Current Problems, Covered Up: Drugs, Disease, and Slavery

After the fall of the USSR, the former nations of the Soviet bloc fell into economic crisis.  The Russian and Turkish mafia infiltrated Odessa's underground, and got rich in the worst ways while the economy suffered still.  These practices still go on today-- criminality seems to be entrenched into the classic Odessa way of life, but in current times things are a bit more sinister than Isaac Babel described.

With access to Turkey and its closeness to the rest of Europe, Odessa is an international human trafficking hub.  Women and orphans from Odessa or even poorer areas like rural Moldova travel to the city to find good jobs abroad, and are promised them by traffickers before their passports are taken away and they are sold into slavery or work as prostitutes within the city.

Building on this issue is the HIV/AIDS epidemic that began in Odessa in 1987 and has spread to the rest of Ukraine.  The epidemic is still plaguing the city, and it's estimated that about 150,000 people in Odessa are infected with HIV/AIDS, stemming from the prostitution industry and closely connected drug culture. The population goes unchecked because those with a confirmed virus are labeled the "dregs of society" and treated as lepers.  They are fired from their jobs, or, in the case of children born with the disease, are not allowed in school.  Many were booted from their homes and live in old tuberculosariums, unable to afford medications to stave off the disease.

Another group heavily affected by the drug culture and HIV/AIDS are Odessa's street children, children who came to the city for money, fled alcoholic parents or are orphans, and live in the sewers and sometimes the very same catacombs that housed the WWII partisans.  Most are addicted to an injectable homemade amphetamine nicknamed "Boltushka", which can cause immediate paralysis, death, and encephalitic shock.  Many drug users are as young as 12.

Still today, many real-life issues and crises are covered up by the tourist vision of Odessa as the premier vacation destination for much of eastern Europe, a type of myth-making that hasn't changed since its inception.  Whether the problems are literally underground or only figuratively, they are real, and like the resilience of the partisans, or of the legacy of Jewish life in Odessa, will likely never go away.

Sources:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/jul/02/odessa-ukraine-sex-trafficking-investigation

http://www.aids-ukraine.com/odessa/odessa_e/tb_hospital.html

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18976896

Pop culture, Brezhnev, the Black Market, and the new economic boom.

Due to the popularity of Mark Bernes and Odessa's new Hero City status, after the second world war, it became a major tourist destination for Communist officials and their families.

However, in the era of Brezhnev, the city welcomed new vacationers, as well as made a new home for criminals that had nothing to do with Benya Krik's Moldavanka.  Krushchev's reforms tanked the economy, and under Brezhnev, the black market created a special privileged class of people who could afford to buy blue jeans and consumer goods.  And they came in through that same port.

Sailors were given their wages to spend when they made port around the world, and when they returned to Odessa they could sell their western goods at top dollar.  This was the beginning of Odessa being a black market hub, a claim to fame that would only get worse after the fall of the USSR.

Tourism poster, 1910-1960's (Flickr)

Mark Bernes and the Hero City Myth

In wartime and in post-war Soviet film, one man made a name for himself portraying an Odessan and portraying him as a hero.  That man was Mark Bernes, the first great Soviet Star and the possible creator of what I like to call, the Odessa "Hero Myth".

Bernes (who was of Jewish ancestry) became famous for his character Arkady Dzubin, first in the 1943 movie "Two Soldiers".  He spent time with troops in military hospitals who were native to Odessa, and picked up that their dialect seemed quite lazy and was accompanied by much shoulder shrugging and lip pursing.  He created an archetype for "the Odessan", a vaguely jewish, musical, easy-going person who could calm his brothers with humor and then rise to any bravery needed.

In "Two Soldiers" he distracts a woman from a bombing raid by singing an ironic song about a fisherman, Konstantin, and his wife Sonya: "Shalandy Polnye Kefali":

Perhaps his most famous song as the Odessan Arkady Dzubin was "Dark Night", which became the unofficial anthem for Soviet citizens and soldiers barely surviving World War Two.  The song is about a soldier who believes no harm can come to him as long as his wife and new baby still wait for him.

