{{short description|Russian author (1935-1888)}} {{Use dmy dates|date=March 2019}} {{Infobox writer | name = Lev Levanda | image = Lev Osipovich Levanda portrait.jpg | image_size = 250px | caption = | native_name = | native_name_lang = | pseudonym = Ladnev | birth_name = Yehuda Leyb Levanda | birth_date = June {{birth year|1835}} | birth_place = Minsk, Russian Empire | death_date = {{Death date and age|df=y|1888|06|18|1835}} | death_place = St. Petersburg, Russian Empire | resting_place = | occupation = Writer | language = Russian and Yiddish | alma_mater = Vilna Rabbinical School | home_town = | period = | genre = | subject = | movement = | notableworks = | spouse = | children = }}
'''Lev Levanda''' ({{Langx|ru|Лев Осипович Леванда|translit=Lev Osipovich Levanda}}, {{Langx|yi|יהודה לייב לעוואַנדאַ|translit=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'''.{{r|hetenyi|page=273}}
Levnada's literary work made him a leading figure in the circles of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia.<ref name=EJ>{{cite EJ|title=Levanda, Lev Osipovich|first=Mark|last=Perlman|volume=12|pages=676–678|url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/levanda-lev-osipovich}}</ref> 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.<ref name=shrayer>{{cite book|chapter=Gaining a Voice, 1840–1881: Lev Levanda|editor-first=Maxim D.|editor-last=Shrayer|title=An Anthology of Jewish-Russian Literature: Two Centuries of Dual Identity in Prose and Poetry|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=QYGsBwAAQBAJ&pg=PA44|date=2015|publisher=Routledge| location=London| isbn=978-1-317-47696-2 | oclc=681279967|pages=44–59}}</ref> 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.<ref name=dubnow>{{cite book|title=History of the Jews in Russia and Poland|volume=II|first=Simon M.|last=Dubnow|author-link=Simon Dubnow|translator-first=Israel|translator-last=Friedlaender|publisher=Jewish Publication Society|location=Philadelphia|date=1918|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15729|via=Project Gutenberg}}</ref> In this role he assisted with programs to study Jewish life and edited Russian-language state textbooks for Jewish children.<ref name=yivo>{{cite encyclopedia|title=Levanda, Lev Osipovich|first=Gabriella|last=Safran|url=http://www.yivoencyclopedia.org/article.aspx/Levanda_Lev_Osipovich|encyclopedia=YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe|editor-first=Gershon|editor-last=Hundert|editor-link=Gershon Hundert|location=New Haven|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2008}}</ref> Levanda was instrumental in exposing false witnesses in a ritual-murder trial of several Jews from the shtetl of Shavl in 1861.<ref>{{cite book | last=Lederhendler | first=Eli | title=The Road to Modern Jewish Politics: Political Tradition and Political Reconstruction in the Jewish Community of Tsarist Russia | publisher=Oxford University Press | location=New York | year=1989 | isbn=978-0-19-505891-8 | oclc=252586534 | page=95|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=3W3mCwAAQBAJ&pg=PA95}}</ref>
===Vilna=== Upon his arrival in Vilna, Levanda participated in the publication of the first Russian-language Jewish journal, ''{{ill|Rassvet (journal)|lt=Rassvet|ru|Рассвет (журнал, 1879—1883)}}'' ('Dawn'), edited in Odessa by Osip Rabinovich, as well as its successor, ''Zion''.{{r|efron}} His first novel, ''Shop of Imported Far-East Groceries'', appeared in the pages of ''Rassvet'' in 1860.<ref name=hetenyi>{{cite book | last=Hetényi | first=Zsuzsa | title=In a Maelstrom: The History of Russian-Jewish Prose, 1860–1940 | publisher=Central European University Press | location=Budapest | year=2008 | isbn=978-615-5211-34-8 | oclc=604915031 }}</ref> 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).{{r|shrayer}}
