"I'm makin' my way to Odessa,
'Cause in Odessa you can live it up.
No carryin' sacks of wheat,
No toilin' for the lord and master
No payin' the poll tax,
No trudgin' behind the plow...
They call me master now!"
-- Chumak (merchant) song
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
Odessa in the 19th century was a city completely without industry, and survived off of imports and exports that came through the port. This system relied on having a large number of middle-men, or petty bourgeoisie, known as the Meshchane-- one of the first things resembling a middle class to show up in Imperial Russia. They existed all around Europe, but in Odessa, a grain and trade boomtown, they were especially prevalent-- however if there was flooding or a drought, they would have to resort to becoming day laborers until the grain trade got back on its feet. In 1858, the Meshchane comprised nearly 70% of the population of Odessa.
In order to qualify as an unofficial member of the Meshchane and claim it as an estate, one had to make a certain amount of money. It was no low amount, and it should be a testament (negative or positive or just plain hilarious) that over half of the city's 607 prostitutes in 1892 made enough money to report that they were members of the Meshchane estate as well.
It was this social class, filled with middlemen, crooks, prostitutes and every kind of person that could make a hefty fortune in Odessa, that created one half of the city's reputation. The thieves of Odessa becoming Meshchane by their trade of stealing seems to be one of the first examples of economic upward mobility in the Empire. Crime was not on the down-low, but publicized and sensationalized heavily all across the empire. From St. Petersburg to Sakhalin people read the latest newspapers for stories of Odessa swindlers and prostitutes that blackmailed nobles for their entire fortunes after posing as noblewomen and then stealing everything of value in their estates.
The other half of Odessa's reputation comes from the Maskilim, the westernized Jews that flocked there and brought their culture with it. They were attracted by the never-before-seen opportunity: Jews faced less economic restrictions in Odessa, or at least the areas where they were allowed to work were areas that people got rich in. Jews could live anywhere in the city, as long as they had the money. Those a part of the Meshchane who didn't have the money to live near the nobles of the city resided in Moldavanka, first named for its large numbers of Moldovan and Romanian settlers, now and in the 19th century known for its Jewish population.
The Maskilim were Jews that had realized that the world was not going to change in an instant, and to escape as much prejudice as they could, they had to abandon the dark robes and hats and the shtetl villages. Maskilim Jews dressed, spoke, and acted like any other European, sent their children to normal schools, and practiced their religion subtly. That is not to say that they had completely abandoned their culture, but merely transformed it today into what we know as Yiddish culture.
Odessa was a particularly important place for Maskilim Jews, because of the opportunity, and because of the relatively low prejudice. When the plague struck some few decades before, the Administrator Richelieu ordered that the Jews were not to blame, in contrast to other plague outbreaks across europe, where Jewish people were sometimes first to be killed, even before sick animals. The Maskilim Jews brought their food, humor, and way of life to Odessa, and it has never left. Even after the Second World War, there was always a vague undertone of Yiddish speech and humor that has defined the city to this day.
Below is a sample of music that combines all of the elements of this entry. It is from a genre of music called "gulag chansons", Russian prison songs. It combines the lighthearted and humorous criminal culture with the tune akin to Jewish Klezmer music. Criminals, Jews, Prostitutes, Nobles, all mixed together in the city, and even today, it's not known as just Odessa by its inhabitants, but "Odessa Mama", a perfect place in the perfect location to give birth to a perfectly complex yet cohesive culture.
"I Remember Mother Odessa- Russian Criminal Song
(lyrics generously translated by my best friend, a Russian student :) 7:40 was the time that a certain train came to Odessa, and the train was known simply as "7:40")
I remember Mother Odessa,
I remember that refined lady,
I remember what was happening there.
I remember all the charlatains,
that climbed into my pockets.
I remember, because Mother Odessa gave birth to me.
There was dancing, dancing,
in sleeping Moldavanka,
it did not tremble when invaded [by people, large population].
