Lev Ozerov was, in a number of ways, a typical Soviet Jewish man of letters. Born Lev Adol’fovich Gol’dberg in Kyiv, Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire) on 10 August 1914, he adopted a Russian-sounding pseudonym in the middle of the 1930s, a common practice among Soviet public figures of Jewish origin. Trained at the prestigious Moscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature, and History (MIFLI), he built an exceptionally productive career as a poet, translator, critic, editor and teacher. After the Second World War he was targeted in the anti-Semitic “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign, but won back the tolerance, if never quite the favour, of the authorities after Stalin’s death. Elements of this brief sketch can be mapped onto …
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Citation: Dralyuk, Boris. "Lev Ozerov". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 04 March 2016 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=13317, accessed 23 November 2024.]