original surname Bobel; birth name - Isaac Manyevich Bobel

Russian Soviet writer, translator, screenwriter and playwright, journalist, war correspondent

Isaac Babel

short biography

Babel’s biography has a number of gaps and inaccuracies due to the fact that the corresponding notes left by the writer himself are largely embellished, altered, or even “pure fiction” in accordance with the artistic design or political dictates of the time.

Date of Birth

There is a discrepancy in various sources regarding exact date birth of the future writer. In Brief literary encyclopedia Babel's date of birth is July 1 according to the old style, and July 13 according to the new style. However, the metric book of the office of the Odessa city rabbi indicates the date of birth according to the old style - June 30. Babel indicated the same birthday, June 30, in his handwritten autobiography of 1915, preserved in the documents of the Kyiv Commercial Institute. “A short chronicle of the life and work of Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel”, compiled by Usher Moiseevich Spector (see: Babel I. Awakening. Tbilisi, 1989. P.491), contains an error in translating the old style into the new: here June 30th Art. Art. corresponds to July 13 A.D. Art., and it should be July 12th. It must be assumed that a similar error has become widespread in reference literature.

Childhood

Born in Odessa on Moldavanka, the third child in the family of merchant Many Itskovich Bobel ( Emmanuel (Manus, Mane) Isaakovich Babel, 1864-1924), originally from Skvira, Kyiv province, and Feiga ( Fani) Aronovna Bobel (née Schwechwel). The family lived in a house on the corner of Dalnitskaya and Balkovskaya streets. In the directory “All Russia” for 1911, Emmanuel Isaakovich Babel is listed as the owner of a store selling agricultural equipment, located at number 17 on Richelieu Street.

No later than the fall of 1895, the family moved to Nikolaev, Kherson province, where I. E. Babel lived until he was 11 years old. In November 1903, he entered the first intake of the preparatory class of the Nikolaev Commercial School named after S. Yu. Witte, which opened on December 9 of the same year, but having passed three oral exams (on the Law of God, the Russian language and arithmetic) with straight A’s, he was not accepted “for lack of vacancy." After his father submitted a request for a re-test on April 20, 1904, Isaac Babel re-passed the exams in August and, based on the test results, was enrolled in the first class, and on May 3, 1905 he was transferred to the second. According to the autobiography of I. E. Babel, in addition to traditional disciplines, he privately studied Hebrew, Bible and Talmud.

Youth and early creativity

Fluent in Yiddish, Russian, Ukrainian and French, Babel wrote his first works in French, but they have not survived.

In 1911, having received a certificate of completion from the Odessa Commercial School, he became a student at the Kyiv Commercial Institute, where he studied at the economics department under his original name Bobel; received his diploma in 1917. During his studies, he first published his work - the story “Old Shloime” - in the Kiev weekly illustrated magazine “Lights” (1913, signed “I. Babel”). In Kyiv, student Babel met Evgenia Borisovna Gronfain, the daughter of a wealthy businessman, who was legally married to him in 1919.

In 1916, he went to Petrograd, without, according to his own recollections, the right to do so, since Jews were prohibited from settling in the capitals (researchers discovered a document issued by the Petrograd police, which allowed Babel to live in the city only while studying at a higher education institution). educational institution). He managed to immediately enroll in the fourth year of the law faculty of the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute.

In the same year, Babel met M. Gorky, who published the stories “Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofyevna” and “Mama, Rimma and Alla” in the journal “Chronicle”. They attracted attention, and Babel was going to be tried for pornography (Article 1001), as well as two more articles - “blasphemy and an attempt to overthrow the existing system,” which was prevented by the events of 1917. On the advice of M. Gorky, Babel “went into the public eye” and changed several professions. The publication in the Chronicle was followed by publications in the Journal of Journals (1916) and Novaya Zhizn (1918).

In the fall of 1917, Babel, having served for several months as a private on the Romanian front, deserted and made his way to Petrograd, where at the beginning of 1918 he went to work as a translator in the foreign department of the Cheka, and then in the People's Commissariat for Education and food expeditions. Published in the newspaper New life" In the spring of 1920, on the recommendation of Mikhail Koltsov, under the name Kirill Vasilievich Lyutov was sent to the 1st Cavalry Army under the command of Budyonny as a war correspondent for Yug-ROST, and was a fighter and political worker there. In the ranks of the 1st Cavalry he became a member Soviet-Polish War 1920. The writer kept notes (“Cavalry Diary,” 1920), which served as the basis for the future collection of stories “Cavalry.” Published in the newspaper of the Political Department of the 1st Cavalry “Red Cavalryman”.

Later he worked in the Odessa Provincial Committee, was the producing editor of the 7th Soviet printing house (Pushkinskaya St., 18), and a reporter in Tiflis and Odessa, at the State Publishing House of Ukraine. According to the myth he himself voiced in his autobiography, he did not write during these years, although it was then that he began to create the cycle “ Odessa stories" In 1922, Babel collaborated with the Tiflis newspaper “Zarya Vostoka” and traveled as a correspondent to Adjara and Abkhazia.

Period of literary activity

The cycle “On the Field of Honor” was published in the January issue of the Odessa magazine “Lava” for 1920. In June 1921, Babel’s story “The King” was first published in the popular Odessa newspaper “Sailor”, which became evidence of the writer’s creative maturity. In 1923-1924, the magazines “Lef”, “Krasnaya Nov” and other publications published a number of his stories, which later formed the cycles “Cavalry” and “Odessa Stories”. Babel immediately received wide recognition as a brilliant master of words. His first book, “Stories,” was published in 1925 by the Ogonyok publishing house. In 1926, the first edition of the collection “Cavalry” was published, which was reprinted many times in subsequent years.

Soviet criticism of those years, while 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 spontaneous principle and romanticization of banditry.”

“To the thunder of guns, to the ringing of sabers, Babel was born from Zoshchenko”
(epigram, quoted from V. Kataev)

In the stories of the “Cavalry” series, the intelligent author-narrator Kirill Lyutov describes the violence and cruelty of the Red Army soldiers with mixed feelings of horror and admiration. In “Odessa Stories,” Babel depicts in a romantic way the life of Jewish criminals of the early 20th century, finding exotic features and strong characters. The most memorable hero of these stories is the Jewish raider Benya Krik (his prototype is the legendary Mishka Yaponchik), in the words of the “Jewish Encyclopedia” - the embodiment of Babel’s dream of a Jew who can stand up for himself.

Master short story, Babel strives for laconicism and accuracy, combining enormous temperament with external dispassion in the images of his characters, plot collisions and descriptions. His flowery, metaphor-laden language early stories later it is replaced by a strict and restrained narrative style.

In the spring of 1924, Babel was in Odessa, where his father died on March 2 of the same year, after which he finally settled in Moscow with his mother and sister.

In 1926, he edited a two-volume collection of Sholem Aleichem’s works in Russian translations, and the following year he adapted Sholem Aleichem’s novel “Wandering Stars” for a film production.