And it wasn't afraid only of,
of those with naked bellies
Push and shove, push and shove,
well, you aren't on the Kiev tram.
Push and shove, push and shove,
well, you aren't on the Kiev tram.
You ask: where from,
7:40 -- isn't that a miracle?
I'll tell you how much and for what.
Then, in Odessa there was,
not comprehending, in the crowd.
Only one in Privoz [large food market in Odessa] was prevented.
7:40 all Odessa,
news awaits with interest,
7:40 will be broadcast to you!
In Odessa everyone should know everything.
Odessa will not act in vain!
Push and shove, push and shove,
well, you aren't on the Kiev tram.
Push and shove, push and shove,
well, you aren't on the Kiev tram.
7:40 all Odessa,
news awaits with interest,
7:40 will be broadcast to you!
In Odessa everyone should know everything.
Odessa will not act in vain!
Finally, a song in Yiddish, that I just came across and thought I should add to this. Here is a much better example of Klezmer tunes and Yiddish Odessa. Lyrics are from the Video description.
"Odessa Mama"
Aaron Lebedeff
Whoever has not been In the beautiful city of Odessa Has not seen the world And knows nothing of progress Who cares for Vienna of Paris, They're puddles, jokes, no comparison Only in Odessa is A Paradise, I say.
There in a restaurant They serve you beer And with it a bite Of fresh skrumbli Bashmala and balik And with them a shashlik With a good glass of wine - What could be better?
Oh, Mother Odessa, You're forever dear to me. Oh, Mother Odessa, How I long for thee! Oh, Mother Odessa, Who can forget you? Oh, Mother Odessa, I see you no more. Oh, Mother Odessa, I long for you and vow:
Your avenues, promenades Are light, beautiful. The cafes, the boulevards, One can never forget. The carriages, the gypsies, The tumult, ta-ra-ram, The hotels, the young ladies Still are on my mind.
Oh, Mother Odessa, You're forever dear to me. Oh, Mother Odessa, How I long for thee! Oh, Mother Odessa, Who can forget you? Oh, Mother Odessa, I long for you and vow:
Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, One cannot forget. Ay, ay, ay, ay, ay, How I should like to see you again! Hop tidl dam ti stidl didl dam ti.....
Oh, Odess-Odessa Mother, You are the most beautiful panorama; Everyone treasured you dearly. The cabarets, restaurants, You will still remember today Who knows what has become of you? Odessa, Odessa, I long for you!
King, Charles. Odessa: Genius And Death In A City Of Dreams. New York: W.W.
Vorontsov had reached Odessa when it was in an identity crisis, and he was no much the better. The city was overrun with peoples of every nationality-- armenian, turkish, german, french, moldovan, bulgarian, cossack, italian, russian, tatar, albanian, greek, and jewish (which becomes extremely important soon)-- who made no effort to assimilate.
"Through beautiful squares planted with trees and crossed with footpaths circulate the Turk, the Greek, the Russian, the Englishman, the Jew, the Armenian, the Frenchman, the Moldovan, the Pole, the Italian, and the German, most of them wearing the costume appropriate to each and speaking different tongues"
-(Comte de Lagarde, Voyage de Moscou a Vienne, found in the source listed under the entry)
Vorontsov himself had been educated and brought up in Cambridge, England, and had an affinity for all things British. So who better to suit this cultural conglomeration than a man who was cross-cultural himself? He was appointed governor-general, the new name given to the city administrator, and reigned fairly, but had a few problems in the system... most notably Alexander Pushkin, who Vorontsov himself had reason to keep watch over.
Alexander Pushkin was given to romance and theatrics and thus loved Odessa, where Romanticism and theatrics were practically breathed through the air. He waltzed in and out of the circles of elite, eventually having a too-public affair with Vorontsov's wife, Lise. She was a renowned thrower of parties, no doubt he met her there and she was smitten with his charm. Although the affair was known and understood by Vorontsov (who had affairs himself), it was intended to remain quiet, though Pushkin wouldn't have it that way. The poet began taking shots at the governor, calling him "Half milord, half shopkeeper" and "Half hero, half ignoramus".
