The City on the Steps

"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

Saturday, April 28, 2012

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 Odes...

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 destinatio...

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 Ma...

Catacombs

In the Second World War, the limestone tunnels quarried by Richelieu and Vorontsov's builders, connected to old catacombs, were used as ...

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 st...

Thursday, April 26, 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...

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 philosop...

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Elizabeth Abosch

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