The Genre of Silence in the USA
“Born down in a dead man’s town.” – THE BOSS
(“Two Siberians” Images provided by the Drifter)
In the Moscow of 1939, ten years after Stalin had become dictator, LOUD KNOCKS on the door in the middle of the night were almost never a good sign – especially if you were a writer, and especially if you were a writer who was accused of “low productivity” because you refused to write works that followed the party line.
It usually wasn’t your friends coming ’round with a case of wine after the bars closed, looking for a place to continue the party.
More likely, it was four somber and silent NKVD, or Russian secret police, agents, arriving to take you where you surely didn’t want to go, unless you enjoyed brutal torture and an eventual complete “disappearance” from the world.
This time the writer was Isaac Babel, a Jewish short story writer from Odessa, Ukraine (it was Russia at that time), and his former friend Joseph was really mad at him for all his low productivity.
Babel called it “a new genre –the genre of silence,” which he had been developing and perfecting – because he was a real, true and deep, artist who just couldn’t bring himself to write the kind of drivel Jospeh Stalin told him to.
The four agents escorted Babel and his common-law wife Antonina to the car (wife number one was in Paris).
No one spoke as they rode toward the prison. Babel laughed a few times. Yes – he laughed, out loud.
The irony was that Russia had never ignored its writers and sent them to die in the gutter, like they do in America.
On the contrary, it was a land that worshiped its writers.
Writers in Russia were beyond what rock stars or movie stars were or are in modern America.
Writers were not just considered “writers” – the best of them were considered to be saints, sages, and spiritual leaders, as well as celebrities.
But now their fame could get them into an awful lot of trouble.
Terminal trouble, indeed.
At one point on the ride to the prison, Babel blurted out to Antonina, “I want you to take care of our child.”
She said, “I don’t know what will happen to me.”
It was the only time one of the agents spoke. Staring straight ahead, he said to her, “We have absolutely nothing against you.”
When they arrived at the prison Babel didn’t look back.
He said to her, “We’ll see each other again,” and was escorted into the prison.
And he disappeared for fifty years.
***
It was only in the 1990s that anyone found out exactly what had happened to Isaac Babel – one of Russia’s greatest writers of all time, a short story writer on a par with Chekhov, Guy de Maupassant of France, and O. Henry of America (who spent his last days poor, broke, in debt, drunk, and possibly on drugs, in a cheap hotel (“turn up the lights”), but at least free, or sort of free, in America), whose collections Red Calvary and Odessa Tales explore the worlds of the Soviet Army and Jewish gangsters respectively and later influenced such literary classics as the American Denis Johnson’s immortal short story collection, Jesus’ Son.
He was tortured for three days until he signed a false confession, stating that he was a terrorist.
Eight months later, after a false trial that lasted twenty minutes and for which the verdict had already been decided, he was executed by firing squad at 1:30 in the morning.
Then thrown into a mass grave.
***
All of the above is the kind of thing that ends up happening when a single, evil, foolish madman is allowed to run the world.
You would think we’d learned our lesson by now.
Such are the wages of ignorance.
***
There are many forms of Resistance.
Mr. William Shakespeare was very careful to make sure he didn’t get his head chopped off like Sir Walter Raleigh did in 1618, or terminally stabbed in the eye in a staged bar fight like his friend Christopher Marlowe had been in 1593.
***
I, The Drifter, have written this on the Jewish Day of Atonement in 2025. I ask forgiveness for my sins.
GOD BLESS THE WORLD.
Historical End Note: Joseph McCarthy left Guthrie alone in the 1950s because Woody was poor.
(Advice to Resisters from The Drifter: When you need to, hide out in an Underground that you light up yourself like Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.)
Saragun Springs 
Hello Drifter
Stalin is easy to dismiss as evil, but I must wonder why someone with access didn’t kill him. A general without family, one dying of something.