Pushkin's profession at that time was a reporter for Civil Service, although he had never once penned a document for the government. Vorontsov, angered by his comments, made an arrangement to send him on his first official job, out in the Caucasus writing a survey on the locust infestation. To remove Pushkin, Vorontsov originally needed express permission from the tsar-- "Deliver me from Pushkin", he once wrote to the empire's premier in a letter. The locust infestation was a godsend for him.
The poet pleaded with Vorontsov, writing that he was a famous poet, too famous for locusts, that he knew and Vorontsov knew that he would do a terrible job. That he had an aneurism that was threatening to pop.
He was sent anyway.
Hovever, there are more reasons as to why Pushkin was sent into the countryside for locust eggs. He was a Decembrists, a revolutionary in his own right, and Vorontsov had reason to suspect he was involved in a revolution of a different kind: The Balkan revolutions of the early 1800s.
Movements were growing in the Balkans to wrest control over Christian lands from the Muslim Ottoman Empire. Odessa was the hub of activity, where Balkan rebels could gather to speak and share often disorganized ideas without fear of being caught. in 1814, the Greek group Philike Hetairia (the Society of Friends) began making plans in Odessa that would lead to a decade of uprisings in the Balkans that would call many romantics to the cause-- and eventually, as in the case of Lord Byron, have them killed. Odessa was the origin of the Greek Revolution, which had benefitted the Russian Empire, as long as the Ottomans were occupied. However, the Russian government was quick to squash any hints of any other kind of revolution, and forced Pushkin out of government service and into exile again for his so-called radical ideas.
Vorontsov died while traveling through Odessa in 1856, stressed by the Crimean War, which was between his two homes, England and Russia. At his funeral, the Archbishop commented that Vorontsov cherished Odessa "like a child, she grew up above all other cities... she became truly the southern capital of Russia" (Innokentii, Slovo pri pogrebenii, 22. Found in Source listed under the entry.)
Mikhael Semyonovich Vorontsov, Governor-General of Odessa and builder of the famous Odessa Steps.
Odessa Steps with a statue of Richelieu at the top, later known as the Potemkin Stairs thanks to Eisenstein's movie. Scorned as "monstrous" when first built, they were designed so that looking from the top, all that is seen is flat plains dropping into the ocean, and from the bottom all that is seen are the steps, as if one is looking on to Mount Olympus.
Statue of the poet Pushkin outside the Pushkin Museum in Odessa.
Pictures from Wikipedia.
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.
While merchants carried luxury goods into Odessa from their ships in exchange for grain, something more sinister was being carried as well, in the summer of 1812. As it happens with every busy port with an 18th century sewer system and a rapidly swelling population, Odessa became overrun with disease, notably the Plague, which had been on a grand tour of Europe since 1345.
Richelieu had first responded to the epidemic by assigning information-gatherers to neighborhoods, to gauge the number of ill, and if it was spreading. Of course it was, but information is power. When that information turned out to be abysmal, he ordered the quarantine of the entire city: no person was to come into the city from a ship without waiting twenty-four days. With cargo or merchandise, that person was made to stay outside the harbor for twelve weeks. Deaths still soared, reported upwards of twenty a day. It was spreading into the countryside by then, and even cautious physicians were falling victim.
Eventually Richelieu ordered the complete quarantine of the entire city. No one went out, no one went in. All doors and windows were to remain closed, and food was delivered to homes after being sanitized with water or fumigated. Every home was inspected two times a day, and any who were sick were taken out of the city into a separate quarantine location, where they would wait to have the sickness clear or wait until they died-- most did the latter. Prisoners were employed to dig graves for those already dead, and the number was growing by the day. Richelieu had a decision to make.
