Isaac babel biography. Isaac Babel - Odessa stories

Russian Soviet writer, journalist and playwright, known for his "Odessa Tales" and the collection "Cavalry" about the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny.

The biography of Babel, known in many details, still has some gaps due to the fact that the autobiographical notes left by the writer himself are largely embellished, altered, or even “pure fiction” with a specific purpose that corresponded to the political moment of that time. However, the established version of the writer's biography is as follows:

Childhood

Born in Odessa on Moldavanka in the family of a poor merchant Many Itskovich Bobel (Emmanuel (Manus, Mane) Isaakovich Babel), originally from the White Church, and Feiga (Fani) Aronovna Bobel. The beginning of the century was a time of social unrest and a mass exodus of Jews from the Russian Empire. Babel himself survived the 1905 pogrom (he was hidden by a Christian family), and his grandfather Shoil became one of the three hundred Jews killed then.

In order to enter the preparatory class of the Odessa commercial school of Nicholas I, Babel had to exceed the quota for Jewish students (10% in the Pale of Settlement, 5% outside it and 3% for both capitals), but despite the positive marks that gave the right to study , the place was given to another young man, whose parents gave a bribe to the leadership of the school. For a year of education at home, Babel went through a two-class program. In addition to traditional disciplines, he studied the Talmud and studied music.

Youth

After another unsuccessful attempt to enter Odessa University (again due to quotas), he ended up at the Kiev Institute of Finance and Entrepreneurship, which he graduated under his original name Bobel. There he met his future wife Evgenia Gronfein, the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv industrialist, who fled with him to Odessa.

Fluent in Yiddish, Russian and French, Babel wrote his first works in French, but they have not reached us. Then he went to Petersburg, without having, according to his own recollections, the right, since the city was outside the Pale of Settlement. (Recently, a document was discovered, issued by the Petrograd police in 1916, which allowed Babel to live in the city while studying at the Psycho-Neurological Institute, which confirms the inaccuracy of the writer in his romanticized autobiography). In the capital, he managed to enter immediately into the fourth year of the law faculty of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute.

Babel published the first stories in Russian in the journal Chronicle in 1915. “Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna” and “Mother, Rimma and Alla” attracted attention, and Babel was about to be tried for pornography (article 1001), which was prevented by the revolution. On the advice of M. Gorky, Babel "went into the people" and changed several professions.

In the autumn of 1917, Babel, after serving as a private for several months, deserted and made his way to Petrograd, where in December 1917 he went to work in the Cheka, and then in the People's Commissariat of Education and on food expeditions. In the spring of 1920, on the recommendation of M. Koltsov, under the name of Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov, he was sent to the 1st Cavalry Army as a war correspondent for Yug-ROST, where he was a fighter and political worker. He fought with her on the Romanian, northern and Polish fronts. Then he worked in the Odessa Provincial Committee, was the editor-in-chief of the 7th Soviet printing house, a reporter in Tiflis and Odessa, in the State Publishing House of Ukraine. According to the myth voiced by him in his autobiography, he did not write during these years, although it was then that he began to create the cycle of Odessa Tales.

Writer's career

In 1924, in the journals Lef and Krasnaya Nov, he published a number of stories, which later formed the Cavalry and Odessa Stories cycles. Babel was able to masterfully convey in Russian the style of literature created in Yiddish (this is especially noticeable in Odessa Tales, where in places the direct speech of his characters is an interlinear translation from Yiddish).

Soviet criticism of those years, paying tribute to the talent and significance of Babel's work, pointed to "antipathy to the cause of the working class" and reproached him for "naturalism and apology for the elemental principle and the romanticization of banditry." The book "Cavalry" was sharply criticized by S. M. Budyonny, seeing in it a slander on the First Cavalry Army. Kliment Voroshilov complained in 1924 to Dmitry Manuilsky, a member of the Central Committee and later head of the Comintern, that the style of the work on the Cavalry was "unacceptable." Stalin believed that Babel wrote about "things that he did not understand." Gorky, on the other hand, expressed the opinion that the writer, on the contrary, “decorated the inside” of the Cossacks “better, more truthfully than Gogol of the Cossacks.”

In "Odessa Tales" Babel romantically depicts the life of Jewish criminals of the early 20th century, finding thieves in everyday life.

Raiders, as well as artisans and petty traders, have exotic traits and strong personalities. The most memorable hero of these stories is the Jewish raider Benya Krik (his prototype is the legendary Mishka Yaponchik), according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the embodiment of the Babel dream of a Jew who can stand up for himself.

In 1926, he acted as the editor of the first Soviet collected works of Sholom Aleichem, and the following year he adapted Sholom Aleichem's novel Wandering Stars for film production.

In 1927 he took part in the collective novel "Big Fires", published in the magazine "Spark".

