Russian short story writer and playwright, famous for his stories
of the Jews in Odessa and his novel Red Cavalry (1926).
In 1923 Babel started to publish a cycle of novels called Red
Cavalry. Like Maupassant, Babel often suprises the reader with
twists in the plot. In Red Cavalry basically a pacifist narrator,
Liutov, who is a Jewish officer, is assigned to a regiment of
traditionally anti-Semitic Cossacs. Their victims are mostly Jews,
and out of the horror of battles, torture and murder Babel creates
a rapidly cutting polyphonic tale of revolutionary change.
The stories appeared in Mayakovsky's LEF and other
magazines, gainig Babel national fame, but they were also attacked
by Budenny, who claimed they isnulted his troops.
From 1923 Babel lived in Moskow. His wife went in
1925 to Paris for a 'temporary' separation. Babel visited his
wife in Paris and travelled on journalistic assignments in Ukraine
and the Caucasus. He served also as a secretary of a village soviet
in Molodenovo.
In the beginning of the 1930s Babel's literary reputation
was high in Soviet Union and abroad, but from mid-1930s he lived
in silence under increasing Stalinist persecution. He married
Antonia Pirizhkova, and they had one daughter. He worked on film
scripts, including Eisenstein's banned Bezhin Meadow and on a
new book.
In May 1939 Babel was arrested. Under interrogation
and probable torture at Lubyanka Babel confessed a long association
with Trotskyites and engaging in anti-soviet activity. His trial
was held in Buturka Prison and on January 27, 1940, he was shot
for espionage.
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