An Amateur Performance (Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s)

An Amateur 
Performance 
(Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s)
Lev Levanda

Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and Their Legacy
Series Editor: Maxim D. Shrayer (Boston College)
Editorial Board:
Karel Berkhoff (NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) 
Jeremy Hicks (Queen Mary University of London)
Brian Horowitz (Tulane University)
Luba Jurgenson (Universite ParisIV—Sorbonne)
Roman Katsman (Bar-Ilan University)
Dov-Ber Kerler (Indiana University)
Vladimir Khazan (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Alice Nakhimovsky (Colgate University)
Antony Polonsky (Brandeis University)
Jonathan D. Sarna (Brandeis University)
David Shneer (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Anna Shternshis (University of Toronto)
Leona Toker (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Mark Tolts (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

B O S T O N
2 0 2 2
E d i t e d  b y 
B r i a n  H o r o w i t z
Translated by Hugh McLean, 
with Conor Daly
An Amateur 
Performance 
(Reminiscences of a Student in the 1850s)
Lev Levanda

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Levanda, L. O. (Lev Osipovich), 1835-1888, author. | Horowitz, 
   Brian, editor. | McLean, Hugh, translator. | Daly, Conor, translator.  
Title: An amateur performance : (reminiscences of a student in the 1850s) / 
   Lev Levanda ; edited by Brian Horowitz ; translated by Hugh McLean, 
   with Conor Daly.  
Other titles: Jews of Russia & Eastern Europe and their legacy.  
Description: Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2022. | Series: Jews of Russia & 
   Eastern Europe and their legacy | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022029731 (print) | LCCN 2022029732 (ebook) |  
   ISBN 9798887190174 (hardback) | ISBN 9798887190181 (adobe pdf) |  
   ISBN 9798887190198 (epub)  
Subjects: LCSH: Jews—Russia—Fiction. 
Classification: LCC PG3467.L435 A83 2022  (print) | LCC PG3467.L435 (ebook) |
   DDC 891.73/3--dc23/eng/20220815 
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029731
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022029732
Copyright © 2022 Academic Studies Press
All rights reserved
ISBN 9798887190174 (hardback)
ISBN 9798887191010 (paperback)
ISBN 9798887190181 (adobe pdf)
ISBN 9798887190198 (epub)
Cover design by Ivan Grave
Book design by Tatiana Vernikov
Published by Academic Studies Press
1577 Beacon St.
Brookline, MA 02446
press@academicstudiespress.com
www.academicstudiespress.com

Contents
6
8
12
51
113 
	
116

Acknowledgements
I am deeply grateful to Hugh McLean, Berkeley Slavist and brilliant wordsmith 
and literary scholar, who was willing to render the story into English, as well as 
produce sensitive notes to aid the modern reader. I am grateful to Mr. Conor 
Daly of Dublin, who stepped in to edit the translation and complete Hugh’s 
effort. I am also grateful to William Craft Brumfield, mentor, friend, and colleague, the author of the preface here. I want to acknowledge the reader of this 
project, Alice Nakhimovsky; Maxim D. Shrayer, editor of the book series Jews of 
Russian and Eastern Europe, and Alessandra Anzani, editorial director, both at 
Academic Studies Press, with all their staff; as well as the staff at Indiana University Press, which has permitted me to use my 2020 article that appeared in Prooftexts. I also want to acknowledge help finding photographs of Levanda from 
Lyudmila Sholokhova and Zachary Rothbart.
I want to acknowledge the generous help that I received for this and other 
projects from my Doktorvater Dr. Hugh McLean and his wife Katherine (Kitty), 
who were close friends and whom I miss deeply. I also want to recognize the 
University of California, Berkeley, where I first fell upon Russian Jewish literature and started off on a path that still unfolds before me in my seventh decade 
of life. 
On the Translation
Very few of Levanda’s works have ever been made available in any language other than Russian (with the exception of Maxim Shrayer’s translations) and I do 
not have any significant explanation for having chosen this story for translation 
except that it’s a charming slice of life that gives a rich portrait of Jewish intellectuals in Russia at the end of Nicholas I’s reign. 
On the Translator
Hugh McLean (1925-2017) was professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures 
at the University of California, Berkeley. He was a polymath and brilliant linguist and literary scholar. For additional info, see the article about his career: 
http://slavic.berkeley.edu/people/hugh-mclean/

A c k n o w l e d g e m e n t s
On the Translation Editor
Mr. Conor Daly teaches in the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at 
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He got his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1994. 
His translations have been published widely.
On the Scholar and Book Editor
Professor Brian Horowitz is the author of six books, including Vladimir Jabotinsky’s Russian Years (2020), The Russian-Jewish Tradition (2017), Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia (2009), Empire Jews (2009), and 
Russian Idea—Jewish Presence (2013). He has won numerous scholarly awards 
and grants. He received his PhD from UC Berkeley in 1993. He holds the Sizeler 
Family Chair and is a professor of Jewish Studies at Tulane University in New 
Orleans. 
On the Writer of Our Preface
Professor William Brumfield is a Sizeler Professor in Jewish Studies and German and Slavic Studies at Tulane University. He is the leading specialist on Russian architecture worldwide. He studied with Hugh McLean, receiving his PhD 
from UC Berkeley in 1973.
—Brian Horowitz

