Ilyich wasn’t too happy with Gorky’s New Life. He shut it down that July (1918). But he could do nothing about Gorky himself. Gorky was much more loved than Lenin. Ilyich had met him in 1905, when Gorky was a world-famous writer and revolutionary, and Lenin was simply an outlaw. People wanted to touch the young god from Nizhni Novgorod. Tolstoy called him a peasant “with a pugnacious nose, Asiatic cheekbones, and a big body, all bone and muscle.” Gorky had become Chekhov’s protégé. “Like a rocket he flew from nowhere into our quiet intelligentsia life,” said Olga Knipper, Chekhov’s actress wife. The police followed him everywhere. He was kicked out of Nizhni. The tsar’s henchmen would have him arrested, and Tolstoy would get him out of jail. He moved to Petersburg and was thrown into the Peter and Paul Fortress, where he might have rotted forever, but his popularity was too great, even for Peter and Paul. Thousands in Western Europe began to protest, and Gorky was “invited” to vacate the tsar’s little empire. He settled in Capri, where Lenin visited him in 1910. They went fishing together like two barefoot boys. Gorky was attracted to men without scruples who wanted to win at any price—ozorniki, like Ilyich. Gorky set up his own “court of Russian art and letters” on Capri. It almost seemed as if literature itself was in exile with Gorky. He’d become the moral heart of Russia, even while he was in the West. . . .
He sailed back to Petersburg in 1913, founded the magazine Letopis, without which Babel and a host of other writers might never have been published. Gorky’s Petersburg apartment was like a hotel for starving writers. He would often cry in the middle of reading a manuscript. “It is to books that I owe everything that is good in me.” He would carry Russian literature around with him on his back, before, after, and during the Revolution. Trotsky, who never liked him, called Gorky “culture’s psalm-singer.” But Gorky understood the ravages that the Revolution would bring. It was Zinoviev, one of the Revolution’s main “architects,” who boasted: “The bourgeoisie kill separate individuals; but we kill whole classes.” He could have been talking about Stalin, Trotsky . . . or Ilyich. Intellectuals were not the country’s brains “but its excrement,” according to Ilyich. And long before Stalin, he started his own Red Terror. He got rid of the tsar’s secret police and organized the Cheka, sometimes with the same policemen. He pecked whole pieces out of the intelligentsia. But Gorky stood in his way. Gorky put aside his own writing and saved as many artists and intellectuals as he could. His apartment became a hospital and a house of culture. He would hide some grand duke, guard him with a bulldog wrapped in a blanket so that the dog “would not bite proletarian visitors.” He began to accumulate wives, sisters, and sons—adopting every lost soul who came to him.
No one but Gorky could stand up to Lenin. “There is something frightening about the sight of this great man, who pulls the levers of history on our planet as he wishes.” Gorky petitioned him about a young sailor who was going to be shot. Ilyich grumbled. “Alexey Maximovich, for God’s sake—don’t come to me with all these trifles. Don’t you understand—this is one boy. There’s a revolution going on.” But the sailor was saved.
Ilyich kept hinting that Gorky go somewhere on a permanent vacation. The barefoot boy went into exile again. And some critics can’t seem to comprehend his fondness for Stalin. He could have been “dining on diamonds” if he’d “submitted” to Ilyich. Then why did he allow Stalin to seduce him? Even if Stalin’s flattery made him feel like “Mary Pickford,” he was already a star without one of Stalin’s jubilees. But Gorky was comfortable around the Boss. Stalin wasn’t the son of a school official, like Ilyich. Stalin never studied law in Kazan and Petersburg. Gorky was blind to the Boss’s murderous nature. At least until the end of his life. “We are engaged in trifles and now the very stones in our country are singing,” he babbled just before he died. The last note he dictated was “End of novel, end of hero, end of author.”
2.
BABEL NEVER HAD a chance. A zhid from Odessa who flourished for a little while, thanks to Gorky. But Gorky could have “fathered” him forever and still wouldn’t understand his writing: “His laconism is a double-edged quality; it can teach or kill Babel.” It wasn’t Babel’s shorthand that killed him, savage or not. It was the deadening saga of Stalin’s machine. Yet it’s curious. Sixty years after the master’s own demise in a Cheka killing room we have another Benya Krik. He also sits in prison. He was arrested on October 25, 2003. State security men in masks grabbed him off his private jet while it was refueling somewhere in Siberia; they were part of Vladimir Putin’s own Cheka. Putin himself had been a Cheka chief before Boris Yeltsin handpicked him as president. But there was trouble inside the Kremlin’s walls. It had become a divided house, composed of “the family,” officials who favored free enterprise, and the siloviki (strong-men), army generals and Putin’s old lieutenants from the Cheka. The siloviki seemed to win. They were frightened of Benya Krik—otherwise known as Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s richest man. Like Benya, Mikhail had a “Jewish background.” But he didn’t come from Odessa, which has fallen off the map. He was born in Moscow, in 1963. Both his parents were factory workers, and Mikhail was raised in a communal apartment. He joined the Communist Party’s youth league—the Komsomol— and rose within its ranks. The Party helped him go into business, rewarded him with government contracts, financed his own bank. He was part of Boris Yeltsin’s coterie of businessmen; in 1993, he even served alongside the minister of energy. He would become an oil and banking baron, “the bad boy of Russian business,” who locked minority shareholders out of meetings and laundered money for the Russian mafia.
It wasn’t his “rough play” that bothered the Kremlin. It was his sudden interest in politics. Up until recently the Kremlin was his krysha, his roof of protection. But he turned away from the Kremlin. He donated a hundred thousand dollars to one of Laura Bush’s favorite projects, the National Book Festival, had himself photographed with the President and the First Lady. He was Benya Krik . . . and Jay Gatsby—a man who’d come out of his own Platonic image: he challenged Putin, began financing rival candidates and parties, even imagined himself as the next Russian president.
Mikhail doesn’t wear orange pants. But he has Benya’s bravura. And perhaps the Cheka will destroy him as it destroyed the King. I won’t predict his future. He might have become king of the Kremlin by the time you read this book. Or he might still be sitting in Moscow’s Matrosskaya Tishina prison. Whatever his fate, Benya Krik is alive and well. Nothing can replace or harm him, not even masked gunmen on a Siberian airstrip. It’s no wonder there’s never been another story quite like “The King.” Fairy tales are hard to find; Moscow may be the new Wild West, but it’s not the Moldavanka, that fetid hothouse of Babel’s imagination. And perhaps the rats and damp rot of Matrosskaya Tishina are as close to the Moldavanka as Mikhail will ever get. The Chekists should have known that this Benya might thrive in the dark, like some magnificent bulb. And at least in my own imagination, Mikhail Khodorkovsky is a sign that Babel’s own work is alive and well, that it has entered our new millennium with all its plumage intact.
“After every story I age a few years,” Babel would often brag, like one of his unreliable narrators. Perhaps now we can forgive him for the myths he loved to build around himself, lies about his life and his craft. Perhaps it was his own way to navigate the Soviet Union, though he should have realized it was unnavigable. The coast was never clear. He rode across the Revolution on some lyrical white horse, and finally he took a terrible fall. Perhaps he was even closer to Kerensky than he could have imagined. Perhaps Kerensky’s colors burst in front of his own eyes. While Ilyich and Stalin were busy destroying people, Babel might have been thinking about trolley cars that had to move along a bumpy line, or else creativity and wonder would begin to break.
NOTES
INTRODUCTION
“was able to describe”: Isaac Babel, You Must Know Everything, 216.
“It’s a very great mistake”: Edvard Radzinsky, Stalin, 170.
&nbs
p; “and twenty dollars in my purse”: Nathalie Babel, afterword to The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 1049.
MINGLED BIOGRAPHIES AND MANGLED LIVES
“beautiful women in mink coats”: Radzinsky, 170.
“as little ambiguity as”: Lionel Trilling, introduction to The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, 9.
“lyric joy in the midst of violence”: Ibid., 17.
“addressing his fellow-writers”: Ibid., 12.
“Intensity, irony, and”: Ibid., 14.
“the Jewish gangs of Odessa”: Ibid., 21.
“For all my life”: Diana Trilling, The Beginning of the Journey, 8.
“[T]he unexpectedness which he takes”: Lionel Trilling, introduction to The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, 31.
“Lionel taught me to think”: Diana Trilling, 19.
“Babel’s kindness bordered”: A. N. Pirozhkova, At His Side, 13.
“believed that people were born”: Ibid., 97.
“Today a man only talks freely”: Isaac Babel, in Ilya Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 425.
“has told me many times”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 79.
“endowed with great goodness”: Pirozhkova, 1.
“Children have been buying”: Sergei Eisenstein, in Maria Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein, 388.
“After Babel’s arrest”: Pirozhkova, 116.
“sealed Babel’s room”: Ibid., 114.
“but even my dresses”: Ibid., 117.
“I so much wanted”: Ibid., 119.
“If I mentioned that”: Ibid., 141.
“made Babel a dark-green”: Ibid., 139.
“black vinyl sofa”: Ibid., 140.
“in his native land”: Ibid., 171.
CHAPTER ONE: THE HEADLESS MAN
“Breughel-like bulk”: Lionel Trilling, introduction to The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, 21.
“Ever since my schooldays”: Konstantin Paustovsky, Years of Hope, 118.
“and shared in their legend”: Ibid., 121.
“Swarming round him”: Ibid., 120.
“one of the prettiest”: Nathalie Babel, introduction to The Lonely Years, xiii.
“our highly original tongue”: Isaac Babel, The Lonely Years, 366.
“to feed his soul”: Pirozhkova, 106.
“You are a born intelligence man”: Maxim Gorky, in Pirozhkova, 44.
“it was in the peculiar”: Patricia Carden, The Art of Isaac Babel, 4–5.
He could be taciturn: Milton Ehre, Isaac Babel, 18.
“We met in the foyer”: Isaac Babel, The Lonely Years, 277.
“For the man of spirit”: Edmund Wilson, The Wound and the Bow, 14.
“A graceless, puffy-cheeked”: Nathalie Babel, introduction to The Lonely Years, xiv.
“When I start eating cake”: Isaac Babel, in ibid., xv.
“There could be no question”: Paustovsky, 130.
CHAPTER TWO: THE HEADLESS MAN, PART II
“Through the years”: Jorge Luis Borges, in Richard Burgin, Conversations with Jorge Luis Borges, 144.
“I went to see”: Isaac Babel, in James E. Falen, Isaac Babel, 19.
CHAPTER THREE: KIRIL LYUTOV
“The special effect”: Carden, 203.
“basic heartlessness”: Richard William Hallett, Isaac Babel, 101.
“as a real writer”: Frank O’Connor, “The Romanticism of Violence,” in The Lonely Voice, 193.
“been dealt a blow”: Carden, 134.
“I have been criticized”: Ilya Ehrenburg, in Isaac Babel, You Must Know Everything, 235.
“a soldier on reconnaissance”: Paustovsky, 126.
CHAPTER FOUR: ARGAMAK
“Don’t overdo it, Yura”: Lev Nikulin, “Years of Our Life,” 239.
“found himself a character”: Carol J. Avins, introduction to 1920 Diary, xxxii.
“fat, pink cigarettes”: Paustovsky, 123.
“16,000 active sabers”: Avins, p. xxii.
“Instead of a unitary character”: Saul Bellow, “Where Do We Go from Here: The Future of Fiction,” 211.
CHAPTER FIVE: BENYA KRIK
“Freaks was a thing”: Diane Arbus, Diane Arbus, 3.
“Babel’s Cossacks are all”: Viktor Shklovsky, “Isaac Babel,” 13.
“a Jewish Cossack”: Raymond Rosenthal, “The Fate of Isaac Babel,” 29.
“Odessa presents an appearance”: Patricia Hurlihy, Odessa, 309.
“an imaginary town”: Nikulin, 246.
“Moscow plunged into a life”: Radzinsky, Stalin, 170.
“high forehead, huge head”: Shklovsky, 9.
“The city was”: Ibid., 10.
“[had] been beaten”: Ibid., 11.
gray as a siskin: Ibid., 14.
“with a pleasant husband”: Nathalie Babel, afterword to The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 1042.
“He would dissimulate”: Nathalie Babel, introduction to The Lonely Years, xxi.
“[Babel] has asthma”: S. J. Grigorev, in Carden, 18.
“spent all his time”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 321.
“What I am going through”: Isaac Babel, in Hallett, 8.
“great breaking point”: Simon Markish, “The Example of Isaac Babel,” 44.
“Comrade Budenny has pounced”: Maxim Gorky, in Isaac Babel, The Lonely Years, 385.
“has no parallel”: Ibid., 388.
