The Complete Works of Isaac Babel Reprint Edition by Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, Peter Constantine
Page 47
^ The former commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
6
Henryk Sienkiewicz, 1846-1916, Polish novelist, author of Quo Vadis?.
^ French: “our little hero is already seven weeks old.”
7
Gerhart Hauptmann, 1862-1946, German dramatist. His play Elga was first performed in 1905.
t Aleksander Nikolayevich Vinokurov was the military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division. He replaced Bakhturov.
D. D. Korotchayev had been the provisional commander of the Fourth Cavalry Division from May 1 to June 20,1920.
^ The new commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
8
Boris Mokeyevich Dumenko had been the legendary commander of the Fourth Cavalry Divison in 1918, and fought with Stalin, Budyonny, and Voroshilov at the Battle of Tsaritsyn.
The political commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
^ Sergey Utochkin, a celebrated Russian aviation pioneer from Odessa.
Vasily Ivanovich Kniga, commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Ukrainian: “language.”
^ The military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
9
Kolesov, commander of the Third Brigade.
^ The chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Revvoensoviet, founded in 1918, were councils in which military commanders and political representatives of the Bolshevik government conferred on military tactics.
Lepiris orderly.
10
Vasily Ivanovich Kniga, commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
^ The chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Zapfront (Zapadnii Front), February 1919 to January 1921, was the central Red Army command of western and northwestern strategic points in Soviet Russia.
^ The chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
Manuilov was the adjutant to Sheko, the divisional chief of staff, and Boguslavsky was staff secretary.
^ Mikhail Artemevich Muravyov, a legendary figure who in 1918, during his tenure as commander of the Western Front, instigated the counterrevolutionary Muravyov Revolt for which he was executed.
Now demoted to the rank of squadron commander.
^ German: “a vehement nationalist.”
11
Manuilov was the divisional chief of staff s adjutant, and Sheko, his boss, was the divisional chief of staff.
^ German: “Polish ones, Jews.”
12
A reference to Maxim Gorky’s story, “Twenty-six Men and One Woman.”
13
Pavel Vasilevich Bakhturov, the former military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division, had become the military commissar of the Eleventh Division on August 8.
A Cossack captain fighting on the Polish side.
14
The Polish Parliament.
15
See the stories “And Then There Were Nine” and “And Then There Were Ten,” in which the Cossacks capture Polish prisoners at the Zavadi Station. Babel and Lepin arrive too late to stop the Cossacks from murdering one of the prisoners.
16
Kniga was the commander of the First Brigade of the Sixth Cavalry Division, and Levda was commander of the Third Brigade of the Fourteenth Cavalry Division.
17
The chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
^ Commander of the Second Squadron of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
18
The infantry, the main force in the Russian-Polish campaign.
^ The military commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
The adjutant of the chief of staff of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
A train for the ideological education of the troops, equipped with a printing press and radio station.
^ V. Zdanevich, the editor-in-chief of the Red Cavalry newspaper Krasny Kavalerist, for which Babel wrote articles. See “Dispatch Office, Shape Up!”
19
The political commissar of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
^ Nikolai Nikolayevich Kuzmin was the provisional commander of the Twelfth Army from August to November 1920.
VII
Sketches for the Red Cavalry Stories
The notebooks that Isaac Babel kept while he worked as a war correspondent in the Russian-Polish Campaign of 1920 are the most significant documentation of his writing process. They are terse; quick jottings of incidents and impressions that he wished to use and develop, first in his diary and later in the Red Cavalry stories. Like his diary, his drafts and sketches are reminders of how he wished to present incidents: “Very simple, A factual account, no superfluous descriptions. . . . Pay no attention to continuity in the story.” Babel was very interested in keeping an accurate account of specific details, such as an individual5 military rank or the dates and tactical implications of incidents—so much so, that he made the dangerous choice of threading real figures and incidents into his stories, not always showing them in a favorable light. Commander Budyonny was to become Marshal of the Soviet Union, Voroshilov was Stalins right-hand man, and Timoshenko became a Marshal of the Soviet Union and Commissar of Defense.
