Babel in Paris: New Materials. Introduction, publication and notes by E.I. Pogorelskaia and A.F. Stroev

The archival documents from the collections of the National Library of France (BnF), the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), and the department of manuscript collections of the V.I. Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature (ORF GLM) make significant additions and clarifications to Babel’s biography during his two long stays in France, expand our understanding of his Paris contacts are published for the first time. These are his letters of 1928 and 1932–1933 addressed to P.P. Suvchinsky, V.S. Pozner and the French writer, translator and journalist Nino Frank, as well as two letters to Suvchinsky of 1928 from the artist N.M. Davydova, in which Babel is mentioned, and a fragment of correspondence between Suvchinsky and A.M. Remizov of the early 1950s, associated with the unfulfilled project of Babel’s book. The publication concludes with a translation into Russian of Babel’s interview with the newspaper Les Nouvelles littéraires, artistiques et scientifiques in May 1928. The introductory article restores the biographical and political contexts of the published correspondence, talks about Babel’s relations with Russian emigrants, including Eurasians, and with Soviet diplomats, about his meeting with Remizov and, possibly, with N.A. Berdyaev.