In 1927, he took part in the collective novel “Big Fires,” published in the magazine “Ogonyok.”

In 1928, Babel published the play "Sunset". The basis for the play was the unpublished story “Sunset,” which he began in 1923-1924. In 1927, “Sunset” was staged by two theaters in Odessa - Russian and Ukrainian, but the 1928 production at the Moscow Art Theater was unsuccessful, and the play was closed after 12 performances. The play was criticized for its "idealization of hooliganism" and its "tendency to the bourgeois underground."

In 1935 he published the play "Maria". Babel also wrote several scripts and collaborated with Sergei Eisenstein.

With tightening censorship and the advent of the era Great Terror Babel published less and less. He was engaged in translations from the Yiddish language. Despite his doubts about what was happening, he did not emigrate, although he had such an opportunity. From September 1927 to October 1928 and from September 1932 to August 1933 he lived abroad (France, Belgium, Italy). In 1935 - the last trip abroad to the anti-fascist writers' congress.

Delegate to the First Congress of Writers of the USSR (1934).

Discussion about "Cavalry"

The very first publications of the stories of the “Cavalry” cycle were in clear contrast with the revolutionary propaganda of that time, which created heroic myths about the Red Army soldiers. Babel had ill-wishers: for example, Semyon Budyonny was furious with the way Babel described the life and life of the cavalrymen, and in his article “Babel’s Babism in Krasnaya Novy” (1924) called him “a literary degenerate.” In the same year, 1924, Kliment Voroshilov complained to Dmitry Manuilsky, a member of the Central Committee and later the head of the Comintern, that the style of the work about the Cavalry was “unacceptable.” Stalin believed that Babel wrote about “things that he did not understand.” Viktor Shklovsky put it in a peculiar way: “Babel saw Russia as a French writer seconded to Napoleon’s army could see it.” But Babel was under the patronage of Maxim Gorky, which guaranteed the publication of the book “Cavalry.” In response to Budyonny’s attacks, Gorky stated: “Attentive reader, I don’t find anything “cartoonish and libelous” in Babel’s book, on the contrary: his book aroused both love and respect for the Cavalry soldiers in me, showing them truly as heroes, - fearless, they deeply feel the greatness of their struggle.” The discussion continued until 1928.

Collectivization in Ukraine

It is known that Babel collected material for a novel about collectivization. However, only one story “Gapa Guzhva” was published (with the subtitle “The first chapter from the book “Great Krinitsa”) and another one was announced, but never published (the second story from the planned book “Great Krinitsa” - “Kolyvushka” , written in 1930 - was published posthumously); working materials for the novel were confiscated when the writer was arrested.

V.I. Druzhbinsky: “In December 1929, Babel wrote criticism to Vyacheslav Polonsky: “ Dear V.P. I’m looking for a reason to go to Kiev, and from there to areas of complete collectivization, in order to immediately describe this event...“Leaving Kyiv for Boryspil on February 16, 1930, he wrote to his family: “ ...Now there is essentially a complete transformation of the village and rural life...an event that surpasses everything we have seen in our time in terms of interest and importance“. Another letter: “I. Livshits. Boryspil. 20.02.30. I spend the night in the Boryspil region of complete collectivization. Hochst interessant. Tomorrow I am going to go live in one of the most remote villages... I.B.“ From Boryspil Babel moved to the village of Velikaya Staritsa, where he lived in the house of teacher Kirill Menzhegi for almost two months. Staying in this village left the writer, as he told his family, “ one of the sharpest memories of my entire life - to this very minute I wake up in sticky sweat"". And further: “A year later, Isaac Emmanuilovich wrote to his future wife Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova: “ ...During the Civil Brawl I saw a lot of humiliation, trampling and destruction of a person as such, but it was all physical humiliation, trampling and destruction. Here, near Kiev, a good, wise and strong person is turned into a homeless, mangy and disgusting dog, which everyone shuns like the plague. Not even a dog, but something not a mammal...“».

According to S.I. Lipkin, returning to Moscow in April 1930, Babel told his friend E.G. Bagritsky: “Would you believe it, Eduard Georgievich, I have now learned to calmly watch how people are shot.” According to V.V. Kozhinov, collectivization delighted him. At the beginning of 1931, Babel again went to those places, and in December 1933 of the famine year he wrote in a letter from the village of Prishibskaya to his sister in Brussels: “The transition to collective farms occurred with friction, there was a need, but now everything is developing with extraordinary brilliance. In a year or two we will have prosperity that will eclipse everything that these villages saw in the past, and they lived comfortably. The collective farm movement has made decisive progress this year, and now truly boundless prospects are opening up, the land is being transformed. I don’t know how long I’ll stay here. Witnessing new relationships and economic forms is interesting and necessary.”.

On the contrary, according to the memoirs of M. Ya. Makotinsky (in whose Kyiv apartment the writer lived during these trips), in 1930 Babel returned from the Kyiv region excited: “You can’t imagine! It’s indescribable what I observed in the village! And not in just one village! It’s impossible to describe! I do not understand anything!" “It turns out,” writes M. Makotinsky, “Babel encountered excesses in collectivization, which later received the name “dizziness from success.” Writes a researcher of the work of I. Babel, professor at Stanford University G. M. Freidin: “According to Babel’s friend Ilya Lvovich Slonim, who shared his memories with the author of this article in the 1960s, Babel, returning from another trip to the collectivization areas, said him that what is happening in the village is much worse than that what he saw during the civil war. Babel’s stories about collectivization that have come down to us, “Gapa Guzhva” and “Kolyvushka,” can serve as indirect confirmation of this evidence.”

The name of the village of Velikaya Staritsa, in which the writer lived, was replaced by Velikaya Krinitsa in preparation for the publication of the story “Gapa Guzhva”. Sending the corrected manuscript of “Gaps of Guzhva” to V. Polonsky in October 1931, Babel, who anticipated a possible reaction to the publication, wrote: “I had to change the name of the village to avoid excessive vilification.”

In an attempt to break the creative silence, in the early 1930s I. E. Babel also traveled to Kabardino-Balkaria, Molodenovo near Moscow, Donbass and Dneprostroy.

Arrest and execution

In the summer of 1938, the Presidium of the USSR Writers' Union approved Babel as a member of the editorial board of the State Publishing House fiction(GIHL).

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 lost forever (15 folders, 11 notebooks, 7 notebooks with notes). The fate of his novel about the Cheka remains unknown. In 1939, Aram Vanetsian began painting a portrait of Babel, which turned out to be the last lifetime portrait writer.

During interrogations, Babel was tortured. He was forced to admit his connection with the Trotskyists, as well as their pernicious influence on his work and the fact that, supposedly guided by their instructions, he deliberately distorted reality and belittled the role of the party. The writer also “confirmed” that he had “anti-Soviet conversations” among other writers, artists and film directors (Yu. Olesha, V. Kataev, S. Mikhoels, G. Alexandrov, S. Eisenstein), and “spyed” in favor of France. From the protocol:

Babel testified that in 1933, through Ilya Ehrenburg, he established espionage connections with the French writer Andre Malraux, to whom he transmitted information about the state of the Air Fleet.

