1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9 He met Aragon and Frédéric Joliot-Currie and also his revolutionary Chinese friend Emi Siao (Si-Ya-U) from KTHV. Then he went to Prag to receive the International Peace Prize. He started to acquire important role in the World Peace Council's activities. He was in Beijing to participate in the meeting of Asian Members on 25 June 1952 and then in Berlin to attend a meeting against the Korean War on 1-5 July 1952. He condemned the Turkish Government that had sent Turkish soldiers to the Korean War which provoked by American imperialism. He made many speeches against those who caused the death of Turkish soldiers in Korea. He went to Vienna for a peace meeting and made the opening speech on 5 October 1952. Proponents of peace convened again in Vienna on 12-19 December 1952. There were 1700 delegates from 83 countries in this important meeting. Frédéric Joliot-Curie, Aragon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Neruda, Diego Rivera, Arnold Zweig were among those present. At the end of 1952 Nâzım Hikmet became an administrator of the World Peace Council. He attended meetings in several countries, and he went to Warsaw during this period. He had good relations with the Polish. His Polish friends realised that he descended from the Borzenski family on his grandfather's side. As he did not possess citizenship to any country, they prepared a Polish passport for him. Thus, Nâzım Hikmet was accepted to Polish citizenship with the name of his grandfather as Nâzım Hikmet Borzenski. The actions of the World Peace Council went on continued and attracted increasingly more interest. There were 2000 delegates from 90 countries at the meeting of World Peace in Helsinki on 22-29 June 1955. Nâzım Hikmet spoke at this meeting as a Turkish delegate. At the end of the meeting he was elected once more to the administrating body of the World Peace Council. Japanese students and housewives organised a World Peace Conference in Hiroshima on 6 August 1955. It was an important meeting in observance of the 10th Anniversary of the Hiroshima Atom Bomb and it could not be seen simply as communist propaganda. 33 million signatures against nuclear research were collected all over the world. Nâzım Hikmet was acclaimed as one of the greatest poets beyond his identity as a peace delegate in this meeting. In 1956 he stayed eight months in Poland. This was interpreted as evincing "an instance of liberal communism" on his part. He travelled to other socialist countries from Poland and returned there. He had to travel continuously because he was one of the administrators of the World Peace Council. The Soviet Union attached importance to peace propaganda in the name of Cold War. On account of its indisputably true basis, the peace case was a cause in which Nâzım Hikmet participated sincerely. It was doubtless that he would defend peace and would do the same propaganda in his poems. He told of his thoughts in the meetings he participated in and in the speeches he made. He was seen as a poet who expressed his feelings sincerely, not as a propagandist. He wrote poems against wars and nuclear weapons and these poems were composed and sung by famous singers like Paul Robeson and Pete Seeger. Nâzım Hikmet was restless from the developments of communism in the Soviet Union and the change of power from the proletarian dictatorship to a one-man dictatorship. He was afraid of telling his thoughts and he was quiet; sometimes, under compulsion, he was talking without believing in what he said. He was telling of his uneasiness to some of his trustworthy friends but he did so with gentle words. For example, he told Ilya Ehrenburg that, "I have great respect for Comrade Stalin but I cannot bear to read poems that compare him with the sun. This is not only bad poetry but also bad sensibility." In fact, in the Soviet Union, where he was staying as a guest, it was impossible not to fear Stalin. He also retreated from the reactions of orthodox communists. His actions promoting freedom and criticism of some of the applications were attracting attention so that his close friends warned him. He was also warned by authorities a number of times. He was hearing that if he continued his undisciplined behaviour, he would be poisoned or he would die by accident. When Stalin died on 5 March 1953, the Authors Union wanted from the leading authors to write poems about this deplorable event. Nâzım Hikmet wrote a poem, too. But he did not idolise Stalin; rather, the poem emphasised the importance of the union of the people and it mentioned him as a hero in the revolution among Marx, Engels and Lenin. - Top - Next ->   1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 - 9