That’s because there was/is no shortage of Stalins/Putins and thugs in long coats. The scary thing is we can tell the truth in America but few people know what that means. We think honesty as we see things is the truth, but disagreement makes that impossible.
But Mr. Babel knew it and ignoring what happened to him would make his work, life and death meanngless. (Nowadays he would have suffered an “accidental” long fall.)
Outstanding work and thank you for giving Isaac back his voice.
Leila
(On a much lighter note, great pic of the boys, what are they looking at?)
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Thank you, Leila!
And thanks to Antonina for coming to me in a dream (or a vision among the trees) and telling The Drifter to write something American about Isaac.
Totally agree with you on why they never take out the Stalins and their ilk.
I think another related reason is these people have a demonic energy about them that terrifies everyone who gets in their orbit.
And these Demons know how to choose the ones who won’t try to kill them for their underlings. They surround themselves with the strong conformists.
Also, there’s that thing about how many times they tried to take out Hitler.
Somehow demonically, he refused to be killed or go away!
Kinda like how JC said, “Many will come in my name…wolves in sheeps’ clothing…false prophets…Beware!”
D
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Hi Leila!
PS
I don’t know what The Kids ‘r’ looking at in this picture…it was snapped spontaneously and caught not on purpose and I only recognized it later as a good photo, showing their brotherhood.
But my guess is they’re looking at, perhaps, a butterfly.
They watch even smaller bugs than that fly by them all the time….
Had it been a squirrel or something they would’ve been in a more hopped-up state of mind than they are.
I can also add that The Colonel often snaps those bugs right out of the air and swallows ’em down. Never seen Boo do that!
D
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Dale,
thanks for a timely reminder of the murder/persecution/imprisonment/banishment of writers. The Soviets were certainly the worst, but it’s almost a global phenomenon, as Salman Rushdie could testify.
It’s a consolation to us, but hardly to the writers themselves, that in many cases their writings have outlived their persecutors.
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Hi Mick
Thank you!
You are right, this has been going on forever.
They killed off Socrates, after all (and what was he really but a great, “oral” writer whose pal Plato took down what he said; many writers back then wrote by dictation).
And yes, they gave him the chance to run away and leave his hometown forever (be banished, in other words), but also: they still killed him when he didn’t.
Thanks again among other things for your depth of knowledge!
Dale
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Hi Drifter
This is poignant and powerful! It absorbs the mind.
This is what happens when God and religion are suppressed in society. The founding fathers knew this.
Stalin was as evil as Hitler. He said Beria, the head of the NKVD, was his Himmler. Mao Tse Tung killed even more people than they did.
The authoritarian government including some wicked Kings does not work.
No wonder people fear this current “regime” that has descended upon us in the States. All the loyalists co-sign his every move. Congress and the Supreme court ruled by money. 50,000 people a year will die. When they yank Medicaid next year, conveniently after the midterms.
Isaac Babel sounds like fantastic writer! A tragedy. What a hero he was to stand up for his art and people! Brave to the end!
Christopher
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CJA
RED CAVALRY by Babel is one of the best books about war I’ve ever read. And the stories are all so sharp and tight and short, and poetically honest, horrible and beautiful by turns, that you can see why Denis Johnson claimed Babel as an influence. RC is also a great example of a novel-in-stories, as all the stories have the same narrator but they’re also all very distinct as separate, stand-alone pieces.
Each story is its own thing but when he put them all together in the same collection, he made them speak to each other, too, giving it all extra depth.
D
PS
See Literally under “Eclipsing Indy” for more, whenever ya can!
“Eclipsing Indy” is a great symbolic title, by the way!
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Hi Drifter
I’m going to check the Red Cavalry out by Babel. Anyone who influenced Denis J must be great! Thank you!
All these great authors and so little time. “No time left for you…” “I’m on my way…. du dat du dat” (The Guess Who).
Thanks! As I remember that title may have come a little easier than some.
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