Editing Isaac Babel (section)

===''Odessa Stories''===
[[File:Benya Krik.jpg|thumb|right|Benya Krik as portrayed by {{ill|Yuri Shumsky|ru|Шумский, Юрий Васильевич}} in the 1926 movie of the same name]]
Back in Odessa, Babel started to write ''[[Odessa Stories]]'', a series of short stories set in the Odessan [[ghetto]] of [[Moldavanka]]. Published individually between 1921 and 1924 and collected into a book in 1931, the stories describe the life of Jewish gangsters, both before and after the [[October Revolution]].<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Briker|first=Boris|date=1994|title=The Underworld of Benia Krik and I. Babel's "Odessa Stories"|url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/40870776|journal=Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes|volume=36|issue=1/2|pages=115–134|doi=10.1080/00085006.1994.11092049|jstor=40870776|issn=0008-5006}}</ref> Many of them directly feature the fictional [[mob boss]] [[Benya Krik]], loosely based on the historical figure [[Mishka Yaponchik]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Tanny|first=Jarrod|title=City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa|year=2011|publisher=Indiana University Press|location=Bloomington|isbn=978-0-253-22328-9|pages=ch. 3|url=http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=650630}}</ref> Benya Krik is one of the great [[anti-hero]]es of [[Russian literature]]. These stories were used as the basis for the 1927 film ''[[Benya Krik (film)|Benya Krik]]'', and the stage play ''[[Sunset (play)|Sunset]]'', which centers on Benya Krik's self-appointed mission to right the wrongs of Moldavanka. First on his list is to rein in his alcoholic, womanizing father, Mendel.

According to Nathalie Babel Brown, <blockquote>"''Sunset'' premiered at the [[Baku]] Worker's Theatre on October 23, 1927, and played in [[Odessa]], [[Kiev]], and the celebrated [[Moscow Art Theatre]]. The reviews, however, were mixed. Some critics praised the play's 'powerful anti-[[bourgeois]] stance and its interesting 'fathers and sons' theme. But in [[Moscow]], particularly, critics felt that the play's attitude toward the bourgeoisie was contradictory and weak. ''Sunset'' closed, and was dropped from the repertoire of the [[Moscow Art Theatre]].<ref>"The Complete Works of Isaac Babel," pages 753–754.</ref></blockquote>

However, ''Sunset'' continued to have admirers. In a 1928 letter to his [[White emigre]] father, [[Boris Pasternak]] wrote, "Yesterday, I read ''Sunset'', a play by Babel, and almost for the first time in my life I found that Jewry, as an ethnic fact, was a phenomenon of positive, unproblematic importance and power. ... I should like you to read this remarkable play..."<ref>''Boris Pasternak: Family Correspondence, 1921–1960'', Translated by Nicholas Pasternak Slater. [[Hoover Press]], 2011. Page 107.</ref>

According to Pirozhkova, filmmaker [[Sergei Eisenstein]] was also an admirer of ''Sunset'' and often compared it to the writings of [[Émile Zola]] for, "illuminating capitalist relationships through the experience of a single family." Eisenstein was also quite critical of the Moscow Art Theatre, "for its weak staging of the play, particularly for failing to convey to the audience every single word of its unusually terse text."<ref>''At His Side'', page 83.</ref>