The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (compilation 2002; mostly written early 1920s)

(1,051 pages) (though I skipped the screenplays)

I keep seeing favorable references to Babel, but never read him before this.  His biography is compelling - war correspondent (reminded me of Vasily Grossman) so lots of access - then he becomes disillusioned and out of favor.  Rare, at least for me, reporting on the Red v. White (and other splinter groups) immediately following WWI.  Early 1920s Russia hadn't yet implemented systematic censorship so his war reporting was more open, I think, than what Grossman could have done (Grossman had to do it via his smuggled-out book).

Babel eventually executed by Soviet regime.

I'll just mention a few of the categories in this quite-wonderful collection.

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1920 Diary - perhaps my favorite war writing (and I've read lots of this)?  Can't-miss content, and not even prep'd for publication (though this was basis for much of the Red Cavalry tales)

dense.  highly effective . . . at least at the level of battles, skirmishes, movement between towns (cart transports. horses).  towns taken and lost.  confusion, exhaustion, merely finding food or forage.  billets.

constant movement, constant commandeering of horses, provisions, shelter - locals get expert at hiding things

airplanes new - being used by the Poles - terrifying though not all that effective

just being tired, and depressed

interspersed with descriptions of age-old interactions - Poles and Jews, Cossacks, the borderlands, Galicia, shtetls, centuries of getting along and then sudden butchery.  like forever.

Babel as "more like me" - bookish, not cut out for soldiering - but somehow finds himself right smack in the middle of everything - reminds of Vasily Grossman (Red Star writer)

little context is provided (as to what was going on in the larger political/military sphere, who was backing Poles - etc) - I think this heightens the immediacy of the war reporting, limits the distractions

running throughout - author as Jew - don't know if he tried to hide it, but he couldn't in any event.  he feels connectedness to Jewish communities that he encounters.   most in dire circumstances

the excitement around communism fading for Babel . . . he eventually characterizes as "fairy tales" the grand stories he tells locals as part of his job.  as in all these settings, others are true believers and/or opportunists; discussing the International, worldwide uprisings, free everything (modern US politics might buy it, however)

***

Odessa stories - mostly about Jewish gangsters

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Red Cavalry stories - genuinely excellent - but not quite as compelling to me as the raw notes in the 1920 Diary (though I read Red Cavalry first).  One aspect here:  Babel made the mistake of being too honest, naming commanders who were ineffective - several became leading figures in Soviet army, and they didn't forget.

**

Stories from Leningrad 1918 - just a few, great, raw

**

Stories from [Georgia?] - propaganda feel, I didn't like these very much.