As becomes clear from these jottings, Babel's ultimate aim in the stories he intended to write about the Polish Campaign was literary effect. As he experienced these events) he was already arranging them as they were to appear, first in his diary, and later in finished prose: "The sequence: Jews. Airplane. Grave. Timoshenko. The letter Trunov’s burial, the salute
The battle near Br[ody]
Pil[sudski’s] proclamations] 2.
Killed, butchered men, sun, wheat, military booklets, Bible pages. Pilsudski’s proclamation?
The battle near Br[ody]
No discussions.—Painstaking choice of words.—Konkin— proverbs: If the Lord does not decree, the bladder will not burst.—His beard is that of Abraham, his deeds are those of an evil man—we’re covered in vice like yard dogs with lice.—Gnats will chew at you till their dying breath.—To save his own goods and chattels a man will gladly set fire to another mans hide.
The battle near Br[ody]
1. Decamp from Bielavtsy. The battle by Brody.—I bandage men.— Description of the battle.—Korotchayev.1 The death of a wounded man in my arms. Radzivillov. Ivan shoots a horse, the horseman runs away.—On the bridge.—It’s a pity about the buttermilk.
2. Departure from Brody. An untouched steam contraption. Farm. I go to answer the call of nature ... A corpse. A sparkling day. The place is littered with corpses, completely unnoticeable in the rye. Pilsudski’s proclamations. Battle, butchery in silence.—The division commander.—I move away. Why? I don’t have the strength to bear this.
3. Going around in circles. First I went to ... [written over: Konkin]. Konyushkovo.—The nurse.
4. Radzivillov.
The battle near Br[ody]
1. On the Radzivillov high road. Battle. In Radzivillov. Night. The movement of the horses is the main thing.
2. Night in Brody. The synagogue is next door.
3. (Briefly). Departure from Brody. A corpse. A field littered with corpses. Pilsudski’s proclamations. Battle. Kolesnikov and Grishin. I go away.—The wounded platoon commander. A special insert.
4. Konkin. We re going around in circles.—Anti-Semites.
5. The nurse. Night. Desperation. Dawn.
The length of the episodes—half a page each.
Battle.
1. Wounded men in the tachanka. The heroism of the Cossack. I will shoot him. The death of the wounded man.
2. Night, horses are moving.
3. Brody. Next door.
4. Departure from Brody. Corpses. Pilsudski’s proclamations. The battle begins. Kolesnikov and Grishin. The beginning of wandering in circles.
5. Lyovka.
6. Konkin.
7. The nurse.
The battle near Brody II
On Ivans tachanka. Wounded men. Lyovka? Brody or Radzivillov.
Buttermilk manque.
The battle by Klyokotovo. Budyonny with his staff. Got cut off from my unit. Roaming about with the Fourth Division.—The nurse.
The end of the battle. A new division commander2 with his retinue. K.K.t in Radzivillov.
Lyovka.
Short chapters?
1. On Ivans tachanka. Death.—Describe the wounded.—Budyonny. Kolesnikov. Grishin.—Roaming about in circles. [. . .]
Immediately a description of the battle—dust, sun, details, a picture of a Budyonny battle.—Specifics—the killing of the officer, and so on.—After that we are on our tachanka, dead men.—Brody or Radzivillov.
II. The field. Waiting to move to our night camp. The nurse.—The horses are pulling the men.
1. Decamp from Belavtsy. The battle near Brody. On Ivans tachanka.
2. Radzivillov.
3. Entry into Brody. The field by Klyokotovo. A farm. A field sown with corpses. Pilsudski’s declarations.—A meeting with the division commander.
4. The battle by Klyokotovo.—Konkin.—The death of the Polish general.
5. Roaming around in circles with the Fourth Division. Night in the field.—The Jewish nurse.
6. In Radzivillov. K.K. [Zholnarkevich]. Sheko.
August 3. The battle near B[rody]. The battle near Brody. My roaming around.
1. The Jewish nurse. What does this mean? I sleep in the field tying the stirrup to my foot. I want to kill my vehicular driver!—The main thing: about the nurse.
2. In Radzivillov.—The visit of K.K. and Timoshenko,3 The battle ended with a change in the command staff.
3. Rest. New men. Night in the field. The horses, I tie myself to the stirrup.—Night, corn on the cob, nurse. Dawn. Without a plot.
