Isbakh Alexander (1904-1977)

Isbakh (Isbach) Alexander (pseudonym; real name: Isaak Abramovich Bakhrakh; 1904, Dvinsk [now Daugavpils] – 1977, Moscow), Russian writer and literary critic.

Alexander Isbakh began publishing in 1920 in the provincial press (Vitebskie izvestiia newspaper), and from 1921 in Moscow periodicals. In 1924 he graduated from the Department of Literature of Moscow State University, and in 1934 from the Institute of Red Professors. In 1925 he published a collection of poems, Smena (“Change”).

Isbakh’s prose of the 1920s–30s was devoted to the Red Army (collections of short stories S vintovkoi i knigoi – “With a Rifle and a Book”, 1926; Krasnoarmeitsy – “Red Army Soldiers”, 1930; Riadovye – “The Rank and File”, 1932, among others, which also included portrait sketches of Jewish fighters), to the Komsomol, and to socialist construction (Bor’ba za promysel – “The Struggle for the Fishery”, 1932; Radost’ – “Joy”, 1934, and others). In 1930 he published the novella Krushenie (“The Collapse”), about the struggle against the Trotskyist opposition.

He was one of the organizers of the literary associations Rabochaia vesna (“Workers’ Spring”), Oktiabr’ (“October”), VOAPP (All-Russian Association of Proletarian Writers), and others. During World War II he worked as a war correspondent. From the late 1930s until 1949 he served on the editorial boards of the journals Oktiabr’ and Znamia, and taught as a professor at the Gorky Literary Institute and the Moscow Pedagogical Institute named after Potemkin.

During the so-called “anti-cosmopolitan campaign” Isbakh was accused of bourgeois nationalism and Zionism. The main pretext was his largely autobiographical story collection Gody zhizni (“Years of Life”, 1948), in which, describing the shtetl of his childhood, he portrayed Jewish wealthy classes and clerics in a negative light, but also depicted new revolutionary life: a young Komsomol member destroying the mikveh and converting the synagogue into a “people’s university.” At the same time, however, the book included Jewish prayers, descriptions of religious ritual, mention of a Zionist circle in the gymnasium, and even quotations from Ha-Tikvah.

In 1949 Isbakh was sentenced to ten years of forced labor camps. In 1954 he was released, rehabilitated, and returned to teaching and literary work. His autobiographical cycle continued with Put’ v zhizn’ (“The Road to Life”, 1957), which was later greatly expanded and published as Iunost’ moia, komsomol moi (“My Youth, My Komsomol”, 1966). The book was structured as “links,” each reflecting a stage in the life of the protagonist Aleksandr Shtein. However, in this edition the text of Ha-Tikvah was removed from the story Syn chesti (“Son of Honor”), and the story Nachalo (“The Beginning”), denounced in 1949 as one of “the most nationalistic,” was omitted entirely.

In his book on the French Resistance, Oni borolis’ za Frantsiiu (“They Fought for France”, 1960), Isbakh also portrayed Jewish heroes. In the collections Litsom k ogniu (“Facing the Fire”, 1958) and Na literaturnykh barrikadakh (“On the Literary Barricades”, 1964), he wrote literary portraits of B. Gorbatov, M. Zalka, E. Bagritskii, Ia. Ilin (1905–32), and many others.