Konarmiya [English title: Red Cavalry
London: Flegon Press. Facsimile reprint of the 1928 third printing. Trade paperback. 170, [6] pages. Cover has some wear and soiling. Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel (13 July [O.S. 1 July] 1894 – 27 January 1940) was a Russian-language journalist, playwright, literary translator, historian and Bolshevik revolutionary. 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, Babel fell victim to Joseph Stalin's Great Purge as a result of his long-term affair with the wife of NKVD chief Nikolai Yezhov. Babel was arrested by the NKVD at Peredelkino on the night of 15 May 1939. After confessing under interrogation to being a Trotskyist terrorist and foreign spy, he was shot on 27 January 1940. There is very little information about Babel's whereabouts during and after the October Revolution. According to one of his stories, "The Road" , he served on the Romanian front until early December 1917. He resurfaced in Petrograd in March 1918 as a reporter for Gorky's Menshevik newspaper, Novaya zhizn ("New Life"). Babel continued publishing there until Novaya zhizn was forcibly closed on Lenin's orders in July 1918. In 1920, Babel was assigned to Komandarm Semyon Budyonny's 1st Cavalry Army, witnessing a military campaign of the Polish-Soviet War of 1920. Virtually all of the newly independent neighbors began fighting over borders. He documented the horrors of the war he witnessed in the 1920 Diary, which he later used to write Red Cavalry (Konarmiya), a collection of short stories such as "Crossing the River Zbrucz" and "My First Goose". The horrific violence of Red Cavalry seemed to harshly contrast the gentle nature of Babel himself. Condition: Good.
Keywords: Russian Civil War, Journalist, Semyon Budyonny, 1st Cavalry Army, First Cavalry Army, Polish-Soviet War, Zbrucz
[Book #75741]
Price: $100.00