Dialogues. The battle near Brody
Rest stops. Hay. Threshing sheds. Horses.
Topics?
The cunning orderly.—Arrival at the night camp. Feeding the horses. We drag away the peasants’ hay.
Night.—We rested for two hours. On our horses. The battle near Brody.—Our bridle has been stolen.
Chapter about Brody—in separate fragments—I’ve been cut off from my division, what that means.
Vasili Rybochkin.
Style: “In Belyov.”—Short chapters saturated with content.
Konkin. I find the brigade waiting in suspense. Introduction at the priests place. What do you want, Moseika? News of heroic Vasili Rybochkin. The army commanders order. The other Rybochkin.—Plays the Cossack—Then, returning from batde: a gold watch, trunks, a horse.—When I get to Nizhny, ha, will I show them... The sister of mercy on the horse. A bitch. The commissar has made a nice profit.—His picture as a clown.—Greetings from Nizhny.—The internationally renowned miracle clown and overseas circus rider.—The procession moves off.
The battle near Lvov
Day by day. Briefly. Dramatic.—Include: the Polish air force. Zadvurdze.
The Polish air force. The battle near Lvov.
The Red Cavalry is retreating. What from? From twenty airplanes.
The secret is out in the open, the cure has been found. Mosher* was right. The airplanes are having a strong demoralizing effect. The wounding of Korotchayev.^—Major Fauntleroys letter to his headquarters in New York.—First encounter with Wes [tern] European technology.—The planes take off in the mornings.
The battle near Lvov.—Describe the battle with the airplanes.— Then development.—The battle.—The air squadron sends us packing, follows us, we squirm, relocate from one place to another. The battle near Lvov.—Describe the day.—Development after the story.—The two phases of war.—Our victories, the fruitlessness of our efforts, but the failure is not obvious.
Brody
I have never seen a sadder town.—The origins of Jewry, an impres-
* Frank Mosher, the assumed name of Captain Merian Caldwell Cooper, the shot-down American pilot that Babel interrogated in Belyov.
t A brigade commander of the Sixth Cavalry Division.
sion that will last my whole life. The Brodsky synagogue in Odessa, aristocracy.—Friday evening. The town—a quick walk around the center, it is destroyed. The outskirts, a Jewish town.—A description of the synagogues: the main thing.
1. At the Galicians. Polite death. 2. Synagogues. 3. Night, in the room next door. Talmudists.—Hasidism with blind eye sockets. A vision of ancient times: for the Rabbi of Belz and for the Rabbi of Husyatin. Chandeliers, old men, children. Talmudists.—I have lived through many nights shivering in corridors, but never have I lived through such a damp, boring, dirty night.—She is a nurse, he is from the quartermasters office.—Through the crack. The womans foul language.—The history of the synagogue.—Find out about the history of Brody.—They are hiding a shriveled-up little old man—The Rabbi of Belz. [...]. Without comparison or historical counterpart.—Simply a story.
Sokal 1.
In the square in front of the synagogue. The quarreling of the Jews. The Cossacks digging a grave. Trunovs body. Timoshenko. An airplane?—An airplane chased the Jews away, then I went up to Tim[oshenko]. A phrase from Melnikovs4 letter—and I understand the suffering felt within this army.
The sequence: Jews. Airplane. Grave. Timoshenko. The letter. Trunov s burial, the salute.
The Orthodox Jews, the Rabbi of Belz. IVe lost you, Sasha.— Religious carnage, you’d think you were in the eighteenth century, Ilya-Gaon, Baal Shem, if the Cossacks didnt dig the grave (description). The Uniate cleric, his leg like an arc.—The Uniate cleric, what ruin, what ruin, say I there are more important things to think about, an airplane is coming, a spot in the distance, the Cossacks, and you wont even have to go out. Do you all remember Melnikov, his white stallion? His petition to the army. He sends you his greetings and his love.
Tim[oshenko] rests his military notebook on the coffin cover to write in it.
Sokal 2.
Go to hell with your “what ruin,” we have more important things to deal with here.—Trunov s body with his neatly placed legs and his carefully polished boots.—His head on the saddle, the stirrups around his chest.
