CHRONOLOGY
5th century BCE
Herodotus describes Greeks and Scythians along Black Sea coast
ca. 1250–1350
Italian trading colonies flourish around Black Sea
1415
Village of Khadjibey first mentioned in written sources
1453
Fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans
ca. 1550–1650
Cossack sea raids against Ottomans
1762–96
Reign of Catherine the Great
1768–74
Russo-Turkish war
1787
Catherine’s elaborate procession to Crimea, managed by Grigory Potemkin
1787–92
Russo-Turkish war
Sept. 1789
Khadjibey captured by Russian troops under José de Ribas
1794
Khadjibey becomes “Odessa”
1803
Richelieu appointed Odessa city administrator
1812–13
Major plague outbreak
1823
Vorontsov becomes governor-general of New Russia
1823–24
Pushkin in Odessa
1828–29
Russo-Turkish War
1830s
Beginning of large-scale Jewish immigration to Odessa
1841
Completion of famous outdoor staircase, now called the “Potemkin steps”
1853–56
Crimean War
1861
Serfdom abolished in Russia
1871
Anti-Jewish pogrom
1881
Anti-Jewish pogrom
1887
Opening of new Opera theater
1897
Jews are 34 percent of Odessa’s population (Russian imperial census)
1905
Riots and anti-Jewish pogrom; Potemkin mutiny
1914–18
First World War
Feb. 1917
February Revolution in Russia
Oct. 1917
Bolshevik Revolution
1918–20
Russian civil war; Odessa nominally controlled in turn by French, Ukrainian, White, and Bolshevik troops
1921
Publication of the first short story in Isaac Babel’s Odessa Tales
1922
Soviet Union established
1925
Filming of Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin
1926
Jews are 36 percent of Odessa’s population (Soviet census)
1935
Vladimir Jabotinsky writes The Five
1939–45
Second World War
1940
Execution of Babel; death of Jabotinsky
Oct. 1941–Apr. 1944
Odessa occupied by Axis powers
Jan. 1942
Romanian forces empty the Jewish ghetto
1943
Mark Bernes stars in Two Warriors
1953
Death of Joseph Stalin
1989
Jews account for less than 4 percent of Odessa’s population; Ukrainians, 51 percent; and Russians, 36 percent (Soviet census)
1991
Ukraine declares independence from Soviet Union
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I have been to Odessa by car, plane, train, and ship, and on each journey I have encountered the verve and hospitality for which the city is rightly famous. I thank the State Archive of the Odessa Region (especially its deputy director, Liliya Belousova) and the Gorky State Scientific Library (especially the “Odesika” Department) for their willingness to share their treasures. Volodymyr Dubovyk spent plenty of shoe leather walking me around his hometown. A conference dinner with Richard von Weizsäcker in the charming garden of Count Mikhail Tolstoy’s former mansion, laid on by the Körber Foundation, first stirred my thinking about the attractions and terror of “Old Odessa.”
The staff of several other archives and libraries made my work efficient and enjoyable. These include the Library of Congress, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives and Library, the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Georgetown University’s Lauinger Library (especially the interlibrary loan and consortium library services), the Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, the Brooklyn Public Library, the Center for Jewish History (especially the YIVO Archives) in New York, the National Archives of the United Kingdom, the National Archives of Romania, the Yad Vashem Archives in Jerusalem, and the Jabotinsky Institute in Tel Aviv.
In Odessa, Marina Vorotnyuk provided expert assistance in researching images and filling in archival holes. Andrew Robarts and Quint Simon, my U.S.-based research assistants, were intrepid and informed, an ideal combination of traits. Andrew made his own trip to the city to work on his dissertation and to pave the way for my last visit. Quint’s fine paper on the history of Brighton Beach helped my thinking about the reproduction of nostalgia.
Any historian of Odessa is indebted to Patricia Herlihy. She has read nearly everything ever written on the city—including the entire manuscript of this book—and her Odessa: A History, 1794–1914 is a foundational text. To an interloper in her field, Pat was a warm source of wisdom. I also thank the other members of America’s small band of “Odessologists”—especially Tanya Richardson, Roshanna Sylvester, Jarrod Tanny, and Steven J. Zipperstein—whose research contributed to my own thinking and is recognized in the notes.
