Imperial Odessa: Peoples, Spaces, Identities [ebook ed.] 9004351620, 9789004351622

Table of contents :
Imperial Odessa......Page 3
Contents......Page 5
Foreword......Page 9
Introduction: Of Peripatetic and Other Approaches to Odessa’s History......Page 11
1 The Peripatetic Approach......Page 13
2 The Socio-economic Approach......Page 21
Port: Mobility and Ethnic Pluralism......Page 30
1 Port-City Identities and Cosmopolitanism......Page 37
2 Enlightened Administrators......Page 40
3 The People of the Port......Page 43
4 Influences from Without and Within......Page 46
5 The Connectedness of Odessa......Page 48
6 Travel Destination and Relay......Page 50
7 The 1897 Demographic Snapshot......Page 52
8 Residential Porosity: The Mikhel’son Apartment Building in Aleksandrovskii District......Page 59
9 Images, Representations, Comparisons......Page 61
Toward a Consumer Society: Tastes, Markets and Political Liberalism......Page 67
1 The Rise of a Consumer Society......Page 68
2 Markets......Page 69
3 Provisioning the City......Page 76
4 Profile of the Merchant-Entrepreneurs Involved in Foreign Trade and Their Specialisations......Page 77
5 Patterns of Successful Business......Page 82
6 The Evolution of Markets in the Second Half of the
Nineteenth Century......Page 85
7 Political Liberalism: The Parallel Activity of the Union of Welfare and the Greek Secret Society......Page 89
8 Imagining Greece’s Independence in Odessa’s Greek Market......Page 91
9 History of the Philiki Etaireia......Page 94
10 Facilitating Factors for Political Fermentation......Page 97
11 The Commercial Outlook of the Greek Society of Friends......Page 102
Merchants and Entrepreneurs: The Driving Forces of Odessa’s Economy......Page 109
1 Industry in Odessa......Page 112
2 Types of Entrepreneurs and Strategies......Page 119
3 The Port and the Exporter......Page 122
4 Middlemen: The Period of Transition......Page 127
5 Real Estate Owners in Odessa......Page 131
6 The Diversified Entrepreneur......Page 134
7 The “Political” Entrepreneur......Page 137
8 At the Commercial Court......Page 140
9 Transcending Communal Boundaries in Capital Raising......Page 147
1 Public Spaces......Page 155
2 Civil Society?......Page 160
3 Associations, Societies, Professional Societies......Page 161
4 Workers’ Associations......Page 166
5 Ethnic Minority Associations......Page 168
6 Charity as a Culture......Page 170
7 Αn Example of Commercial Charity: The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa......Page 171
8 Towards a Longed-for Multi-Ethnic Society: Odessa 1907–1914......Page 173
The Two Sides of the Moon: Ethnic Clashes and Tolerance in a Cosmopolitan City......Page 183
1 Co-existence and Tolerance in the Upper Classes......Page 184
2 Rivalry in the Middle Classes......Page 186
3 Separation and Conflict in the Lower Strata......Page 189
4 Crisis Management and the Responsibilities of the
Local Authorities......Page 196
5 Stereotypes......Page 199
6 Impact of the Pogroms and Civic Drawbacks......Page 206
7 Non-ethnic Violence......Page 209
The End of a Cosmopolitan Port-City......Page 216
1 Αftermath: The Four Stories......Page 221
2 Politicization during the School Years......Page 224
2.2 Acquaintances......Page 225
3 Between Judicial Responsibility, Passion for Music and Revolution......Page 227
3.1 1918 – Law Service, Music and German Occupation......Page 228
3.2 1919 – Farewell to the Violoncello......Page 230
4.1 The February Revolution......Page 231
4.2 Τhe October Revolution......Page 233
4.4 Odessa under Austro-German Occupation (March–November 1918)......Page 234
4.5 Τhe Allied Intervention (French and Greeks in Odessa)–
December 1918 – March 1919......Page 237
4.6 The Departure......Page 238
5 At the Gen Factory in Peresyp’......Page 239
5.2 The Battle for the Eight-Hour Workday......Page 240
5.3 Bombshells into Ploughshares......Page 241
5.4 At Odessa’s Companies......Page 243
6 Peoples and Identities......Page 244
7 Epilogue......Page 246
Appendix......Page 249
Archival Sources......Page 264
Journals/Newspapers/Periodicals......Page 265
Published Sources and Secondary Literature......Page 266
Index of Names......Page 286
Index of Places......Page 289
Index of Subjects......Page 290

Citation preview

Imperial Odessa

Eurasian Studies Library History, Societies & Cultures in Eurasia

Series Editors Dittmar Schorkowitz (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany) David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye (Brock University, St. Catherines, Canada) Editorial Board Bakhtiyar Babadjanov Paul Bushkovitch Peter Finke Svetlana Gorshenina Michael Khodarkovsky Marlène Laruelle Scott C. Levi Virginia Martin Jeff Sahadeo Willard Sunderland Nikolay Tsyrempilov

volume 8

The titles published in this series are listed at brill.com/esl

Imperial Odessa Peoples, Spaces, Identities By

Evrydiki Sifneos

leiden | boston

Cover illustrations: Front: Stroganov bridge, Odessa, by Gennadiy Verschagin. Courtesy of the painter. Back: The author, photographed by Vassilis Colonas. The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at http://catalog.loc.gov lc record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/

Typeface for the Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic scripts: “Brill”. See and download: brill.com/brill-typeface. ISSN 1877-9484 ISBN 978-90-04-31360-6 (hardback) ISBN 978-90-04-35162-2 (e-book) Copyright 2018 by Koninklijke Brill nv, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill nv incorporates the imprints Brill, Brill Hes & De Graaf, Brill Nijhoff, Brill Rodopi and Hotei Publishing. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill nv provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, ma 01923, usa. Fees are subject to change. This book is printed on acid-free paper and produced in a sustainable manner.

