3 Review(s)

The Red Cavalry cycle, one of the great works of Russian literature, still has the striking newness that gave Babel his notoriety when the stories were first released in the 1920s. Babel creates a remarkable cast of characters from the exuberant, violent era of early Soviet history, including commissars and colonels, Cossacks and peasants, as well as the bespectacled, Jewish writer/intellectual who was observing it all and trying to establish his role in the new Russia. Babel draws on his own experiences as a journalist and propagandist with the Red Army during the war against Poland.