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.<ref name=klier>{{cite journal|first=John D.|last=Klier|year=2001|title=The Jew as Russifier: Lev Levanda's ''Hot Times''|journal=Jewish Culture and History|volume=4|issue=1|pages=31–52|doi=10.1080/1462169X.2001.10511951|s2cid=161762253}}</ref> 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''.{{r|hetenyi}} In a series of articles, Levanda argued that the acquisition of civil rights hinged on the assimilation of the Jewish masses into Russian culture.<ref>{{cite book | last=Horowitz | first=Brian | title=Russian Idea, Jewish Presence: Essays on Russian-Jewish Intellectual Life | publisher=Academic Studies Press | location=Brighton | year=2013 | isbn=978-1-936235-61-2 | oclc=864747359 }}</ref>
In the 1870s and 1880s, he contributed to the Russian Jewish journals ''{{ill|The Jewish Library|lt=Evreiskaia biblioteka|ru|Еврейская библиотека}}'' (Еврейская библиотека, 'The Jewish Library'), ''{{ill|Russkii evrei|ru|Русский еврей}}'' ('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''.{{r|JE}} He published over twenty articles on Jewish life in Poland with the title "The Vistula Chronicle" in ''Russkii evrei''.<ref>{{cite journal|first=Lev|last=Levanda|title=Privislianskaia khronika|journal=Russkii Evrei|language=ru|year=1882|volume=1}}</ref><ref name=horowitz>{{cite book | last=Horowitz | first=Brian | title=Empire Jews: Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Russia | publisher=Slavica Publishers| location=Bloomington, IN | year=2009 | isbn=978-0-89357-349-2 | oclc=237886831 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lNVMNwAACAAJ}}</ref> Other works of this period include "Essays of the Past" (1875), originally published in 1870 in ''{{ill|Den (Russian newspaper)|lt=Den|ru|День (газета, Одесса)}}'' ('The Day'); "Types and Silhouettes" (1881); and the historical novels ''The Wrath and Mercy of the Tycoon'' (1885) and ''Avraam Yosefovich'' (1887).{{r|JE}}
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''.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Levanda|first=Lev|title=Goriachee vremia|trans-title=Seething Times|journal=Evreiskaia Biblioteka|volume=1–3|date=1871–1873}}</ref><ref>{{cite book | first=ChaeRan Yoo|last=Freeze|chapter=The Politics of Love in Lev Levanda's ''Turbulent Times''|editor1-last=Kaplan | editor1-first=Marion|editor2-last= Moore | editor2-first=Deborah Dash| title=Gender and Jewish History | publisher=Indiana University Press | location=Bloomington | year=2011 | isbn=978-0-253-22263-3 |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Dfw6PcG1ojQC&pg=PA200| oclc=502029602 | pages=187–202}}</ref> 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.{{r|EJ}} The book was released as a book in 1875 under the title ''Seething Times: The Novel of the Last Polish Uprising''.<ref>{{cite book|first=Leonid|last=Katsis|chapter=Jewish Images in Russian Futurism: The Case of Aleksei Kruchenykh|pages=250|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=SDFBDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA250|title=International Yearbook of Futurism Studies|volume=6|date=2016|editor-last=Berghaus | editor-first=Günter|isbn=978-3-11-046595-2| oclc=953629084| publisher=De Gruyter | location=Berlin}}</ref>
