Maxim Gorky was the first to notice Babel’s talent.
Photo: GLOBAL LOOK PRESS.
Isaac Babel is considered a classic of literature. The writer was glorified by “Odessa Stories” about the gang of robbers Benny Krik. It is believed that with this book Babel introduced Odessa humor to the masses. The collection of stories “Cavalry” brought the writer worldwide fame. After reading them, Nobel Prize winner Ernest Hemingway himself admitted: “I am delighted with him. Babel’s things are wonderful and he writes wonderfully. Babel’s style is even more laconic than mine.”
“Go among the people”
The future classic was born in 1894 in the family of the wealthy merchant Mane Itskovich Bobel. Later, for the sake of respectability, he became Emmanuel Isaakovich Babel. He sold flour mills, equipment for oil mills, machinery and agricultural implements.
The father only changed one letter in the surname. But this will later play a cruel joke on his son.
In 1916, a resident of Odessa set out to conquer the capital of the Russian Empire. I immediately entered the fourth year of law school at the Petrograd Psychoneurological Institute (now the V. M. Bekhterev National Medical Research Center for Psychiatry and Neurology). I brought several stories with me. “I began to distribute my writings in editorial offices, but they pursued me everywhere,” wrote the classic writer in “Autobiography.” “All the editors urged me to join a workshop somewhere, but I did not listen to them and at the end of 1916 I ended up working with Gorky.”
Gorky published two stories by the novice author in his magazine “Chronicle”. The censorship regarded them as pornography. In March 1917, Babel was to be put on trial. Saved by the February Revolution. Gorky did not like the following works. “You, sir, really know nothing, but you guess a lot,” the proletarian writer uttered. “Go ahead, join the people.”
Going “to the people” lasted from 1917 to 1923. “During this time I was a soldier on the Romanian front, then served in the Cheka, in the People’s Commissariat for Education, in the food expeditions of 1918, in the Northern Army against Yudenich, in the 1st Cavalry Army, in the Odessa Provincial Committee, was a reporter in St. Petersburg and Tiflis, published in the Soviet printing house in Odessa, etc. and so on… Seven years later, already demobilized, I made a second attempt to publish and received a note from Gorky: “Perhaps we can start.”
Against “babyism”
The writer began publishing stories about the legendary 1st Cavalry Army of Semyon Budyonny, where he was seconded as a war correspondent. He kept a diary, which became the basis of the future collection “Cavalry”.
Literary critics immediately recognized Babel as a brilliant master of words. But there is a paradox here: if in “Odessa Stories” the author openly idealizes the bandits of the early twentieth century, then in “Cavalry”, on the contrary, he “punished” the red cavalrymen, describing the violence and cruelty of the Red Army soldiers with a mixture of horror and admiration.
The famous commander Budyonny unleashed a torrent of insults against the author of “Cavalry”. Photo: Ivan FILIMONOV/Global Look Press
A sound of thunder! Hero of the Civil War, former commander of the 1st Cavalry, Budyonny, exploded in an angry article “Babel’s Babism.” He called the writer “a literary degenerate, an erotomaniac, a sadist, a libertine” who does not understand the essence of the class struggle. Budyonny played on the writer’s surname in the text of the article: “Citizen Babel tells us women’s gossip about the cavalry army, rummages through garbage and women’s underwear, invents fables, throws mud at the best communist commanders, fantasizes and simply lies.”
If the classic Father Bobel had remained, the army commander’s article would not have been so scathing.
Maxim Gorky defended his favourite: “Comrade Budyonny denounced the Babel Cavalry, it seems to me that this was done in vain. Comrade Budyonny himself likes to decorate not only his fighters, but also their horses. Babel decorated his fighters from within and, in my opinion, better and more sincerely than Gogol did about the Cossacks.”
Budyonny did not remain in debt. “An Open Letter to Maxim Gorky” was published. For example, the author “traveled somewhere with a deep bottom, was on the outskirts of the Cavalry and could not see anything in it except women’s breasts and bare legs.”
Babel called Budyonny’s letter to Gorky a godsend, which would fuel interest in the book. “In every civilized country, such criticism deserves a new edition,” he wrote to a friend. “I am waiting with hope and secret voluptuousness.”
Babel’s hopes came true. Chivalry was published in the USSR more than a dozen times in large editions. It was also published abroad in two dozen languages.
