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Chapter 1 A Jewish Russifier in Despair: lev levanda's Polish Question Lev Levanda (1835-88) is commonly regarded as a leading advocate of the Russification of the Jews of the Russian empire, but in fact his ethnic attitudes were far more complex and conflicting than this stereotype allows. One of the sources of conflict were his ambivalent feelings about Poland and the Polesa people unwillingly subjected to Russian rule and, like the Jews, often the object of Russian state oppression. Levanda's writings on Poland (four novels, one historical study, and more than twenty short essays) appeared after and, I believe, in response to major defeats in his Russification program1 They constitute a kind of literary wishful thinking. Unable to attain the goal of equal rights for Jews in the Russia of his time, Levanda searched into the region's past to find moments of harmony and integration between Jews and non-Jews. At the same time, he had a high regard for Polish literary culture, which had informed his development as a writer. His "Polish" texts are part of a dialogue with his other writings , providing idealistic visions of a world he dreamed of creating but was unable to realize. Vilna, the capital of Lithuania, was Levanda's home for over 25 years; he lived there from 1859 until his death in 1888. In 1875 the city had a total population of 82,668, of which the 37,909 Jews comprised nearly 46 percent2 During the 1860s, Jews and certain non-Jews-mainly Lithuanian peasants, along with the smaller classes of Polish nobles and Russian administrators-were socially segregated. Contact was limited to business and administrative affairs . V. O. Harkavy, a Jewish intellectual, describes his experience as a youth in Vilna in the 1860s as follows: Jewish life was sheltered from the outside world and, thanks to the "ghetto," even physically. Of course, there were interactions between Christians and Jews in daily life, but they were often related to business , and, of course, were restricted to the public sphere by prefer1 Between 1879 and 1884, Levanda published over 20 articles on Jewish life in Poland with the title "Privislianskaia khronika" in the weekly newspaper Russkii evrei. 2 "Vilna," El1lsiklopedicheskii slovar', 82 vols. (St. Petersburg: Brokgauz-Efron, 18901905 ),6: 38l. For more on Vilna's Jewish life during this time, see Israel Cohen, Vill1a (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1943), 283-303. 14 EMPIRE JEWS ence. The Christian world appeared foreign and antagonistic, not so much because of the legal constraints upon us that emanated from it, but in particular because it threatened our spiritual world. Therefore, any novelty in dress or habits which came from that world seemed dangerous, and wearing German dress, a short frock, was considered a great sin and was permitted only to merchants who had business abroad and in Moscow3 In this environment, for Levanda to write in Russian in itself implied various political and literary transgressions, symbolizing a conscious alliance with Russian power and with the goal of Russifying the peoples of the territory. In addition, if a writer identified himself as Jewish but wrote in Russian, he was inevitably marking himself out as a proponent of secular knowledge and an enemy of Orthodox Jews. Thus, as can be imagined, during the Polish uprising of 1863, Levanda's views were considered dangerous; according to the historian Simon Dubnov they even drew death threats from "Polish spies.,,4 However, by the 1880s the image of Levanda is that of a harmless eccentric-the object of gossip. We have this picture from Mordechai (Max) Rivesman, at the time an aspiring young writer: While he was getting shaved, he talked to the men waiting in the queue. He spoke in Polish, Russian, and Yiddish. He spoke really excellent Polish, or so it seemed to me at the time. I already knew that he wrote a column in Vilenskii vestl1ik and that people considered him a heretic [apikoires] and even ... a Judophobe.... He earned that reputation after forcing the hero of his best novel, Goriachee vremia, to preach the need to destroy "the fig trees and vineyards" in order to "plant the seed of Russian enlightenment in their place."s Like his contemporaries, later readers perceived Levanda as an ardent proponent of Russification6 The Russification program in the northwest had begun in the 1840s, when the Russian government opened the first Russian-language schools. The state 3 V. O. Garkavi [Garkavy], OtnJvki vospominanii (SI. Petersburg: Tip...

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