Editing Isaac Babel (section)

==Life in the 1930s==
In 1930, Babel travelled in [[Ukraine]] and witnessed the brutality of [[collectivization in the Soviet Union|forced collectivisation]] and [[Dekulakization|dekulakisation]]. Although he never made a public statement about this, he privately confided in Antonina, <blockquote>"The bounty of the past is gone—it is due to the [[Holodomor|famine in Ukraine]] and the destruction of the village across our land."<ref>Antonina Pirozhkova, "At His Side; The Last Years of Isaac Babel," page 18.</ref></blockquote>

As Stalin tightened his grip on the Soviet [[intelligentsia]] and decreed that all writers and artists must conform to [[socialist realism]], Babel increasingly withdrew from public life. During the campaign against "[[Formalism (philosophy)|Formalism]]", Babel was publicly denounced for low productivity. At the time, many other Soviet writers were terrified and frantically rewrote their past work to conform to Stalin's wishes. However, Babel was unimpressed and confided in his protégé, the writer [[Ilya Ehrenburg]], "In six months time, they'll leave the formalists in peace and start some other campaign."<ref>Ilya Ehrenburg, ''Memoirs, 1921–1941'', page 328.</ref>

At the first congress of the [[Union of Soviet Writers]] (1934), Babel noted ironically, that he was becoming "the master of a new literary genre, the genre of silence."  American [[Max Eastman]] describes Babel's increasing reticence as an artist in a chapter called "The Silence of Isaac Babyel" in his 1934 book ''Artists in Uniform''.<ref>Max Eastman, ''Artists in Uniform: A Study of Literature and Bureaucratism'', (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1934) pp. 101–103</ref> However, according to Nathalie Babel Brown, his life was tolerable: <blockquote>"The young writer burst upon the literary scene and instantly became the rage in [[Moscow]]. The tradition in Russia being to worship poets and writers, Babel soon became one of the happy few, a group that included Soviet writers who enjoyed exceptional status and privileges in an otherwise impoverished and despotic country. In the late 1930s, he was given a villa in the writer's colony of [[Peredelkino]], outside Moscow. No secret was ever made of his having a wife and daughter in [[Paris]]. At the same time, hardly anyone outside of Moscow knew of two other children he had fathered. As a matter of fact, Babel had many secrets, lived with many ambiguities and contradictions, and left many unanswered questions behind him."<ref>''The Complete Works of Isaac Babel'', page 21.</ref></blockquote>

In 1932, after numerous requests, he was permitted to visit his estranged wife Yevgenia in [[Paris]]. While visiting his wife and their daughter Nathalie, Babel agonized over whether or not to return to Soviet Russia. In conversations and letters to friends, he expressed a longing of being "a free man," while also expressing fear at no longer being able to make a living solely through writing. On July 27, 1933, Babel wrote a letter to [[Yuri Annenkov]], stating that he had been summoned to Moscow and was leaving immediately.<ref>''The Complete Works of Isaac Babel'', page 25.</ref>

Babel's common-law wife, Antonina Pirozhkova, recalled this era, <blockquote>"Babel remained in France for so long that it was rumored in Moscow that he was never returning. When I wrote to him about this, he wrote back saying, 'What can people, who do not know anything, possibly say to you, who knows everything?' Babel wrote from France almost daily. I accumulated many letters from him during his 11-month absence. When Babel was arrested in 1939, all of these letters were confiscated and never returned to me."<ref>''At His Side'', pages 9–10.</ref></blockquote>

After his return to the Soviet Union, Babel decided to move in with Pirozhkova, beginning a [[common law marriage]] which would ultimately produce a daughter, Lidya Babel. He also collaborated with [[Sergei Eisenstein]] on the film ''[[Bezhin Meadow]]'', about [[Pavlik Morozov]], a child informant for the [[Soviet secret police]]. Babel also worked on the screenplays for several other Stalinist propaganda films.

According to Nathalie Babel Brown, "Babel came to Paris in the summer of 1935, as part of the delegation of Soviet writers to the [[International Congress of Writers]] for the Defense of Culture and Peace. He probably knew this would have been his last chance to remain in [[Europe]]. As he had done numerous times during the last ten years, he asked my mother to return with him to Moscow. Although he knew the general situation was bad, he nevertheless described to her the comfortable life that the family could have there together. It was the last opportunity my mother had to give a negative answer, and she never forgot it. Perhaps it helped her later on to be proven completely right in her fears and her total lack of confidence in the [[Soviet Union]]. My mother described to me these last conversations with my father many times."<ref>''The Complete Works of Isaac Babel'', pages 23-24.</ref>