Lev Zalmanovich (Zinovyevich) Kopelev (Russian: Лев Залма́нович (Зино́вьевич) Ко́пелев, German: Lew Sinowjewitsch Kopelew, 9 April 1912 – 18 June 1997) was a Soviet author and dissident.

While a student at Kharkiv State University's philosophy faculty, Kopelev began writing in Russian and Ukrainian languages; some of his articles were published in the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper.

An idealist communist and active party member, he was first arrested in March 1929 for "consorting with the Bukharinist and Trotskyist opposition," and spent ten days in prison.

Still an optimist and believer in the ideals of communism, during the Khrushchev Thaw he restored his Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) membership.

It was Kopelev who approached Aleksandr Tvardovsky, editor of the top Soviet literary journal, the Novy Mir (New World) to urge publication of Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.

In 1968 he was fired from his job and expelled from the CPSU and the Writers' Union for signing protest letters against the persecution of dissidents, publicly supporting Andrei Sinyavsky and Yuli Daniel and actively denouncing the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia.