Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was a Ukrainian writer, playwright, and journalist, a master of short prose and novellas, and one of the most renowned authors of the Soviet era. His works depict life in Odesa, revolutionary events, and the realities of war, becoming landmarks of psychological and satirical literature.
Early YearsIsaac Babel was born on 12 July 1894 in Odesa’s Moldavanka district, into the family of a small merchant. According to local historian Oleksandr Rozenboim, he was born in the house of his maternal grandmother, Khaya-Leah Shvekhvel, who owned the shop “Oats and Hay Trade” at 21 Dalnytska Street. A year later, the family moved to Mykolaiv for his father’s work, and in 1905 returned to Odesa, where they lived in the apartment of his mother’s sister at 12 Tiraspolska Street, Apt. 3. In 1907 his father purchased an apartment at 17 Rishelievska Street; Isaac lived there until the Revolution and last visited it in 1924 for his father’s funeral.
Young Babel attempted to enroll at the Odesa Commercial School named after Nicholas I. Initially rejected due to the discriminatory “percentage quota” for Jews, he entered after a year of home study, mastering two grades’ material and additionally studying the Talmud and violin under the legendary P. S. Stolyarsky. Later, Babel mastered French so well that he wrote his first stories in French (none of which survived). He then studied at the Kyiv Institute of Finance and Entrepreneurship.
Creative PathIn 1913, Babel published his first story, “Old Shloyme,” in the journal Ogni (Lights). In 1916, he moved to Petrograd, where he met Maksim Gorky, who published his works in the journal Letopis (Chronicle). Babel wrote under the pseudonym Bab-El. In 1918, Babel briefly worked as a translator for the Petrograd Cheka. The experience he gained there formed the basis of his anti-Bolshevik cycle of articles, Diary (1918), which described his work in the Cheka and the People’s Commissariat for Education.
In 1920, on the recommendation of S. Ingulov, he became a correspondent for the First Cavalry Army under the pseudonym K. Lyutov. After returning to Odesa, Babel began publishing short stories that would later form the collections Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories. His books were released in Moscow, and his works were translated into all major European languages.
In the 1930s, Babel became the first Soviet prose writer to produce a tragic story about collectivization — “The Little Mill” (Kolyvushka), depicting the famine in Ukraine and the impoverishment of the countryside. At the same time, he worked on the plays “Sunset” and “Maria”, as well as a collection of stories about the Cheka, which was confiscated during his arrest. Of all the stories from this period, only “Froim Grach” survived — a moral indictment of the new regime.
Final Years and LegacyIn May 1939, Babel was arrested on charges of anti-Soviet propaganda and an alleged conspiracy to assassinate Stalin. After brutal torture, he retracted all “testimony,” but this did not save him. On 27 January 1940, Isaac Emmanuilovych Babel was executed, and his manuscripts were destroyed.

His works returned to readers during the Khrushchev Thaw, when Selected Works with a foreword by Ilya Ehrenburg was published in Moscow; later, a four-volume edition refuted the myth of Babel’s “small literary legacy.”
Memory and CommemorationIn Odesa, Babel’s name is borne by a street in Moldavanka, and a memorial plaque adorns 17 Rishelievska Street. At the initiative of the World Club of Odesans, an international competition for a monument to the writer was held and won by sculptor Heorhiy Frangulyan (architects M. Reva and O. Lutsenko). The monument was unveiled on 4 September 2011. In 2014, a star honoring Isaac Babel was added to Odesa’s Walk of Fame.