Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel
Born: June 30, 1894
Died: January 27, 1940

Biography

In Autobiography (1924) Babel wrote: “At the insistence of his father, he studied the Jewish language, the Bible, and the Talmud until the age of sixteen. It was difficult to live at home, because from morning till night they were forced to study many sciences. I rested at school. The program of the Odessa Commercial School, where the future writer studied, was very intense. Chemistry, political economy, jurisprudence, accounting, commodity science, three foreign languages ​​and other subjects were studied. Speaking of "rest", Babel meant the feeling of freedom: according to his recollections, during breaks or after classes, students went to the port, to Greek coffee houses or to Moldavanka “to drink cheap Bessarabian wine in the cellars”. All these impressions later formed the basis of Babel's early prose and his Odessa stories.

Write Babel started at fifteen. For two years he wrote in French - under the influence of G. Flaubert, G. Maupassant and my French teacher Vadona. The element of French speech sharpened the sense of the literary language and style. Already in his first stories Babel strove for stylistic elegance and the highest degree of artistic expressiveness. “I take a trifle - an anecdote, a bazaar story, and make it a thing that I myself can’t tear myself away from ... They will laugh at him not at all because he is cheerful, but because you always want to laugh with human luck”, - he later explained his creative aspirations.

The main property of his prose was revealed early: the combination of heterogeneous layers - both the language and the way of life depicted. His early work is characterized by the story In a slit(1915), in which the hero buys for five rubles from the owner of the apartment the right to spy on the life of prostitutes renting the next room. After graduating from the Kyiv Commercial Institute, in 1915 Babel came to St. Petersburg, although he did not have the right to reside outside the Pale of Settlement. After his first stories (Stariy Shloyme, 1913, etc.), published in Odessa and Kiev, went unnoticed, the young writer became convinced that only the capital could bring him fame. However, the editors of St. Petersburg literary magazines advised Babel to quit writing and engage in trade. This went on for more than a year - until he came to Gorky in the magazine "Chronicle" where the stories were published Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna and mother, Rimma and Alla(1916, No. 11). The stories aroused the interest of the reading public and the judiciary. Babel were going to be prosecuted for pornography. The February Revolution saved him from trial, which had already been scheduled for March 1917.

Babel served in the Extraordinary Commission, as a newspaper correspondent "Red Cavalry" was in the First Cavalry Army, participated in food expeditions, worked in the People's Commissariat for Education, in the Odessa Provincial Committee, fought on the Romanian, northern, Polish fronts, was a reporter for Tiflis and Petrograd newspapers.

He returned to artistic creativity in 1923: in the magazine "Lef"(1924, No. 4) the stories Salt, Letter, Death of Dolgushov, Korol and others were published. Literary critic A.Voronsky wrote about them: « Babel not before the eyes of the reader, but somewhere away from him, he has already passed a long artistic path of study and therefore captivates the reader not only with his "gut" and the unusualness of life material, but also ... with culture, intelligence and mature hardness of talent ... ". Over time, the writer's artistic prose took shape in cycles that gave names to collections Cavalry (1926), Jewish stories(1927) and Odessa stories (1931).

Basis for a collection of stories Cavalry were diary entries. The first equestrian shown Babel, differed from the beautiful legend that official propaganda composed about the Budyonnovites. He was not forgiven for the slander. Gorky, defending Babel, wrote that he showed the fighters of the First Cavalry "better, more truthful than the Gogol of the Cossacks". Budyonny called the Cavalry "super-arrogant Babel slander". However, creativity Babel already regarded as a significant phenomenon in modern literature. “Babel was not like any of his contemporaries. But a short time has passed - contemporaries begin to gradually resemble Babel. His influence on literature is becoming more and more evident.", - wrote in 1927 a literary critic A. Lezhnev.

Attempts to discern passion and romance in the revolution turned out to be spiritual anguish for the writer. “Why do I have an unending longing? Because (...) I'm at a big, non-stop memorial service", he wrote in his diary. Became a kind of salvation for Babel fantastic, exaggerated world of Odessa stories. The action of the stories in this cycle is the King, How it was done in Odessa, Father, Lyubka Cossack– takes place in an almost mythological city. Babel Odessa is inhabited by characters in which, according to the writer, there are "Enthusiasm, lightness and charming - sometimes sad, sometimes touching - a sense of life"(Odessa). The real Odessa criminals Mishka Yaponchik, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka and others, in the writer's imagination, turned into artistically authentic images of Beni Krik, Lyubka Kazak, Froim Grach. "King" Odessa underworld Benya Krik Babel portrayed as a defender of the weak, a kind of Robin Hood. The style of the Odessa stories is distinguished by brevity, conciseness of the language and at the same time vivid imagery and metaphor. Babel's demands on himself were extraordinary. Only one story by Lyubka Kazak had about thirty serious editings, on each of which the writer worked for several months. Paustovsky in his memoirs quotes the words of Babel: “Style, take, style, sir. I'm ready to write a story about washing clothes, and maybe it will sound like prose Julius Caesar» .

In literary heritage Babel there are about eighty stories, two plays - Sunset (1927, first staged in 1927 by director V. Fedorov on the stage of the Baku Workers' Theatre) and Maria(1935, first staged in 1994 by director M. Levitin on the stage of the Moscow Hermitage Theatre), five screenplays, including Wandering Stars (1926, based on the novel of the same name by Sholom Aleichem), journalism.

“It is very difficult to write on topics that interest me, very difficult if you want to be honest”, he wrote from Paris in 1928. In 1937 Babel wrote an article Lie, betrayal and smerdyakovism, glorifying show trials over "enemies of the people". Shortly afterwards he confessed in a private letter: “Life is very bad: both mentally and physically - there is nothing to show to good people”. The tragedy of the heroes of Odessa stories embodied in the short story Froim Rook(1933, published in 1963 in the USA): the title character tries to conclude "pact of honor" with power, but dies.

In the last years of his life, the writer turned to the topic of creativity, which he interpreted as the best that a person is capable of. One of his last stories was written about this - a parable about the magical power of art. Di Grasso (1937).

Babel was arrested on May 15, 1939 and charged with "anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activities", shot January 27, 1940.

Awards

Works

1918 - A series of articles "Diary"
1920 - A series of essays "On the field of honor"
1926 - Collection "Cavalry"
1927 - Jewish stories
1927 - The play "Sunset"
1931 - "Odessa stories"
1935 - The play "Maria"
1968 - a fragment of the story "Jew"

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 "Mary" (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.

Together with his parents he returned to Odessa.

At the insistence of his father, he studied the Hebrew language and Jewish sacred books, took violin lessons from the famous musician Peter Stolyarsky, and participated in amateur theatrical performances.

To the same period, researchers of the writer's work attribute the appearance of the first non-preserved student stories of Babel, which he wrote in French.

In 1911 he graduated from the Odessa Commercial School.

In 1915, in St. Petersburg, he immediately entered the fourth year of the law faculty of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute, where he did not finish his studies.

In 1916 he graduated with honors from the economic department of the Kyiv Commercial Institute.

The literary debut of the writer took place in February 1913 in the Kiev magazine "Lights", where the story "Old Shloyme" was published.

In 1916, in Maxim Gorky's magazine "Chronicle", Babel's stories in Russian "Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna" and "Mother, Rimma and Alla" were published. Notes "My sheets" appeared in the Petrograd Journal of Journals.

In 1954, Isaac Babel was posthumously rehabilitated.

With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, he was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, a collection of carefully censored works of the writer was published. From 1967 until the mid-1980s, Babel's works were not reprinted.

The work of Isaac Babel had a huge impact on the writers of the so-called "South Russian school" (Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov, Yuri Olesha, Eduard Bagritsky, Valentin Kataev, Konstantin Paustovsky, Mikhail Svetlov), his books have been translated into many foreign languages.

On September 4, 2011, a monument to the writer was unveiled at the corner of Richelieu and Zhukovsky streets in Odessa.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Together with his parents he returned to Odessa.

At the insistence of his father, he studied the Hebrew language and Jewish sacred books, took violin lessons from the famous musician Peter Stolyarsky, and participated in amateur theatrical performances.

To the same period, researchers of the writer's work attribute the appearance of the first non-preserved student stories of Babel, which he wrote in French.

In 1911 he graduated from the Odessa Commercial School.

In 1915, in St. Petersburg, he immediately entered the fourth year of the law faculty of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute, where he did not finish his studies.

In 1916 he graduated with honors from the economic department of the Kyiv Commercial Institute.

The literary debut of the writer took place in February 1913 in the Kiev magazine "Lights", where the story "Old Shloyme" was published.

In 1916, in Maxim Gorky's magazine "Chronicle", Babel's stories in Russian "Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna" and "Mother, Rimma and Alla" were published. Notes "My sheets" appeared in the Petrograd Journal of Journals.

In 1954, Isaac Babel was posthumously rehabilitated.

With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, he was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, a collection of carefully censored works of the writer was published. From 1967 until the mid-1980s, Babel's works were not reprinted.

The work of Isaac Babel had a huge impact on the writers of the so-called "South Russian school" (Ilya Ilf, Evgeny Petrov, Yuri Olesha, Eduard Bagritsky, Valentin Kataev, Konstantin Paustovsky, Mikhail Svetlov), his books have been translated into many foreign languages.

On September 4, 2011, a monument to the writer was unveiled at the corner of Richelieu and Zhukovsky streets in Odessa.

The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources

Babel Isaac Emmanuilovich, whose biography is presented in the article, is a prose writer, translator, playwright, essayist. His real name is Bobel, he is also known under the pseudonyms Bab-El and K. Lyutov. This man was shot by the Bolsheviks in 1940. In 1954, Isaac Babel was posthumously rehabilitated.

His biography begins on June 30 (July 12), 1894. It was then that Isaac Emmanuilovich was born in Odessa. His father was Emmanuil Isaakovich Bobel.

Childhood, period of study

In the years of early childhood, the future writer lived in Nikolaev, near Odessa. At the age of 9, he entered the local Commercial School. Count Witte. A year later, he transferred to the Odessa Commercial School named after Nicholas I. Babel graduated from it in 1911. By this time, he was learning to play the violin. Babel was taught by P.S. Stolyarsky, famous musician. Also, the future writer was fond of the works of French authors. At the urging of his religious father at the same time, Babel took up the study of the Hebrew language in earnest. He read Jewish holy books. Isaak Emmanuilovich received the title of honorary citizen after successfully completing his studies at the Odessa Commercial School. Then he applied for admission to the economic department of the Kyiv Commercial Institute. Babel was admitted to the institute and lived in Kyiv for several years. He graduated with honors in 1916, receiving the title of candidate.

The first printed work, life in Saratov

The Kiev magazine "Lights" published Babel's first work - the story "Old Shloyme". After the Russian-German war broke out, Isaak Emmanuilovich was enrolled in the militia, but did not take part in hostilities.

In 1915, Babel was enrolled in the fourth year of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute (Faculty of Law). However, he did not graduate from this educational institution. In 1915, Babel was in Saratov for some time. Here he created a story called "Childhood. At Grandma", after which he returned to Petrograd.

First meeting with M. Gorky

The meeting with Maxim Gorky took place in the autumn of 1916 in the editorial office of the Chronicle magazine. In November 1916, two stories by Babel were published in this magazine - "Mother, Rimma and Alla" and "Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna". In the same year, in the "Journal of Journals", a Petrograd publication, a series of essays appeared, united under the title "My Leaflets".

In the "Autobiography" created in 1928, Isaac Emmanuilovich, speaking of the first meeting with Gorky, noted that he owed everything to her and still pronounces the name of this writer with gratitude and love.

Babel's life "in people"

I.E. Babel, whose biography is marked by friendship with M. Gorky, wrote that he taught him very important things, and then, when it turned out that several of his youthful experiences were accidental luck, that he writes badly, Maxim Gorky sent him "to the people." Babel noted in "Autobiography" that he "went into the people" for 7 years (1917-24). At that time he was a soldier, was on the Romanian front. Babel also worked in the foreign department of the Cheka as a translator. In 1918, his texts were published in the New Life newspaper. In the same year, in the summer, Isaac Babel took part in food expeditions organized by the People's Commissariat for Food.

In the period from the end of 1919 to the beginning of 1920, Isaac Babel lived in Odessa. The short biography of the writer is supplemented with new important events. The writer served in the State Publishing House of Ukraine, where he was in charge of the editorial and publishing department. In the spring of 1920, under the name of Lyutov Kirill Vasilievich, correspondent of Yugrost, Isaak Emmanuilovich went to where he stayed for several months. The writer kept diaries, and also published his essays and articles in the newspaper "Red Cavalryman". After suffering typhus, at the end of 1920, Isaak Emmanuilovich returned to Odessa.

New publications, life in Moscow

In 1922-1923. Babel began to actively publish his stories in the newspapers of Odessa ("Sailor", "Izvestia" and "Silhouettes"), as well as in the magazine "Lava". Among these works, the following stories should be noted: "King", included in the cycle "Odessa Stories", and "Grishuk" (cycle "Cavalry"). Almost all of 1922 Babel lived in Batumi. His biography is also marked by a visit to other Georgian cities.

In 1923, the writer established contacts with Moscow writers. He began to publish in Krasnaya Nov, in Lef, in Searchlight, and also in Pravda (Odessa Stories and short stories from Cavalry). While still in Odessa, Isaak Emmanuilovich met Vladimir Mayakovsky. Then, after Babel finally moved to Moscow, he made acquaintance with many writers who were here - with A. Voronsky, S. Yesenin, D. Furmanov. Note that at first Isaac Emmanuilovich lived in Sergiev Posad (near Moscow).

Popularity, creativity of the second half of the 1920s

In the mid-1920s, he became one of the most popular writers in the USSR. Only in 1925 three collections of his stories were published as a separate edition. The first set of short stories created by Babel from Cavalry came out the following year. In the future, he replenished. Isaac Babel planned to write 50 short stories, but 37 were published, the last of them is called "Argamak".

