Lev Levanda

Lev Levanda (Russian: Лев Осипович Леванда, romanized: Lev Osipovich Levanda, Yiddish: יהודה לייב לעוואַנדאַ, romanized: Yehuda Leyb Levanda; June 1835 – 18 June 1888) was a Russian author, belletrist, and publicist. His sketches were often published under the pen name Ladnev.^{[1] : 273}

Levnada's literary work made him a leading figure in the circles of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia.^[2] Originally a vocal proponent of the assimilation of Jews into Russian culture, Levanda became a strong supporter of their emigration to Palestine following the 1881–82 pogroms across the Russian Empire.

Lev Levanda was born to a poor Jewish family in Minsk, Russian Empire (now Belarus). After spending three years at a state-sponsored school for Jews in his hometown, he entered the Vilna Rabbinical School in 1849, graduating in 1854 with a teacher's diploma.^[3] He thereafter returned to Minsk and was appointed a teacher at the government-run Jewish school. He taught there until 1860, when he was appointed uchonyi evrei ('adviser on Jewish affairs') to the Governor-General of Vilna, Mikhail N. Muravyov, a position he held until his death.^[4] In this role he assisted with programs to study Jewish life and edited Russian-language state textbooks for Jewish children.^[5] Levanda was instrumental in exposing false witnesses in a ritual-murder trial of several Jews from the shtetl of Shavl in 1861.^[6]

Upon his arrival in Vilna, Levanda participated in the publication of the first Russian-language Jewish journal, Rassvet  [ru] ('Dawn'), edited in Odessa by Osip Rabinovich, as well as its successor, Zion.^[7] His first novel, Shop of Imported Far-East Groceries, appeared in the pages of Rassvet in 1860.^[1] Levanda's The Warehouse of Groceries: Pictures of the Jewish Life, a work of belles lettres, was serialized in Rassvet, and published as a book in 1869 (a Hebrew translation was published five years later).^[3]

A supporter of the Russification of Eastern European Jewry, in 1864 Levanda was appointed editor of the region's official newspaper, Vilenskie gubernskie vedomosti ('Vilna Provincial News'), with a mandate to justify Muravyov's russifying campaign.^[8] Following the banning of Rassvet and Zion, he began to contribute under a pseudonym to a number of liberal Russian newspapers in St. Petersburg and Vilna, including the Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti .^[1] In a series of articles, Levanda argued that the acquisition of civil rights hinged on the assimilation of the Jewish masses into Russian culture.^[9]

In the 1870s and 1880s, he contributed to the Russian Jewish journals Evreiskaia biblioteka  [ru] (Еврейская библиотека, 'The Jewish Library'), Russkii evrei  [ru] ('The Russian Jew'), and Voskhod ('Sunrise'). In 1876 he published a collection of sketches under the title "Sketches of the Past," followed later by a number of stories, such as "The Four Tutors" and "The Amateur Performance", in Russkii evrei, Yevreiskoe Obozrenie ('The Jewish Review'), and Voskhod.^[10] He published over twenty articles on Jewish life in Poland with the title "The Vistula Chronicle" in Russkii evrei.^{[11] [12]} Other works of this period include "Essays of the Past" (1875), originally published in 1870 in Den  [ru] ('The Day'); "Types and Silhouettes" (1881); and the historical novels The Wrath and Mercy of the Tycoon (1885) and Avraam Yosefovich (1887).^[10]

He published his best-known work, Seething Times, set in the northern Pale of Settlement against the background of the Polish Uprising of 1863, in three instalments between 1871 and 1873 in Evreiskaia biblioteka.^{[13] [14]} In the novel, young Westernized Jews were urged by the hero, Sarin, to abandon Polish orientation (after 500 years of unhappy experience with the Poles) and become Russians.^[2] The book was released as a book in 1875 under the title Seething Times: The Novel of the Last Polish Uprising.^[15]

Levanda's political views changed dramatically following the 1881–82 pogroms across the Russian Empire, and the Russian state's hostile indifference to them.^{[16] [17]} With the subsequent rapid growth in Polish anti-Semitism, Levanda began writing about the rebuilding of a Jewish state in Palestine.^[3] He became a leading activist for the Hibbat Zion movement and maintained close links with Leon Pinsker, author of the influential Zionist manifesto Auto-Emancipation . In "The Essence of the So-Called 'Palestine' Movement" (1884), Levanda discussed the ideas of Jewish self-determination as a "practical solution" to a "vicious cycle,"^[18] and in 1885 published an important reconsideration of the position of the Jews in Russia, entitled "On 'Assimilation'".^[8]

In early 1887, his mental condition began to deteriorate sharply, showing signs of major depressive disorder. As a result, he was transported that May to St. Petersburg, where he was placed in a psychiatric hospital.^[7] He died there less than a year later.^[19]

Although a popular writer, contemporary critics considered Levanda untalented and unrefined.^{[1] : 63–65 [20]}

An elegy in Levanda's memory, in Yiddish and Russian with accompaniment on the piano, was published in Vilna upon his death.^[21]

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Rosenthal, Herman; Lipman, J. G. (1904). "Levanda, Lev Osipovitch". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia . Vol. 8. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. pp. 17–18.

• 1835 births
• 1888 deaths
• 19th-century novelists from the Russian Empire
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• Novelists from the Russian Empire
• Russian historical novelists
• Russian male novelists
• Russian nationalists
• Russian Zionists
• Vilna Rabbinical School alumni
• Writers from Minsk
• Writers from Vilnius
• Yiddish-language writers

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