BABEL, Isaac. Red Cavalry … Translated from the Russian by Nadia Helstein. London and New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1929.
8vo. Original orange cloth, lettered and illustrated in black, pp. viii, [2], 213, title-page printed in red and black; cloth a little dulled, toning to paper as usual; a still a very good copy.
First US edition of these gripping stories from the Soviet-Polish and Civil Wars, written by the pro-Soviet journalist who had been assigned to Semyon Budyonny's Cossack army. The military commander Budyonny wanted Babel to be shot after the publication of the stories, because of the way he described the utter brutality of the war. Stalin caught up with the intellectual later; Babel was murdered in 1940.
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