| Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel | |
| Author: | Anatoly Kuznetsov |
| Title Orig: | Бабий яр. Роман-документ |
| Orig Lang Code: | ru |
| Country: | Soviet Union |
| Language: | Russian |
| Subject: | Babi Yar |
| Set In: | Kyiv |
| Publisher: | Yunost |
| Media Type: | |
Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel (Russian: Бабий яр. Роман-документ) is a documentary novel by Anatoly Kuznetsov, about the Nazi occupation of Kyiv and the massacres at Babi Yar. The two-day murder of 33,771 Jewish civilians on 29–30 September 1941, in the Kyiv ravine was one of the largest single mass killings of the Holocaust.[1]
Kuznetsov began writing a memoir of his wartime life in a notebook when he was 14. Over the years, he continued working on it, adding documents and eyewitness testimonies.
The novel was first published in 1966 in what Kuznetsov would later describe as a censored, form in the Soviet monthly literary magazine Yunost, in the original Russian language. The magazine's copy editors cut the book down by[?] a quarter of its original length and introduced additional politically correct material.
In 1969, Kuznetsov defected from the USSR to the UK and managed to smuggle 35-mm photographic film containing the unedited manuscript. The book was published in the West in 1970 under a pseudonym, A. Anatoli. In that edition, the edited Soviet version was put in regular type, the content cut by editors in heavier type, and newly added material was placed in brackets. In the foreword to the Russian-language edition by the Russian emigre publishing house , Kuznetsov wrote:
In 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine proposed the removal of Babi Yar as well as many other Russian, Soviet, and Belarusian works from the school curriculum for grades six through eleven.[2]
The 2023 paperback reissued edition of Babi Yar contains three different typefaces, distinguished by the author as follows:
- Ordinary type—material published in Yunost in 1966.
- "Heavier type"—material cut out by the censor at the time.
- Enclosed between square brackets []—material added between 1967 and 1969.[4]
The novel begins as follows:
Kuznetsov describes his own experiences, supplementing them with documents and testimonies of survivors. The tragedy of Babi Yar is shown in the context of the German occupation of Kyiv, from its first days of September 1941 until November 1943. "It is also about the curious fact that a 14-year-old boy can show up anywhere and adults—German soldiers—don't especially care. By accident, then, he saw what others were not allowed to see. And by accident, he survived the occupation and lived to write about it."[5] The chapter "How Many Times I Should Have Been Shot" lists twenty reasons the fascists should have shot him according to orders issued by the Nazi occupiers.
When he talks about his own family, the author does not shy away from criticizing the Soviet regime. Several intermissions directly address the future reader.
One of the most often-cited parts of the novel is the story of Dina Pronicheva, an actress of Kyiv Puppet Theatre. She was one of the people ordered to march to the ravine, forced to undress, and then shot. Badly wounded, she played dead in a pile of corpses and eventually managed to escape. One of the very few survivors of the massacre, she later told her horrifying story to Kuznetsov.[6]
The novel concludes with a warning: