Vitaly Charny

Isaak E. Babel, (1894 - 1941)

Born in Odessa, Ukraine into a Jewish family, Babel grew up in an atmosphere of persecution that is reflected in the sensitivity, pessimism, and morbidity of his stories.

From the beginning Babel was interested in writing of short stories considering French author Guy de Maupassant as a teacher. He learned French to use in his first works, later included in his “Odesskiye Rasskazy” ("Odessa Tales"), which were published in 1916 in St. Petersburg in a monthly edited by Maksim Gorky; but the tsarist censors considered them crude and obscene.

Gorky praised the young author's terse, naturalistic style, at the same time advising him to "see the world." Babel proceeded to do so, serving in the Cossack First Cavalry Army and in the criminal/political police (at the time of the Revolution it wasn’t divided), working for newspapers, and holding a number of other jobs over the next seven years.

Perhaps his most significant experience was as a soldier in the war with Poland. Out of that campaign came the group of stories known as Konarmiya (1926; Red Cavalry). These stories present different aspects of war through the eyes of an inexperienced, intellectual young Jew who reports everything graphically and with naive precision. Though senseless cruelty often pervades the stories, they are lightened by a belief that joy and happiness must exist somewhere, if only in the imagination.

You may see the copy of a stamp from a set of four issued by USSR in 1929 to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of the 1^st Cavalry. On the stamp are depicted its commanders: Shchadenko, Budyony and Voroshilov who also can be found on “Red Cavalry” pages.

The commander of the 1^st Cavalry - Semyon Budyony founding no glorifying stories about his Army during discussions of the book, and made very rude statements about the writer and his work. It was only Maxim Gorki with his authority who saved Babel saying that they have to judge the book from the point of view of literature, not a horse…

The "Odessa Tales" were published in collected book form in 1931. This cycle of realistic and humorous sketches of the Moldavanka--the ghetto suburb of Odessa--vividly portrays the life-style and jargon of a group of Jewish bandits and gangsters, led by their "king," the legendary Benya Krik.

Babel wrote other short stories, as well as two plays (Zakat, 1928; Mariya, 1935). In the early 1930s, his literary reputation in the Soviet Union was high, but in the atmosphere of increasing Stalinist cultural regimentation, Communist critics began to question whether his works were compatible with official literary doctrine. After the mid-1930s Babel lived in silence and obscurity. His last published work in the Soviet Union was a short tribute to Gorky in 1938. His powerful patron had died in 1936; in May 1939 he was arrested, and he died in a prison camp in Siberia. After Stalin's death in 1953, Babel was rehabilitated, and his stories were again published in the Soviet Union.

Babel’s 100^th Birth Anniversary was commemorated by a Russian postal card. Original 40 Rubles stamp shows his portrait, name (I.Babel’) and years of life: 1894-1941. On the cachet is an illustration to one of his Odessa Tales – “The Story of my Dovecote”, a very touching tale of a young Jewish boy during 1905 pogrom in Odessa.