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Abstract:

The article explains why I. Babel considered the publication of his stories in the fourth issue of the magazine “Lef” for 1923 the beginning of his literary work; the date of acquaintance of Mayakovsky and Babel, which occurred in Moscow, at the poet’s apartment in Vodopyany Lane, late in October or in November 1923, is specified. The stories “Letter”, “Dolgushov’s Death”, “Prishcepa”, “Salt”, “As It Was Done in Odessa” were published in “Lef” for the second time, the story “The King” — for the third time. The article presents the most significant examples of the author’s edits made to these stories for the “Lef” publication. Two stories — “Dyakov” (later “The Reserve Cavalry Commander”) and “Kolesnikov” (later “The Commander of the Second Brigade”) — were published in “Lef” for the first time. Babel made an edit to the 1926 edition of the “Red Cavalry”: in the story “The Reserve Cavalry Commander” he supplemented the description of the chief of staff; in the story “The Commander of the Second Brigade” he completely abandoned the description of the battle. In February 1924, Mayakovsky came to Odessa. Probably, it was then that he received from Babel the manuscript of another story, “My First Goose”, printed in the first issue of “Lef” for 1924. It was published between June 9 and 15. The publication of this story took place in the Odessa “Izvestia” on May 4, 1924. The texts of newspaper and magazine publications have differences. The article shows that although “Lef” was published later than the Odessa “Izvestia”, its proofreading appeared earlier — until April 20, 1924, the variants of “Lef” were not taken into account in subsequent editions, and the newspaper text was used as the basis for publication of “Red Cavalry” in 1926. Thus, autograph and the publication in “Lef” are the earliest sources of the text of this story.