In 1928 Babel published the play "Sunset" (staged at the 2nd Moscow Art Theater), in 1935 - the play "Maria". Babel's Peru also owns several scripts. A master of short stories, Babel strives for conciseness and accuracy, combining in the images of his characters, plot collisions and descriptions a huge temperament with outward dispassion. The flowery, metaphor-laden language of his early stories is later replaced by a strict and restrained narrative manner.

In the subsequent period, with the tightening of the situation and the onset of totalitarianism, Babel was printed less and less. Despite his doubts about what was happening, he did not emigrate, although he had such an opportunity, visiting in 1927, 1932 and 1935 his wife, who lived in France, and a daughter born after one of these visits.

Arrest and execution

On May 15, 1939, Babel was arrested at his dacha in Peredelkino on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activity" and espionage (case No. 419). During his arrest, several manuscripts were confiscated from him, which turned out to be forever lost (15 folders, 11 notebooks, 7 notebooks with notes). The fate of his novel about the Cheka remains unknown.

During interrogations, Babel was subjected to severe torture. By the military board of the Supreme Court of the USSR, he was sentenced to capital punishment and shot the next day, January 27, 1940. The execution list was personally signed by Joseph Stalin. Among the possible reasons for Stalin's hostility to Babel is the fact that the Cavalry was devoted to the story of the Polish campaign of 1920 - a military operation failed by Stalin.

In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated. With the active influence of Konstantin Paustovsky, who loved him very much and left warm memories of him, after 1956 Babel was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, the collection "Selected" was published with a preface by Ilya Ehrenburg, who called Isaac Babel one of the outstanding writers of the 20th century, a brilliant stylist and master of the short story.

Babel family

Evgenia Borisovna Gronfein, with whom he was legally married, emigrated to France in 1925. His other (civilian) wife, with whom he entered into a relationship after breaking up with Evgenia, was Tamara Vladimirovna Kashirina (Tatyana Ivanova), their son, named Emmanuel (1926), later became known in the Khrushchev era as the artist Mikhail Ivanov (member of the Group of Nine ”), and was brought up in the family of his stepfather, Vsevolod Ivanov, considering himself his son. After parting with Kashirina, Babel, who traveled abroad, for some time reunited with his legal wife, who gave birth to his daughter Natalya (1929), married to the American literary critic Natalie Brown (under whose editorship the complete works of Isaac Babel were published in English). The last (civil) wife of Babel - Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova, gave birth to his daughter Lydia (1937), lived in the USA.

Creation

Babel's work had a huge impact on the writers of the so-called "South Russian school" (Ilf, Petrov, Olesha, Kataev, Paustovsky, Svetlov, Bagritsky) and received wide recognition in the Soviet Union, his books were translated into many foreign languages.

The legacy of the repressed Babel somewhat shared his fate. It was only after his "posthumous rehabilitation" in the 1960s that he began to be printed again, however, his works were subjected to heavy censorship. The writer's daughter, an American citizen, Natalie Babel Brown (1929-2005) managed to collect hard-to-reach or unpublished works and publish them with comments ("The Complete Works of Isaac Babel", 2002).

Memory

Currently, in Odessa, citizens are raising funds for the monument to Isaac Babel. Already obtained permission from the city council; the monument will stand at the intersection of Zhukovsky and Richelieu streets, opposite the house where he once lived. The grand opening is planned for 2010 - the 70th anniversary of the tragic death of the writer.

Youth

Writer's career

Cavalry

Creation

Arrest and execution

Babel family

Creativity Explorers

Literature

Bibliography

Editions of essays

Screen adaptations

(original surname Bobel; July 1 (13), 1894, Odessa - January 27, 1940, Moscow) - Russian Soviet writer, journalist and playwright of Jewish origin, known for his "Odessa stories" and the collection "Cavalry" about the First Cavalry Army of Budyonny.

Biography

The biography of Babel, known in many details, still has some gaps due to the fact that the autobiographical notes left by the writer himself are largely embellished, altered, or even “pure fiction” with a specific purpose that corresponded to the political moment of that time. However, the established version of the writer's biography is as follows:

Childhood

Born in Odessa on Moldavanka in the family of a poor merchant Manya Itskovich Bobel ( Emmanuil (Manus, Manet) Isaakovich Babel), originally from Belaya Tserkov, and Feigi ( Fani) Aronovna Bobel. The beginning of the century was a time of social unrest and a mass exodus of Jews from the Russian Empire. Babel himself survived the 1905 pogrom (he was hidden by a Christian family), and his grandfather Shoil became one of the three hundred Jews killed then.

In order to enter the preparatory class of the Odessa commercial school of Nicholas I, Babel had to exceed the quota for Jewish students (10% in the Pale of Settlement, 5% outside it and 3% for both capitals), but despite the positive marks that gave the right to study , the place was given to another young man, whose parents gave a bribe to the leadership of the school. For a year of education at home, Babel went through a two-class program. In addition to traditional disciplines, he studied the Talmud and studied music.

