Yes, that is my experience also for many years, using Ubuntu with
GNOME desktop rather than Unity. So I don't think this is related
to MATE in any way, but is an issue with the Evolution RSS plugin.
I would love to use Evolution full-time, but because of this small thing, I use Thunderbird.
You can try asking the question on the Evolution List, but they will not give a solution. Instead, they may just berate you for top posting. ;-)
C
Also, I found evolution doesn't crash if it is RSS 0.92, the application only crashed if it is RSS 2.0. Sorry to make trouble for you. (PS. My system is Ubuntu MATE 20.04, so the DE is MATE, maybe that's the reason)