The life of the Russian and Soviet writer Isaac Babel was very rich. He managed to stay and a war correspondent, and a master of the pen, and even to establish himself as a playwright and screenwriter. Unfortunately, the biography of this talented person is not at all optimistic – later, like many others in those years, he was repressed by the Soviet authorities.
Biography of Babel is replete with numerous gaps, and some of its facts are questioned by historians and literary critics. In elementary school, in addition to general subjects, the future writer studied the Hebrew language and religious literature. Isaac Babel was fluent in four languages - Russian, Ukrainian, Yiddish and French. His first works were written in French. Unfortunately, they have not survived to this day.
In those years, Jews were forbidden to settle in the capital, St. Petersburg, because of the law on the “land line”. However, Babel nevertheless moved there, since the police issued him a document authorizing his residence there for the period of his studies. The first fame came to Babel after Maxim Gorky helped publish several of his short stories. For the stories “Mom, Rimma and Alla” and “Eliya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievre” the writer intended to put on trial. He was accused of pornography, an attempt on the existing state system and blasphemy. He was saved by the beginning of the 1917 revolution. At the beginning of the Civil War, Babel served in the army for several months, after which he deserted. He later returned to the army again, becoming a war correspondent.
In the late 1930s, after tightening censorship, his works practically ceased to be printed, and he actively engaged in translating works of art from Yiddish into Russian. In 1939, Babel was arrested on charges of espionage and conspiracy. When he was arrested, many manuscripts were seized from him, which as a result were lost forever. After his arrest, the writer under torture was forced to confess to the charges against him, after which he was shot. For 14 years, from 1939 to 1955, all references to Babel were cleared out of Soviet literature, as well as works written by him.
In total, he wrote about 80 stories, five screenplays for movies and two plays throughout his life. Officially, he was rehabilitated only in 1954. Konstantin Paustovsky, who at one time was very friendly with Babel, had a hand in this. Odessa climbers, who in 1968 conquered the impregnable 6007-meter peak in the Pamir mountains, called it the Babel peak. After a couple of years, this name was officially approved. Also the name of Babel is an asteroid discovered in 1987. His works have been translated into several dozens of the most common languages.