Other friends and colleagues read all or part of this book in draft form and provided generous and invaluable criticism. They include Harley Balzer, Holly Case, Peter Dunkley, John Gledhill, Thane Gustafson, John McNeill, Vladimir Solonari, and the late Richard Stites. (A package containing a copy of the entire manuscript, marked up with Richard’s insightful and playful comments, arrived in my mailbox a week after his death in Helsinki. I am unspeakably grateful to Natalia Baschmakoff for sending it to me.) Participants in the Washington, D.C., Russian History Workshop, organized by Eric Lohr and Catherine Evtuhov, provided important comments on two draft chapters. Those chapters were also presented at the 2010 World Convention of the Association for the Study of Nationalities, convened by Dominique Arel. I thank the following people for helpful conversations and advice: Tommaso Astarita, Jacques Berlinerblau, Binio Binev, Jeffrey Burds, Daniel Byman, Adrian Cioflanca, Dorin Dobrincu, Anton Fedyashin, Eugene Fishel, Steve Harris, Bruce Hoffman, Radu Ioanid, Anita Kondoyanidi, Jared McBride, Michael Oren, Blair Ruble, Hannah Shelest, Douglas Smith, Eric Steinhart, Tom de Waal, Larry Wolff, and Sufian Zhemukhov.
Lawrence and Amy Tal, Michael Thumann and Susanne Landwehr, and the American Research Institute in Turkey (directed by Tony Greenwood) were gracious hosts on my trips to and from Odessa. Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and East European Studies (CERES), and the Department of Government have been wonderful homes for the last fifteen years. I thank my four bosses—Robert Gallucci, Carol Lancaster, Angela Stent, and George Shambaugh—for their support. Jennifer Long deserves special thanks for miraculously keeping the CERES trains on their proper tracks. My beloved Maggie Paxson, among many other contributions to this project, discovered that Vladimir Jabotinsky and Bahá’u’lláh nearly shared the same cell in Acre, although a half century apart.
My agent, William Lippincott of Lippincott Massie McQuilkin, was a brilliant and encouraging tutor. My editor at W. W. Norton, Alane Salierno Mason, was excited about the project from the beginning and a supportive critic as chapters came across her desk. Her pencil made the stories better and the prose sharper. Denise Scarfi helped shepherd the book through the publishing process. The sharp eye of Mary N. Babcock was of enormous benefit at the copyediting stage. Chris Robinson, with whom I have worked happily on several projects, drew the fine maps.
This book is dedicated to my mother’s side of the family, especially my warm-hearted uncles, whose Mennonite great-grandparents surely knew somethi
ng of Odessa’s wicked charms.
NOTES
Abbreviations Used in Notes
CUR
Columbia University Rare Book and Manuscript Library, New York
DCFRJ
Ancel, ed., Documents concerning the Fate of Romanian Jewry during the Holocaust
GAOO
State Archive of the Odessa Region, Odessa
JIA
Jabotinsky Institute Archives, Tel Aviv
JPJ
John Paul Jones Papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
NARA
National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD
NAUK
National Archives of the United Kingdom, Kew, London
PPSS
Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii
SIRIO
Sbornik Imperatorskago russkago istoricheskago obshchestva
TGE
Theodore Gordon Ellyson Papers, Naval Historical Foundation Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, DC
USHMM
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Archives, Washington, DC
YVA
Yad Vashem Archives, Jerusalem
References to archival documents held in GAOO use the standard Russian-language archival designations: f. (fond), op. (opis’), d. (delo), l/ll. (list/listy).
INTRODUCTION
1. Twain, Innocents Abroad in Complete Travel Books of Mark Twain, 1: 256.
2. Jabotinsky, “Memoirs by My Typewriter,” in Dawidowicz, ed., Golden Tradition, 399.
Chapter 1: THE SINISTER SHORE
1. Kohl, Russia, 417. See also Koch, Crimea and Odessa, 259.
2. Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, 2.
3. See Baschmakoff, La synthèse des périples pontiques; Boardman, Greeks Overseas; Nawotka, Western Pontic Cities; Tsetskhladze, ed., North Pontic Archaeology.