Contents Foreword ix Introduction: Of Peripatetic and Other Approaches to Odessa’s History 1 1 The Peripatetic Approach 3 2 The Socio-economic Approach 11 1 Port: Mobility and Ethnic Pluralism 20 1 Port-City Identities and Cosmopolitanism 27 2 Enlightened Administrators 30 3 The People of the Port 33 4 Influences from Without and Within 36 5 The Connectedness of Odessa 38 6 Travel Destination and Relay 40 7 The 1897 Demographic Snapshot 42 8 Residential Porosity: The Mikhel’son Apartment Building in ­Aleksandrovskii District 49 9 Images, Representations, Comparisons 51 2 Toward a Consumer Society: Tastes, Markets and Political Liberalism 57 1 The Rise of a Consumer Society 58 2 Markets 59 3 Provisioning the City 66 4 Profile of the Merchant-Entrepreneurs Involved in Foreign Trade and Their Specialisations 67 5 Patterns of Successful Business 72 6 The Evolution of Markets in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century 75 7 Political Liberalism: The Parallel Activity of the Union of Welfare and the Greek Secret Society 79 8 Imagining Greece’s Independence in Odessa’s Greek Market 81 9 History of the Philiki Etaireia 84 10 Facilitating Factors for Political Fermentation 87 11 The Commercial Outlook of the Greek Society of Friends 92

vi contents 3 Merchants and Entrepreneurs: The Driving Forces of Odessa’s Economy 99 1 Industry in Odessa 102 2 Types of Entrepreneurs and Strategies 109 3 The Port and the Exporter 112 4 Middlemen: The Period of Transition 117 5 Real Estate Owners in Odessa 121 6 The Diversified Entrepreneur 124 7 The “Political” Entrepreneur 127 8 At the Commercial Court 130 9 Transcending Communal Boundaries in Capital Raising 137 4 The Springtime of the Public Sphere 145 1 Public Spaces 145 2 Civil Society? 150 3 Associations, Societies, Professional Societies 151 4 Workers’ Associations 156 5 Ethnic Minority Associations 158 6 Charity as a Culture 160 7 Αn Example of Commercial Charity: The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa 161 8 Towards a Longed-for Multi-Ethnic Society: Odessa 1907–1914 163 5 The Two Sides of the Moon: Ethnic Clashes and Tolerance in a ­Cosmopolitan City 173 1 Co-existence and Tolerance in the Upper Classes 174 2 Rivalry in the Middle Classes 176 3 Separation and Conflict in the Lower Strata 179 4 Crisis Management and the Responsibilities of the Local Authorities 186 5 Stereotypes 189 6 Impact of the Pogroms and Civic Drawbacks 196 7 Non-ethnic Violence 199

contents

6 The End of a Cosmopolitan Port-City 206 1 Αftermath: The Four Stories 211 2 Politicization during the School Years 214 2.1 Gymnasia Militancy 215 2.2 Acquaintances 215 2.3 The Illegal Literature 217 3 Between Judicial Responsibility, Passion for Music and Revolution 217 3.1 1918 – Law Service, Music and German Occupation 218 3.2 1919 – Farewell to the Violoncello 220 4 Between War and Revolution 221 4.1 The February Revolution 221 4.2 Τhe October Revolution 223 4.3 The Bolsheviks in Odessa ( January–March 1918) 224 4.4 Odessa under Austro-German Occupation (March–­ November 1918) 224 4.5 Τhe Allied Intervention (French and Greeks in Odessa) – December 1918–March 1919 227 4.6 The Departure 228 5 At the Gen Factory in Peresyp’ 229 5.1 Ideology and Workers’ Demands in 1917 230 5.2 The Battle for the Eight-Hour Workday 230 5.3 Bombshells into Ploughshares 231 5.4 At Odessa’s Companies 233 5.5 The “Sale” of the Factory 234 6 Peoples and Identities 234 7 Epilogue 236 Appendix 239 Bibliography 254 Index of Names 276 Index of Places 279 Index of Subjects 280

vii

Foreword This is a book about a cosmopolitan city by a cosmopolitan scholar. Evrydiki (Roura) Sifneos combined the French- with the English-speaking schools of history. She was well versed in the approaches of both historiographical traditions. That is why her book exhibits the theoretical grounding and flair of the French school with the analytical solidity of the Anglo-Saxon historiography. Sifneos has a new and particular “peripatetic” approach to offer, one that places the history of the city of Odessa firmly in space. Many scholars, when dealing with the history of a city, look at it through a bird’s eye view. Not so Sifneos, who chooses to walk the city, go into its streets, and examine the lives of its inhabitants through an approach that emphasises their connection to the city. Thus, the individual and specific become focal points that are always placed in the wider framework. Moreover, with few exceptions, such as that of Patricia Herlihy’s history of Odessa, most of the other authors of books on Odessa wrote a study of an ethnic group, explored a limited period or a particular aspect of the city. In her review of the present book, Patricia Herlihy has indicated that, “Sifneos has written a broader, more extensive and richer examination of Odessa’s history both in chronology and in subject matter. She incorporates past works of others but she also expands the scope and depth of previous works on Odessa. It is definitely a valuable addition to the growing scholarship on the city and its past.” Furthermore, Herlihy added, “[Sifneos] incorporates a wealth of new information regarding living patterns, civic and social organisations, commercial operations, ethnic communities, and fleshes out many aspects of the city’s history. She also provides analyses, interpreting the data she has collected”. Sifneos’ historical training was in economic and social history, but she never stopped having strong political concerns as well. It is interesting that she started her career with an economic and social history of Mytilini (Lesvos), the place of origin of her family. Her career and her life ended (far too prematurely) again with the history of a particular place, Odessa. The present book is in some ways the cresting point of her pursuits in social, economic, business and, partly, cultural history. For us, her friends and colleagues, this is a fascinating peregrination (a peripatos, as she would have put it) into the life of the most important city of the Black Sea. The Black Sea shores fascinated her as spaces and she devoted her academic efforts for more than fifteen years to them. The contract for this book arrived on 12 October 2015, literally the day before she died, and in this way a fruitful career came to a fitting (if still

x foreword premature) end. Brill, and especially Ivo Romein, Marti Huetink and Jennifer Obdam exhibited particular interest in this case and prepared quickly the contract, once the positive reviews came in. The two reviewers, Patricia Herlihy and Guido Hausmann, contributed significantly with their constructive criticism and their many suggestions for the final manuscript. A group of friends and relatives of Roura prepared the book for its final publication. Michael Dodson-Sifnaios worked with Roura at the final stage of its preparation when he translated, edited and organized parts of the book; he also prepared all the maps of the volume using all (the yet unfinished) instructions by her. Christine Agriantoni and Nassia Yakovaki read and commented on various parts of the book. Sofronis Paradeisopoulos provided the cover image and Vassilis Colonas her photograph. Gelina Harlaftis and Nikolaos Chrissidis tried to address the issues that the reviewers and others indicated, and restricted themselves to limited editing and restructuring of the text leaving it more or less in the way she had originally sent it to Brill. Lastly, Roura’s son, Leo Salvi-Sifnaios, provided continuous support and contributed substantially to the final outcome. The editorial team

