Lev Ozerov (russian: Лев Адольфович Озеров) (August 10/23, 1914 – March 18, 1996) was a Russian-Jewish poet, translator and essayist born in

Kiev Kyiv, also spelled Kiev, is the capital and most populous city of Ukraine. It is in north-central Ukraine along the Dnieper, Dnieper River. As of 1 January 2021, its population was 2,962,180, making Kyiv the List of European cities by populat ...

. Ozerov was the professor of Literary Translation at the Literary Institute until his death. He was one of the first Jewish authors who wrote poems about Babi Yar along with

Liudmila Titova Liudmila Titova ( uk, Людмила Титова, russian: Людмила Титова) was a Jewish-Ukrainian poet from Kiev, wife of the poet Ivan Yelagin (Іван Єлагін) also from Kiev, whom she had first met as a schoolgirl. Her fam ...

and Leonid Pervomayskiy. He visited that place of martyrology of Ukrainian Jews in Kiev immediately after the liberation. His famous epic "Babi Yar" first appeared in the '' Октябрь'' (''October'') ( ru) magazine March–April 1946 issue.Original in Russian by Lev Ozerov (''Oktyabr'' 3/4, 1946: pp. 160-163): "Фашисты и полицаи Стоят у каждого дома, у каждого палисада. Назад повернуть — не думай" ''From the following stanza:'' "Фашист ударил лопатой упрямо. Земля стала мокрой," (Maxim D. Shrayer, 2010.) Ozerov served as poetry editor of ''October'' (''Октябрь'') magazine in 1946–1948, one of the more important literary publications at the time. Originally Ozerov published under his own name Leo Goldberg, as well as pen-names Leo Berg and L Kornev. He wrote several books and numerous articles on Russian and Ukrainian poetry including on Anna Akhmatova among others. His "Poems of Anna Akhmatova" article published on June 23, 1959 in the ''

Literaturnaya Gazeta ''Literaturnaya Gazeta'' (russian: «Литературная Газета», ''Literary Gazette'') is a weekly cultural and political newspaper published in Russia and the Soviet Union. It was published for two periods in the 19th century, and ...

'', was the first review of her poetry after years of silence. Ozerov did much to preserve the creative heritage of poets of his own generation who perished in the years of Stalinist repressions. He died in Moscow. A first English edition of Ozerov's ''Portrait Without Frames'' (''Портреты без рам'', 1999), edited by '' Robert Chandler'' and Boris Dralyuk, was published by '' Granta'' in November 2018, and by '' New York Review Books'' in December 2018.

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ozerov, Lev Jewish Ukrainian poets 1914 births 1996 deaths Soviet literary historians Soviet male writers 20th-century Russian male writers 20th-century Russian poets Moscow State University alumni