The Gangster Benya Krik, of Moldavanka: Babel’s Odessa Tales

The gangster boss Benya Krik (Беня Крик) and the people who live in the back streets of Odesa. Isaac Babel’s (1894–1940) story cycle Odessa Tales (Одесские рассказы) is set in the Jewish quarter of Odesa in the early 20th century. In Japan, a translation by Tadashi Nakamura has been published by Gunzosha under the title Odessa Tales (the book’s title is given here exactly as translated by its Japanese publisher; elsewhere in this article, the city’s name is written Odesa, following Ukrainian).

The following draws on three Ukrainian encyclopedias — the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ESU), the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine (published by the Institute of History of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), and the Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia (VUE) — and on the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe (published by the YIVO Institute in the United States), as of September 2026.

Born in Odesa, He Wrote in Russian

According to ESU and the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, Babel was born on July 13, 1894 (New Style; July 1 Old Style) into a Jewish merchant family in Odesa (VUE gives July 12). He attended a commercial school in Odesa and graduated from the Kyiv Commercial Institute (ESU and the History Encyclopedia give the graduation year as 1915; VUE gives 1917 — the two do not agree). VUE records that Babel wrote in Russian, and that he had also acquired Yiddish and French, along with the Talmud and the Bible.

The YIVO encyclopedia writes that Babel’s attachment to Yiddish shows through in the texture of his Russian prose. In 1916 he met Mendele Moykher-Sforim, known as the “grandfather of Yiddish literature.”

He became widely known as a writer in the 1920s. His experience as a war correspondent attached to the Soviet First Cavalry Army in 1920 gave rise to the story collection Red Cavalry (Конармия, 1926) (ESU, YIVO). ESU states that this collection and Odessa Tales were translated into more than 20 languages.

What Odessa Tales Depicts

According to VUE, the individual stories that make up Odessa Tales appeared in various periodicals in 1923–1924 and were gathered into a single volume in 1931. The YIVO encyclopedia states that the Odesa-set stories were written between 1921 and 1937. VUE describes the collection’s content as the criminal underworld of Odesa from 1904 to 1919, while ESU describes it as depicting “the lives of Odesa’s poor Jews and of a gangster clan.”

The YIVO encyclopedia writes that the gangster Benya Krik represents both a lost Jewish strength and the joy of living among Odesa’s Jews. It also explains that later works, such as “Froim Grach” and “The End of the Old Folks’ Home” (1932), depict a vibrant Jewish community brought to an end in the name of a socialist future.

The District of Moldavanka

Many of the stories are set in Moldavanka (Молдаванка), a district of Odesa. The Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine writes that as the city grew rapidly in the second half of the 19th century, industrial and working-class districts sprang up: Peresyp to the north, and Slobidka, Romanivka, and Moldavanka to the west.

The YIVO encyclopedia’s entry “Odessa” notes that by the turn of the 20th century, about a third of Odesa’s Jews were registered to receive Passover charity, and that in 1881 Jews made up more than a third of the city’s population but owned less than an eighth of its homes. It states: “The Jewish poor were concentrated in the Moldavanka district, an area of unpaved streets that became widely known in the early 1920s through Isaac Babel’s Odesa stories.”

The same entry also writes that on Odesa’s streets, Ukrainian, Russian, and especially Yiddish mixed together, and that this, as was often said at the time, is reflected in Babel’s work. The founding of Odesa and the makeup of its 19th-century population are covered in the article on Odesa and its age as a free port.

The Model for Benya Krik

VUE identifies the model (prototype) for Benya Krik as M. Vinnytskyi (1891–1919), known as Mishko Yaponchyk. ESU, the Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, and the YIVO encyclopedia’s entries on Babel do not mention a model.

Stage and Film Adaptations

According to the YIVO encyclopedia, Babel’s first play, Sunset (Закат), based on Odessa Tales, was staged in 1928 but did not run long (ESU dates the play to 1927).

On film, according to ESU and VUE, the Odesa Film Studio shot Salt (1925) and Benya Krik (1927), based on Odessa Tales, both from Babel’s screenplays. He also wrote the screenplay for Wandering Star (1927), based on the novel by Sholem Aleichem. The studio’s history is covered in the article on the Odesa Film Studio.

Reading It in Ukrainian and in Japanese

According to VUE, Odessa Tales was translated into Ukrainian by K. Simchenko, and several of the stories were also included in a 2020 anthology of Eastern European Jewish prose. ESU lists Babel’s influence on Ukrainian writers, from Yurii Yanovskyi’s early short stories — of which the literary scholar Oleksandr Biletskyi said “Babel is right there” — to the prose of Yurii Andrukhovych.

Shot by Firing Squad, 1940

Babel was arrested in May 1939, sentenced to death on January 26, 1940, and shot the following day, January 27. He was posthumously rehabilitated in 1954 (Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, VUE).