SMOLENSKIN, PERETZ

(1840-85)

   Russian Hebrew novelist and editor. He was born in Monastyrshchina, in the province of Mohilev, Belorussia. He wandered for several years before settling in Odessa and later Vienna. In 1868 he founded in Vienna the journal Ha-Shahar, which served as a central organ of Hebrew literary activities and Jewish national thought. Ten years later he established the weekly Ha-Mabbit. He wrote numerous stories and romances about Eastern European Jewish life. His articles promoted a Jewish national theory opposed to religious Orthodoxy and the Haskalah. After the pogroms in Russia in 1881, he supported the Hibbat Zion movement.