He was sentenced to capital punishment by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR and was shot the next day, January 27, 1940. The execution list was signed by the Secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, I.V. Stalin. The writer’s ashes are buried in Common Grave No. 1 of the Donskoye Cemetery.

From 1939 to 1955, Babel's name was removed from Soviet literature. In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated. With the active assistance of Konstantin Paustovsky, who knew Babel well and left warm memories of him, after 1956 Babel was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, the collection “Favorites” was published with a foreword 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.

Family

The writer's father died in 1924, after which Babel's mother and his sister Maria and her husband emigrated and lived in Belgium.

• His wife, artist Evgenia Borisovna Gronfain, went to France in 1925.
  • Daughter Natalya (1929-2005, married - American literary critic Natalie Brown, under whose editorship it was published in English full meeting works of Isaac Babel).
• Babel’s second (common-law) wife, with whom he became close after breaking up with Evgenia, is actress Tamara Vladimirovna Kashirina (later Ivanova, wife of the writer Vsevolod Ivanov);
  • Their son, named Emmanuel (1926-2000, was known in the Khrushchev era as the artist Mikhail Ivanov, a member of the “Group of Nine”), was brought up in the family of his stepfather V.V. Ivanov, considering himself his son. After breaking up with Kashirina, Babel, who traveled abroad, was reunited for some time with his legal wife, who gave birth to a daughter, Natalya.

• Babel’s last wife, Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova, gave birth to his daughter Lydia:
  • Daughter Lydia (1937), has lived in the USA since 1996. She died in September 2010.
    • The son of Lydia Isaakovna and the grandson of Babel is Andrei Malaev-Babel, director and theater teacher, professor at Florida State University (Sarasota, USA).

Literary influence

Babel’s work had a huge influence 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 in some ways shared his fate. He began to be published again only after his “posthumous rehabilitation” in the 1950s, and his works were heavily censored. The writer’s daughter, American citizen Natalie Babel Brown, 1929-2005, managed to collect hard-to-find and unpublished works and publish them with commentaries (“The Complete Works of Isaac Babel”, 2002).

Babel's works aroused interest all over the world. Thus, Jorge Luis Borges wrote about “Cavalry” in his youth:

His style of music contrasts with the almost unspeakable brutality of some scenes.

Study of life and creativity

• One of the first researchers of I. E. Babel’s work was I. A. Smirin and Kharkov literary critic and theater critic L. Ya. Livshits.
• After the posthumous rehabilitation of the writer, an essay on his work was prepared by the Moscow literary scholar and critic F. M. Levin.
• In late Soviet and early post-Soviet times The life path and literary heritage of the writer was most actively studied by the Moscow engineer, collector of miniature books Usher Moiseevich Spektor (died in 1993).
• Literary critic Elena Iosifovna Pogorelskaya, employee of the State literary museum(Moscow) - author of many articles and publications devoted to the life, work and epistolary heritage of Babel.
• Creative biography of Babel and the circumstances of his tragic death long time investigated by literary critic S. N. Povartsov (Omsk).
• Local historian A. Yu. Rosenboim (Rostislav Aleksandrov) dedicated a number of publications to the Odessa pages of Babel’s life, and the historian M. B. Kalnitsky dedicated them to the Kyiv pages.
• In April 1989, the “First Babel Readings” took place in Odessa.

Memory

• Back in 1968, a group of climbers from Odessa, having conquered an unnamed peak 6007 m high in the Pamirs, named it Babel Peak (the name was approved two years later).
• In 1989, one of the streets of Moldavanka was named in honor of Babel.

• • The grand opening of the monument to the writer in Odessa took place on September 4, 2011. The author of the monument is folk artist RF Georgy Frangulyan. The monument was erected at the intersection of Zhukovsky and Rishelievskaya streets, opposite the house where he once lived. Sculptural composition represents the figure of a writer sitting on the steps and a rolling wheel on which is inscribed “Isaac Babel.” The area near the monument is paved with traditional Odessa paving stones. The monument was built on the initiative of the World Club of Odessa residents with funds from sponsors from all over the world.
  • In the city of Odessa, on a house located at st. Rishelevskaya 17, where the writer lived, a memorial plaque was installed. The house itself is an architectural monument, built at the beginning of the 20th century according to the design of Samuel Galperson. Initially the building belonged to engineer S. Reich and was apartment building. Babel's family settled here after returning from Nikolaev in 1905. Their apartment No. 10 was on the fourth floor, the balcony overlooked Richelieu Street. The apartment was owned by the writer’s father, Emmanuel Babel, an entrepreneur who had an office selling agricultural machines. The writer’s grandmother Mindlya Aronovna lived there until her death in 1913, who became the heroine of one of the writer’s early works, “Childhood. By Grandma". In 2015, work on a major reconstruction of this building was completed. The courtyard is decorated with images of Odessa sights and scenes from its history.
  • The asteroid (5808) Babel, discovered by astronomer Lyudmila Karachkina at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory on August 27, 1987, is named in honor of I. E. Babel.

Literary heritage

In total, Babel wrote about 80 stories, collected in collections, two plays and five film scripts.

• 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 the front-line notes of French officers.
• "Cavalry Diary of 1920"
• Collection "Cavalry" (1926), reprint. 1933.
• Jewish Stories (1927).
• "Odessa Stories" (1931).
• The play "Sunset" (1928).
• The play "Maria" (1935).
• The unfinished novel “Velikaya Krinitsa”, from which only the first chapter “Gapa Guzhva” (“Gapa Guzhva”) was published (“ New world", No. 10, 1931).
• fragment of the story “The Jewish Woman” (published in 1968).
• Cavalry diary of 1920.

Editions of essays

• Lyubka Kozak. - M., Ogonyok, 1925
• Stories. - M., Ogonyok, 1925. - 32 p.
• Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1925. - 112 p.
• Benya Krik. - M., Circle, 1926
• Libretto of the film "Benya Krik". Virob of the Odessa factory VUFKU 1926 rock. Kyiv, 1926. - 8 p. - 5000 copies.
• Wandering stars. - M., Kinoprint, 1926
• The story of my dovecote. - M.-L., ZIF, 1926. - 80 p.
• Cavalry. - M.-L., GIZ, 1926
• Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1926
• The story of my dovecote. - Paris, 1927
• The story of my dovecote. - M.-L., ZIF, 1927
• Cavalry. - M.-L., GIZ, 1927
• Cavalry. - M., FOSP, 1927
• The end of St. Hypatia. - M.-L., ZIF, 1927
• Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1927 - 64 p.
• Stories. - M.-L., GIZ, 1927. - 128 p.
• Sunset. - M., “Circle”, 1928. - 96 pp., 5,000 copies.
• Cavalry.- M.-L., GIZ, 1928
• The story of my dovecote. - M., GIZ, 1930
• Cavalry. - M.-L., GIZ, 1930
• Odessa stories. - M., OGIZ-GIHL, 1931. - 144 pp., 10,000 copies.
• Cavalry. - M., OGIZ-GIHL, 1931
• Stories. - M., Federation, 1932
• Cavalry. - M., GIHL, 1933
• Stories. - M., Goslitizdat, 1934
• Maria. - M., Goslitizdat, 1935. - 66 pp., 3,000 copies.
• Stories. - M., Goslitizdat, 1935
• Selected stories. - M., 1936, 2008. - 40 pp., 40,000 copies. (Library “Ogonyok”).
• Stories. - M., Goslitizdat, 1936
• Favorites / Preface I. Ehrenburg. - M., Goslitizdat, 1957.
• Favorites / Join Art. L. Pole. - M., Fiction, 1966.
• Favorites / Preface I. Ehrenburg. - Kemerovo, 1966
• Cavalry. Selected works/ Afterword V. Zvinyatskovsky; Ill. G. Garmidera. - K.: Dnipro, 1989. - 350 p.
• Awakening: Essays. Stories. Film story. Play / Comp., prepared. texts, intro. article, note, chronological index by W. M. Spector. - Tbilisi: Merani, 1989. - 432 p.
• Selected / Comp., preface. and comment. V. Ya. Vakulenko. - Frunze: Adabiyat, 1990. - 672 p.
• Cavalry / Comp. A.N.Pirozhkova-Babel/. Entered: Cavalry. Cavalry diary of 1920. Odessa stories. Journalism. Stories different years. Memoirs, portraits, articles. - M., Pravda (Znamya magazine library), 1990. 480 pp. Circulation 400 thousand copies.
• Works: In 2 vols. - M.: IHL, 1990 / comp. A. Pirozhkova, entry. Art. G. Beloy, approx. S. Povartsova, reprint vol. 1 - 1991, vol. 2 - 1992
• Odessa stories. - Odessa: Voluntary Society of Book Lovers. 1991, p.221, format 93×67 mm, circulation 20,000 copies, hardcover.
• Works in two volumes. M., Terra, 1996., 15,000 copies.
• Diary 1920 (cavalry). - M.: MIC, 2000.
• Cavalry I.E. Babel. - Moscow: Children's literature, 2001.
• Collected works: In 2 volumes - M., 2002.
• Collected works: In 4 volumes / Comp., notes, intro. Art. I. N. Sukhikh. M.: Time, 2006.
• Collected works: In 3 volumes / Comp., approx. entry Art. I. N. Sukhikh. St. Petersburg: Azbuka, 2012. - 2,000 copies.
• Stories / Comp., prepared. texts, afterword, commentary. E. I. Pogorelskaya. St. Petersburg: Vita Nova, 2014. - 1000 copies.
• Letters to a friend: From the archives of I. L. Livshits / Comp., comp. texts and comments. E. Pogorelskaya. M.: Three squares, 2007. - 3000 copies.

Performances

The play “Sunset,” which was shown on the stage of the Moscow Art Theater 2 during the author’s lifetime (1928), was again staged by many theaters during perestroika and post-Soviet times, including.

How is the rating calculated?
◊ The rating is calculated based on points awarded over the last week
◊ Points are awarded for:
⇒ visiting pages dedicated to the star
⇒voting for a star
⇒ commenting on a star

Biography, life story of Babel Isaac Emmanuilovich

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel is a famous Russian and later Soviet writer of Jewish origin, who worked in the first third of the 20th century.

Childhood

Isaac Emmanuilovich Bobel (this is his real name) was born in Odessa. This event took place in the family of a Jewish merchant named Manya Itskovich and Feiga Aronovna. The birth took place on the 1st, or according to the new style on July 13th in 1894 (although according to some sources Isaac was born on June 30th).

In the fall of 1895, the Bobel family moved to the city of Nikolaev, located in the Kherson province. Here Isaac lived until he was eleven years old. In November 1903, the teenager tried to enter the preparatory class of the Nikolaev Commercial School, which was named after Sergei Yulievich Witte and opened this year on December 9. However, having received A's in three oral exams (in the Russian language, the Law of God and arithmetic), Isaac was not enrolled in the school due to a “lack of vacancies” under the 10% quota for Jews in the Pale of Settlement. On April 20, 1904, his father filed a petition to re-test his son, and in August 1904, Isaac Babel re-passed all the required exams and was finally enrolled in first grade. In addition to the traditional disciplines taught at the school, Babel privately studied the Hebrew language, as well as the Talmud and the Bible, and studied music.

The beginning of the 20th century was a very turbulent time in Ukraine, there were social unrest and pogroms of Jews, which caused a mass exodus of people of the Jewish faith from the Russian Empire. Isaac himself survived the Jewish pogrom that happened in 1905 (the boy was hidden from the raging crowd by a Christian family), but his grandfather, whose name was Shoil, became one of the three hundred Jews killed then.

Youth

Babel continued his studies at the Odessa Commercial School, which he successfully graduated in 1911. Having made an unsuccessful attempt to enter Odessa University, where he was again not enrolled due to the same quotas, Isaac began studying at the Institute of Entrepreneurship and Finance in Kyiv, from which he graduated, receiving a diploma of higher education in 1917.

CONTINUED BELOW

Here at the university, Babel met his future first wife, artist Evgenia Borisovna Gronfein. Isaac was legally married to this daughter of a wealthy Odessa businessman in 1919, but already in 1925 they separated, Evgenia went to live in France. Then Isaac lived for some time with Tamara Vladimirovna Kashirina, who gave birth to his son Emmanuel out of wedlock, who was later adopted by the writer Vsevolod Vyacheslavovich Ivanov. Having parted with Kashirina and gone to France for a while in 1929, Babel made peace with his legal wife, and she even gave birth to his daughter Natalie, but Isaac returned to Russia alone.

Youth

Fluent in Russian, French and Yiddish, Isaac Babel, nevertheless, wrote his first literary works, which have not survived to our time.

In 1916 Babel arrived in Petrograd. The young Jew did not have the right to this, because Jews were at that time forbidden to settle in the capitals of the Empire, but the Petrograd police issued a temporary (during his university studies) permission to live in this city. Babel immediately entered the fourth year at the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute to receive an education at the Faculty of Law.

It was then that Isaac met the writer. published Babel’s stories “Mama, Rimma and Alla” and “Margarita Prokofyevna and Elya Isaakovich” in his journal “Chronicle”. These works attracted the attention of the public, but the aspiring writer almost ended up on trial under Article 1001 (for pornography). They tried to incriminate him with two more articles of the Criminal Code of the Republic of Ingushetia - attempted overthrow of the state system and blasphemy, but this was prevented by the revolutionary events of 1917. Babel on advice "went public". The aspiring writer changed several professions, but published regularly in the “Journal of Magazines” in 1916, and in “New Life” in 1918.

In the civil war

Babel served in the Cavalry Army in 1920 as a simple fighter, and then as a political worker. After the defeat of the Whites, in 1924 he published a number of stories, which later formed cycles called “Odessa Stories” and “Cavalry.” Literary scholars believe that Babel was able to skillfully translate into Russian the literary stylistics of Yiddish prose, which is especially noticeable in his “Odessa Stories.” Here, the direct speech of the characters in places resembles an interlinear translation from this language.