With only 500 cossacks at his disposal to police the quarantine, he couldn't afford to trust the people to want to stay in it much longer. He made the choice, particularly bad for a port city, to burn the docks, effectively cutting off trade and supplies until the disease cleared and he came up with an easier way to handle the quarantine of new arrivals.
In 1713, he lifted the strictest quarantine, and people were allowed to leave their homes. Those homes who had plague victims inside were torched. However, the quarantine barriers around the city were never removed. In the end, the death toll was over ten percent of the population.
A system was put in place to screen new arrivals for the plague during the tenure of the Governor Voronotsov (whom you'll meet in the next post), modeled after existing systems in other European cities: a lazaretto was built and connected to a man-made "quarantine harbor". All ships would dock their at first, and after going through a medical examination (in which passengers would punch themselves under the arms or groin for signs of the plague while a physician watched) and cleared would spend fourteen days in the Lazaretto.
Merchants in Odessa saw this as a unique opportunity to make money. Lots of money. Each food and goods merchant got only a small amount of time to sell his goods in the Lazarett-- goods such as food that its tenants could not survive without. The merchants inflated their prices sky-high, since there was no choice but to buy it. One seller even renovated the Opera House (built only a few years prior) and offered famous acts from across Europe to play there, to entice the government to let him sell exclusively in the Lazaretto, so much money could be made there.
Just as money could be made off of war, money could be made for the crafty merchants of Odessa from a terrifying epidemic.
The Duc De Richelieu.
(Photo from Wikipedia)
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.
If Jose De Ribas (who has a street named in his honor: Deribasovskaya street) is considered the Father of Odessa, then the Duc De Richelieu could maybe be named a very close uncle.
Despite the economic boom that De Ribas had seen during his stint as the city administrator, Odessa still lacked many public buildings and works. Despite its cosmopolitan reputation, many people were surprised to see, when they came upon Odessa, that it was still very much a frontier town.
The Duc, who's father was a famous cardinal in France, had helped him originally get a job and title in the court of Louis XVI, famously known to have become headless after the French Revolution. Richelieu had been close with the king and his family, and had originally begged them to leave France for someplace safer.
So, afterwards, basically blacklisted in the rest of western Europe because of close ties to the French former Royal family, like may other European statesmen, headed eastward into Russia's frontier to find a job.
He was appointed the new administrator to Odessa, and immediately set about building schools, the library, government buildings, the sewers (which in the future present a problem, as do the tunnels created by mining limestone for buildings from underneath the city-- they were used by partisan rebel groups in WW2... but we aren't quite there yet.), transforming the frontier town into an urban center in time that Peter the Great would be proud of.
De Ribas' organization of Odessa, drawn with the help of Dutch designer Franz De Voland. With Richelieu's improvements, later Mark Twain would visit the city and claim when he looked around that all he saw on all sides was America-- the block organization of the city closely resembled Washington, D.C.
With that, the transformation from a tatar village to frontier boomtown to a city to rival the capital of the United States was complete. Odessa may have been owned by the Russian Empire, but it was far from russian. Odessa had been Tatar, then conceived by a Neapolitan mercenary, named by a German on the Russian throne, organized by a Dutchman, built by Richelieu and his exiled French noblemen, and modernized by a Russian count who wished to be British (we'll get to him soon enough). There was nothing 'Russian' about Odessa... perhaps that is why it developed such a unique reputation, memorialized in Russian literary and pop culture myth as "Old Odessa".
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.
Odessa has always seemed to profit at the misfortune of other nations. Sitting in the north of the Black Sea, it was a valuable shipping port for ships from the Ottoman empire and the mediterranean, and was closer to any other western European city than Moscow or St. Petersburg. When places closest to those cities ran out of supplies, Odessa was the natural place to go.
De Ribas had envisioned in Odessa a newer, better version of his original home, Naples. The man from the Italian coast's dream would come true quicker than he realized, because a man from off the Italian coast was making waves in the rest of Europe.
Napoleon Bonaparte was making his way across Europe and taking everything in his path. Knowing that the more eastward he went, people had access to more food thanks to arable farmland, he made the decision to stop Hungary from exporting any more grain to the lands of his enemies. And Odessa, just south of the most fertile land in the Russian empire, stood to gain immensely from it.
Even better, soon the Ottoman Empire caved under the pressure from other nations and allowed ships from the rest of Europe free entry into the Black Sea, a privilege it had only granted to Russia until the 1780s. Ships were now free to make port in Odessa and leave with all of the grain they could hold, exchanging it for exotic foreign money and goods that first made the port a cosmopolitan hub.
Robert Stevens, after a visit to the port, wrote that the Black sea "became the common domain of the nations of Europe, and Odessa the centre of vast speculations... the very circumstances, that paralysed commerce elsewhere... acted upon Odessa in an inverse ratio" (Stevens, Account of Odessa, 5., From Source book listed at the bottom of the entry).
(Odessa harbor in the mid-late 19th century, still booming)
King, Charles. Odessa: Genius And Death In A City Of Dreams. New York: W.W.
After Catherine the Great's death in 1796, her son, Paul I took over the Russian empire. He had never been fond of his mother, and it was his express intent to undo or let decay all she had accomplished-- including her territory on the Black sea. Especially her pet project of Odessa. After purging his administration of at least eighteen-thousand civil servants (thirty-thousand, if the men who left voluntarily are included), he cut off funding for the Black Sea project, and the money De Ribas needed for the construction of the city beyond its foundations never arrived.
The only solution would be to prove Odessa was an important and vital port for the Tsar. However, Paul I was petty and stubborn, and if he had ignored the fact that the port was closer to any other port in western europe than Moscow, he would ignore it again. De Ribas ordered an unorthodox gift of three thousand Turkish oranges to the Tsar, hoping it would sway him.
In the end, three thousand was just as much as the Tsar needed to change his mind. Odessa began to get money again, and building continued, even flourished.
Erected in 2004, this statue of Paul I inside an open orange commemorates the event.
It adds to some of the more bizarre monuments in the city.
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 and additional information from:
Ukraine Online Travel Guide. "Orange Monument in Odessa."UA-Traveling. N.p.,
First appearing in written sources around the 15th century, the small coastal village was run by its namesake, Tatar chief Hadji I Giray, when he ceded the land to the Duchy of Lithuania, then a powerful force, for protection. However, soon the Ottoman empire spread out from Byzantium to conquer Christian villages on the black sea, and saw the advantage of having a military base in Khadjibey, and established Fort Izmail, Grigory Potemkin would order the takedown of over two centuries later in the name of Catherine the Great.
It was here in the crossroads of the hinterlands of the Ottoman, Russian, and Lithuanian empires of the 17th century that existed the Cossacks, somewhat loyal subjects when it benefitted themselves. However, they benefitted most from piracy, looting the Ottoman ships that were coming to their own port in Khadjibey. French engineer Guillaume de Beauplan witnessed these frequent raids, describing them in detail in his Description of Ukraine:
"Their number now approaches 120,000 men, all trained for war... It is these people who often, [indeed] almost every year, go raiding on the Black Sea, to the great detriment of the Turks. Many times they have plundered Crimea.. ravaged Anatolia, sacked Trebizond...they have laid waste to everything with fire and sword..."
The cossacks in the future Odessa were much more loyal to the Polish-Lithuanian king, and saw the Ottomans as usurpers into rightful Tatar territory. Peter the Great attempted to make his own forays into the Black Sea in the early 18th century, but was not successful. However, his successor was able to "combine strategic daring, technological innovation, and careful diplomacy to present a sustained challenge to the Ottomans and the Crimean Tatars"(King 2011). From 1768 to 1774, the empress gradually and consistently pushed the Ottoman presence out of the Northern Black Sea, gaining access to the Dnieper and Bug rivers and the Sea of Azov, and Catherine ordered the building of a new naval fleet to outfit the coast. She appointed Grigory Potemkin the chief developer of the new conquests in Novorossiya, or new Russia, and wanted it all done quickly. Like Peter the Great had erected his city in a few mere decades, Catherine, who had engraved her name under his on his monument, wanted the same claim to fame. Potemkin erected fake towns, facades, and English gardens on the steppe in the Crimea and Khadjibey, when in reality, there were nothing but rock foundations for future buildings behind them. Charles-Joseph, Prince de Ligne, attended these displays of fake grandeur, "Potemkin villages", and noted that the empress was "made to believe that towns... are finished, whilst they often are towns without streets, streets without houses, and houses without roofs, doors, or windows" (Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 66).
Later, when the Ottoman empire demanded the return of their lands, and declared war, Potemkin mobilized his troops. After unsuccessful attempts at naval force with the "father of the U.S. Navy", John Paul Jones, who had come to Russia looking for work (while he was a good privateer, he was not fit for a large fleet), Potemkin appointed Jose De Ribas a, a captain from Naples, as his liaison officer, and De Ribas began to succeed despite John Paul Jones' confusion, and overthrew the Ottoman fort Izmail, formally establishing Russian control over the formerly small village of Khadjibey in 1789. The news came as a surprise to Potemkin, who was sure it would have taken longer.
Potemkin was not the only one to praise De Ribas. In his epic Don Juan, Lord Byron writes of him as a savior of the Russian fleet in the Russo-Turkish conflict:
"But the some bastion still kept up its fire, Where the chief pacha calmly held his post: Some twenty times he made the Russ retire, And baffled the assaults of all their host; At length he condescended to inquire If yet the city's rest were won or lost; And being told the latter, sent a bey To answer Ribas' summons to give way" (Byron, Don Juan, 8.120)
Statue of Jose De Ribas in Odessa
He is known as the "Father of Odessa"
(photo from Wikipedia)
After the conflict, De Ribas convinced Catherine that she could turn Khadjibey into the new jewel of the empire. She was elated, and appointed him the first administrator of the new city. He had suggested that the new name for the city be Odessos, after the ancient Greek city that was said to have existed near it. However, it was Catherine's city, and as a female ruler, she thought it imperative that at least one place on the Black Sea have a feminine name. So Odessos was changed to match the most powerful woman in Europe at the time, to the feminine "Odessa". It would never be recognizable as Khadjibey ever again.
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.
To understand the history of Odessa is to have the ability to see through a mirage of romanticism, propaganda, and popular culture into the real and mostly just as unbelievable truth, yet still accept the mirage as just as valid. Just as valid, because it presents a side of history that can't be told through mere chronology.
"Odessa's history is encased in legends of imagined gilded and wicked past, a body of lore that has been compiled, enriched, embellished, and passed down for more than two centuries" -Jarod Tanny
It is a place that escapes definition, almost as if it has tried to. Catherine the Great's "pearl on the Black Sea" was decorated perfectly for regality and flaunting, like her very own St. Petersburg, but there existed a lively underworld of endearing criminals, prostitutes, and sailors; and the two worlds seemed to live side-by-side, even mesh together, only in Odessa, where bandits could be heroes and the only lifestyle that was best was the one that made for the best stories.
There on the Black Sea also took place a transformation of Jewish life into a cosmopolitan and lucrative lifestyle that spread across the Pale and survived despite it's home's brutal pogroms and the horrors of the Holocaust. In Odessa a new kind of "jewishness" flourished and tied both worlds of the rich and the poor together, creating writers like Isaac Babel, Vladimir Jabotinsky, and Ahad Ha'am as well as inspiring a young Lev Bronstein to become Leon Trotsky.
The history of Odessa can be seen in Mark Bernes' acting, Eisenstein's famous movie, and Babel's character Benya Krik... that is if one is able to separate the fact from the fiction, where the former might even be more unbelievable than the latter.
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.