===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.{{r|trouble}}<ref name=moss>{{cite journal | last=Moss | first=Kenneth B. | title=At Home in Late Imperial Russian Modernity—Except When They Weren't: New Histories of Russian and East European Jews, 1881–1914 | journal=The Journal of Modern History | publisher=University of Chicago Press | volume=84 | issue=2 | year=2012 | issn=0022-2801 | doi=10.1086/664733 | pages=401–452| s2cid=143255499 }}</ref> With the subsequent rapid growth in Polish anti-Semitism, Levanda began writing about the rebuilding of a Jewish state in Palestine.{{r|shrayer}} 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,"<ref>{{cite journal|first=Lev|last=Levanda|title=Sushchnost' tak nazyvaemogo 'palestinskogo' dvizheniia (pis'mo k izdateliam)|journal=Palestina: Sbornik Statei I Svedenii O Evreiskikh Poseleniiakh V Sviatoi Zemle|location=St. Petersburg|publisher=Tip. Lebedeva|year=1884|language=ru}}</ref> and in 1885 published an important reconsideration of the position of the Jews in Russia, entitled "On 'Assimilation'".{{r|klier}}
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.{{r|efron}} He died there less than a year later.{{r|KYE}}
==Reception and legacy== Although a popular writer, contemporary critics considered Levanda untalented and unrefined.{{r|hetenyi|page=63–65}}<ref>{{cite journal|title=Split in Two or Doubled?|first=Zsuzsa|last=Hetènyi|url=http://jewishstudies.ceu.edu/sites/jewishstudies.ceu.edu/files/attachment/basicpage/70/02hetenyi.pdf|publisher=Central European University|volume=2|journal=Yearbook|date=2000|page=6}}</ref>
An elegy in Levanda's memory, in Yiddish and Russian with accompaniment on the piano, was published in Vilna upon his death.<ref>{{cite book|language=yi,ru|script-title=yi:טרויער געדיכט: איבער דעם טויט פון ר׳ יהודא ליב לעוואנדא|publisher=A. G. Syrkin|location=Vilna|date=1888}}</ref>
==Partial bibliography== {{div col}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Депо бакалейных товаровъ: картины еврейского быта|trans-title=The Warehouse of Groceries: Pictures of the Jewish Life|date=1869|location=Vilna|publisher=Romm|language=ru|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH002298469/NLI}} * {{cite book|script-title=yi:ר׳ שלומעלע: דער פער פון דער קהלה נ׳|trans-title=Mr. Shlomele|date=1870|location=Vilna|publisher=Romm|language=yi|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH002143607/NLI}} * {{cite book|script-title=he:המרכלת: אוצר מרכלת מגרים; או, תמונת היהדות|trans-title=The Gossip|date=1874|location=Odessa|publisher=Olrikh et Shultse|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hwmnha|language=he}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Польный хронологический сборник законов и положений касающихся Евреев|trans-title=Complete Chronological Collection of Laws and Regulations Concerning Jews|location=St. Petersburg|language=ru|publisher=K. V. Trubnikova|date=1874}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Горячее время: роман из послѣдняго польскаго возстанія|trans-title=Hot Times|date=1875|location=St. Peterburg|publisher=A. E. Landau|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433067027775|language=ru}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Очерки прошлаго|trans-title=Sketches of the Past|date=1875|language=ru|location=St. Petersburg|publisher=A. E. Landau|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.d0006228167}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Мировоззрение талмудистов: свод религиозно-нравственных поучений в выдержках из главнейших книг раввинской письменности|trans-title=The Talmudic Worldview|date=1994|location=Moscow|publisher=Ladomir|orig-year=1876|language=ru}} (With S. J. Fuenn and Kh. L. Katsenelenbogen.) * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Виленская жизнь: фельетонные этюды|trans-title=Vilna Life|date=1878|location=Vilna|publisher=A. G. Syrkin|language=ru|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH002298468/NLI}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru: Исповѣдь дѣльца: роман в 2-х частях|trans-title=Confessions of a Lover: A Novel in 2 Parts|date=1880|location=St. Petersburg|publisher=Tuzov|language=ru|url=}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Большой ремизъ: романъ изъ коммерческой жизни евреевъ|trans-title=A Large