page_title: Isaac Babel
section_title: Early years
hierarchical_section_title: Isaac Babel / Early years
caption_attribution_description: Isaac Babel in 1908
context_page_description: Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel was a Russian writer, journalist, playwright, and literary translator. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry, Story of My Dovecote and The Odessa Tales—stories from the life of Jewish gangsters from Odessa led by Benya Krik. He has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry". Babel was arrested by the NKVD on 15 May 1939 on fabricated charges of terrorism and espionage, and executed on 27 January 1940.
context_section_description: Isaac Babel was born in the Moldavanka section of Odessa to Manus and Feyga Babel. Soon after his birth, the Babel family moved to the port city of Mykolaiv. They later returned to live in a more fashionable part of Odessa in 1906. Babel used Moldavanka as the setting for The Odessa Tales and the play Sunset.
  Although Babel's short stories present his family as "destitute and muddle-headed", they were relatively well-off. According to his autobiographical statements, Babel's father, Manus, was an impoverished shopkeeper. Babel's daughter, Nathalie Babel Brown, stated that her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "present an appropriate past for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party." In fact, Babel's father was a dealer in farm implements and owned a large warehouse.
  In his teens, Babel hoped to get into the preparatory class of the Nicolas I Odessa Commercial School. However, he first had to overcome the Jewish quota. Despite the fact that Babel received passing grades, his place was given to another boy, whose parents had bribed school officials. As a result, he was schooled at home by private tutors.
  
  In addition to regular school subjects, Babel studied the Talmud and music. According to Cynthia Ozick, 
  "Though he was at home in Yiddish and Hebrew, and was familiar with the traditional texts and their demanding commentaries, he added to these a lifelong fascination with Maupassant and Flaubert. His first stories were composed in fluent literary French. The breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes. He befriended whores, cabdrivers, jockeys; he knew what it was like to be penniless, to live on the edge and off the beaten track."
  His attempt to enroll at Odessa University was blocked for ethnic reasons. Babel then entered the Kiev Institute of Finance and Business. There he met Yevgenia Borisovna Gronfein, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, whom he eventually married.
caption: Isaac Babel in 1908.
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