Red Cavalry (Konarmiya)

'Konarmiya' (Red Cavalry) is one of the masterpieces created by Isaac Babel, a master of the short story, a penetrating, subtle, and ironic storyteller, 'sent to the world,' as he wrote in his autobiography, by Maxim Gorky. Babel served in the Civil War with Budyonny's First Cavalry Army. The terrible and daring events of those years are reflected in the pages of the 'Konarmiya' series; it features generosity and cruelty, victories and defeats, tragedy and humor. Upon its publication, Budyonny called 'Konarmiya' 'Babel's extremely brazen slander.' And yet, contrary to the army commander's opinion, the writer's work, largely thanks to 'Konarmiya,' was considered one of the most significant literary phenomena of the first third of the 20th century. Ilya Ehrenburg writes of this book: 'Everyone was stunned by the power of his imagination; they even spoke of fantasy. Meanwhile, Babel described what he saw.' This is confirmed by the writer's miraculously preserved diary, which he kept in 1920 while serving in the ranks of the First Cavalry, and which we are publishing together with the series of stories 'Konarmiya' in this edition.