"Dark night, only bullets whistling over the steppe,
Only the wind humming in the woods, dim stars twinkle.
In the dark night, darling, I know, I'm not sleeping,
And in the crib, you secretly wipe away a tear.

How I love the depth of your gentle eyes,
How do I want him to press my lips against you!
Dark Night divides us, my love,
And a disturbing, black steppe lie between us.

I believe in you
In my sweetheart,
This belief is the bullet
Dark night ...
Happily me
I am confident in mortal combat:
I know you will meet with my love
To me no matter what.

Death is not terrible.
With time it's time to meet.
Here and now
She whirls on me.
You got me waiting
And the cradle,
And so, I know, with me
Nothing will happen!"

I believe that with the influence of pop culture and Mark Bernes' character and created archetype, a myth was created that the people of Odessa were as resilient as those during the siege of Leningrad, when in reality, they played along as much as they could to stay alive.  

King, Charles. Odessa: Genius And Death In A City Of Dreams. New York: W.W. 
     Norton & Company, Inc., 2011. N. pag. Amazon Kindle. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.

Catacombs

In the Second World War, the limestone tunnels quarried by Richelieu and Vorontsov's builders, connected to old catacombs, were used as home base and transport for groups of partisans fighting against the Romanians.

Today, if a house slightly sinks or a pet goes missing, it is always blamed on the catacombs, which run over 2,500 kilometers-- it's only 2,138 km from Odessa to Paris-- and possibly more, they are not fully explored.

Because of this, the different partisan groups never connected with each other, but were effective at setting off small bombs in Romanian buildings and thwarting daily plans.  The Romanians soon caught on and sealed, gassed, or fire-bombed the entrances.  Malaria and malnutrition was rampant in the tunnels, but despite that, they more or less stayed underground until the war was over.  

Recreated Partisan hideout

Flooded!

Nowadays it is more likely to find a stash of smuggled drugs, a pet, or lost tourist than partisan rebels.  

However, the question I pose is, if Odessa's citizens seemed complacent during the war, and the partisans could never do much, why was it one of the four founding Soviet Hero cities? The answer has to do with created myths, yet again. 

Sources (photos and information):

http://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g295368-d2334352-Reviews-Wild_Odessa_Catacombs_Tour-Odessa_Odessa_Oblast.html

http://whatsupkuwait.com/2010/09/27/odessa-catacombs/

1941 and the Romanian Occupation

When Hitler's army invaded Russia through the Pale in October 1941, the people of Odessa were given options: to leave, or stay.  Most stayed, as leaving meant surrendering their apartment or house to their neighbors (soviet space was notoriously crowded) as well as their belongings for an uncertain future in a refugee settlement.  In addition, most people living in Odessa were not aware that Stalin and Hitler were no longer non-agression friends, or what even Hitler was doing in his own country.  A Life under Stalin wasn't the best either (about 20,000 Odessans were arrested out of Stalin's paranoia and sent to gulags, one-third were shot), so one could say that the people might have welcomed the change.  Besides, after a two-month siege, the Red Army abandoned the city, evacuated who they could, and left the rest of the citizens at the hands of the Romanians, who saw the occupation as taking revenge for  the soviets taking "their" Bessarabia in WWI.

(Wikipedia)

Then the Einsatzgruppen D rushed the city, shooting any Jews they could find.  After that, control of the city was given over to the Romanians, who had joined with the Axis powers, and wanted to prove itself to them.  Jews were concentrated in Odessa from neighboring towns and either killed or placed into camps in Transnistria, west of Odessa and now a part of Moldova (it's also currently an old-school communist illegal state, but that subject would be too short for a blog) where more people died from sickness from the unsanitary conditions than gun-murder.

Ukrainian Jews Registering with Romanian Authorities (US Holocaust Memorial Museum)

It was easy to hide from the disorganized Romanian forces, led by general Ion Antonescu if one had hidden in the initial searches, and once hid, it was best to stay that way-- Romanian tactics were especially brutal, in an attempt to impress the German army.  Exterminations were carried out by gathering groups of Jews and suspected communists and taking a flamethrower to the crowd.  In a message that was ordered to be burned (a testament to the disorganization of Antonescu's army), Antonescu wrote:

"1. Execution of all Jews from Bessarabia [Moldova/Transnistria] who have sought refuge in Odessa.

"2. All individuals who fall under the stipulations of October 23, 1941 [ordering the killing of 'Communists'], not yet executed and the others who can be added thereto will be placed inside a building that will be mined and detonated.  This action will take place on the day of the burial of the victims [of the bombing of Romanian headquarters attributed to Odessans].

"3. This order will be destroyed after being read"

(Charles King)

The exact figure is unclear, but it is estimated that a total of 300,000 Jews, not including suspected communists, were killed by Antonescu's army.  The people of Odessa were surprisingly complacent, considering Jewish people comprised over 1/3 of the population, their friends and neighbors.  Citizens actually unknowingly cause more trouble for the Romanians when they sent in tips about possible Jews and Communists: they were so used to ratting out everyone under Stalin, they would send in letters saying something akin to "my neighbor's apartment is very messy, and he reads too much, because of this I think he is a communist", just to get their neighbor's space, and caused bureaucratic stall in the Romanian army.    Not admitting this complacency contributes to Ukraine being barred out of the EU (among other serious problems).

Romanian stamps commemorating the conquest of Odessa and the "crusade against Bolshevism" (Wikipedia)

That is not to say that Odessans did not fight back.  The next entry will detail the struggle of the catacomb partisans.

King, Charles. Odessa: Genius And Death In A City Of Dreams. New York: W.W. 
     Norton & Company, Inc., 2011. N. pag. Amazon Kindle. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.

1905

1905 was both a great and terrible year for Odessa.

In the 1850s, there had been a few fights between Greek Orthodox Christians and Odessa Jews arising from accusations of conspiracy, ranging from messing with the grain trade to assisting in the repression of the greek's revolution.  None of that could compare to the violence of 1905, after peasants had fled into the city, tripling the population and threatening the economy where Jews were finally fairly confident that they were assimilated.  They made up most of the high level positions and merchants, while peasants and christians made up the working class.  When those peasants couldn't find jobs, they turned on the Jewish business owners, the only public and prominent representations of the large grain industry and merchants in general.

"When Carters had a sick cow, when petty traders haggled over the price of a bolt of imported cloth, and when working men sought to combat the winter chill with a bottle of vodka, they were in intimate interaction with their Jewish neighbors.  But in a context of rising Russian nationalism and the state's growing fear of political subversives, this familiarity bred the opposite of fellow-feeling.  'The common remark therefore is that 'Everything is in the hands of the Jews,' the US consul reported to Washington" (King).  

This hatred and resentment fermented for decades, resulting in the bloodiest pogrom in Russian History.  Disgruntled workers clashed with innocent women and children as well as self-defense organizations, in the end causing 1,273 deaths and changing the political, economical, and social structure of Odessa forever.

Victims of the 1905 pogrom.

The workers were not just attacking Jews, but the establishment itself, as 1905 was also the time of the arrival of the mutinied Battleship Potemkin.  Its docking in the Odessa harbor spurred on the landlocked revolutionaries, but it could only throw a few bombs into the city before moving on to Romania in defeat.  Unlike Eisenstein's brilliant work of propaganda, Battleship Potemkin, a massacre occurred in the city at the hands of the Tsar's police, but it didn't take place on the Richelieu steps, rather, it took place around the entire city, and that year, it was chaos.   Eisenstein's movie elevated the incident from being like many of the other insurrections across the empire into an iconic event that spurred the Russian revolution.

