Customer Reviews

At His Side: The Last Years of Isaac Babel

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This is a sad story of Isaac Babel, a Soviet writer of short stories. Isaac was a good writer but fell on the foul side of Stalin's policies. This is the story of the last seven years of his life as told by his common law wife. As the terror grows, artists on all sides of Isaac start to disappear. Isaac even befriends the former leader of the Soviet NKVD who gives him some sage advice---If they arrest you, deny everything. Babel was arrested and disappeared. The NKVD tells his wife he is at a labor camp when in actuallity he was executed by a firing squad approximately six months after his arrest.
Two things stand out about this book. One was Babel never getting to spend time with his three children before he died. The second is his common law wife spending significant time trying to recover him and documenting his life's work. Their married life was one of true love. A nice story about the destruction of the Soviet intelligentsia.