Youth

After another unsuccessful attempt to enter Odessa University (again due to quotas), he ended up at the Kiev Institute of Finance and Entrepreneurship, which he graduated under his original name Bobel. There he met his future wife Evgenia Gronfein, the daughter of a wealthy Kyiv industrialist, who fled with him to Odessa.

Fluent in Yiddish, Russian and French, Babel wrote his first works in French, but they have not reached us. Then he went to Petersburg, without having, according to his own recollections, the right, since the city was outside the Pale of Settlement. (Recently, a document was discovered, issued by the Petrograd police in 1916, which allowed Babel to live in the city while studying at the Psycho-Neurological Institute, which confirms the inaccuracy of the writer in his romanticized autobiography). In the capital, he managed to enter immediately into the fourth year of the law faculty of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute.

Babel published the first stories in Russian in the journal Chronicle in 1915. “Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna” and “Mother, Rimma and Alla” attracted attention, and Babel was about to be tried for pornography (article 1001), which was prevented by the revolution. On the advice of M. Gorky, Babel "went into the people" and changed several professions.

In the autumn of 1917, Babel, after serving as a private for several months, deserted and made his way to Petrograd, where in December 1917 he went to work in the Cheka, and then in the People's Commissariat of Education and on food expeditions. In the spring of 1920, on the recommendation of M. Koltsov, under the name Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov was sent to the 1st Cavalry Army as a war correspondent for Yug-ROST, was a fighter and political worker there. He fought with her on the Romanian, northern and Polish fronts. Then he worked in the Odessa Provincial Committee, was the editor-in-chief of the 7th Soviet printing house, a reporter in Tiflis and Odessa, in the State Publishing House of Ukraine. According to the myth voiced by him in his autobiography, he did not write during these years, although it was then that he began to create the cycle of Odessa Tales.

Writer's career

Cavalry

In 1920, Babel was assigned to the 1st Cavalry Army, under the command of Semyon Budyonny, and became a member of the Soviet-Polish War of 1920. Throughout the campaign, Babel kept a diary (The Cavalry Diary of 1920), which served as the basis for the collection of stories Cavalry, in which the violence and cruelty of Russian Red Army soldiers contrasts strongly with the intelligence of Babel himself.

Several stories, which were later included in the Cavalry collection, were published in Vladimir Mayakovsky's journal Lef in 1924. Descriptions of the brutality of the war were far removed from the revolutionary propaganda of the time. Babel has ill-wishers, so Semyon Budyonny was furious at how Babel described the life and life of the Red Army and demanded the execution of the writer. But Babel was under the auspices of Maxim Gorky, which guaranteed the publication of the book, which was subsequently translated into many languages ​​of the world. Kliment Voroshilov complained in 1924 to Dmitry Manuilsky, a member of the Central Committee and later head of the Comintern, that the style of the work on the Cavalry was "unacceptable." Stalin believed that Babel wrote about "things that he did not understand." Gorky, on the other hand, expressed the opinion that the writer, on the contrary, “decorated the inside” of the Cossacks “better, more truthfully than Gogol of the Cossacks.”

The famous Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges wrote about Cavalry:

Creation

In 1924, in the journals Lef and Krasnaya Nov, he published a number of stories, which later formed the cycles Cavalry and Odessa Stories. Babel was able to masterfully convey in Russian the style of literature created in Yiddish (this is especially noticeable in Odessa Tales, where in places the direct speech of his characters is an interlinear translation from Yiddish).

Soviet criticism of those years, paying tribute to the talent and significance of Babel's work, pointed to "antipathy to the cause of the working class" and reproached him for "naturalism and apology for the elemental principle and the romanticization of banditry."

In "Odessa Tales" Babel portrays in a romantic way the life of Jewish criminals of the early 20th century, finding exotic features and strong characters in everyday life of thieves, raiders, as well as artisans and petty merchants. The most memorable hero of these stories is the Jewish raider Benya Krik (his prototype is the legendary Mishka Yaponchik), according to the Jewish Encyclopedia, the embodiment of Babel's dream of a Jew who can take care of himself.

In 1926, he acted as the editor of the first Soviet collected works of Sholom Aleichem, and the following year he adapted Sholom Aleichem's novel Wandering Stars for film production.

In 1927 he took part in the collective novel "Big Fires", published in the magazine "Spark".

In 1928 Babel published the play "Sunset" (staged at the 2nd Moscow Art Theater), in 1935 - the play "Maria". Babel's Peru also owns several scripts. A master of short stories, Babel strives for conciseness and accuracy, combining in the images of his characters, plot collisions and descriptions a huge temperament with outward dispassion. The flowery, metaphor-laden language of his early stories is later replaced by a strict and restrained narrative manner.

