SOURCE: Rougle, Charles. “Isaac Babel and His Odyssey of War and Revolution.” In Red Cavalry, edited by Charles Rougle, pp. 5-65. Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1996.

In the following excerpt, Rougle provides a stylistic analysis of the stories of Red Cavalry and argues that Babel does not focus on accurate descriptions of the military and historical aspects of the Soviet-Polish War, but rather on “the effect of violence on human life, morals, and culture.”

Red Cavalry and the Polish-soviet War

Relations between revolutionary Russia and the newly created Republic of Poland had been smoldering for more than a year before Babel arrived on the scene. They erupted into a major conflict in late April and early May 1920, when the Poles occupied Kiev, then the capital of the shaky Ukrainian People's Republic recognized by the 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The principals are still debating whether the move was a preemptive...