After the very first publications of stories about the Cavalry, Babel found himself in clear opposition to revolutionary propaganda, which was designed to create exclusively heroic myths about the Red Army soldiers. Isaac Emmanuilovich had very high-ranking ill-wishers: for example, Semyon Mikhailovich Budyonny became furious. The commander did not like how the writer depicted the life and the very life of the cavalrymen in these stories. Budyonny, in an article called “Babel’s Babism” and published in 1924 in Krasnaya Novy, named the narrator "literary degenerate". In the same year, Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov wrote to Dmitry Zakharovich Manuilsky, who was then a member of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks (Bolsheviks), and later became the head of the Comintern, saying that he considered the style of Babel’s works on the Cavalry unacceptable. believed, in turn, that Babel wrote about things that he could not understand.

Active phase of literary creativity

Soviet critics of those years paid tribute to Babel’s enormous talent and appreciated the significance of his work, but constantly pointed out that the writer had antipathy towards the cause of the struggle of the working class. They reproached Isaac Emmanuilovich for the fact that in his works he is carried away by excessive naturalism and often acts as an apologist for the spontaneous principle in people, and in addition, he also romanticizes banditry.

Nevertheless, Babel published actively. He published a play in 1928 called “Sunset,” which was staged the same year at the Second Moscow Art Theater, and in 1935 he wrote a play called “Maria.” He also created several film scripts. In 1937, Isaac Emmanuilovich married again. His chosen one was Antonina Nikolaevna Pirozhkova, who was a simple Soviet civil engineer. She gave birth to Babel's daughter Lydia.

Arrest and death

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was arrested in May 1939. The writer was accused of "anti-Soviet terrorist conspiratorial activities" and sentenced to death. The sentence was carried out on January 27, 1940. After death

Despite the fact that Isaac Babel's books were popular all over the world, he became a victim of the "great purge" of Joseph Stalin, presumably because of his long-term relationship with the wife of the head of the NKVD Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD in Peredelkino on the night of May 15, 1939. After being recognized as a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy during interrogation, he was shot on January 27, 1940.

early years

The biography of Isaac Babel begins in Ukraine. The future writer was born in Odessa on Moldavanka in a typical Jewish family. Soon after his birth, Babel's family moved to the port city of Nikolaev. Later, in 1906, they moved to a more respectable area of ​​Odessa. Babel used Moldavanka as the setting for Odessa Stories and Sunset.

Although Babel's stories present his family as "dispossessed and confused people", they were relatively wealthy. According to his autobiographical stories, Isaac Babel's father, Manus, was an impoverished shopkeeper. However, Babel's daughter, Nathalie Babel-Brown, stated that her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "create a background that would be ideal for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party." In fact, Babel's father was a dealer in agricultural implements and owned a large warehouse.

As a teenager, Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel hoped to get into the preparatory class of the Odessa Commercial School named after. Nicholas I. However, first he had to overcome the Jewish quota. Although Babel received enough grades to pass, his place was given to another boy whose parents had bribed school officials. As a result, he was taught by private teachers.

After the Jewish quota also thwarted his attempt to enter Odessa University, Babel entered the Kiev Institute of Finance and Business. There he met Evgenia Borisovna Gronfein, the daughter of a wealthy industrialist. She eventually ran away with him to Odessa.

Path to glory

In 1915, Babel graduated from school and moved to Petrograd, in violation of laws restricting the residence of Jews within the Pale of Settlement. He spoke French, Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish fluently, and Isaac Babel's early stories were written in French. However, none of his stories have survived in this language. The most famous work of Isaac Babel is “Odessa Stories”.

In St. Petersburg, Babel met Maxim Gorky, who published some of his stories in his literary journal Letopis (Chronicle). Gorky advised the aspiring writer to gain more life experience. The author of "Odessa Stories" Isaac Babel wrote in his autobiography: "... I owe everything to this meeting and still pronounce the name of Alexei Maksimovich Gorky with love and admiration." One of his most famous semi-autobiographical stories, “The Story of My Dovecote” (“The History of My Dovecote”), was dedicated specifically to Gorky.

The story "Bathroom Window" was considered too obscene by censors, and Babel was charged with violating Article 1001 of the Criminal Code.

There is very little information about Babel's whereabouts during and after the October Revolution. According to one of his stories, called “The Road,” he served on the Romanian front until early December 1917. In March 1918, he returned to Petrograd as a reporter for Gorky's Menshevik newspaper Novaya Zhizn. Isaac Babel's stories and reports continued to be published there until Novaya Zhizn was forcibly closed by order of Lenin in July 1918.

The Arrival of October

During the Civil War in Russia, which led to the party's monopoly on the printed word, Babel worked in the publishing house of the Odessa Provincial Committee (regional Committee of the CPSU), in the food procurement department (see his story “Ivan Maria”), in the People's Commissariat of Education (Commissariat of Education ), as well as printing houses.

After the end of the Civil War, the author of Odessa Stories, Isaac Babel, worked as a reporter for the newspaper Rassvet Vostoka (Dawn of the East), published in Tbilisi. In one of his articles, he expressed regret that the new economic policy Lenin was not more widely implemented.

Personal life

Babel married Evgenia Gronfein on August 9, 1919 in Odessa. In 1929, their marriage produced a daughter, Nathalie Babel-Brown, who was raised specifically to become a scientist and editor of her father's works. By 1925, Evgenia Babel, feeling betrayed by her husband's infidelity and filled with a growing hatred of communism, emigrated to France. Babel saw her several times during his visits to Paris. During this period he also entered into long-term romantic relationship with Tamara Kashirina. They had a son, Emmanuel Babel, who was later adopted by his stepfather Vsevolod Ivanov. Emmanuel Babel's name was changed to Mikhail Ivanov, and he later became famous artist.

After the final break with Tamara, Babel tried to reconcile with Evgenia. In 1932, Babel met a sultry Siberian woman named Antonina Pirozhkova, and after failing to convince his wife to return to Moscow, he and Antonina began living together. In 1939, a daughter, Lydia Babel, was born into their civil marriage.

In the ranks of the red cavalry

In 1920, Babel served under Semyon Budyonny and witnessed the military campaign of the 1920 Polish-Soviet War. Poland was not alone in its newfound opportunities and challenges. Almost all of the newly independent neighbors began to fight over borders: Romania fought with Hungary for Transylvania, Yugoslavia with Italy for Rijeka. Poland argued with Czechoslovakia over Cieszyn and Silesia, with Germany over Poznan, and with the Ukrainians (and, as a consequence, with the Ukrainian SSR - part of the USSR) over Eastern Galicia.

Babel documented the horrors of the war he saw in a 1920 diary (Cavalry Diary, 1920). "Cavalry" by Isaac Babel is just the result literary processing the above diary. This book is a collection short stories, such as “Crossing the Zbruch River” and “My First Goose.” The terrible violence of the Red Cavalry seemed to contrast sharply with the gentle nature of Babel himself.