In the subsequent period, with the tightening of censorship and the advent of the era of great terror, Babel was printed less and less. Despite his doubts about what was happening, he did not emigrate, although he had such an opportunity, visiting in 1927, 1932 and 1935 his wife, who lived in France, and a daughter born after one of these visits.

Arrest and execution

On May 15, 1939, Babel was arrested at his dacha in Peredelkino on charges of "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activity" and espionage (case No. 419). During his arrest, several manuscripts were confiscated from him, which turned out to be forever lost (15 folders, 11 notebooks, 7 notebooks with notes). The fate of his novel about the Cheka remains unknown.

During interrogations, Babel was subjected to severe torture. He was sentenced to death by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and shot the next day, January 27, 1940. The execution list was personally signed by Joseph Stalin. Among the possible reasons for Stalin's dislike for Babel is the fact that he was a close friend of Y. Okhotnikov, I. Yakir, B. Kalmykov, D. Schmidt, E. Yezhova and other "enemies of the people."

In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated. With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, who loved Babel very much and left warm memories of him, after 1956 Babel was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, the collection "Selected" was published with a preface by Ilya Ehrenburg, who called Isaac Babel one of the outstanding writers of the 20th century, a brilliant stylist and master of the short story.

Babel family

Evgenia Borisovna Gronfein, with whom he was legally married, emigrated to France in 1925. His other (civilian) wife, with whom he entered into a relationship after breaking up with Evgenia, was Tamara Vladimirovna Kashirina (Tatyana Ivanova), their son, named Emmanuel (1926), later became known in the Khrushchev era as the artist Mikhail Ivanov (member of the Group of Nine ”), and was brought up in the family of his stepfather, Vsevolod Ivanov, considering himself his son. After parting with Kashirina, Babel, who traveled abroad, for some time reunited with his legal wife, who gave birth to his daughter Natalya (1929), married to the American literary critic Natalie Brown (under whose editorship the complete works of Isaac Babel were published in English).

Babel's last (civil-law) wife, Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova, bore him a daughter, Lydia (1937), and has lived in the United States since 1996. In 2010, at the age of 101, she came to Odessa and looked at the layout of her husband's monument. She passed away in September 2010.

Influence

Babel's work had a huge impact on the writers of the so-called "South Russian school" (Ilf, Petrov, Olesha, Kataev, Paustovsky, Svetlov, Bagritsky) and received wide recognition in the Soviet Union, his books were translated into many foreign languages.

The legacy of the repressed Babel somewhat shared his fate. It was only after his "posthumous rehabilitation" in the 1960s that he began to be printed again, however, his works were subjected to heavy censorship. The writer's daughter, American citizen Natalie Babel (Brown, Eng. NatalieBabelBrown, 1929-2005) was able to collect inaccessible or unpublished works and publish them with commentaries ("The Complete Works of Isaac Babel", 2002).

Creativity Explorers

• One of the first researchers of the work of I.E. Babel was the Kharkov literary critic and theater critic L.Ya. Lifshits

Literature

1. Cossack V. Lexicon of Russian literature of the XX century = Lexikon der russischen Literatur ab 1917. - M.: RIK "Culture", 1996. - 492 p. - 5000 copies. - ISBN 5-8334-0019-8
2. Voronsky A., I. Babel, in his book: Literary portraits. vol. 1. - M. 1928.
3. I. Babel. Articles and materials. M. 1928.
4. Russian Soviet prose writers. Bio-bibliographic index. vol. 1. - L. 1959.
5. Belaya G.A., Dobrenko E.A., Esaulov I.A. Cavalry by Isaac Babel. M., 1993.
6. Zholkovsky A.K., Yampolsky M. B. Babel/Babel. - M.: Carte blanche. 1994. - 444 p.
7. Esaulov I. The logic of the cycle: "Odessa stories" by Isaac Babel // Moscow. 2004. No. 1.
8. Krumm R. Creating a biography of Babel is the task of a journalist.
9. Mogultai. Babel // Lot of Mogultai. - September 17, 2005.
10. The enigma of Isaac Babel: biography, history, context / edited by Gregory Freidin. - Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009. - 288 p.

Memory

Currently, in Odessa, citizens are raising funds for the monument to Isaac Babel. Already obtained permission from the city council; The monument will stand at the intersection of Zhukovsky and Richelieu streets, opposite the house where he once lived. The grand opening is planned for early July 2011, on the occasion of the writer's birthday.

Bibliography

In total, Babel wrote about 80 stories, combined into collections, two plays and five screenplays.