Preface
William Craft Brumfield
It is a pleasure to write the preface for this book by, and about, Lev Levanda—
the most important Jewish writer in the Russian language between 1860 and 
1887, the author of novels and editorials about the fate and future of Russia’s 
multimillion-strong Jewish population. I would like to mention important 
details that illuminate the book’s genesis and goals. But first, let me say a few 
words in praise of Brian Horowitz, the editor of this volume and my colleague at 
Tulane University.
Horowitz did his doctoral work at the University of California, Berkeley, 
and I can say without exaggeration that he developed the previously nonexistent field of Russian Jewish culture. When Brian was at Berkeley in the 1980s, 
there was little recognition of Russian Jewish literature as a legitimate field. Russian scholarship in the field had ended in the late 1930s, when the Communist 
authorities prevented scholars from publishing on, and gaining academic promotion through, Jewish subjects. Archives remained shut, and there were no 
relevant courses or institutions in Russia. The brilliant émigré generation of the 
interwar period had passed away, and the study of Russian Jewish literature was 
relegated primarily to religious seminaries. Professional writers knew the work 
of Isaac Babel and little else. In short, Russian Jewish culture was not a promising subject for a budding scholar.
Fortunately, Horowitz realized that the generational break and the absence 
of recent scholarship offered a chance to right a historical injustice and rejoin 
Russian Jewry to Jewish history. Trained as a Slavist, he understood that Russian 
Jewish culture was sui generis, profoundly enriched in the nineteenth century 
by the Golden Age of Russian literature (Pushkin, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov). Horowitz deserves great credit for his discoveries, which underly numerous articles and books such as Empire Jews, Jewish Philanthropy and Education 
in Late-Tsarist Russia, Russian Idea—Jewish Presence, and The Russian Jewish 
Tradition. These publications represent the development of an entire field of 
study. For example, the book before us emerged from Horowitz’s plan to compile translations of Russian Jewish stories for a large volume that would lead to 
extensive translations of Levanda’s work. Although that idea did not materialize, 

P r e f a c e
it led to the translation of the present story with an incisive introduction that 
brings Levanda to an English-speaking audience. 
In 1995, Shimon Markish, a leading scholar of Russian Jewish literature, 
wrote an essay entitled “Is It Worthwhile to Reread Lev Levanda?” This question remains. Levanda dealt with existential problems facing Russia’s Jewish 
population: modernization, economic dislocation, violence, and, especially, 
russification—the idea that Jews needed to integrate into Russian society, learn 
the language, and appreciate and contribute to its culture, as Levanda had done 
through his writing. Before the pogroms of the early 1880s, Levanda had shown 
positive aspects of russification. His literary characters were types who embodied the goals of contented Jewish citizens of Russia: the young intellectual, 
kind-hearted parents, budding musicians, and generous entrepreneurs. He also 
warned against the sacrifice of ideals for the sake of money. Levanda was seen to 
embody this ideal synthesis and he advocated for it: he was a Jew who was fully 
Jewish and fully Russian, a person capable of discussing Talmud and Pushkin. 
To some extent, this ideal remains to the present. 
In the early 1990s Horowitz asked Hugh McLean to translate “An Amateur Performance.” McLean willingly accepted the offer, thus making his own 
contribution to Russian Jewish culture. Anyone who had the privilege of being 
a graduate student in the Slavic Department at Berkeley during the last third of 
the twentieth century and the beginning of this one can remember the pleasure 
of Hugh McLean’s company. I, for one, enrolled in or audited every course he 
offered during those hyperactive years of the quarter system in the late 1960s. 
It wasn’t simply that he was an outstanding teacher. Everyone in the Slavic Department was superb, at least in my experience. McLean entered a finely honed 
system for pedagogy and research, and he made it his own, amplifying the work 
of his distinguished colleagues.
I should emphasize the easy rapport that McLean and his fellow Slavicists 
had with the History Department (also in dear Dwinelle Hall), whose Russian 
specialists did so much to define the field in this country. And there was his role 
as a dissertation adviser—supportive, tactful, not interfering when there was no 
need. Hugh and his colleagues provided the aspiring scholar with intellectual 
space at a time when egos were fragile and self-doubt plentiful.
All of the above could be repeated by many who encountered McLean during graduate studies. But for me, the defining moment occurred in the departmental office one afternoon in the spring of 1970. I was checking my mailbox 
when Hugh came up, tapped me on the shoulder, and asked if I was interested in going to Russia in the summer. He explained that the summer institute 

W i l l i a m  C r a f t  B r u m f i e l d
William Brumfield at Dwinelle Plaza, June 1966. In background: Wheeler Hall 
and Campanile. Photograph courtesy of William Brumfield Collections.
Sproul Plaza meeting, fall 1967. In background: Sproul Hall. Photograph: William 
Brumfield. Courtesy of William Brumfield Collections.