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Isaac Babel, the son of a jewish shopkeeper, was born in Odessa, Ukraine, on 13th July,1894. When he was a child he witnessed a pogrom and was deeply influenced by the experience.

After leaving school Babel moved to Kiev. He began writing but had no success with his work until he met maxim gorky in 1916. Soon afterwards Gorky printed two of his short stories in his Letopis. The Russian censors considered the stories to be obscene and Babel was charged under Article 1001 of the criminal code.

Babel joined the Bolshevikes in 1917 and during the Civil War he served as a political commissar in the Red Army. A collection of his stories based on his war experiences, Red Cavalry was published in 1926. The following year he published Odessa Tales, a collection of stories about Jewish life in Russia. He also wrote two plays, zakat (1928) and Mariya (1935).

Babel became increasingly critical of the rule of Joseph Stalin and found it increasingly difficult to get his work published. At the first meeting of the Soviet Writers Union in 1934, Babel told the gathering that: "I have invented a new genre - the genre of silence".

In May, 1939, Babel was arrested and his work was confiscated. According to the Soviet government Isaac Babel died in a prison camp in Siberia on 17th March, 1941. However, his family believe he was executed soon after he was arrested in 1939.