Yevtushenko was one of the authors politically active during the Khrushchev Thaw. In 1961 he wrote what would become perhaps his most famous poem, "Babiyy Yar", in which he denounced the Soviet distortion of historical fact regarding the Nazi massacre of the Jewish population of Kyiv in September 1941, as well as the anti-Semitism still widespread in the Soviet Union. The usual Soviet policy in relation to the Holocaust in Russia was to describe it as general atrocities against Soviet citizens, and to avoid mentioning that it was a genocide of the Jews. However, Yevtushenko's work "Babiyy Yar" "spoke not only of the Nazi atrocities, but the Soviet government's own persecution of Jewish people." The poem was published in a major newspaper, "Literaturnaya Gazeta", achieved widespread circulation in numerous copies, and later was set to music, together with four other Yevtushenko poems, by Dmitri Shostakovich in his Thirteenth Symphony, subtitled "Babi Yar". Of Yevtushenko's work, Shostakovich has said, "Morality is a sister of conscience. And perhaps God is with Yevtushenko when he speaks of conscience. Every morning, in place of prayers, I reread or repeat by memory two poems by Yevtushenko: 'Career' or 'Boots'."