Introduction: Of Peripatetic and Other Approaches to Odessa’s History In this study, I wish to re-map Odessa by following a “peripatetic” approach to a port-city. I conceive of Odessa as more of a fin-de-siècle east Mediterranean port-metropolis than as a provincial city of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century due to two of its principal characteristics: its function as a hub of international trade and travel and the multi-ethnic character of its inhabitants. Historical narratives have usually privileged this or that single ethnic group and presented little evidence on the interaction, competition, clashes, collaboration and common experiences that typified the activities of Odessites throughout the nineteenth century. In contrast, my project seeks to study the intersection of the economic and social activities among the different ethnic groups that constituted Odessa’s social fabric. The distribution of ethnic groups in the city’s space during a period of extreme growth and dramatic social restructuring, their tendency to practice certain professions, their different patterns of entrepreneurship and their contribution to the creation of the public sphere form the core of my analysis. By examining urban demography, social interaction and economic collaboration, I wish to provide a corrective to the standard historical narrative of Odessa’s development. In particular, I offer evidence against the supposedly predominant fragmentation of Odessa’s population principally along ethnic and religious lines. Instead, I argue that both the upper classes (bankers, wealthy merchants, etc.) and the lower classes (workers, servants, maids, prostitutes, urban poor etc.) displayed a high degree of integration that sidestepped the religious and ethnic boundaries dictated by state law, religious tradition and ethnic allegiance. It was the middle classes (merchants, urban shopkeepers, etc.) who competed fiercely in particular sectors of the economy, and mostly in the grain trade, as was the case between Greeks and Jews. Class determined whom Odessites shared partnerships or public space with and whose family celebrations they attended; and it was class that allowed Russian and Jewish women to work together as servants in the same household or as workers in the same factory. Although the state may have wanted to keep the ethnicities of the Empire legally segregated in respect to social status and professional opportunities, the struggle for equality and civil rights bore fruit in the years that preceded and followed the Great Reforms. Such developments coincided with a strong assimilationist trend, evident principally among the Jewish population of Odessa. During the last quarter of the nineteenth century, © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004351622_002

2 Introduction however, state policies towards different ethnic groups reinforced segregation and exclusion, phenomena that were most obvious in the educational sector. Economic recession resulted in fierce competition in the labour market and fuelled ethnic clashes while the failure of a comprehensive policy of integration boosted the emergence of nationalistic projects to which different ethnic groups enthusiastically adhered. The 1905 Revolution offered the last opportunity (ultimately unsuccessful) for a unifying movement of political reform that could mitigate ethnic differences and guarantee economic and civic improvement. The dynamics of economic activity are a major focus of my project since they help trace how different ethnic groups engaged in commercial relations and how economic changes affected Odessites. As the sector of cross-cultural interaction par excellence, trade allows us to detect the patterns of ethnic ­entrepreneurship of incoming immigrant groups. Interethnic entrepreneurial activity and commercial undertakings (such as joint stock companies and banking initiatives) show that the seemingly fragmented (along religious and ethnic lines) urban landscape of Odessa was actually riven along class lines instead, particularly so until the last third of the nineteenth century. A timetable of the trends of integration and fragmentation in Odessan society shows that, until the 1860s, there was a trend towards integration; afterwards it was followed by one of fragmentation as supported by state policies. Consequently, by the beginning of the twentieth century, Odessa’s urban landscape was split largely along class lines but separation along ethnic or religious lines had deepened as well. Re-examining the social structure of ethnic minorities in relation to the space they shared in the city and analysing their sources of income and levels of education, brings forth new evidence regarding the converging and diverging features of their urban lives and thus illuminates collaboration, competition and clashes. By describing the integration of various ethnic groups into Odessan society and by comparing their behaviour in the private and public spheres, a sharper larger picture of Odessa emerges as a laboratory of multiand, occasionally, cross-cultural urban experience. This idiosyncratic profile, shared by only a few Mediterranean port cities (Marseilles, Livorno, Salonika, Alexandria, Smyrna), is what drew me to Odessa as the subject of my research and, finally, led to this study. The book unfolds around two interpenetrating axes. The first one is the peripatetic approach that discovers the space of the city; and the other, the one that has given it its dynamic, is the socio-economic transformations that germinated within the political changes.

Introduction

3

1 The Peripatetic Approach Discovering a city demands determined perambulation either with or without a preordained destination. It is, in a phrase, the practice of walking as analysed by Michel de Certeau.1 Slowness of pace and incremental discoverycum-­apprehension of the urban space via a peripatetic2 approach are essential in  the quest for the meaning I seek: the gradual initiation into the city’s ­physiognomy. A city is perceived entirely differently from aboard a tourist bus or speeding automobile. A safe distance is maintained. This is not what I am looking for. I seek the stroll on the boulevard, in the back alleys, streets and dead ends, as well as the leisurely pause before historical buildings and the discovery of the past through its material remains. Walter Benjamin tells us that the materiality of the city reveals its history. The historicity of the city is encased in its material relics, for example in the buildings that tell stories of the recent and far distant past. The historian becomes an urban archaeologist whose task is to dig beneath the surface of the modern city and to unearth individual or collective memories while keeping for himself/herself the richest prize, namely the inventory of his/her discoveries.3 Of course, well in advance of Walter Benjamin or Guy Debord, who coined the term psychogeography as the art of strolling that leads pedestrians to a new awareness of the urban landscape, the practice of discovering the city through strolling in a peripatetic fashion remains a constant, almost primordial, characteristic of city life. A body of written and oral information, extracted from and framed by others, accompanies me in my explorations. The stories come unbidden to mind wherever I pause. The city’s timeless layers cloak infinite

1 2

3

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. by Steven Rendall (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 91–110 and 115–30. Peripatetic is used in the broader sense of walking about, wandering. The adjective derives from the Greek verb peripatein. It refers to Aristotle’s school, called Peripatos, founded after 335 bc at a public gymnasium outside the city walls. It was a place of systematic co-operative research in all branches of knowledge named after the covered colonnades where much of the peripatetic learning took place. See The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, ed. by Robert Audi (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 573. Walter Benjamin, One-Way Street and other Writings (London: Verso, 1985), 314; Graeme Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis. Walter Benjamin and the City (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996), 70–71.

