Isaak Babel'’s Tales of Collectivization: Rites of Transition in the New Soviet Village

Abstract

Isaac Babel'’s two stories depicting the 1930 collectivization campaign must be placed beside his other story cycles in any effort to understand the writer and his time. The resistance to authority displayed in “Kolyvushka” and the reconciliation reached for in “Gapa Guzvha” have in common an important and hitherto unnoted feature: the implicit adaptation of Orthodox religious ritual to new functions. In both stories the climactic encounter with officialdom shows how vestiges of religious ritual become improvised rites of transition, religious in form but political in content. Placing Babel”s stories in the context of the surrounding cultural and political discourse (including Iosif Stalin's “Dizzy with Success article, but focusing on the pages of Novyi mir, where one of the stories appeared), this article explores links between Babef”s dark depiction of the countryside in crisis and contemporary treatments of collectivization, religion, and literary engagement.