September 2000 in commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Pushkin’s birth) and another to Walt Whitman in Moscow. The monument to the American poet near Moscow State University was officially opened on October 14th, in the presence of US State Secretary Hillary Clinton.

“Yevgeny Aleksandrovich is very well-known overseas. His eighteen books have been translated into English, he met the President in the White house, he reads lectures at [George Washington University], his photographs have been printed on the covers of major American magazines,” Noviye Izvestia Daily quote Aleksandr Potyomkin as saying.

Poet Yevtushenko, who divides his time between Russia and the US, is also a novelist, essayist, dramatist, screenwriter, actor, editor, and a director of several films.