Fine|date=1881|location=St. Petersburg|publisher=L. Berman and G. Rabinovich|language=ru|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH002298489/NLI}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Гнев и милость магната|trans-title=The Wrath and Mercy of the Tycoon|date=1885|location=|publisher=|language=ru|url=}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Авраамъ Іезофовичъ: историческая повѣсть первой половины XVI вѣка|trans-title=Avraam Yosefovich|date=1887|language=ru}} * {{cite book|script-title=ru:Скромныя бесѣды о прошлогоднемъ снѣгѣ: О томъ, какъ гора родила мышь|trans-title=Modest Talk About Last Year's Dream|date=1894|location=Ekaterinoslav|publisher=Pechatnya Shparbera|language=ru|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH002298484/NLI}} * {{cite book|script-title=he:אברהם בן יוסף|trans-title=Abraham ben Joseph|date=1901|location=Warsaw|publisher=Toshiyah|language=he|url=https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001967695/NLI}} * {{cite book|script-title=he:עיר ובהלות: ספור מחיי אחינו במדינת ליטה במאה העברה|trans-title=City and Panic|date=1903|location=Warsaw|publisher=B. Tursh|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.a0001310341|language=he}} * {{cite book|script-title=yi:אין שטורם: ראָמאַן|trans-title=In Turbulent Times|date=1912|location=Warsaw|publisher=Tsentral|language=yi|url=https://archive.org/details/nybc204610}} * {{cite book|script-title=yi:אַ גרויסער רעמיז: ראָמאַן|trans-title=A Large Fine|date=1914|location=Warsaw|publisher=Tsentral|language=yi|url=https://archive.org/details/nybc204015/ |title=A groyser remiz roman }} * {{cite book|script-title=yi:דער פוילישער מאגנאט|trans-title=The Polish Magnate|date=1923|location=Warsaw|publisher=Tsentral|language=yi|url=https://archive.org/details/nybc203415}} {{div col end}}
==References== {{Jewish Encyclopedia|article=Levanda, Lev Osipovitch|url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9793-levanda-lev-osipovitch|first1=Herman|last1=Rosenthal|first2=J. G.|last2=Lipman|volume=8|pages=17–18}} {{Reflist|refs= <ref name=trouble>{{cite book|first=Brian|last=Horowitz|chapter=Russian-Jewish Writers Face Pogroms, 1881–1917|title=Times of Trouble: Violence in Russian Literature and Culture|page=148|editor-first=Marcus C.|editor-last=Levitt|editor2-first=Tatyana|editor2-last=Novikov| year=2007 |publisher=Univ of Wisconsin Press | isbn=978-0-299-22430-1 | chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0oThfxDIEBYC&pg=PA148}}</ref> <ref name=JE>{{Jewish Encyclopedia|article=Levanda, Lev Osipovitch|url=http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/9793-levanda-lev-osipovitch|first1=Herman|last1=Rosenthal|first2=J. G.|last2=Lipman|volume=8|pages=17–18|no-prescript=1}}</ref> <ref name=efron>{{cite JEBE|wstitle=Леванда, Лев Осипович|trans-title=Levanda, Lev Osipovitch|pages=59–63|volume=10}}</ref> <ref name=KYE>{{cite encyclopedia|script-title=ru: Левáнда, Лев Осипович|encyclopedia=Shorter Jewish Encyclopedia|volume=4|language=ru|pages=712–714|date=1988|url=https://eleven.co.il/jewish-literature/in-russian/12346/|location=Jerusalem|trans-title=Levanda, Lev Osipovitch}}</ref> }}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Levanda, Lev}} Category:1835 births Category:1888 deaths Category:19th-century novelists from the Russian Empire Category:Hovevei Zion Category:Jewish educators Category:Jewish Russian writers Category:20th-century Lithuanian Jews Category:People with mood disorders Category:Russian historical novelists Category:Russian male novelists Category:Russian nationalists Category:Russian Zionists Category:Vilna Rabbinical School alumni Category:Writers from Minsk Category:Writers from Vilnius Category:Yiddish-language writers Category:19th-century Jews from the Russian Empire Category:Jewish novelists