—I have lost you, Pava—
Very simple, a factual account, no superfluous descriptions.—Stand to attention. We are burying Pavel Trunov. Military commissar, give your speech. And the military commissar gave a speech about Soviet power, about the constitution of the Union of Soviet Republics, and about the blockade.
The past.
I remember, said Tim[oshenko], right now is when we could use him.—We are burying Pavel Trunov, the international hero.—The military commissar, honor the memory of this hero in the presence of the fighters.
Trunovs death
I too would believe in the resurrection of Elijah if it weren’t for that airplane that came floating toward us, etc. It dropped bombs with soft thuds. Art[illery] harnesses.
The airplane, the Cossack from inside the grave: I inform you, Comr. Division Commander, that it is highly possible jhat we will all end up here.—Right you are.—and he went to get the dead man ready. His saddle, stirrups, the band and the delegations from the regiments. We are burying Trunov, the international hero, the military commissar gives a speech that expresses this.
Com[rades], the Communist Party is an iron column, pouring out its blood in the front line. And when blood flows from iron, that is no laughing matter, Comrades, but victory or death. A subject: the military commissars speech.
Gowinski
A Polish deserter. Where in the world is there an army like ours?
They took him in and sent him right over to me as my coachman. He is shaken, then suddenly whips the horses and sings at the top of his voice.
Rev. chapter.—Af[onka] Bida. They caught him, wanted to kill him—the main thing: why didn’t they kill him?—Then they forgot about him, then they put him on the rations list. A subject: how Gowinski was placed on the rations list.
The fire in Lashkov
Galician culture.—The cler[gyman] Szeptycki, description of the ic
ons, chasubles, the womenfolk, how they bury, the church.—Apanasenko at the fire, he looks like Utochkin.*—The Cossacks are ransacking.—All night long my room is brightly lit.—My landlord in Lashkov.—Kuban Cossacks beneath my window.—Also there—the band—the nurse. A proposal? The Galicians are putting out the fire with detestable slackness, they cannot.— Burned horses, singed cows.—The Galicians’ apathy.—Apanasenko.
Briefly.—Immediately the fire, Ap[anasenko], the Galicians, the Cossacks.—The pile outside the church, the conversation with the clergyman, Count Szeptycki.—The Metropolitan of Galicia.
Page 1. A miniature.
The books.
Style, scope.—The cemetery in Kozin . . .
The estate of Kulaczkowski, horses in the drawing room—a listing of the books.
A poem in prose.
Books—I grabbed as many as I could, they keep calling me—I cannot tear myself away.—We gallop off—I keep throwing books away—a piece of my soul—I’ve thrown them all away.—The core—a listing of the books.—Books and battle—Heloise and Abelard. Napoleon.—Anatole France.
Leshniov. July 29, 1920
The vicissitudes of a cavalry campaign.—Rain is the victor, a
* Sergei Utochkin, a celebrated Russian aviation pioneer from Odessa.
Gal[ician] shtetl through a sheet of rain.—Night at Froim’s.—A night of anxiety.—Gowinski and Grishchuk.—The highroad to Brody.
Describe the night simply. Beginning: the night will be one of anxiety. The condition of waiting and fatigue.
Milatin
Right away a description of the monastery.—The Catholic priest. Burials. The Polish woman.—Korotchayev. Remembering the days of marching. The horses chomping, the sky shimmers through, we are lying in the hay.—Then at the Jews. Korotchayev acts like a country squire. The Jew has no revolutionary tendencies.—The demoted division commander.—Then, Korotchayev s star—the Jewish adjutant of the squadron commander.—Kniga.—A tall, immovable man, bulky, like the inspector in Korolenko,5 he sits on the sofa, is silent, vodka—a mute scene—a figure behind the enclosure, a Basilian monastery, the monk in a gray cassock, tall, broad-shouldered, fingers his rosary—I stand there—bewitched—then noise, the thunder of transport carts.— A Pole lying in a coffin.—Two orderlies—one of them, Borisov, tiptoes through the yard, his head down, the other—a Kirghiz . . . the body is slashed—uncovered—covered again.—I feel sorry for the Polish woman—I want to be graceful, gallant.—They return from battle—a special calm, their usual way of riding, professionalism! Separate: Milatin, Korotchayev. [. . .]