Russian journalism in the 1860s called for radical change. Alexander II had become tsar and many people believed he would bring about a total transformation of the country. In 1861, he liberated 70 million serfs. Eagerly awaiting a Jewish liberation, educated Jews wanted to help speed the process. A small group that included Levanda, along with Abraham Kovner, and Reuven Kulisher, imitated the radical Russian writers in such newspapers as Otechestvennye Zapiski (Notes of the Fatherland). In Rassvet Levanda agitated against Jewish tradition and the old ways of doing things, all of which he labeled as “ignorance” and “backwardness.” In his article in Rassvet’s first issue, “Several Words on the Jews of Russia’s Western Province,”published on May 27, 1860, Levanda presented the sharpest criticism of Jewish life in print up to that time. Visiting Igumen, a small town like any other in Belarus, Levanda found nothing to praise; everything the Jews did was bad, their way of life displayed disease, immorality, and rot. His overall appraisal: “Oh my God, what poverty! What material and moral degradation!”¹

Not surprisingly, the people of the Belarussian region were infuriated by Levanda and stated in a letter to the editor that they were cancelling their subscriptions.² The feuilleton “Awakening” expresses Levanda’s response to them and to Rabinovitch, especially to his observations about the first year of Jewish journalism in Russia. The piece begins with a confession about the vocation of a journalist: “So if anyone was to ask me now ‘what is the easiest thing in the world and what is the hardest thing?’ instead of giving the classic answer I would answer as follows: ‘The easiest thing – by which I mean the lightest thing – is …down feathers (!) …and the hardest thing is to be an employee or a staff writer in any Jewish current affairs journal.’” Although he tried to make light of the first year of Rassvet, work on the paper proved to be a school of hard knocks for him. In “Awakening” Levanda discusses whether the writer should praise Jewish communal institutions, the Jewish way of life, or whether he/she should expose flaws with the aim of improvement. He notes that the journalist who aims to help brings immense anger upon his head. He sees newspapers and especially feuilletons as one of the ways to provoke change in society. The public, he notes, needs to change if only as a first step for new Jewish institutions to develop.

Despite everything, Levanda believed the Jewish people in Russia had awakened, but rather than awakening signaling the last step of transformation, it signified the first stage, perhaps the hardest stage: “Yes, we have awakened. We were asleep for a long time, and we slept soundly, because the sky outside was gloomy, the kind of weather that just makes you want to go to bed. But may God preserve even our worst enemy from the nightmares which afflicted us – the very thought of them is enough to make your hair stand on end and goose pimples quiver across your skin. It used to be that someone would wake up suddenly, rub his eyes and fling himself out of his uncomfortable bed and walk over to the doors and windows, just to breathe in some fresh air and lighten the feeling in his chest; but – alas! – he would find those doors and windows nailed firmly shut – there was no way out; nothing else to do but gasp for air along with everybody else in that dark, cramped, stuffy and smoke-filled little hut.” In other words, the way forward toward progress is hard and the others will not make your way easier because they too would prefer to rest rather than to get up and struggle. What would Russia’s Jews choose? Levanda would risk his career on a belief in the struggle, that Russian Jews would do what was necessary for equal rights and that sacrifice would be accepted by Russia. The pogroms of 1881-82 would prove him wrong; at least that is how he felt about the violence of the Summer Storms.