“Red Cavalry is not”: Joseph Stalin, in Carden, 27.
“I want to show”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 107.
“engineers, jockeys”: Ilya Ehrenburg, “The Wise Rabbi,” 69.
“his days were like”: Ibid., 74.
“As long as”: Isaac Babel, in Ehre, 27.
CHAPTER SIX: MAKHNO AND MAUPASSANT
“Being Russian, French”: Nathalie Babel, afterword to The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 1049.
“wild, ferocious”: Hallett, 32.
“I left Russia mostly”: Evgenia Babel, in Nathalie Babel, afterword to The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 1041.
“On his first visit”: Nikulin, 240.
“It would be fascinating”: Isaac Babel, in ibid., 241.
“How nice it would be”: Isaac Babel, in ibid., 242.
“I lead a most simple life”: Isaac Babel, in Carden, 23–24.
“[I]t is clear that settling down”: Nikulin, 256.
“Here [in Paris] a taxi driver”: Isaac Babel to Yuri Annenkov, in Isaac Babel, The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 25.
“I can’t sleep nights”: Isaac Babel, in Nikulin, 241.
“I am poisoned by Russia”: Isaac Babel, in Hallett, 60.
“Russia was tiresome”: Ehre, 141.
“I’m going there to meet”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 2.
“Man lives for the pleasure”: Isaac Babel, in Ehrenburg, “The Wise Rabbi,” 73.
“was a sad person who”: Ehrenburg, “Moscow Commemoration of Babel’s Seventieth Birthday,” 231.
“I’m glad I’m going to Moscow”: Isaac Babel to Annenkov, in Isaac Babel, The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 25.
“My native land”: Isaac Babel, in Ehre, 28.
“But it’s not enough for him”: Ehrenburg, “The Wise Rabbi,” 75.
“For us now the USSR”: André Gide, in Vitaly Shentalinsky, Arrested Voices, 39.
“like horseshoes at the head”: Osip Mandelstam, in Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 13.
“But where will the artist”: Alexander Blok, in Shentalinsky, 284.
CHAPTER SEVEN: FINAL FICTION
“people were opening up”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 277.
“about whose protracted silence”: Georgy Munblit, “Reminiscences of Babel,” 268.
“I’ll breathe more easily”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 58.
“guided by a strategy”: Ehre, 25.
“His life centered on writing”: Nathalie Babel, introduction to The Lonely Years, xvii.
“I am a Russian writer”: Isaac Babel, The Complete Works of Isaac Ba
bel, 27.
“And that’s what I’ll call it”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 111.
“the manuscripts confiscated”: Isaac Babel, in Shentalinsky, 61.
“I’m not afraid of arrest”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 103.
“carrying so many boxes”: Pirozhkova, 92.
“terrifying and playful labyrinth”: Gregory Freidin, “Fat Tuesday in Odessa,” 199.
“an unknown tongue”: Carden, 237.
“Terror,” she tells us, “was planned”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 340.
“M. always said”: Ibid., 363.
“He can’t forget her”: Pirozhkova, 75.
“We were all the same”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 340.
“morbidly curious about”: Ibid., 147.
“Why is it”: Ibid., 203.
“Gorky’s a proud man”: Stalin, in Radzinsky, 261.
“The writers exceed”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, in Shentalinsky, 187.
“[B]ecause I was homeless”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 136.
“Peasants just lay quite still”: Ibid., 185.
“After 1937 people stopped”: Ibid., 74.
“a prison ward”: Ibid., 55.
“was played not by terror”: Ibid., 126.
“the style of our period”: Isaac Babel, The Lonely Years, 398.
“had the courage to say”: Gleb Struve, in Isaac Babel, You Must Know Everything, 219.
“I make my way”: Isaac Babel, The Lonely Years, 157–58.
“since, for old”: Ibid, 181.
“the dawn of his brief”: Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, 322.
“a small man”: Radzinsky, 259.
“Socialist Realism is Rembrandt”: Shentalinsky, 258.
“You rough fellows do not realize”: Gorky, in ibid., 261.
“Baudelairean predilection”: Gorky, in Isaac Babel, The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, 754.
“If I were a poet”: Stalin, in Radzinsky, 301.
Stalin condemns Shostakovich’s opera: Ehrenburg, Memoirs, 326.
“Now they are not”: Isaac Babel, in Pirozhkova, 103.
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