Isaac Emmanuilovich Babel [ a ] 13 July [ O. He is best known as the author of Red Cavalry and Odessa Stories , and has been acclaimed as "the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry ". Soon after his birth, the Babel family moved to the port city of Nikolaev. They later returned to live in a more fashionable part of Odessa in Babel used Moldavanka as the setting for Odessa Stories and the play Sunset. Although Babel's short stories present his family as "destitute and muddle-headed", they were relatively well-off.
Babel's daughter, Nathalie Babel Brown, stated that her father fabricated this and other biographical details in order to "present an appropriate past for a young Soviet writer who was not a member of the Communist Party.
However, he first had to overcome the Jewish quota. Despite the fact that Babel received passing grades, his place was given to another boy, whose parents had bribed school officials. In addition to regular school subjects, Babel studied the Talmud and music. According to Cynthia Ozick ,. His first stories were composed in fluent literary French. The breadth and scope of his social compass enabled him to see through the eyes of peasants, soldiers, priests, rabbis, children, artists, actors, women of all classes.
He befriended whores, cabdrivers, jockeys; he knew what it was like to be penniless, to live on the edge and off the beaten track. His attempt to enroll at Odessa University was blocked for ethnic reasons. Babel then entered the Kiev Institute of Finance and Business. There he met Yevgenia Borisovna Gronfein, daughter of a wealthy industrialist, whom he eventually married.
In , Babel graduated and moved to Petrograd , in defiance of laws restricting Jews from living outside the Pale of Settlement. Babel was fluent in French, besides Russian, Ukrainian and Yiddish, and his earliest works were written in French. However, none of his stories in that language have survived. In St. Gorky advised the aspiring writer to gain more life experience; Babel wrote in his autobiography, "I owe everything to that meeting and still pronounce the name of Alexey Maksimovich Gorky with love and admiration.