4 Introduction narratives. Which ones do I choose for my canvas? To mould together historical knowledge and the excavation of the social undercoat of the living city, how its inhabitants lived, and the sociocultural propensities that flowed from them; this is my goal in Odessa. I have particular reasons for pursuing this type of “vision”. To perceive a city, I need to follow a literal and metaphorical path that unites its history with its places and peoples and reveals the complexities of its present and its past. Odessa was the principal Black Sea port of the Russian Empire, was tightly linked with the Eastern Mediterranean and the metropolises of Europe, and its society was multi-ethnic and cosmopolitan. The neglected aspects of the city today are evident in its structural morphology. Like a one-hundred-yearold photograph frozen in time, the buildings capture the city at the peak of its fortunes and contrast sharply with its current inhabitants’ self-image and presentation. Emerging from the Soviet system’s isolationism into the fantasia of hard core capitalism, at least some of Odessa’s people desire nothing more than to embrace the new, the shiny, the modern in any form or extreme rendition that is available. At the same time, Odessites display an admirable perseverance, living, unavoidably to be sure, in crumbling residences of the historical centre and abandoned apartment buildings of eclectic style whose plaster decoration frequently and abruptly plummets to the pavement. I ascend the grand marble stairs of the entrance of a formerly urbane apartment building, now deprived of concierge and elevator service, wrapped in the pervasive odour of abandonment and heavy cooking, destined for the top floor where “renovated” apartments are available for rent for those planning long visits to the city. The relocation to my new dwelling was preceded by hard bargaining provoked by the disparity between the price and the services to be provided. And so I find myself living in the first district of the city at 1 Vorontsovskii Pereulok, the residence, once upon a time, of Stephen Ralli (see Maps 1 and 2).4 In my walks around the city, when I passed by this building next to the palace of the Governor-General of New Russia, Michael Vorontsov, I always imagined its premises and grand reception spaces. Presiding there would be

4

Stephen (Stepan) Ralli was the son of the prominent Greek merchant John Ralli, one of the magnates of grain exports in the first half of the 19th c. Originating from the island of Chios in the Aegean Archipelago, his father arrived in Odessa in 1819 with substantial capital and enrolled in the city’s first merchant guild. John Ralli was at the head of the consulate of the United States from 1833 on. His son, a rentier, studied law at the University of Novorossiia and became American consul as well.

Introduction

map 1

5

Odessa neighbourhoods

the vigorous Mr. Ralli, the nominal head of the city’s Greek community, who did as little as possible for it and was always too busy and full of excuses of a personal nature to attend any of its meetings. A founding member of the city’s Society for the Protection of Animals, his heart was fonder of his hounds,

6 Introduction guardians of his country estate and regular Cerberuses who once attacked his servant as the newspaper Odesskii Vestnik reported.5 I now reside in the former superintendent’s dwelling, an entirely illegal structure according to the Jewish neighbour and hear, day and night, the sound of the hooves of the horses that pull the carriages that still deliver visitors to the building. From this vantage point Odessa in its glory lives on only through the remnants of its past. At present, the set has changed dramatically. For 50 euros a night, I enjoy a room with no fan, cockroaches in the bathtub, ersatz contemporary furniture, kitsch of kitsch, flora-festooned wallpaper, a small fluorescent sconce above the bed, a terrycloth bedspread in shades of mauve, and plastic made-in-China decorative vases. However, this vision of post-modern wretchedness promptly dissipates as soon as I emerge on the street to begin my daily tour. Walking is an urban practice as de Certeau notes.6 It permits the walker to adopt a kind of formal regularity in criss-crossing the city and to determine his or her own trajectory in the urban space. Thus, place becomes a practiced space and itineraries are transformed into spatial stories.7 Unlike the daily route that has a predetermined destination such as the port or commercial offices for the city’s workers, my itinerary is that of a perambulator who strolls and experiences what the perambulation itself may yield. Like the ancient philosophers’ practice, constant walking is a bodily practice that enables sensing, thinking and interacting with others.8 Contemporary groups like the My Odessa Club sense their history through walking in the city and exchanging views with its residents in the courtyards.9 At the intersection of Vorontsovskii Pereulok and Ekaterininskaia Street, which leads from the Odessa Steps of renown to the centre of the city, one comes across the Ménage Mahs (see Map 2). Hugging the corner, it is a green-coloured mansion with twenty-three large windows on the façade of the third floor alone. Its decoration is as spare as were its German owners. Ernst Mahs first settled in Odessa as a representative of the banker Baron Stieglitz.

5 6 7 8

9

Odesskii Vestnik, n. 46, February 17, 1888; n. 49, February 20, 1888; n. 51, March 22, 1888; n. 144, May 28, 1888. de Certeau, Practice, 93. Yet, I do not consider myself a flâneur since my tour is not aimless. de Certeau, Practice, 116–17. On the philosophy, not only of the Peripatetics, characteristic of walking, see R. E. Wycherley, “Peripatos: The Athenian Philosophical Scene – I,” Greece and Rome, sec. series, 8/2 (Oct. 1961): 155. Tanya Richardson, “Walking Streets, Talking History: The Making of Odessa”, Ethnology 44/1 (Winter 2005): 13–33.

