Introduction

A Note on the Translations and Annotations

A Note on the Organization of the Collection

Acknowledgements

Isaac Babel’s Selected Writings

1. Unacknowledged Beginning Old Shloyme
2. Conquering Petersburg

DEBUT IN FICTION

1. Elya Isaakovich and Margarita Prokofievna
2. Mama, Rimma, and Alla
3. The Bathroom Window

MAN ABOUT TOWN

1. The Public Library
2. Nine
3. Odessa
4. Doudu

JEWISH FOLKLORE

1. Shabos-Nakhamu

A CULTURAL AND SOCIAL CRITIC OF THE REVOLUTION

1. Mosaic
2. An Incident on the Nevsky Prospekt
3. At the Station: A Sketch from Life

PETERSBURG TALES

1. An Evening with the Empress
2. Chink
3. The Sin of Jesus
4. Line and Color
5. Guy de Maupassant
6. The Road
7. The Ivan and Maria
8. Maria: A Play in Eight Scenes

The Polish Campaign: Civil War or World Revolution

RED CAVALRY

1. Crossing the River Zbrucz
2. The Church in Novograd
3. A Letter
4. The Reserve Cavalry Commander
5. Pan Apolek
6. Italian Sun
7. Gedali
8. My First Goose
9. The Rabbi
10. The Road to Brody
11. The Tachanka Theory
12. Dolgushov’s Death
13. The Commander of the Second Brigade
14. Sashka Christ
15. The Life of Matvey Rodionovich Pavlichenko
16. The Cemetery in Kozin
17. Prishchepa
18. The Story of a Horse
19. Konkin
20. Berestechko
21. Salt
22. Evening
23. Afonka Bida
24. At Saint Valentine’s
25. Squadron Commander Trunov
26. Ivan and Ivan
27. The Continuation of the Story of a Horse
28. The Widow
29. Zamosc
30. Treason
31. Czesniki
32. After the Battle
33. The Song
34. The Rabbi’s Son

RED CAVALRY: ALTERNATE ENDINGS

1. Argamak
2. The Kiss

1920 DIARY

REPORTING FOR THE RED CAVALRYMAN

1. We Need More Men Like Trunov
2. The Knights of Civilization
3. Murderers Who Have Yet to Be Clubbed to Death
4. Her Day

The Caucasus

1. At the Workers’ Retreat
2. Bagrat-Ogly and the Eyes of His Bull
3. Information

The Odessa Stories

1. The King
2. How Things Were Done in Odessa
3. Lyubka the Cossack
4. Sunset: A Play in Eight Scenes
5. Karl-Yankel
6. The End of the Almshouse
7. Froim Grach

Collectivization and the Five-Year Plan

1. Gapa Guzhva
2. Kolyvushka
3. Petroleum

Paris

1. Dante Street
2. The Trial

Autobiographical Fiction: Childhood

1. At Grandmother’s
2. The Story of My Dovecote
3. First Love
4. The Awakening
5. In the Basement
6. Di Grasso

Selected Letters of Isaac Babel to His Sister and Mother, 1926-1939

Isaac Babel Through the Eyes of His Contemporaries

1. Nathalie Babel • [The Family]
2. M. N. Berkov • We Knew Each Other since Childhood
3. Pyotr Pilsky • [The Young Babel]
4. Elena Pilsky • [Babel in Odessa, 1919–1920]
5. Konstantin Paustovsky • Life’s Novel. The Time of Great Expectations
6. Yuri Annenkov • Isaac Babel
7. Dmitry Furmanov • Notes from the Diary 1925–1926
8. Semyon Gekht • By the Walls of the Passion Monastery on a Summer Day in 1924
9. Kornei Chukovsky • Diary (1901–1969)
10. Tamara Ivanova (Kashirina) • A Chapter from My Life
11. 1. (Memoirs, Letters of I. Babel)
12. Vyacheslav Polonsky • Diary, 1931–1932
13. Stalin-Kaganovich Correspondence
14. Gorky’s Letter to Babel about Maria
15. Boris Souvarine • My Last Conversations with Babel
16. Ilya Ehrenburg • A Book for Adults
17. 1. • People, Years, Life
18. Clara Malraux • The Sound of Our Steps: Suddenly Summer Comes
19. Valentina Khodasevich • Babel as I Saw Him
20. 1. • Meetings at A. M. Gorky’s Country House Before and After His Death
21. NKVD Reports on Babel, 1934–1936
22. Erwin Sinko • A Novel about a Novel. Moscow Diary
23. Nadezhda Mandelstam • Hope against Hope
24. Tatyana Stakh • [The Search]
25. Antonina Pirozhkova • At His Side: The Last Years of Isaac Babel

Criticism

1. Viktor Shklovsky • Isaac Babel: A Critical Romance
2. Semyon Budyonny • The Babism of Babel from Red Virgin Soil
3. Lionel Trilling • The Forbidden Dialectic
4. Efraim Sicher • Midrash and History: A Key to the Babelesque Imagination
5. Gregory Freidin • The Other Babel

Isaac Babel: A Chronology

Selected Bibliography