Babel wrote: “Only by 1923 did I learn to express my thoughts clearly and not very in a long way and then returned to writing." Several stories that were later included in "Cavalry" were published in the magazine "LEF" by Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1924. An honest description of Babel harsh realities war, far from revolutionary propaganda, brought him numerous enemies. According to recent research, Marshal Budyonny was furious at Babel's description of the Red Cossacks' marauding. However, Gorky's influence not only protected Babel from the wrath of the famous commander, but also helped in the publication of the book. In 1929, "Cavalry" was translated into English by J. Harland, and then into a number of other languages.

"Odessa Stories" by Babel

Returning to Odessa, the talented writer began writing “Odessa Stories” - a series of stories about the Odessa ghetto of Moldavanka. They are based on the life of Jewish criminals before and after the October Revolution. It is precisely the outstanding and realistic characters that make the prose of Isaac Babel remarkable - Benya Krik and other characters from his “Stories” are forever included in the golden fund of anti-heroes of Russian literature.

Conflict with the authorities

In 1930, Babel traveled through Ukraine and witnessed the brutality of forced collectivization and the fight against the kulaks. When Stalin consolidated his power over the Soviet intelligentsia and decreed that all writers and artists must conform socialist realism, Babel increasingly moved away from public life. During the campaign against "formalism", Babel was publicly condemned for his low productivity. During this time, many other Soviet writers were frightened and feverishly rewrote their past works to conform to Stalin's wishes.

At the first congress of the Union Soviet writers(1934) Babel ironically noted that he was becoming “a master of the new literary genre, the genre of silence." American Max Eastman describes Babel's growing reticence as an artist in a chapter entitled "The Silence of Isaac Babel" in his 1934 book Artists in Uniform.

Paris Voyage

In 1932, after numerous requests, he was allowed to visit his wife Eugenie in Paris. While visiting his wife and their daughter Natalie, the writer was tormented by the question of whether it was worth returning to Soviet Russia or not. In conversations and letters to friends, he expressed his desire to be a "free man" and also expressed his fear that he would no longer be able to make a living solely by writing. On July 27, 1933, Babel wrote a letter to Yuri Annenkov, stating that for some reason he had been summoned to Moscow.

After returning to Russia, Babel decided to move in with Pirozhkova, entering into a civil marriage with her, which led to the birth of his daughter Lydia. He also collaborated with Sergei Eisenstein on a film about Pavlik Morozov, a child informant for the Soviet secret police. Babel also worked on the scripts for several other Stalinist propaganda films.

Connection with the Yezhov family

While visiting Berlin, the married Babel began an affair with Evgenia Feigenberg, who was a translator at the Soviet embassy. According to the protocols of the writer’s interrogation, Evgenia greatly intrigued the writer with the words: “You don’t know me, but I know you well.” Even after Evgenia married the head of the NKVD N.I. Yezhov, their romance continued, and Babel often presided over the literary meetings of “Citizen Yezhova,” which were often attended by such luminaries Soviet culture, like Solomon Mikhoels, Leonid Utesov, Sergei Eisenstein and Mikhail Koltsov. At one of these meetings, Babel said: “Just think, a simple girl from Odessa became the first lady of the kingdom!”

In her memoirs, Antonina declares complete ignorance about her husband’s affair with Yezhov’s wife. Babel told her that his interest in Yevgenia Yezhova was “purely professional” and related to his desire to “better understand the party elite.”

In retaliation for an affair with his wife, Yezhov ordered that the writer be under constant surveillance by the NKVD. When the Great Purge began in the late 1930s, Yezhov was informed that Babel was spreading rumors about the suspicious death of Maxim Gorky and claiming that he former mentor was killed on Stalin's orders. It is also alleged that Babel said the following words about Trotsky: “It is impossible to describe his charm and power of influence on everyone who meets him.” Babel also said that Lev Kamenev was “... the most brilliant expert on language and literature.”

However, as the number of victims of the purge grew, Nikolai Yezhov's excessive desire to destroy all "enemies of the people" placed a heavy burden on the reputation of Stalin and his inner circle. In response, Lavrentiy Beria was appointed Yezhov's assistant and quickly usurped the leadership of the NKVD.

Arrest

On May 15, 1939, Antonina Pirozhkova was awakened by four NKVD agents knocking on the door of her Moscow apartment. Despite the severe shock, she agreed to take them to Babel’s dacha in Peredelkino. Babel was then arrested. According to Pirozhkova: “In the car, one of the men was sitting in the back with Babel and me, and the other was sitting in front with the driver. Babel said: “The worst thing is that my mother will not receive my letters,” and after that he was silent for a long time. I couldn't say a word. When we approached Moscow, I said to Isaac: “I will wait for you, imagining that you just went to Odessa... only this time there will be no letters...” He replied: “But I don’t know, what will be my fate." At that moment, the man sitting next to Babel told me: “We have no complaints against you personally.” We drove up to Lubyanka and stopped in front of a massive closed door where two guards stood. Babel kissed me and said: “We’ll see each other someday...” And, without looking back, he got out of the car and walked through that door.”

According to Nadezhda Mandelstam, Babel's arrest became the subject of an urban legend in the NKVD. Babel, according to NKVD agents, seriously wounded one of their men and also resisted arrest. Nadezhda Mandelstam once stated, without hiding her contempt for the Cheka: “Whenever I hear such tales, I think about the tiny hole in the skull of Isaac Babel, the careful, smart person with a high forehead, who has probably never held a gun in his life.”

Execution

From the day of his arrest, Isaac Babel became unclaimed in the Soviet Union, his name was destroyed, removed from literary dictionaries and encyclopedias, and deleted from school and university textbooks. He became unacceptable in any public. When did it premiere next year? famous director Mark Donskoy, the name of Babel, who worked on the script, was removed from the end credits.

According to Babel’s dossier, the writer spent a total of eight months in Lubyanka and Butyrka prison, when a criminal case was fabricated against him for Trotskyism, terrorism and espionage for Austria and France. At the beginning of the interrogations, Babel categorically denied any wrongdoing, but then three days later he suddenly “confessed” to everything that the investigator charged him with, and named many people as co-conspirators. Apparently he was tortured, almost certainly beaten. Among the investigators working on his case were Boris Rhodes, who had a reputation as a particularly cruel torturer, even by the standards of his time, and Lev Shvartsmann, who had once tortured the famous theater director Vsevolod Meyerhold. Among those whom Babel “accused” of conspiring with him were his close friends Sergei Eisenstein, Solomon Mikhoels and Ilya Ehrenburg.

Despite months of prayer and writing letters addressed personally to Beria, Babel was denied access to his unpublished manuscripts. In October 1939, Babel was again summoned for questioning and denied all his previous testimony. A statement was recorded: “I ask the investigation to take into account that in prison I did commit a crime - I slandered several people.” This led to further arrests, since the NKVD leadership was very interested in preserving the cases against Mikhoels, Ehrenburg and Eisenstein.

