Benya Krik, the Gangster and Other Stories

By Isaac Babel

1948

First Published

4.45

Average Rating

128

Number of Pages

3H54M

Audio Length

Isaac Babel was born in 1894 in that part of Odessa called Moldavanka. A protege and friend of Maxim Gorky, Babel came to prominence in the early 1920's with the publication of Red Cavalry, but as Stalin's repressive regime made the position of the creative writer increasingly difficult during the next decade, Babel published less and less. In 1939, he was arrested, and his papers, which were seized by the police, vanished with him. The charge against him is not known. A certificate delivered to the family shortly after Stalin died gives March 17, 1941, as the data of Babel's death, but mentions neither its cause nor where it had occurred. He was "rehabilitated" in 1954. His complete works were re-issued in Moscow in 1957.

Avg Rating

4.45

Number of Ratings

5 STARS

59%

4 STARS

28%

3 STARS

2 STARS

1 STARS

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Author

Isaac Babel

Author · 15 books

Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel (Russian: Исаак Эммануилович Бабель; 1894 - 1940) was a Russian language journalist, playwright, literary translator, and short story writer. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of my Dovecote and Tales of Odessa, all of which are considered masterpieces of Russian literature. Babel has also been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry." Loyal to, but not uncritical of, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Isaak Babel fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge due to his longterm affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD at Peredelkino on the night of May 15, 1939. After "confessing", under torture, to being a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy, Babel was shot on January 27, 1940. The arrest and execution of Isaak Babel has been labeled a catastrophe for the world of literature.