In 1925, Isaac Emmanuilovich began to work on the creation of the script "Benya Krik", and also completed the play "Sunset". In the second half of the 1920s, Isaac Babel wrote (at least published) almost all of his best works. The next 15 years of Babel's life added only very little to this main legacy of his. In 1932-33, Isaak Emmanuilovich worked on the play "Maria". He created a number of new "cavalry" short stories, as well as stories, mostly autobiographical ("Guy de Maupassant", "Awakening", etc.). At this time, the writer also completed the screenplay "Wandering Stars" based on the prose of Sholom Aleichem.

"Cavalry"

In the mid-1920s, his entry into literature was sensational. The short stories "Konarmiya" created by Babel were notable for their unusual directness and sharpness of depicting the atrocities and bloody events of the Civil War period, even for that time. At the same time, his works are characterized by a rare elegance of words, refinement of style. Babel, whose biography indicates that he was familiar with the Civil War firsthand, conveys its bloody events with particular harshness. Three cultural layers were involved in them, which were unlikely to intersect before in Russian history. We are talking about the Jews, the Russian intelligentsia and the people. The effect of this collision shapes the moral and artistic world of Babel's prose, full of hope and suffering, insights and tragic mistakes. Cavalry immediately provoked a very sharp controversy, in which various points of view clashed. In particular, the commander of the First Cavalry S.M. Budyonny took this work as a slander on the Reds. But A. Voronsky and M. Gorky believed that the depth of the image of human destinies in the conflicts of the Civil War, the truth, and not propaganda, is the main task of the writer.

"Odessa stories"

Babel in his "Odessa Stories" depicted a romanticized Odessa Moldavanka. Benya Krik, the "noble" bandit, became her soul. The book presents the life of Odessa merchants and raiders, dreamers and wise men in a very colorful, lyrical and ironic-pathetic way. It is depicted as if a passing era. "Odessa Stories" (the play "Sunset" became a variant of the plots of the second book) is one of the most significant events in Russian literature in the mid-20s of the last century. They had a great influence on the work of a number of writers, among them - I. Ilf and E. Petrov.

Travels in the USSR and foreign trips

Since 1925, Isaac Emmanuilovich travels a lot around the USSR (south of Russia, Kyiv, Leningrad). He collects materials on the recent events of the Civil War, serves as the secretary of the village council in the village of Molodenovo, located on the Moscow River. In the summer of 1927, Babel went abroad for the first time. His biography was noted first and then - to Berlin. Trips abroad from that time became almost annual until 1936. In 1935, Isaac Emmanuilovich presented a report in defense of culture at the Paris Congress of Writers.

Meetings with Gorky

Many times Babel met with Maxim Gorky, who closely followed his work and supported him in every possible way. After Gorky's son died, Alexei Maksimovich invited Isaac Emmanuilovich to his place in Gorki. Here he lived from May to June 1934. In the same year, in August, Babel delivered a speech during the First All-Union Congress of Soviet Writers.

Babel: biography and work of the second half of the 1930s.

In the second half of the 1930s, the work of Isaak Emmanuilovich was mainly connected with the literary processing of the work of other writers. In particular, Babel worked on the following screenplays: based on the work "How the Steel Was Tempered" by N. Ostrovsky, based on the poem "The Thought about Opanas" by Vs. Bagritsky, as well as on the script of the film about Maxim Gorky. He also created an adaptation of Turgenev's work for cinema. We are talking about the script for a film called "Bezhin Meadow" for S.M. Eisenstein. This film, it must be said, was banned and destroyed as "ideologically vicious." However, this did not break a writer like Isaac Babel. His biography and work testify that he did not pursue fame.

In 1937, Isaac Emmanuilovich announced in the press that he had finished work on the play about G. Kotovsky, and two years later - on the script "Old Square". During the life of the writer, however, none of these works was published. In the autumn of 1936, the last collection of his stories was published. Babel's last speech in print was New Year's wishes, which were published on December 31, 1938 in Literaturnaya Gazeta.

Arrest, execution and rehabilitation

Babel's biography by dates continues with the fact that on May 15, 1939, a search was carried out at the Moscow apartment of Isaac Emmanuilovich, as well as at his dacha located in Peredelkino (where he was at that time). During the search, 24 folders with his manuscripts were confiscated. Subsequently, they were not found in the FSK archives. On June 29-30, after a series of continuous interrogations, Babel testified. Subsequently, in several statements, he retracted them. In a speech delivered at the trial, Isaak Emmanuilovich asked to be given the opportunity to complete his latest works. However, he was not destined to do so. Isaak Emmanuilovich was sentenced to death. On January 27, 1940, Babel was executed. His brief biography ends with the fact that the body of the writer was cremated on the same day in the Donskoy Monastery.

After 14 years, in 1954, Isaac Emmanuilovich was fully rehabilitated, since no corpus delicti was found in his actions. After that, disputes around his fate and work resumed. They don't stop to this day. Babel, whose biography and work we have reviewed, is a writer whose works are certainly worth getting acquainted with.