On January 16, 1940, Beria presented Stalin with a list of 457 “enemies of the party and Soviet power” who were in custody, with a recommendation to shoot 346, including Isaac Babel. According to the later testimony of Babel's daughter, Natalie Babel-Brown, his trial took place on January 26, 1940 in one of the private halls of Lavrenty Beria. It lasted about twenty minutes. The sentence was prepared in advance without any ambiguity: execution by firing squad, to be carried out immediately. He was shot at 1.30 am on January 27, 1940.

Babel's last recorded words during the trial were: “I am innocent. I've never been a spy. I have never taken any action against Soviet Union. I accused myself falsely. I was forced to make false accusations against myself and others... I ask only one thing - let me finish the job." He was shot the next day and his body was thrown into a common grave. All this information was disclosed only in the early 1990s.

According to Simon Sebag Montefiore, Babel's ashes were buried with those of Nikolai Yezhov and several other victims of the Great Purge in mass grave at the Donskoye Cemetery. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a memorial plaque was placed there that reads: “Here are buried the remains of innocent, tortured and executed victims of political repression. May they be remembered forever." The grave of Evgenia Yezhova, who committed suicide in a psychiatric institution, is located less than twenty steps from the grave of her former lover.

According to the earlier official Soviet version, Isaac Babel died in the Gulag on March 17, 1941. Peter Constantine, who translated all of Babel's letters into English, described the writer's execution as "one of greatest tragedies literature of the 20th century." The works of Isaac Babel are still popular in both countries former USSR, and in the West.

Soviet literature

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel

Biography

BABEL, ISAAC EMMANUILOVICH (1894−1940), Russian writer. Born on July 1 (13), 1894 in Odessa on Moldavanka, in the family of a Jewish merchant. In his Autobiography (1924), Babel wrote: “At the insistence of his father, he studied the Hebrew language, the Bible, and the Talmud until he was sixteen years old. Life was difficult at home, because from morning to night they forced me to study many sciences. I was resting at school." Program of the Odessa Commercial School, where he studied future writer, was very intense. Studied chemistry, political economy, law, accounting, merchandising, three foreign languages and other items. Speaking about “rest,” Babel meant a 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.

Babel began writing at the age of fifteen. For two years he wrote in French - under the influence of G. Flaubert, G. Maupassant and his teacher French Vadona. The element of French speech sharpened the feeling literary language and style. Already in his first stories, Babel strove for stylistic grace and the highest degree of artistic expression. “I take a trifle - an anecdote, a market story, and make a thing out of it that I myself cannot tear myself away from... They will laugh at him not because he is funny, but because you always want to laugh at human luck,” he explained subsequently their creative aspirations.

The main property of his prose was revealed early: the combination of heterogeneous layers - both language and depicted life. For his early creativity A typical story is In the Crack (1915), in which the hero, for five rubles, buys from the landlady the right to spy on the lives of prostitutes renting the next room.

After graduating from the Kiev 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 (Old 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. It went on like this more than a year- until he came to Gorky in the journal “Chronicle”, where the stories Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofyevna and Mama, Rimma and Alla were published (1916, No. 11). The stories aroused interest among the reading public and the judiciary. Babel was going to be prosecuted for pornography. The February Revolution saved him from trial, which was already scheduled for March 1917.

Babel served in the Extraordinary Commission, as a correspondent for the newspaper "Red Cavalryman" he 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, and was a reporter for Tiflis and Petrograd newspapers.

TO artistic creativity returned in 1923: the magazine “Lef” (1924, No. 4) published the stories Salt, Letter, Death of Dolgushov, The King, etc. Literary critic A. Voronsky wrote about them: “Babel is not in front of the reader, but somewhere on the side he's already had a blast artistic path studies and therefore captivates the reader not only with the “gut” and unusualness of life material, but also... with culture, intelligence and mature firmness of talent...”

With time fiction The writer took shape in cycles that gave the names to the collections Cavalry (1926), Jewish Stories (1927) and Odessa Stories (1931).

The basis for the collection of stories Cavalry was diary entries. The first Cavalry, shown by Babel, was different from beautiful legend, which official propaganda composed about the Budennovites. Unjustified cruelty and the animal instincts of people overshadowed the weak shoots of humanity that Babel initially saw in the revolution and in the “cleansing” civil war. The Red commanders did not forgive him for his “denigration.” The persecution of the writer began, at the origins of which was S. M. Budyonny. Gorky, defending Babel, wrote that he showed the fighters of the First Cavalry “better, more truthful than Gogol of the Cossacks.” Budyonny called the Cavalry “super-impudent Babel slander.” Contrary to Budyonny’s opinion, Babel’s work was already considered one of the most significant phenomena in modern literature. “Babel was not like any of his contemporaries. But not long has passed - contemporaries are beginning to gradually resemble Babel. His influence on literature is becoming more and more obvious,” he wrote in 1927 literary critic A. Lezhnev.

Attempts to discern passion and romance in the revolution turned into spiritual anguish for the writer. “Why do I have persistent melancholy? Because (...) I’m at a big, ongoing funeral service,” he wrote in his diary. The fantastic, hyperbolic world of the Odessa stories became a kind of salvation for Babel. The action of the stories in this cycle - The King, How It Was Done in Odessa, The Father, Lyubka Cossack - takes place in an almost mythological city. Babel's Odessa is populated by characters in whom, according to the writer, there is “enthusiasm, lightness and a charming - sometimes sad, sometimes touching - feeling of life” (Odessa). Real Odessa criminals Mishka Yaponchik, Sonya Zolotaya Ruchka and others in the writer’s imagination turned into artistically authentic images of Benny Krik, Lyubka Kazak, Froim Grach. Babel portrayed the “King” of the Odessa criminal world Benya Krik as a defender of the weak, a kind of Robin Hood. The style of Odessa stories is distinguished by laconicism, conciseness of language and at the same time vivid imagery and metaphor. Babel's demands on himself were extraordinary. The story Lyubka Kazak alone had about thirty serious edits, on each of which the writer worked for several months. Paustovsky in his memoirs quotes Babel’s words: “We take it with style, with style. I’m ready to write a story about washing clothes, and it might sound like the prose of Julius Caesar.” Babel's literary heritage includes about eighty stories, two plays - Sunset (1927, first staged in 1927 by director V. Fedorov on the stage of the Baku Workers' Theater) and Maria (1935, first staged in 1994 by director M. Levitin on the stage of the Moscow Hermitage Theater ), five film scripts, including Wandering Stars (1926, based on novel of the same name 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. Trying to protect himself, Babel wrote the article Lies, Betrayal and Smerdyakovism (1937), glorifying show trials of “enemies of the people.” " Soon after this he admitted in a private letter: “Life is very bad: both mentally and physically - there is nothing to show up to. good people" The tragedy of the heroes of the Odessa stories was embodied in the short story by Froim Grach (1933, published in 1963 in the USA): the title character tries to conclude a “pact of honor” with the Soviet government and dies at the hands of the security officers. 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 books was written about this latest stories- parable about magical power art by Di Grasso (1937). Babel was arrested on May 15, 1939 and, accused of “anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activities,” was shot on January 27, 1940.

Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (real name Bobel) was born at the beginning of the 19th century on July 1 (13), 1894 into a wealthy family of a Jewish merchant in Odessa on Moldavanka. At the request of his father, the future writer studied the Hebrew language, the Bible, and the Talmud.

In his autobiography (1924), Isaac Emmanuilovich wrote that his life at home was not very easy, because his parents forced him to study many sciences at once and he rested at school. Most likely, when talking about relaxation, the writer had in mind a feeling of freedom, since at school he studied a lot of things: chemistry, political economy, law, accounting, merchandising and 3 foreign languages.

Babel began his first steps in his work at the age of 15. Under the impression of the works of G. Flaubert, G. Maupassant and under the influence of his teacher Vadon, Babel wrote in French. p>

After graduating from the Kyiv Commercial Institute in 1915 and after the failed publications of his works in Odessa and Kyiv (1913), Babel went to St. Petersburg, confident that only in the capital would he be noticed. Despite the advice of almost all the editors of St. Petersburg literary magazines to stop writing and go into trading, almost a year later Babel was published. Gorky himself published his stories “Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofyevna and Mom”, “Rimma and Alla” (1916, No. 11) in the journal “Chronicle”. These stories aroused interest in the aspiring writer, both among readers and bailiffs who were going to prosecute Bebel for pornography. The 1917 revolution saved him from trial.

Since 1918, Isaac Emmanuilovich served in the foreign department of the Extraordinary Commission, in the First Cavalry Army he worked as a correspondent in the newspaper "Red Cavalryman", and then in the People's Commissariat for Education (in the Odessa Provincial Committee) and in food expeditions. He fought on the northern, Romanian and Polish fronts, and was a reporter for Petrograd and Tiflis newspapers. He returned to his work in 1923.

In 1924, Isaac Emmanuilovich with his mother and sister finally moved to Moscow. All of the writer’s prose took shape in cycles, which gave the names to the collections Cavalry (1926), Jewish Stories (1927) and Odessa Stories (1931).

With the tightening of censorship as a result of the onset of the era of the Great Terror, Babel is published less and less every month. Engaged in translations from the Yiddish language. From September 1927 to October 1928 and from September 1932 to August 1933 he lived abroad (France, Belgium, Italy). In 1935 - the last trip abroad to the anti-fascist writers' congress.

On May 15, 1939, Babel was arrested on charges of “anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activities.” He was tortured during interrogations and was shot on January 27. In 1954 he was posthumously rehabilitated and after 1956 he was returned to Soviet literature

Babel, Isaac Emmanuilovich, writer (July 13, 1894, Odessa - March 17, 1941, in prison). Born into a Jewish merchant family. He studied Hebrew, the Torah and the Talmud, and graduated from a commercial school at the age of 15. In 1911-15 he studied at the Kiev Financial and Trade Institute, and wrote his first stories in French. Until 1917 he lived in St. Petersburg. In 1916 he published two stories in M. Gorky’s magazine “Chronicle”.

From 1917 to 1924 he changed many occupations: he was a soldier at the fronts First World War, employee of the People's Commissariat for Education, participant in predatory expeditions food detachments to a Russian village, as a fighter in Budyonny's First Cavalry Army; served in the city government of Odessa, worked as a journalist in Petrograd and Tiflis. In 1924 he settled in Moscow. His wife emigrated to Paris in 1925.

Babel after arrest

In 1924, Babel suddenly gained fame thanks to the publication of several of his stories in LEF; these stories were later collected into two collections Cavalry(1926) and Odessa stories(1931); both collections were soon translated into more than 20 languages ​​and made Babel internationally famous.

Continuing to write stories, Babel also created five scripts and two plays. Sunset(1927) and Maria (1935). The last play was not allowed to be staged, but literary career Babel in the USSR remained quite successful so far. In 1934 he performed at First Congress Writers' Union, in 1938 he was deputy chairman of the editorial board of Goslitizdat.

15.5.1939 Babel was arrested, his manuscripts were confiscated, his name was erased from the literature. On December 18, 1954, he was posthumously rehabilitated by the Military Collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR; in 1956, the date of his death was named - March 17, 1941, but neither the place nor the cause of death were indicated. With active influence K. Paustovsky after 1956 Babel was returned to Soviet literature. In 1957, a collection of Babel’s works was published, carefully censored and provided with a preface. I. Ehrenburg. However, the accusations brought against Babel in the 20s and 30s, when he was reproached for being too “subjective” Civil War"continued. From 1967 to 1980, not a single book of his was published in the USSR.

The relatively small volume of Babel’s work - about 80 stories and two plays - is explained not only by his death at the age of 47. Babel wrote extremely slowly, reworking each story sometimes for months; this was the case, for example, with the story Lyubka Kazak, which he published in 1925 after 26 revisions. As a result, his prose was distinguished by laconicism and density, compressed language, catchy, strong images. He considered himself a model, first of all, Flaubert.

In Babel’s stories both about the Civil War and about Odessa life, the predominant place is occupied by the motives of cruelty, murder, violence, and obscenity. Igor Shafarevich in work " Russophobia"gives a sharply negative assessment of the style and nationalist-Jewish ideology of Babel’s works:

Contempt and disgust for Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, as beings of a lower type, subhumans, is felt in almost every story of I. Babel’s “Cavalry.” A full-fledged person who evokes respect and sympathy from the author is found there only in the form of a Jew. With undisguised disgust, it is described how a Russian father cuts his son, and then the second son cuts his father (“Letter”), how a Ukrainian admits that he does not like to kill by shooting, but prefers to trample him to death (“Biography of Pavlichenko, Matvey Rodionich”). But the story “The Rabbi’s Son” is especially characteristic. The author is traveling on a train with the retreating army.

“And monstrous Russia, improbable as a herd of body lice, stamped its bast shoes on both sides of the carriages. The typhoid peasant rolled in front of him the usual coffin of a soldier's death. It jumped onto the steps of our train and fell off, hit by rifle butts.”

But then the author sees a familiar face: “And I recognized Ilya, the son of the Zhitomir rabbi.” (The author visited the rabbi on the evening before Shabbat - even though he was a political commissar in the Red Army - and noted “a young man with the face of Spinoza” - the story “Gidali”.) He, of course, was immediately accepted into the editorial carriage. He was sick with typhus, at his last breath, and died there, on the train. “He died, the last prince, among poems, phylacteries and footcloths. We buried him at a forgotten station. And I, barely able to contain the storms of my imagination in my ancient body, I accepted last breath my brother".

Unlike Chekhov's stories, Babel's stories are full of dynamics and action. Odessa stories They are distinguished by a color that is completely untranslatable into other languages, which consists of a specifically Odessa jargon, permeated with Ukrainianisms and borrowings from Yiddish, as well as from the language of the literary norm and elements of poetic pathos.