None of that violence would compare to the German/Romanian occupation in less than 30 years.

King, Charles. Odessa: Genius And Death In A City Of Dreams. New York: W.W. 
     Norton & Company, Inc., 2011. N. pag. Amazon Kindle. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.
Photo from: http://www.friends-partners.org/partners/beyond-the-pale/eng_captions/42-5.html

Mythmakers and Shakers of Jewish Odessa

By far the largest and most believed myth of Odessa covers up the truth of the Sdcond World War.  Before that, however, writers and philosophers of jewish descent created a myth of Moldavanka and Jewish Odessa that was surprisingly truthful, from the streets of Moldavanka to the upper class.

Possibly the most famous perpetrator of this myth is the writer Isaac Babel.  Born in Odessa in 1894, he was deeply influenced by the pogrom of 1905 (next entry) and he carried that for the rest of his life, and translated it into his stories.  His writing was one of the catalysts for turning the meek, Shtetl Jew into a person unafraid to stand up for himself and others, mostly based on the reality he saw in Odessa.  His most famous work, a collection of stories about characters in the back alleys of Moldavanka, called Odessa Tales is a testament to the changing Jewish identity in Eastern Europe, in response to many tsar-sanctioned pogroms.  Jewish self-defense groups were forming, especially in Odessa.

So it's no surprise that Babel's most used character, Benya Krik, is a tough Jewish gangster from Moldavanka who is both smart and strong, and at the same time a very Robin Hood-like character.  Babel used him frequently to criticize the Stalin Regime, as Krik in one story was drafted into a Bolshevik division, and the Bolshevik's plan falls apart.

Krik was was based nearly entirely on the real king of the Odessa criminal world, Mishka Yaponchik ("Mike the Jap") Vinnitsky.
Babel was eventually sent to Siberia, where his family believes he was killed, in 1939.

(Photo of Benya Krik, from the 1925 movie adaption of Babel's play "The King", immediately banned in the Ukrainian SSR because of its blatant anti-bolshevism)

Vladimir Jabotinsky shed light on the lives of the wealthy Jewish Community in Odessa with his novel (which is just now being considered a true russian novel, rather than a jewish novel) The Five, about five wealthy Jewish siblings who meet terrible fates in a city they thought they were welcome in.  I was going to read the entire book for this entry, however the shipping of the book came about two weeks late.  There were some quotes that stood out, to show how much the wealthy Maskilim Jews had to distance themselves from their own culture, and where the rest of the Empire drew the fine line between "Jew" and "Human".  "'It's a pity people are still going on about religion: One's a Russian, another's a Jew.  What difference does it make?  There should be a common soul, just like you and I have.  Then again, there's X-- now that's different: he has a Jewish soul, a filthy soul...'" (Jabotinsky 16).

Eventually Jabotinsky became more infamous than famous.  Originally a cultural Zionist, he changed his first name to the Hevrew Ze'ev, and became Militant, starting a jewish youth military group in Palestine.  

In contrast, Asher Ginsberg was born near Kiev in 1856, while in Odessa he changed his name to Ahad Ha'am and became the father of Cultural Zionism, which advocated a language and culture revitalization rather than occupying Palestine.  

Lastly, one more person whom Odessa left its mark on was a young Lev Bronstein, a Jewish student attending a lycee there while living with his uncle.  While in school, he was deeply troubled by the deep social class divisions between his classmates, who should not have been worrying about status at all, as children.  He took that startling experience with him where it influenced his political philosophy years later and went on to become Leon Trotsky.  

Sources:

Jabotinsky, Vladimir. The Five. Trans. Michael R. Katz. 1936. Ithaca: Cornell
     University Press, 2005. Print.

King, Charles. Odessa: Genius And Death In A City Of Dreams. New York: W.W.
     Norton & Company, Inc., 2011. N. pag. Amazon Kindle. Web. 4 Apr. 2012.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/RUSbabel.htm