4. Herodotus, Histories, 232–33.
5. Pliny the Elder, Natural History, 10: 18.47–48.
6. Strabo, Geography, 7.3.7–9.
7. Ovid, “Tristia,” in Poems of Exile, 3.13.28.
8. Pachymeres, Relations historiques, 5.30.
9. Polo, Travels of Marco Polo, 344.
10. Pegolotti, La pratica della mercatura, 24.
11. “The Journey of Friar John of Pian de Carpini to the Court of Kuyuk Khan, 1245–1247, as Narrated by Himself,” in Komroff, ed., Contemporaries of Marco Polo, 8, 47–48.
12. Honcharuk, ed., Istoriia Khadzhibeiia, 5–8.
13. Beauplan, Description of Ukraine, 10–11.
14. Coxe, Travels in Russia, in Pinkerton, ed., General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages, 6: 889.
Chapter 2: POTEMKIN AND THE MERCENARIES
1. Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 46.
2. Montefiore, Prince of Princes, 65.
3. Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 55.
4. Ségur, Memoirs and Recollections, 3: 8, 91–2; Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 39; Coxe, Travels in Russia, in Pinkerton, ed., General Collection of the Best and Most Interesting Voyages, 6: 764.
5. Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 66.
6. Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 41. See also Dearborn, Memoir of the Commerce, 1: 117.
7. Ligne, Letters and Reflections, 1: 74.
8. Smith, ed. and trans., Love and Conquest, 262–63.
9. Aragon, Le prince Charles de Nassau-Siegen, 237.
10. Jones to de Ribas, Aug. 1, 1788, JPJ.
11. Astarita, Between Salt Water and Holy Water, 7, 319.
12. Sade, Voyage d’Italie, 1: 177.
13. Ségur, Memoirs and Recollections, 3: 19–20.
14. Jones to de Ribas, Aug. 1, 1788, JPJ.
15. Jones to de Rileef, Apr. 2, 1789, JPJ.
16. Smith, ed. and trans., Love and Conquest, 297.
17. Honcharuk, ed., Istoriia Khadzhibeiia, 233–36. See also Skal’kovskii, Pervoe tridtsatiletie, 14–17. Some sources state that Russian losses ran to five killed and thirty-two wounded, while more than two hundred Turks were killed, but those figures seem doubtful. See Skinner, “City Planning in Russia,” 34.
18. Castelnau, Essai sur l’histoire ancienne, 3: 5–8.
19. Smith, ed. and trans., Love and Conquest, 360.
20. Byron, Don Juan, 8.120.
21. Honcharuk, ed., Istoriia Khadzhibeiia, 328–30.
22. Honcharuk, ed., Istoriia Khadzhibeiia, 339–40.
23. Honcharuk, ed., Istoriia Khadzhibeiia, 350; Herlihy, Odessa, 7. There is sadly no documentary evidence that Catherine personally chose the new city’s name, but the story of her intervention was taken as fact by the earliest writers. See for example Stevens, Account of Odessa, 5; Vsevolozhskii, Dictionnaire géographique-historique, 2: 35; and Lyall, Travels in Russia, 1: 161.
Chapter 3: BEACON
1. Clarke, Travels to Russia, 502.
2. Stevens, Account of Odessa, 5.
3. Anthoine de Saint-Joseph, Essai historique, 62.
4. Sicard, Pis’ma ob Odesse, 47.
5. Bremner, Excursions in the Interior of Russia, 2: 507.
6. Richelieu, “Mémoire sur la Russie,” SIRIO 54 (1886): 387.
7. Herlihy, Odessa, 20.
8. Castelnau, Essai sur l’histoire ancienne, 3: 26.
10. Herlihy, Odessa, 36.
11. Stevens, Account of Odessa, 8–9.
12. Castelnau, Essai sur l’histoire ancienne, 3: 43.
13. My account of the plague of 1812–13 and its victims is based on Lagarde, Voyage de Moscou à Vienne, 167–99; Sicard, “Notice sur onze années de la vie du duc de Richelieu à Odessa pour servir à l’histoire de sa vie,” SIRIO 54 (1886): 53–60; “Le duc de Richelieu à l’Empereur Alexandre,” SIRIO 54 (1886): 367–68; and Morton, Travels in Russia, 312–30, who in turn based his work on that of a well-informed eyewitness, Gabriel de Castelnau.
