Editing Openai/6874b524-4134-8013-b5e6-0601c853d841 (section)

===== Now in his 30s, Israel was a prominent cultural functionary within Narkompros, with several published anthologies, a prestigious editorial role, and indirect influence over literary policy. On paper, he was everything a Soviet poet should be. =====

But Israel was also deeply troubled.

He watched friends—some who had cheered the Revolution with him—disappear into Lubyanka Prison or internal exile. He quietly removed earlier poems from circulation. His once-searing verse grew abstract, cautious, full of “we” instead of “I.”

In 1933, during the Holodomor, Israel requested permission to travel to Ukraine to observe a “workers’ poetry collective.” What he saw—famished peasants, cannibalized villages, corpses by the roadside—never made it into his official reports. But a private notebook survived:

: 

This notebook was hidden behind a loose brick in the Gershovitz family apartment. It would not be found until long after his death.