Isaac Babel (1894-1940), The Essential Fictions. Edited and translated from the Russian by Val Vinokur. Northwestern University Press, 2018

This collection contains the following:

Openings: 11 stories (published or dated from 1916)

The Story of My Dovecot (Childhood Cycle): 6 stories

Odessa Stories: 10 stories set in the city of his birth and early years

Red Cavalry: 34 (mostly very short) stories set during his service in the Polish-Soviet war of 1920

Red Cavalry: Additions: 2 stories

Closings: 9 stories

I bought this three years ago when Russia invaded Ukraine, aware that I knew little about Ukrainian history, literature or culture, and thought I ought to show a little, admittedly very indirect, solidarity with the under-attack Ukrainian people by rectifying this situation. Since then I’ve also read several works by another Ukrainian author, Bulgakov; there’s a link to my short posts on five of his works, including his most famous, The Master and Margarita, HERE.

In this Essential collection, Odessa Stories deals mostly with Jewish characters, some of them gangsters, in the Black Sea port city, now usually spelt Odesa, and which had a large Jewish (and Italian) population in the early 20C. It’s perhaps most famous for its Odesa Steps, which feature climactically in Sergei Eisensteins’s 1925 film about the 1905 workers’ uprising that happened in Odesa, The Battleship Potemkin.

Odessa Stories mostly feature the period in its history at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath. Bulgakov also wrote extensively about the vicious civil war between the anti-communist White army and the Soviet Red army that followed the revolution, in which Odesa played a key role, changing hands between the warring armies several times.

Born to a Jewish family himself, Babel would have been familiar with life in the ghetto and the wider city environment. He witnessed the 1917 revolution, the ensuing civil war, and turbulent years of the Soviet regime. After being nurtured and protected by Gorky, Babel became a victim of Stalin’s infamous purges, and was shot by firing squad in 1940.

Red Cavalry, perhaps his most famous work, consists of very short pieces, more like reflective vignettes than traditional plot-driven stories. They’re a strange mix of lyrical, poetic language that counterpoints the brutality and cruelty of war that Babel experienced first-hand: he served in the Red Army during that campaign.

I must admit I struggled to get into this large collection of stories. I don’t know if it was the translation, but despite the colourful, animated material and characters, I found the language and subject matter off-putting and instantly forgettable. I’d really intended to admire this collection, but couldn’t finish it – I gave up halfway through the brutal Red Cavalry section. I can see why they are so widely admired – they are definitely possessed of great power – but they didn’t work for me.