Introduction

7

In 1838, he went independent and began his involvement in the wheat export business. As Kitty Huderman, née Mahs, informs us: The house on Ekaterininskaia was very beautiful and looked out over the port. It was also the headquarters for Ernst Mahs & Co., the bank our grandfather founded. When he died in 1879, grandmother removed herself from the house and we moved in. My father’s family had 7 children. We spent winters here in Odessa and summers at the Derebczin property, at the administrative centre of Podolia. The four of us girls never went to school but our parents made certain we had the best teachers at home. We owe much to Eugenia Petrovna Obunkova who taught us to love work. She was demanding, strict and fair.10 At present, the Mahs building is seeking a purchaser. The “For Sale” signs (prodam) affixed on most buildings confirm that real estate in Odessa is a booming business. At number 4 Ekaterininskaia Street, next to the Ménage Mahs, the light-beige toned Palais Brodskii presents thirteen third-floor windows to the street and is sparsely decorated with plaster garlands. Abraham Brodskii (1816–1884) established himself in Odessa in 1858. His family in Kiev, primarily his brother Israel and his sons Lazar and Leon, controlled a network of twenty–two sugar processing factories. Abraham was involved in the family business but also engaged in public affairs as a member of the municipal council (City Duma) for many years.11 A promoter of the rights of the Jewish community but also of human rights in general, his philanthropic work encompassed support for the poor and education.12 His son Samuel (1846–1896) was also elected to the City Duma despite the fact that the participation of the Jewish community in municipal bodies and committees as well as in professional guilds was subject to restrictions. Across Ekaterininskaia Square stands the four-storey mansion of the Stourdza-Gagarin family (see Map 2). The Stourdza were Moldavian nobles of

10 11 12

Wolfgang Sartor, Das Haus Mahs. Eine Internationale Unternehmerfamilie im Russischen Reich, 1750–1918 ([Saint Petersburg]: Olearius Press, 2009), 149–52. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/3729-brodski (accessed July 2015). He donated a stone building on Aleksandrovskii Prospekt to the Talmud Torah for hou­ sing orphans willing to study at the institution. Steven J. Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa from 1794–1871: Social Characteristics and Cultural Development” (PhD. diss., University of California-Los Angeles, 1980), 178.

8 Introduction Greek descent who lived in St. Petersburg and Odessa.13 The decoration of the intensely pink Stourdza building becomes increasingly dense as it ascends the façade, from heraldic escutcheons above the second-floor windows to garlands and busts of Athena on the third, which in turn give way to anthropomorphic pilasters of a masculine cast on the top floor. Roxandra, a lady-in-waiting to the wife of Tsar Alexander I, is known for the romantic correspondence she maintained with Count Ioannis Kapodistrias [Capo d’Istria] (1776–1831), foreign minister of Russia and later the first ruler of modern Greece. Dearest Friend, You write to instruct me never to forget you in my prayers. And with them to warm the place you hold in my thoughts and in my heart. And you repeat, once again, that you too warm the place that I hold in your thoughts and in your heart with your prayers.14 The tragic news of Kapodistrias’ murder in Nafplion, the capital of Greece at the time, arrived in Odessa late. Roxandra’s brother, Alexander, a close colleague of Kapodistrias in the Russian diplomatic service and booster of philhellenic ideas in Odessa, wrote, “As soon as my beloved sister learned of the tragic news, she fell insensate! In essence, from that moment on she too was dead!”15 Roxandra had persuaded the Minister of Religious Affairs and Public Education, Prince A. N. Golitsyn, to collect money in order to support the victims of the Greek insurrection and built an orphanage for unattended children who had escaped from the Ottoman Empire. These three neighbours of the upper class Bul’varnyi district, although speaking different mother tongues and belonging to distinct cultures and religions, were all involved in civic and communal affairs (see Map 1). They participated actively in municipal matters while launching projects for the benefit of their ethno-cultural groups. The investigation of dual (or multiple) identities is an integral part of this book. Moreover, the book delves into the interaction, clash, collaboration and common experiences that punctuated the activities 13

Stella Ghervas, Réinventer la tradition. Alexandre Sturdza et l’ Europe de la Sainte-Alliance (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008). 14 This letter, whose date is unknown, is supposedly copied in the unpublished parts of her autobiography “Ma vie” and is held in the Stourdza Archive in Pushkin House, Saint Petersburg. Elene Koukkou, Ioannes Kapodistrias, Roxane S. Stourtza. Mia anekplerote agape. Historike viographia (Athens: Patakis, 2000), 598–600. 15 Alexandre Stourdza, Oeuvres posthumes, religieuses, historiques, philosophiques et littéraires. Souvenirs et portraits (Paris: Dentu, 1859), 12, 282.

Introduction

9

of Odessites throughout the nineteenth century. In order to escape a historical narrative that focuses on the decisive contribution of a single ethnic group, I propose a “peripatetic” approach to loci that reveal the intersection of the economic and social activities among the different ethnic groups that constituted Odessa’s social tissue.16 From my open window in the Ralli Mansion, I frequently hear 1930s music and wonder wherefrom a tango could possibly originate, perhaps from the courtyard or from one of its forty-nine windows? As I distance myself from our house on my way to the end of Vorontsovskii Pereulok, my eyes are drawn to Mahs’ basement windows. Tucked in the building’s side is the entrance to the “White Rabbit,” revealingly subtitled “an erotic club.” This is one of the neighbourhood’s main attractions and many locals and visitors have themselves photographed there at all times of the day. I slow my pace in the hope that I might catch a glimpse, but the interior is dark and the stairs steep. One could wind one’s way downward, perhaps slightly tipsy, drawn to the friendly, faintly glowing white rabbit standing guard in the shadowy depths by tantalizingly closed doors. Odessa, a quintessential port city with a disproportionately high male population, offered a vast variety of underground entertainment and supported a lucrative network in the trade of women. Busted by the police in April 1872, a human trafficking gang was involved in the transportation of 50 local girls for distribution to dives in Constantinople owned by Ottoman subjects of Jewish origin.17 The case not only drew the attention of the head of the city and of the local police but also of the Ottoman consulate in Odessa and the Russian embassy in Constantinople. In another case of “women for export,” the network extended all the way to Alexandria and involved Greek citizens.18 Lawsuits filed by the parents blamed the slackness of employers’ supervision of the young women who worked, far from home, as housemaids. Young women who toiled independently as sellers in the bazaar were also at risk. Some of them apparently had few inhibitions in accepting proposals that seemed to promise a better life far from home and country. Prostitution was taken for granted in the 16

17 18

There is a rich literature on the study of particular ethno-religious communities in Odessa. See: John A. Mazis, The Greeks of Odessa: Diaspora Leadership in Late Imperial Russia (Boulder, co: East European Monographs, 2004); Steven J. Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794–1881 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985). daoo, fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 13, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Politsmeistera, 2 April 1872, letter from the City-Prefect of Odessa to the Head of the Police. Evrydiki Sifneos, “Rentiers, Teachers and Workers: Greek Women in Late Nineteenth-­ Century Odessa,” Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies 34/2 (2010): 199.

10 Introduction

map 2

Odessa: a peripatetic view

Introduction

11

port-city of Odessa. It became a public concern in the 1870s only as a result of its principal side effect, namely the rampant spread of syphilis among the urban population. Local authorities reported to the city governor on the state of the inhabitants’ morals as a matter of course describing transgressive social practices, which everyone attributed to the nature of port-city life.19 Rare were cases when discussions in the City Duma addressed petitions of neighbours disturbed by the noise of the nearby brothels. Attempts to regularise health controls by issuing a yellow-ticket to all prostitutes requiring them to present themselves for examination were an important challenge. Registration was another. Indeed, the few official brothels reported in the All-Russian Census were renowned workplaces of ethnic plurality that reflected aspects of city life.20 As I step out at dawn to photograph the city’s monuments, a taxi idling in front of “The White Rabbit” receives the girls of the late shift while the youthful night guard, wrapped in a blanket across the street, sleeps the sleep of the innocent. My fascination for the past several years with Odessa and the magical world of its archives leads to an adventure that melds scholarly research and the intense experience of the real city. Much as the historic building across the way is semi-visible behind its scaffolding and presents to the eye an enchanting trompe l’oeil by revealing only a flat sliver of its surface, this city of affirmation and contradiction that spreads out before me challenges me to remove its veil. 2 The Socio-economic Approach The identity of Odessa and the ways in which the city affected the variegated identities of its residents form parts of an interactive relationship that was defined as much by the objective physical features of the city as by the subjective manner through which they are perceived and experienced by the various groups of its population. The identities of the residents were not formed exclusively by their relationship to the city they inhabited, but principally by the ways that they defined themselves collectively and in relation to other groups. The shaping of identities was an evolutionary process, which was affected as much by time as by space. Three phases of development can be discerned

19 20

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 301, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, Report of the Duma of Odessa for the year 1851. See data from the All-Russian Census. Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii, 1897 g., v. 47, Odessa, table 22 (St. Petersburg: Tipografiia E. L. Porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), 140–45.

12 Introduction during the nineteenth century, each of which gave the city a different texture and colour: a) the period of the Europeanized port-city (1794–1856); b) the period of the imperial city (1857–1905); and c) the period of the city of political reform (1905–1917).21 The first phase, during which Odessa can by characterised as a Europeanised port-city, covers the years between the founding of the city to the end of the Crimean War (from 1794 to 1856). Odessa was founded upon European principles and prototypes established by its French and Russian administrators (all of whom had European experience), foreign merchants, and Balkan and Central Europeans settlers. The port proved to be the centre of economic life and connected Odessa more closely to Mediterranean ports than with the capital of the Russian Empire. This connection determined the physiognomy of Odessa to a great extent. The economic life of the city was structured around international trade and its modernisation was supported by the material and social contributions of its merchants. Salient features of the period were religious tolerance, attempts by the Jewish community to introduce reforms into its religious and educational practices, and political liberalism that expressed itself through a relatively autonomous administration. In the second phase, 1857–1905, Odessa functioned as an imperial city. It benefitted from the Great Reforms, the advent of the railroad and the connection with the hinterland and the imperial centre. The port and the outskirts of the city in the direction of the countryside became equally important gateways for the supply of commodities. One connected to the foreland and the other to the hinterland. The population of the city increased dramatically as a result of systematic internal immigration. The Jewish community made its greatest effort at integration into Russian society until the 1880s when, as a result of the pogroms, isolation and self-protection emerged simultaneously with the rise of nationalist movements. In the same period, the public sphere bloomed. A plethora of societies and clubs were founded, giving expression to various aspects of civil society and organising residents’ initiatives in the realms of charity, professionalisation, and the organisation of leisure time. During this period, the Empire envisioned consolidating the national market by integrating geographical spaces and assimilating ethnicities.22 The unequal treatment

21 22

For the population of Odessa see Appendix, Table 1. Mark Bassin, “Geographies of Imperial Identity,” in The Cambridge History of Russia. Imperial Russia, 1689–1917, ed. Dominic Lieven, vol. 2 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 56–57.

13

Introduction

of the ethno-religious communities and the discrimination against the Jewish minority destroyed this attempt at homogenisation from the inside. The third phase, 1905–1917, was characterised by political reforms and was marked by the liberalisation of the absolutist state through the constitutional experiment. The founding of political parties, labour unions, the right to free assembly, relative freedom of the press, and elections for the State Duma were among the innovations of the period. Odessa was united on a political and administrative level with all-Russian institutions. The last anti-Jewish pogrom coincided with the proclamation of the liberal Manifesto of 1905, which was followed by a period of political instability and criminal anarchy, an increase in police surveillance, repression of political activists, and terrorism by the far-right extremists. The latter’s victims, the Jewish population, responded by establishing armed self-defence groups and Zionist and socialist organisations. Social polarisation was much in evidence before the outbreak of ww1.23

…

The substance of a new book of history adds (one hopes, at least) a layer to the accumulated knowledge on its subject, confirms or contests established assumptions and wisdom, opens new avenues for research, and eavesdrops, borrowing here and there, on the ways of thinking of the past. As I too add my perspective and research to this body of knowledge, it would be remiss not to highlight several books from the rich historiography of Odessa. Patricia Herlihy’s, Odessa: A History 1794–191424 offers a comprehensive history of the city and covers most aspects of its economic and social development. Put together with her PhD dissertation and a plethora of articles,25 her works constitute the Holy Scriptures on the subject, by far the essential primers for the city’s

23

24

25

This is the basic argument of Leopold H. Haimson concerning pre-revolutionary urban Russia. Leopold H. Haimson, “ ‘The Problem of Political and Social Stability in Urban Russia on the Eve of War and Revolution’ Revisited,” Slavic Review 59/4 (Winter 2000): 848–75. Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 1794–1914 (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, 1986). See also Herlihy, “Russian Grain and Mediterranean Markets, 1774–1861,” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1963). Herlihy, “Russian Wheat and the Port of Livorno 1794–1865,” Journal of European Economic History 5/1 (Spring 1976): 45–68; Herlihy, “Odessa: Staple Trade and Urbanization in New Russia,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, new series, 21/2 (1973): 184–95; Herlihy, “The Ethnic Composition of the City of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1/1 (March 1997): 53–78.

14 Introduction history. Written three decades ago, her first book, which was an attempt at a histoire totale of Odessa, has since been supplemented by specialised offerings emphasizing particular aspects of the city’s evolution. Frederick Skinner has studied Odessa’s urban development in relation to the process of urbanization in Russia in general and maintains that the city conformed to the dictates of modernity in the second half of the 19th century.26 A more in-depth examination of the municipal government and its deliberations would enrich this important study and shed light on the strategies used by the social groups in power. The recently published Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams,27 by Charles King aspires to emulate Mark Mazower’s, Salonica, City of Ghosts,28 which narrates that city’s history through the triple prism of its Muslim, Jewish and Greek subcultures. King’s attempt to present an all-encompassing general history of Odessa presents little new material for the specialised reader and is mostly directed towards the general public. Tanya Richardson29 observes the city as a social anthropologist by following an amateur group of walkers, My Odessa Club, who rediscover their city by conversing with its contemporary inhabitants. Roshanna Sylvester’s Tales of Old Odessa: Crime and Civility in a City of Thieves30 presents a colourful collage of the city’s characters, neighbourhoods and social life by drawing from newspaper clippings from the years prior to wwi. It depicts the role of journalism as a booster for bourgeois respectability and critic of criminality and the behaviour of the “lumpen proletariat,” thereby promoting the formation of an urban middleclass culture. Her social-historical approach sustains her thesis of Odessa’s distinctiveness. In his book, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa. Blood on the Steps,31 Robert Weinberg digs deep into the political and socio-economic antecedents of the

26 27 28 29 30 31

Frederick W. Skinner, “City Planning in Russia. The Development of Odessa, 1789–1892,” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 1973). Charles King, Odessa: Genius and Death in a City of Dreams (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2011). Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts: Christians, Muslims and Jews, 1430–1950 (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005). Tanya Richardson, Kaleidoscopic Odessa. History and Place in Contemporary Ukraine (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Roshanna Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa: Crime and Civility in a City of Thieves (DeKalb, il: Northern Illinois University Press, 2005). Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa. Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993).

Introduction

15

1905 revolution. He analyses the constituent parts of the working class and their divisions along ethnic and cultural lines and highlights the development of the political movement from the simple demonstrations of early days to the aggressive strikes and social upheaval that culminated in the events of 1905. Guido Hausmann’s Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 1865–1917: soziale und nationale Selbstorganisation an der Peripherie des Zarenreiches32 offers deep insight into the liberal professions of the city and its intelligentsia as they were shaped in relation to Novorossiiskii University (University of Novorossiia). Moreover, it opens the discussion on the interplay between social and ethnic groups, their dynamics and attempts to conquer the political stage of the city. Hausmann’s enlightening article33 on the origins and activities of Odessa’s multi-ethnic entrepreneurial group analyses its much-debated fragmentation along ethnic lines and spotlights the fragile identity of the businessmen as opposed to the conception of a homogenous bourgeoisie. Tanja Penter has successfully undertaken the task of delving into the political and social events of the 1917 revolution up until the late 1920s when the Bolsheviks seized power in Odessa.34 Odessa’s idiosyncrasy has been emphasised in the political sphere as well, as a consequence of its diverse social and ethnic urban fabric, which diverged from the paradigms of other major Russian cities. Steven J. Zipperstein described in his doctoral thesis the formation of the Jewish community of Odessa, its social characteristics and its adaptive efforts, particularly stressing the marked trend toward assimilation in the 1860s and the broken dreams resulting from the rise of ethnic violence of the 1870s.35 Among the older books on the city, one must take note of Odessa 1794–1894,36 a complete narrative of the shaping of the city and its inhabitants written in honour of its centenary. Ilya Gerasimov’s academic work presents new historiographical approaches on social intermingling and aspects of city violence and

32 33

34 35 36

Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 1865–1917: soziale und nationale Selbstorganisation an der Peripherie des Zarenreiches (Stuttgart: F. Steiner, 1998). Guido Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute und Unternehmer. Zur Herausbildung bürgerlicher Identitäten im ausgehenden Zarenreich,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, new series, 48/1 (2000): 41–65. Tanja Penter, Odessa 1917: Revolution an der Peripherie (Köln: Böhlau, 2000). Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa”; see also Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History. Odessa 1794–1894. Izdanie gorodskogo obschestvennogo upravleniia k stoletiiu goroda (Odessa: Tipografiia A. Shul’tse, 1895).

16 Introduction criminality.37 He sheds light on the much-debated ethnic dichotomies that flourished during the late Imperial period. The Odessite Oleg Gubar’ is the “living history” of the city incarnate. In all his writings, articles, and contributions to collective volumes and periodicals38 he brings an amazing sense and precision to Odessa’s places and people and to the imprint that its diverse residents leave on its space. Abel Polese and Aleksandr Prigarin studied the function and survival of bazaars by tying past with present through an anthropological approach.39 Their markets have taken on new roles (barter, networking and socializing), and demonstrate a path-dependent trajectory in the use of the same loci. This is amply demonstrated by the adaptability of the Privoz market, at the centre of the city, to today’s needs (low-cost, home-made, fresh products) (see Map 4).

