In the traditional world of the "shtetls", there was a division between the Jews who whose lifestyle was "comme il faut" (correct) and the "goyish" (incorrect), and for many Jews the Cossacks were the ultimate in "goyish". For many Soviet Jewish writers, the exhortation to be "strong like the Cossacks" symbolized a desire to break with the traditionalist world inside the "shtetls". During the Russian Civil War, several Jewish "Red Cossacks" such as Semyon Turovsky, Mikhail Zyuk, Il'ia Dubinskii, and Dmitry Shmidt rose to high command, being seen in the Soviet Jewish community as a symbol of modernity and progress by having achieved leadership in Cossack units. In one of Babel's stories, a Jewish character declares: "A Jew who mounts a horse ceases to be a Jew and becomes a Russian". In the novel "Heavy Sand" by Anatoly Rybakov, a character says: "Uncle Misha was mad about horses. He would give his soul for the chance to gallop with a horse on a Cossack saddle, or a cavalry saddle or bareback". The American literature scholar Gary Rosenshield wrote: "The uncle achieves what the narrator of Babel's Cossack stories can only dream of: the ability to ride a horse like a Cossack, a guarantee of never being mistaken for a Jew".