But Isaac Emmanuilovich was glad early…
“Our restless”
On June 7, 1932, Stalin wrote to the secretary of the Central Committee, Lazar Kaganovich: “The New World publishes Sholokhov’s new novel, The Unturned Virgin Land.” Interesting thing! Apparently, Sholokhov studied collective farming on the Don. Moreover, he writes about things he knows well. Not like “our” restless Babel, which from time to time writes about things completely unknown to it.”
It turns out that the leader was following Budyonny’s conversation with Gorky. And he was clearly on the side of the army commander. It is not known why he called Babel in a state of anxiety.
On June 23, 1932, Kaganovich wrote to Stalin: “M. Gorky turned to the Central Committee with a request to allow Babel to travel abroad for a short period of time. I conveyed to him that we doubted the advisability of this, but he calls me every day.”
The leader’s response was brief: “It is not worth Babel’s while to spend foreign currency on his trip abroad.”
The next day, Babel writes personally to the secretary of the Central Committee: “Dear Comrade Kaganovich! In a few days, my wife will have to undergo a partial removal of her thyroid gland in Paris. My duty is to be present at her operation and then to take her and the child to Moscow. I feel responsible for two lives. The constant mental anxiety in which I find myself has brought me to a state bordering on despair. I cannot work, I cannot finish the work I have begun. I ask you to help me obtain a foreign passport as soon as possible. Yours, Babel.”
Kaganovich did not refuse. He prepared a draft resolution of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “To allow the writer I. Babel to travel to France for a period of one and a half months.” Stalin imposed a resolution: “Definitely against.”
But the incredible happened: Babel somehow turned around and, against Stalin’s will, left for Paris in September. Instead of a month and a half, I spent a whole year in France. How he managed this, history is silent.
Fatal girl from Odessa
But why did Budyonny call Babel an “erotomaniac author” and a sadist? The answer is given by the editor of New World, Vyacheslav Polonsky. Here is what he wrote in his diary in the summer of 1931: “Babel did not only work on the Horse. He worked in the Cheka. His greed for blood, death, murder, everything terrible, his almost sadistic passion for suffering, limited his material. He was present at executions, watched executions, and collected enormous material on the cruelty of the revolution. Tears and blood are his material. He cannot work with ordinary material. He needs something special, spicy, piquant, and deadly. A few days ago I handed in three manuscripts: all of them are deeply erotic. It is impossible to publish it: it would mean ruining his reputation.”
Babel was not handsome, the writer Viktor Shklovsky said: “Short, broad-chested, dressed very modestly; he went bald early; he always spoke in a low voice. But he had an incredible influence on his friends and acquaintances. They all obeyed him. I do not know of any case of magnetic influence.”
Writer with his wife Antonina Pirozhkova. He was not handsome, but he knew how to charm women. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The beautiful artist Evgenia Gronfain, daughter of a wealthy Kiev merchant, also succumbed to the magnetism of the writer. The first wife is a classic. She gave birth to a daughter, Natalia. In 1925, Evgenia left for Paris. Babel will have a common-law wife – actress Tamara Kashirina. She will give him a son, Emmanuel. Babel, having asked the Central Committee to go to Paris in 1932 to take home his first wife and daughter, returned only a year later. In the capital, the designer of the Moscow metro, Antonina Pirozhkova, 15 years younger, was waiting for him. “I loved everything about him,” she recalled. – His charm was irresistible, it was impossible to resist him. There was a certain elegance in his behavior, gait, and gestures. It was nice to look at him, it was interesting to listen to him, with his words he simply fascinated me, and not only me, but everyone who communicated with him. Women were in love with him and said: “With Babel, to the ends of the earth.”
A fatal one for Babel was a meeting with Evgenia Khayutina-Gladun, a resident of Odessa, wife of a Soviet diplomat. This happened in 1927 in Germany. Then her husband was called to Moscow. Babel, who appeared in Berlin, visited an employee of the embassy she knew. “There I met Gladun,” the writer later told an NKVD investigator. – The party was accompanied by quite a bit of drinking, after which I invited Gladun to take a ride around the city in a taxi. Gladun immediately agreed. In the car I persuaded her to come to my hotel. It was in these furnished rooms that I became close to Gladun, after which I continued my intimate relationship with her until the day of my departure from Berlin.”
Evgenia Khayutina-Gladun with her daughter. Evgenia Solomonovna loved to have adventures and inevitably led to more than one man being shot. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The connection with Babel was resumed when Evgenia returned to Moscow with her husband.
