Isaac(Isaak) Babel: A Jewish Revolutionary Writer

Dr. Neil Landsman, Principal lecturer at School of Languages and Area Studies at University of Portsmouth, presents an intriguing talk about Isaac Babel, considered by some as the “the greatest prose writer of Russian Jewry”.

Isaac Babel, born in Odessa in 1894, was a Russian language writer famous for his plays and short stories. He fell victim to Stalin’s Great Purge and was arrested and imprisoned. After ‘confessing’ under torture to being a terrorist and a spy, in January 1940 he was executed in prison. In 1954, during the Khrushchev era, the charges against him were revoked as being baseless.