Although recent archival research has uncovered valuable information, not least about Babel's arrest and execution, no full-length biography as yet exists that can fill in the considerable gaps. Thus far, exactly what Babel was doing during significant periods of his life is not known, nor did he leave his readers with many nonfictional statements or interpretations of important events and phenomena. Babel remains something of a puzzle, and he himself contributed to the confusion with ambivalent or deliberately misleading biographical information.
He was born Isaak Emmanuilovich Babel on 30 June 1894 in the Black Sea port of Odessa and grew up there and in the nearby town of Nikolaev. His parents were Emmanuel Isaakovich Babel (originally Man Yitzkovich Bobel) and Fania (originally Feiga) Aronovna Shvevel Babel; he also had a sister, Meriam (Meri), who was born on 16 July 1899. Emmanuel Isaakovich was a moderately successful Jewish merchant who first sold agricultural machinery and then owned a small warehouse. The depiction of poverty in Babel's childhood stories notwithstanding, the family's economic circumstances were quite comfortable. The Babels were typical of the assimilated Jews that made up more than a third of the population of Odessa, a port sometimes referred to as the "Russian Marseilles" for its sunny, bustling, cosmopolitan Mediterranean atmosphere.
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