Letters from Isaac Babel to P.P. Kryuchkov. Introduction, publication and notes by E.I. Pogorelskaiа

I.E. Babel’s epistolary legacy is quite significant in volume; according to his letters, it is possible to build a chronology of the writer’s whereabouts and movements, clarify the details of his biography, and supplement the historical, literary, and real commentary on his works. An essential addition to Babel’s epistolary is his six letters from the first half of the 1930s, addressed to P.P. Kryuchkov and sent from Molodenovo, Sorrento, Paris, and Moscow, which are kept in A.M. Gorky archives at the Institute of World Literature of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The beginning of Babel and Kryuchkov’s communication dates back to the spring of 1931, when Gorky returned from Italy and settled in Moscow, as well as in a country house in Gorki, near the village of Molodenovo, where Babel had been living since the summer of 1930. In letters from 1933, sent from Sorrento and Paris, the writer shares with Kryuchkov his immediate plans and asks for help in obtaining money. It turns out that Babel received an advance of 1,000 rubles for the stories “Dante Street,” “Oil,” and “Froim Grach” that were transferred to the almanac “Year XVI,” but were not published there. The letter dated March 13, 1934, clarifies the dating of Gorky’s letter to Babel, dedicated to the play “Maria.” The letter dated June 20, 1935, written on the eve of Babel’s departure with Boris Pasternak to Paris for the International Congress of Writers in Defense of Culture, is interesting because it contains a request to help the Chinese writer Amy Xiao, with whom Babel was familiar. The published letters to Kryuchkov thus add important touches to Babel’s biography.