In 1931, the loving Evgenia Solomonovna, leaving her diplomat husband, married Stalin’s favourite Nikolai Yezhov. In 1936 she headed the NKVD, becoming the fourth person in the USSR after Stalin, Molotov and Voroshilov.
“Just think,” Babel admired, “our Odessa girl became the first lady of the kingdom!” Indeed, the first. Stalin’s wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva, shot herself in 1932. The wives of other Soviet leaders did not like to shine. But Evgenia, from her youth, adored restaurants, foxtrot, champagne… Yezhov’s wife organized a social salon. Cozy atmosphere, luxurious table thanks to special NKVD funds, pleasant conversations. Cultural figures, prominent party and Soviet workers came to see Evgenia. The main thing in the salon was… the bedroom, said Ivan Kataev, a member of the board of the Union of Writers of the USSR. He was Yezhova’s lover. Like the writer Mikhail Koltsov and the Komsomol leader Alexander Kosarev.
In 1937, Antonina Pirozhkova gave birth to Lidia, Babel’s daughter. “Can’t they arrest you?” Antonina timidly asked her husband. “During the old man’s (Gorky’s) lifetime, this was impossible,” she replied. “But now it is still difficult.”
Gorky died in 1936. But Babel was waiting for his native Cheka. He himself once served in this office and has not lost contact with it. He was friends with influential security officers and called them “holy people”. Once he was having a drink with the former People’s Commissar of the NKVD Yagoda: “Genrikh Grigorievich, tell me how to behave if I fall into your clutches.” “Deny everything, no matter what accusations we make, say “no”, only “no,” he advised.
To be on the safe side, Babel began writing a novel about security agents.
He also extended straws to the leader. At the First Congress of Soviet Writers, Babel urged his colleagues from the podium: “Look how Stalin forges his speech, how his few words are forged, how full of muscles he is. I am not saying that everyone should write like Stalin, but we should work like Stalin in the word.”
Naive man…
SAD ENDING
He confessed to espionage
In the autumn of 1938, clouds began to gather over the Yezhov family. In November, anticipating an imminent arrest, the “first lady of the Soviet kingdom” Evgenia Solomonovna poisoned herself. Yezhov was replaced as People’s Commissar of the NKVD by Beria. Nikolai Ivanovich was soon arrested. During the investigation, Yezhov did everything possible to “drown” his wife’s lovers. They say that Mikhail Koltsov slept with Evgenia on the instructions of British intelligence. And her second husband, Alexey Gladun, recruited her in London. Babel is also a conspirator.
On May 16, 1939, the “holy people” came to Babel’s soul. At first, the writer denied all accusations. But Yagoda’s advice did not help! Under torture, the writer confessed to “anti-Soviet conspiratorial terrorist activities and espionage.” In the verdict, the writer will write: “Being organizationally associated in anti-Soviet activities with the wife of the enemy of the people, Yezhova-Gladun-Khayutina-Feigenberg, Babel participated in anti-Soviet activities, sharing goals and objectives of this anti-Soviet organization, including terrorist acts against the leaders of the All-Union Communist Party (b) and the Soviet government.”
At the trial, Babel retracted his testimony: “I was not a spy, I do not plead guilty.” But the military collegium of the Supreme Court of the USSR sentenced him to death. The sentence was carried out on January 27, 1940.
The manuscript of the novel about security agents, which was to become Isaac Emmanuilovich’s safe conduct, has not been discovered to this day. Apparently, it was in the archives seized during the arrest. The archive was burned, as was the body of the executed writer.
Babel was rehabilitated in 1954. After death.
SAID!
“A person should know everything. It is not tasty, but it is interesting.”
Various quotes from the books of the master of words.
The lining of the heavy wallet is made of tears.
An old man from Odessa can eat any kind of stew, no matter what it is made of, as long as it contains bay leaves, garlic and pepper.
The sun does not enter through closed eyes…
“Do you believe in God?” asked the prosecutor Naftula. “The one who won two hundred thousand, let him believe in God,” replied the old man.
I mastered a new literary genre: silence.
They wore black frock-coats with silk lapels and new boots that creaked like pigs in a sack.
A person should know everything. It is not tasty, but it is interesting.
Gentlemen, mark my words, children must be made with your own hands…
Suffice it to say: he is sick, angry, drunk with melancholy, he wants the sun of Italy and bananas.
