fiction.wikisort.org - Writer

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
Born	Yehuda Leyb Levanda June 1835 (1835) Minsk, Russian Empire
Died	18 June 1888(1888-06-18) (aged 52–53) St. Petersburg, Russian Empire
Pen name	Ladnev
Occupation	Writer
Language	Russian and Yiddish
Alma mater	Vilna 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 [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]

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.

На других языках

---

- [en] Lev Levanda

---

[ru] Леванда, Лев Осипович

Лев Осипович Леванда (Иехуда Лейб; июнь 1835, Минск — 6 [18] марта 1888, Санкт-Петербург) — российский писатель, публицист, просветитель; известен сначала как сторонник ассимиляции евреев в российском обществе, а впоследствии как сторонник их эмиграции в Палестину. Считается одним из самых крупных и известных еврейских писателей России XIX века.

---

---