14. SIRIO 54 (1886): vii.
15. Lagarde, Voyage de Moscou à Vienne, 167.
16. Morton, Travels in Russia, 319.
17. Morton, Travels in Russia, 326–28. Skal’kovskii, Pervoe tridtsatiletie, gives the different figures of 4,038 infected and 2,632 dead, but agrees on the mortality rate of around 10 percent (p. 206).
18. Morton, Travels in Russia, 326.
19. Stevens, Account of Odessa, 5.
20. Lagarde, Voyage de Moscou à Vienne, 155.
21. Kohl, Russia, 419.
22. Lagarde, Voyage de Moscou à Vienne, 153.
23. Herlihy, Odessa, 141; Skal’kovskii, Pervoe tridtsatiletie, 146.
24. “Le duc de Richelieu à M-r Sicard,” SIRIO 54 (1886): 630.
Chapter 4: THE GOVERNOR AND THE POET
1. This account is based on the eyewitness report in Morton, Travels in Russia, 333–35.
2. Tolstoy, Hadji Murat, 41–42.
3. Quoted in Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, 45–46. I am grateful to Rhinelander’s work for helping me to reconstruct the life and career of Mikhail Vorontsov.
4. Pushkin to Wiegel, between Oct. 22 and Nov. 4, 1823, in Letters of Alexander Pushkin, trans. Shaw, 1: 139.
5. Pushkin to Lev Pushkin, Aug. 25, 1823, in Letters of Alexander Pushkin, trans. Shaw, 1: 136.
6. Morton, Travels in Russia, 202; Jesse, Notes of a Half-Pay, 1: 185.
7. Morton, Travels in Russia, 238.
8. Lyall, Travels in Russia, 1: 171.
9. Binyon, Pushkin, 158–60, quote to Wiegel on p. 158.
10. Vsevolozhskii, Puteshestvie cherez iuzhnuiu Rossiiu, 1: 94.
11. Morton, Travels in Russia, 355–58, describing two soirees in 1829.
12. Binyon, Pushkin, 162.
13. PPSS, 2: 420. For a brief description of the dacha, see Vsevolozhskii, Puteshestvie cherez iuzhnuiu Rossiiu, 1: 99.
14. Binyon, Pushkin, 173.
15. Quoted in Binyon, Pushkin, 175.
16. Bremner, Excursions in the Interior of Russia, 2: 500.
17. Spencer, Travels in Circassia, 2: 126.
18. Binyon, Pushkin, 176–77.
19. Pushkin to Vasilii Lvovich Davydov (?), first half of Mar. 1821, in Letters of Alexander Pushkin, trans. Shaw, 1: 79.
20. Moore, Journey from London to Odessa, 196.
21. Quoted in Binyon, Pushkin, 185.
22. Vorontsov, “Mémoires du prince M. Woronzow, 1819–1833,” 78.
23. Morton, Travels in Russia, 368–85.
24. “Michele de Ribas to Prince Cassaro,” Sept. 22, 1837, in de Ribas, “Saggio sulla città di Odessa” e altri documenti, 102.
25. Herlihy, Odessa, 144.
26. Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, 2.
27. Herlihy, Odessa, 140.
28. Innokentii, Slovo pri pogrebenii, 22.
Chapter 5: “THERE IS NOTHING NATIONAL ABOUT ODESSA”
1. Zipperstein, Jews of Odessa, 35.
2. Herlihy, Odessa, 124; Reuilly, Travels in the Crimea, in Collection of Modern and Contemporary Voyages, 5: 82.
3. Frederick William Skinner, “Odessa and the Problem of Urban Modernization,” in Hamm, ed., City in Late Imperial Russia, 214.
4. John Ralli to State, July 12, 1856, NARA, M459, Reel 1.
5. Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea, 13.
6. Mendele Moykher-Sforim, Selected Works, 298.
7. Vsevolozhskii, Puteshestvie cherez iuzhnuiu Rossiiu, 1: 92.
8. La Fite de Pellepore, La Russie historique, 2: 299.
9. Polishchuk, Evrei Odessy i Novorossii, 22.
10. Tarnopol, Notices historiques, 65.