His death was announced by Gennady Ivanov, the secretary of the Russian Writers Union. Mr. Ivanov did not give the cause of death, but Mr. Voznesensky had a stroke several years ago, and some Russian news reports said he suffered a second stroke earlier this year.

Mr. Voznesensky's poetry epitomized the setbacks, gains and hopes of the post-Stalin decades in Russia. His hundreds of subtle, ironic and innovative verses reflected alternating periods of calm and stress as the Communist Party's rule stabilized, weakened and then, in 1991, quickly disintegrated.

Mr. Voznesensky (pronounced Vahz-nuh-SEN-skee) was part of a group of daring poets like Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Bella Akhmadulina and Robert Rozhdestvensky who burst onto the stage in the cultural thaw that followed Stalin's death in 1953. Rising to stardom in the 1960s, they filled stadiums for poetry readings and attracted worldwide attention as creators of powerful verse and symbols of youthful defiance.

Mr. Voznesensky traveled the world to read his poetry, serving as a sort of unofficial Kremlin cultural envoy, even though he was a critic of rough-handed Soviet policies like the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia and the arrests of intellectual dissidents. Moscow, ever in search of approval at home and abroad, at times seemed to use Mr. Voznesensky's independent voice for its own propaganda aims, as if to show the world that the authorities could, to a degree, tolerate criticism of the Communist leadership.

Whatever Mr. Voznesensky's political opinions, his skill, experimentation and depth as a poet won respect around the world. His works were widely translated, and Mr. Voznesensky himself was hailed as a magnificent reader of his poetry. He once appeared in London on the same bill as Laurence Olivier and Paul Scofield and more than held his own.

"I Am Goya," one of Mr. Voznesensky's earliest and best-known poems, expressed the fear of war he experienced in childhood. It was inspired by a volume of Goya's etchings given to him by his father. As translated by the American poet Stanley Kunitz, it reads in part:

I am Goya
of the bare field, by the enemy's beak gouged
till the craters of my eyes gape
I am grief
I am the tongue
of war, the embers of cities
on the snows of the year 1941
I am hunger
I am the gullet
of a woman hanged whose body like a bell
tolled over a blank square
I am Goya

The poem creates its impressions of war and horror through a series of images and interrelated variations on the name of the painter, which echo throughout in a series of striking sound metaphors in Russian: Goya, glaz (eyes), gore (grief), golos (voice), gorod (cities), golod (hunger), gorlo (gullet).

The British critic John Bayley wrote that a recitation of the poem by Mr. Voznesensky in the 1960s "was electrifying."

"Russian poetry has always inspired recitation and a rapt response from the reciter's audience," Mr. Bayley added, "but Mr. Voznesensky, and his contemporary Yevgeny Yevtushenko, are perhaps the first Russian poets to exploit this in the actual process of composition — to write poems specifically for performing, as pop songs are written for electronic transmission by singers and band."

Andrei Andreyevich Voznesensky was born in Moscow on May 12, 1933. From 1941 to 1944 he and his mother, who read poetry to him, lived in the Urals while his father, an engineering professor, was engaged in war work, including the evacuation of factories during the siege of Leningrad.

Mr. Voznesensky first studied to be an architect at the Institute of Architecture in Moscow and received an engineering degree. One night in 1957 there was a fire there, and he wrote about it in an early poem called "Fire in the Architecture Institute."

"I believe in symbols," he remarked years later. "I understood that architecture was burned out in me. I became a poet."

Architecture's demands for structural harmony and contrast seemed to be present in his poetic design, which emphasized the exterior rather than the interior — form and sound above content. W. H. Auden, who translated some of his verses, said Mr. Voznesensky knew that a poem was "a verbal artifact" that had to be "as skillfully and solidly constructed as a table or a motorcycle."

Mr. Voznesensky's poetic and moral mentor and fellow critic of the Soviet system was Boris Pasternak, the author of "Doctor Zhivago." Their friendship began when Mr. Voznesensky was still a student and sent his poems to Pasternak, who invited him to his home. Mr. Voznesensky later wrote in "I Am Fourteen": "From that day on, my life took on a magical meaning and a sense of destiny; his new poetry, telephone conversations, Sunday chats at his house from 2 to 4, walks — years of happiness and childish adoration."

Clifford J. Levy contributed reporting from Moscow.