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 

Lev Levanda
BornYehuda Leyb Levanda
June 1835 (1835)
Minsk, Russian Empire
Died18 June 1888(1888-06-18) (aged 52–53)
St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Pen nameLadnev
OccupationWriter
LanguageRussian and Yiddish
Alma materVilna Rabbinical School

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.

Biography

Early life

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]

Vilna

Upon his arrival in Vilna, Levanda participated in the publication of the first Russian-language Jewish journal, Rassvet ('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 (Еврейская библиотека, 'The Jewish Library'), Russkii evrei ('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 ('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]

Final years

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]

Reception and legacy

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]

Partial bibliography

References

 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.

  1. Hetényi, Zsuzsa (2008). In a Maelstrom: The History of Russian-Jewish Prose, 1860–1940. Budapest: Central European University Press. ISBN 978-615-5211-34-8. OCLC 604915031.
  2. Perlman, Mark (2007). "Levanda, Lev Osipovich". In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 12 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. pp. 676–678. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4.
  3. Shrayer, Maxim D., ed. (2015). "Gaining a Voice, 1840–1881: Lev Levanda". An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry. London: Routledge. pp. 44–59. ISBN 978-1-317-47696-2. OCLC 681279967.
  4. Dubnow, Simon M. (1918). History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Vol. II. Translated by Friedlaender, Israel. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society – via Project Gutenberg.
  5. Safran, Gabriella (2008). "Levanda, Lev Osipovich". In Hundert, Gershon (ed.). YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  6. Lederhendler, Eli (1989). The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 95. ISBN 978-0-19-505891-8. OCLC 252586534.
  7. Katznelson, J. L.; Ginzburg, Baron D., eds. (1911). "Леванда, Лев Осипович"  [Levanda, Lev Osipovitch]. Jewish Encyclopedia of Brockhaus and Efron (in Russian). Vol. 10. St. Petersburg: Brockhaus & Efron. pp. 59–63.
  8. Klier, John D. (2001). "The Jew as Russifier: Lev Levanda's Hot Times". Jewish Culture and History. 4 (1): 31–52. doi:10.1080/1462169X.2001.10511951. S2CID 161762253.
  9. Horowitz, Brian (2013). Russian Idea, Jewish Presence: Essays on Russian-Jewish Intellectual Life. Brighton: Academic Studies Press. ISBN 978-1-936235-61-2. OCLC 864747359.
  10.  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.
  11. Levanda, Lev (1882). "Privislianskaia khronika". Russkii Evrei (in Russian). 1.
  12. Horowitz, Brian (2009). Empire Jews: Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Russia. Bloomington, IN: Slavica Publishers. ISBN 978-0-89357-349-2. OCLC 237886831.
  13. Levanda, Lev (1871–1873). "Goriachee vremia" [Seething Times]. Evreiskaia Biblioteka. 1–3.
  14. Freeze, ChaeRan Yoo (2011). "The Politics of Love in Lev Levanda's Turbulent Times". In Kaplan, Marion; Moore, Deborah Dash (eds.). Gender and Jewish History. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. pp. 187–202. ISBN 978-0-253-22263-3. OCLC 502029602.
  15. Katsis, Leonid (2016). "Jewish Images in Russian Futurism: The Case of Aleksei Kruchenykh". In Berghaus, Günter (ed.). International Yearbook of Futurism Studies. Vol. 6. Berlin: De Gruyter. p. 250. ISBN 978-3-11-046595-2. OCLC 953629084.
  16. Horowitz, Brian (2007). "Russian-Jewish Writers Face Pogroms, 1881–1917". In Levitt, Marcus C.; Novikov, Tatyana (eds.). Times of Trouble: Violence in Russian Literature and Culture. Univ of Wisconsin Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-0-299-22430-1.
  17. Moss, Kenneth B. (2012). "At Home in Late Imperial Russian Modernity—Except When They Weren't: New Histories of Russian and East European Jews, 1881–1914". The Journal of Modern History. University of Chicago Press. 84 (2): 401–452. doi:10.1086/664733. ISSN 0022-2801. S2CID 143255499.
  18. Levanda, Lev (1884). "Sushchnost' tak nazyvaemogo 'palestinskogo' dvizheniia (pis'mo k izdateliam)". Palestina: Sbornik Statei I Svedenii O Evreiskikh Poseleniiakh V Sviatoi Zemle (in Russian). St. Petersburg: Tip. Lebedeva.
  19. Левáнда, Лев Осипович [Levanda, Lev Osipovitch]. Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia (in Russian). Vol. 4. Jerusalem. 1988. pp. 712–714.{{cite encyclopedia}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  20. Hetènyi, Zsuzsa (2000). "Split in Two or Doubled?" (PDF). Yearbook. Central European University. 2: 6.
  21. טרויער געדיכט: איבער דעם טויט פון ר׳ יהודא ליב לעוואנדא (in Yiddish and Russian). Vilna: A. G. Syrkin. 1888.
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