• A series of articles "Diary" (1918) about work in the Cheka and Narkompros
• A series of essays "On the field of honor" (1920) based on front-line notes of French officers
• Collection "Cavalry" (1926)
• Jewish Stories (1927)
• "Odessa stories" (1931)
• The play "Sunset" (1927)
• The play "Maria" (1935)
• The unfinished novel Velyka Krinitsa, of which only the first chapter, Gapa Guzhva, was published (Noviy Mir, No. 10, 1931)
• fragment of the story "Jew" (published in 1968)

Editions of essays

• Favorites. (Foreword by I. Ehrenburg). - M. 1957.
• Favorites. (Introductory article L. Polyak). - M. 1966.
• Selected: for youth / Comp., foreword. and comment. V. Ya. Vakulenko. - F.: Adabiyat, 1990. - 672 p.
• Diary 1920 (cavalry). M.: MIK, 2000.
• Cavalry I.E. Babel. - Moscow: Children's Literature, 2001.
• Collected works: In 2 volumes - M., 2002.
• Selected stories. Ogonyok Library, M., 1936, 2008.
• Collected works: in 4 volumes / Comp., approx., Intro. Art. Sukhikh I. N. - M .: Time, 2006.

BABEL ISAAK EMMANUILOVYCH

(b. 1894 - d. 1940)

The tender attachment of the inhabitants of Odessa to their city has already become almost legendary. Our ancestors compared Odessa with nothing less than Paris: the same fashionable vernissages, the Lyon Credit bank on Richelieu, the picturesque Privoz - why not the Womb of Odessa - a brilliant opera, many poets and his own Maupassant, known as Isaac Babel…

“I was born ... in Moldavanka,” wrote Isaac Emmanuilovich in his autobiography. And this event determined his entire future life and creative path. In the genetic memory, on hearing, and in the mind of Babel, she remained, as they once said, a place "more than Odessa itself." The Moldavian woman is a phenomenon, the morality of the whole city. This suburb of Odessa brought up a special morality in Isaac Babel, endowed his memory with aching sadness, and became his style of life.

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was born on July 1 (13), 1894 in Odessa in a fairly prosperous Jewish family. His maternal great-grandmother Feiga married in 1818 a Jew of the same age, Mozes-Froim Leyzov-Schwekhvel, who had arrived from Galicia, and after some time became an "apprentice of the Jewish male guild." One of their sons, Aron Mozesov Shvekhvel, later became the grandfather of the famous writer Isaac Babel. His eldest daughter Feiga (named after her grandmother) married Emmanuil Babel in 1890. The following year, their first-born Aron was born, in 1892 their daughter Anna, and then Isaac, the future famous writer.

Having lived for a short time in Odessa, the Babel family left for Nikolaev, where Emmanuil Isaakovich entered the service of Birnbaum's firm for the sale of agricultural machinery. His business flourished. In addition to technology, the elder Babel traded in fire pumps, blue vitriol and pig iron. Among the friends of a successful merchant was even a French consul.

Unfortunately, personal misfortunes haunted the family. One by one, the older children Aron and Anna died. Only Isaac survived. The boy was strong and smart. It must be said that Isaac was always surrounded by the love and care of his loved ones. My paternal grandmother, Mindley Aronovna, adored her grandson and surrounded him with harsh, demanding love. She was absolutely sure that her beloved Isaac would glorify their surname. Mindli Aronovna even got angry if someone tried to compete with her in love for her little grandson. He received his early education at home. In his autobiography, Babel wrote: “At the insistence of his father, he studied the Jewish language, the Bible, and the Talmud until the age of 16. It was difficult to live at home, because from morning till night they were forced to study many sciences. I rested at school. The boy studied well. Languages ​​were especially easy for him. Isaac easily mastered English and German, was fluent in Yiddish and Hebrew, and spoke French as fluently as Russian. In Nikolaev, he entered the preparatory class of the commercial school. Count S. Yu. Witte. In the same place, on June 16, 1899, the only sister of Isaac, Mera (Marie), was born in the Babel family.

Having accumulated sufficient capital, the family moved in 1905 to their hometown of Odessa and for some time settled with their mother's sister Gitl (Katya) on Tiraspolskaya, 12, in apartment No. 3. Adult Isaac will describe this apartment, house and yard in the story "Awakening" . Four years later, the Babel family settled on Richelevskaya in house number 17, apartment number 10. The father always dreamed that his son would follow in his footsteps and become a businessman. It was to him that Emmanuil Babel wanted to leave the profitable family business. Therefore, under pressure from his father, Isaac entered the Odessa Commercial School. Emperor Nicholas I. The program of the school was very rich. Chemistry, political economy, jurisprudence, accounting, commodity science, three foreign languages ​​and other subjects were studied. You could "rest" during the breaks in Greek coffee houses or walking along the port. Sometimes students ran to Moldavanka "to drink cheap Bessarabian wine in the cellars." The father doted on his son, literally idolized him. If he really liked someone, the elder Babel said about such a person: "The type of beauty of my Easy." These words from the lips of a loving father were the highest praise.

