"The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula and the Steel Flea" (Russian: Сказ о тульском косом Левше и о стальной блохе, Skaz o Tulskom kosom Levshe i o stalnoy Blokhe),[1] The Tale of the Crosseyed Lefthander from Tula and the Steel Flea or simply Levsha (Russian: Левша, left-handed), variously translated as The Lefthander, Lefty, The Steel Flea or The Left-handed Craftsman is a well-known 1881 skaz (story) by Nikolai Leskov.

Styled as a folk tale, it tells a story of a left-handed arms craftsman from Tula (traditionally a center of the Russian armaments industry) who outperformed his English colleagues by providing a clockwork steel flea they'd made with horseshoes and inscriptions on them.

Platov keeps insisting that things in Russia are much better (embarrassing a guide at one point when he finds something that appears well made that turns out to be a Russian gun), until they are shown a small mechanical flea.

The sailor is treated well, but the authorities finding no identification on Lefty and believing him to be a common drunkard, send him off to die in a hospital for unknowns.

Leskov retorted that there was nothing of the kind, and the only thing known is a quip "The English made a flea of steel, and our Tula people shod it and sent it back to them".

[2] The language of the story is unique; Leskov coined many folk-flavored neologisms and colloquialisms (many of them being replacements of borrowed non-Slavic words, very funny and natural).

In order to maximize the ballet's patriotic message, the story was changed so that the flea keeps its leap and Lefty survives to return home to a love interest.