Isaac Babel actively participated in amateur performances and composed plays. At the insistence of his father, he studied violin with the famous maestro Peter Solomonovich Stolyarsky. During his studies, Isaac began to write. At that time he was barely 15 years old. For two years he composed in French under the influence of G. Flaubert, Guy de Maupassant and his French teacher Vadon. His father spoke of his literary work in the following way: “There were “jumps” - at night he stained paper, wrote something in French, and hid what was written.” Emmanuil Isaakovich jokingly called his son "Count Montekristov" for this. Isaac Babel himself later recalled his first stories: “I take a trifle - an anecdote, a bazaar story - and make a thing out of it that I myself can’t tear myself away from ...” French sharpened the sense of the literary language and style of the young writer. Already in his first stories, Babel strove for stylistic elegance and the highest degree of artistic expression. The main property of prose was formed early: the novice writer was able to combine the heterogeneous layers of life and language.

In 1912, Isaac Babel graduated from the Odessa Commercial School. But, unfortunately, he did not have the right to enter the Odessa University, because this required a gymnasium certificate. Therefore, the parents decided to send their son to Kyiv, where there was a Commercial Institute. During the First World War, Isaac Babel had to be evacuated along with the institute to Saratov. Despite the difficulties, the young man graduated from the institute in 1916, receiving the title of candidate of economic sciences.

In Kyiv, where his father continued to send him on commercial matters, Isaac met Evgenia Borisovna Gronfain, whose father supplied agricultural machines to the elder Babel. On August 9, 1919, young people got married according to all the rules of the synagogue. The bride's father did not accept this marriage, considering it a real misalliance, disinherited his daughter and cursed the entire Babel family to the tenth generation.

In 1916, the young man came to St. Petersburg, deciding for himself to earn a living by writing. He knocked on the thresholds of various editorial offices and publishing houses, offered his stories, but to no avail. Many editors in well-known St. Petersburg magazines advised the young writer to give up paperwork and engage in trade. The situation was complicated by the fact that Babel lived in St. Petersburg in an illegal position. In the Russian Empire there was a Pale of Settlement for Jews, and without special permission they could not settle in large cities. At the same time, Isaac Babel became interested in psychology, psychiatry and jurisprudence. In 1916, he entered the fourth year of the Faculty of Law of the Bekhterevsky Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute, which, unfortunately, he did not graduate from.

The worst thing was that Isaac was left without the support of his family and friends. Desperate, the aspiring writer turned to Maxim Gorky for help. He showed the famous writer some of his early works. Gorky, after reading them, gave advice: go to the people, gain life impressions, as he himself once did. Alexei Maksimovich at that time was the editor-in-chief of the Chronicle magazine. Two stories by the young writer were published in the 11th issue of the magazine in 1916. They aroused great interest among readers and ... the judiciary. For the stories “Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna”, “Mother, Rimma and Alla”, Babel was going to be prosecuted for distributing pornography. Only the February Revolution saved him from the trial scheduled for March 1917.

The end of the First World War was approaching. Isaac Babel managed to be a soldier on the French front. And in the summer of 1918 he was an active participant in the food expeditions of the People's Commissariat for Food. During the years of the revolution and the Civil War, he changed many professions: he worked in the People's Commissariat of Food and the Odessa Provincial Committee, fought on the Romanian, northern, Polish fronts, worked as a reporter for Tiflis and St. Petersburg newspapers. Babel the publicist was always ideologically correct, and instead of humor he used the honed syllable of revolutionary vocabulary.

In 1919, the aspiring writer joined the Extraordinary Commission as a correspondent for the First Cavalry Army. Documents in the name of Kirill Vasilyevich Lyutov helped him to get the secretary of the Odessa Regional Committee S. B. Ingulov - "Comrade Sergei." According to the documents, the correspondent Lyutov was Russian, which gave him the opportunity to take part in the hostilities. During his stay in the First Cavalry, Babel constantly kept a diary, which became the basis of a cycle of stories about the Cavalry of 1923–1926. Babel's "cavalry" was very different from the beautiful legend that the official media composed about the Budenovites. The young writer showed both the unjustified cruelty and the animal instincts of the soldiers, which overshadowed the weak sprouts of humanity that the writer saw in the revolution and the cleansing Civil War. It can be said without exaggeration that Cavalry became a document and a literary masterpiece, for the sake of which the writer sacrificed himself.

A serious scandal erupted around the book. The stories about the First Cavalry Army brought the author fame and at the same time the hatred of such powerful persons as the commander of the First Cavalry Army, Budyonny: “I demand to protect from irresponsible slander those whom the literary degenerate Babel spits with the artistic saliva of class hatred.” The head of the First Cavalry Army, S. K. Timoshenko, who later became a marshal and people's commissar of defense, was furious after reading the story "Timoshenko and Melnikov." Once he told one of Babel's friends, Okhotnikov, that he would kill the writer "to hell, if he caught his eye." When Okhotnikov decided to reconcile the division commander and Babel, he persuaded Timoshenko to come to visit the author of the sensational work. They came to Obukhovsky lane, where the writer lived, in broad daylight. Isaak Emmanuilovich worked… Later he told a school friend: “And then they enter my room, I see Timoshenko ahead. Well, I think you should at least read a prayer before you die.”

Gorky stood up in defense of the Babel Cavalry. In his reviews, his critical articles, he often repeated that Babel described the soldiers of the First Cavalry Army "more truthfully, better than Gogol of the Cossacks." It can be said with certainty that without Gorky's intervention, the writer would have immediately fallen under a military tribunal. Cavalry was highly appreciated by Babel's colleagues in the writer's shop: Mayakovsky, Furmanov, Andrei Bely and others. Soon the first translations appeared. In 1928 Cavalry was translated into Spanish. In France, his novel was a resounding success. Romain Rolland, Henri Barbusse, and Martin Dugard read the Cavalry. Among the admirers of Babel's work were Thomas Mann, Lion Feuchtwanger. Contrary to ill-wishers, the work of the Odessa writer was regarded as the most significant phenomenon in modern literature. Literary critic A. Lezhnev wrote: “Babel is not like any of his contemporaries, but a short time has passed - contemporaries are beginning to resemble Babel a little. His influence on literature is becoming more and more evident."

During the Civil War, Isaac Babel miraculously survived, suffered a serious wound, and fell ill with typhus. Only in November 1920 was he able to return to Odessa. And already in February 1921, he became the editor of the Kommunist magazine and worked at the State Publishing House of Ukraine. Despite world fame, the writer remained the same modest and sympathetic person. His kindness was boundless. Isaac Babel handed out his ties, shirts and said: "If I want to have some things, then only in order to give them." His aunt Katya often came to people whom Babel had the imprudence to give something from furniture or family heirlooms and said: “Sorry, my nephew is crazy. This thing is our family, so please return it to me.” That's how she managed to keep some of the family environment. In addition, it was easy to borrow money from Babel. And no one returned the debts to the famous writer. Very often, the writer himself needed money and therefore took an advance payment in various magazines against future stories, not having time to complete the order on time. In the writer's family archive, there are requests that were sent to him from various magazines: “Dear comrade Babel, when will we still get The Road? Time passes, the reader wants to read. Now we are doing the sixth issue, it would be nice to put it there, but the deadline is on time. Babel really worked very slowly. As a sculptor, he gradually cut off unnecessary details, polished every word, selected the most vivid ways of expression. The language of his works is concise and concise, vivid and metaphorical. The Department of Manuscripts of the Russian State Library keeps a friendly pencil caricature by E. Zozulya of Babel. Text under the picture: "I. Babel conceived a new story. It feels like it will be written quickly, in just a year or so.”

Isaak Emmanuilovich was unusually demanding of himself. There is a legend that only one story "Lyubka Cossack" had about 30 serious editings, on each of which the writer worked for several months. Very often he repeated: “We take it with style, with style. I am ready to write a story about washing clothes, and maybe it will sound like the prose of Julius Caesar. Babel wrote his works in a small room with huge windows. He never had a typewriter, and he simply did not know how to type on it. He wrote with pen and ink. Isaac Emmanuilovich kept the manuscript in the bottom drawer of the wardrobe. And only diaries and notebooks were in a heavy metal box with a lock. Usually he had at hand cut pieces of paper 10x15 cm, on which he wrote down his stories.

In 1923-1924, Babel worked on the Odessa Tales cycle, which became the pinnacle of his work. At this time, the writer was experiencing a real mental crisis: “Why do I have an unending longing? Because I am at a big, ongoing memorial service,” he wrote in his diary. He found a way out of his spiritual and creative crisis in an exaggerated, almost mythological city inhabited by characters in whom, according to the writer, there is “arousal, lightness and a charming, sometimes sad, sometimes touching sense of life.” Odessa and its real inhabitants - Mishka Yaponchik, Sonya the Golden Hand - in the writer's imagination turned into artistically reliable images: Beni Krik, Lyubka Kazak, Froma Grach. Talking in detail about the life of Odessa crime, he very often tried on their life for himself. In order to plunge into the atmosphere of Odessa everyday life, Babel rented a room on Moldavanka from an old Jew Tsiris, who was a gunner for bandits and received his “karbach” from every robbery. According to legend, it was there that Babel spied the plots for his world-famous "Odessa Tales". But the famous writer received information from other sources. On May 29, 1923, a top secret paper came from the provincial committee to the Odessa criminal investigation department to Baryshev about the admission of Comrade Babel as a writer to the study of certain materials of the criminal investigation department to the extent possible. In addition, Isaak Emmanuilovich attended open court hearings. The full humor and bright colors of the story "Karl Yankel", on which the writer worked for seven years, were based on a trial that took place on June 24, 1924 in the tram club.

From year to year, the popularity of Babel the writer grew. He was often invited to evenings hosted by the Kremlin wives. At that time it was fashionable to have your own literary salon. There were rumors in Moscow at that time that Babel had a close, even intimate relationship with Yezhov's wife, the beautiful Evgenia Solomonovna. Young and already well-known authors often gathered in her house. The regulars of the salon appreciated Babel for his love of life. No wonder Ilya Ehrenburg once said about the writer: "He was greedy for life." Communication with Evgenia Yezhova subsequently played a fatal role in the life of Babel.

The famous writer himself believed that a person is born to have fun and enjoy life. He loved funny stories and situations. Isaac Emmanuilovich often invented all sorts of pranks and at the same time had a lot of fun. One Sunday, incredible heart-rending moans were heard from Babel's room. To the question "What happened?" the great hoaxer replied in the most serious tone: "I wanted to show you Jewish groans." According to the recollections of friends, the writer was a man of high culture and, moreover, a great storyteller. He spoke in a flat voice without an accent, he never imitated anyone. The peculiarity of Babel the narrator was that sometimes in front of funny places he began to laugh, so contagiously that it was impossible not to laugh with him.

Unfortunately, the life of the writer with Evgenia Gronfine was unsuccessful. Beauty Evgenia very often criticized what her husband wrote. In 1925 she left permanently for Paris. The couple broke up due to Babel's frequent betrayals. Isaac Emmanuilovich himself said that his wife had gone to Paris to practice in the arts. After her departure, Babel was able to openly meet with the artist of the theater. Meyerhold Tatyana Kashirina. In July 1926, their son was born, whom the happy parents named Emmanuel. Their romance was short-lived. Without legitimizing the relationship, Babel left his beloved and went to Paris to Evgenia Gronfine, where their daughter Natalie was born. During this time, Kashirina married Vsevolod Ivanov, who adopted Emmanuel and gave him a new name, Mikhail. The Ivanovs did everything possible to protect Mikhail from meeting his real father. From Paris, Isaac Babel returned alone. And in 1932 he met his third and last love - Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova. Isaak Emmanuilovich became her first and last husband. In 1937 their daughter Lida was born. Antonina Nikolaevna remained faithful to her writer husband all her life.

Gorky's death was one of the most significant losses in Babel's life. Together with him, the unsteady balance between the creator of the Cavalry and the authorities went into oblivion. Immediately after the fateful news reached the writer, he uttered a phrase that anticipated further events: “Now they won’t let me live.” Isaac Emmanuilovich understood well that Gorky's death was violent, but he could not speak openly about it. At the same time, the literary critic Elsberg was assigned to the Odessa writer. This man worked at the Academy publishing house, which allowed him to constantly patronize Babel and his family. Many years later, after the XX Party Congress, at one of the writers' congresses, Elsberg was expelled from the Writers' Union for informing activities.

Khrushchev recalled in his memoirs that Stalin and Beria planned the arrest of Yezhov's wife in the late 1930s. Evgenia Solomonovna, warned by her husband, committed suicide in the hospital. On May 11, 1939, Commissar of State Security Kobulov interrogated the arrested Yezhov about what his wife's literary salon was like. The former iron commissar spoke of the fact that his wife had a special friendship with Babel, who, as you know, constantly spun in a suspicious Trotskyist environment and, moreover, was closely associated with French writers. On May 15, 1939, Babel himself was also arrested - at a dacha in Peredelkino, due to the fact that they could not find the writer at home.

Already in the courtyard of the Lubyanka prison, the arrested Babel said: "It's terrible that there will be no letters from my mother." Unable to withstand the torture, Isaak Emmanuilovich named dozens of names and surnames, but the NKVD archives preserved a statement by the writer in which he recanted his words. The court verdict was brief: Babel was accused of conspiratorial and terrorist activities and preparation of terrorist attacks against the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government. The materials of the investigation mentioned the name of Lord Beaverbrook, with whom the writer allegedly established contacts in order to carry out his subversive tasks. The sentence (execution) was carried out by the commandant of the NKVD Blokhin on January 26, 1940 in the Lefortovo prison.

During the arrest of the writer, 24 folders with his manuscripts were confiscated. The secretary of the board of the Union of Writers A. Surkov, who sent a letter to the Minister of State Security, General Serov, was busy searching for the Babel archive. "Manuscripts not found," was the short reply. He came so quickly that it became clear that no thorough search was carried out.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain, Pirozhkova-Babel went abroad. There she wrote the book "Seven Years with Babel", which sold millions of copies.

“Babel was doomed as an outstanding personality, as a writer incapable of making a deal with the government. It is very difficult for me to write about this,” recalled Antonina Pirozhkova. The pain of loss never leaves me. And the thought that for eight months in the NKVD he had to experience a lot of humiliation and insults, torture, and live his last day as the day before his death after the verdict, breaks my heart.

In one of his letters to his relatives, Isaac Babel wrote: "At my birth, I did not give the obligation of an easy life." We now know that these words have become prophetic.