…

My preoccupation with the Black Sea region stems from a kind of genealogical curiosity, a desire to discover the facts behind my family’s mythology. 37

38

39

Ilya V. Gerasimov, “Urban Tales: sotsial’naia dinamika pozdneimperskogo goroda cherez prizmu etnicheskoi prestupnosti, sluchai Odessy,” in Kul’tury gorodov Rossiiskoi Imperii na rubezhe xix-xx vekov (Materialy mezhdunarodnogo kollokviuma, Sankt-Peterburg, 14–17 iiunia 2004 goda), ed. by B. I. Kolonitskii et al. (St. Petersburg: Evropeiiskii Dom, 2009), 282–298; Gerasimov, Modernism and Public Reform in Late Imperial Russia: Rural Professionals and Self-Organization, 1905–30 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); Gerasimov, “ ‘My ubivaem tol’ko svoikh’: prestupnost’ kak marker mezhetnicheskikh granits v Odesse nachala xx veka (1907–1917 gg.),” Ab Imperio 1 (2003): 209–260; Gerasimov, “Redefining Empire. Social Engineering in Late Imperial Russia,” in Empire Speaks Out: Languages of Rationalization and Self-Description in the Russian Empire, ed. by Gerasimov, Jan Kusber and Alexander Semyonov (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2009), 229–272. Oleg Gubar’, “Novyi bazar (Khersonskaia ploshchad’): istoriia zastroiki,” Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 32 (2008): 11–17, http://www.odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/alm_32/alm_32_11-17.pdf (accessed 12 December 2014); Gubar’, “Staraia Odessa,” in Oleg Gubar’, Starye doma i drugie pamiatnye mesta Odessy (Odessa: Pechatnyi Dom, 2006), 128–33; Gubar’, “Dom Papudovykh”, in Gubar’, Starye doma, 131–32; Gubar’ and P. Herlihy, “The Persuasive Power of the Odessa Myth,” in Cities after the Fall of Communism: Reshaping Cultural Landscapes and European Identity, ed. by John Czaplicka et al. (Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson Center Press, and Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009): 137–66; Gubar’, “Dom na Politseiskoi” Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 20 (2005): 66–75, http://www.odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/ alm_20/alm_20_329-333.pdf (accessed 10 April 2012) Abel Polese and Aleksandr Prigarin, “On the persistence of bazars in the new capitalist world: reflections from Odessa,” The Anthropology of East Europe Review 31/1 (Spring 2013): 110–36.

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Originating from an island in the northwest Aegean, two generations of my ancestors lived in Taganrog on the Sea of Azov from 1850 to 1919. My academic interests transformed this curiosity into a scholarly study of the Sifneos Bros. enterprise,40 a medium sized business of international reach concerned with the grain trade and shipping based in Taganrog. There followed many trips to the Sea of Azov region, to Rostov-on-Don, the regional capital, and to picturesque Taganrog; these trips and a research grant awarded to my friend and colleague Gelina Harlaftis and myself resulted in substantive conclusions regarding the presence of Greeks in the Azov region.41 My interest as a historian was inevitably drawn to the great port of the Black Sea. Odessa won me over on my very first visit. The past is intensely present in the built environment and the city, after 200 years, can transport one back to other times in an almost cinematic manner. My interest in Odessa and the singular atmosphere that it emanates metamorphosed into an interest in its people well beyond the activities of its Greek colony, which once was the largest in Russia. The ethnic amalgam, the confluence of disparate demographic groups, the fusion promoted by a shared urban experience, these were the elements of the city’s history that inspired me the most in writing this book. Inevitably, the city’s inhabitants were transformed through coexistence and interaction and this change enriched them and Odessa itself. Odesssa inspired me to explore it on foot, to absorb its essence, to delve deeply into its substance. Traversing Zhukovskogo Street, between Rishel’evskaia and Pushkinskaia, I was confronted by a challenge: the crumbling building that once was the Brodskii Synagogue, enormous cracks running along its facades and rickety scaffolding attempting to support it, like wounds held together with stitches so as not to spill forth and scatter the city’s riches to the pavement. Inside, it was stuffed with redacted, sorted and edited files, placed neatly on shelves awaiting historians of the future while the archivists with heroic selflessness carried on their mission as guardians of the city’s hidden legacy. The die was cast and my research began tentatively and at a slow pace mostly during summer vacations. The responsiveness of the employees and the archive’s vice-director, Lilya Bilousova, to my research needs was limitless and a

40

41

Evrydiki Sifneos, Hellenes emporoi sten Azophike. He dyname kai ta horia tes oikogeneiakes epicheireses (Athens: Institute for Neohellenic Research/The National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2009). Evrydiki Sifneos and Gelina Harlaftis, eds., Hoi Hellenes tes Azophikes. Nees prosengiseis sten historia ton Hellenon tes Notias Rosias (Athens: Institute for Historical Research/The National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2015).

18 Introduction pleasant surprise, so much more so given the wealth and quality of information that emerged. Despite the unaccustomed length of time required for a Western academic to familiarise herself with the pace of research in the Ukrainian state archives, their content was reward enough. I had found the yeast to ferment a new approach to Odessa’s history, investigating the interrelationships of its inhabitants, and how they operated and appropriated the city for themselves. A fellowship at the Program in Hellenic Studies of Princeton University and access to its valuable library resources permitted me to concretise and finalise the manner in which I wanted to “see” Odessa and also what exactly my point of view could offer to the existing bibliography on the subject. With this project in mind and as a member of the School for Historical Studies (SeptemberDecember 2012) at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University, I had the opportunity to witness how research is undertaken in practice in a country where research itself is a strategic priority. Thanks to the award of an Elizabeth and J. Richardson Dilworth Fellowship, I participated in a rich variety of academic endeavours at the Institute that ventured well beyond the confines of pure historical studies. I am particularly grateful to Professor Jonathan Israel who showed interest in my study and invited me to participate in his seminar on Early Modern European History. There, for the first time, I was able to publicly describe my planned approach to the history of Odessa and received, in return, precious feedback that helped me address omissions and false starts in my preliminary thinking. I must thank Professors Kate Fleming and Yianni Kotsonis who facilitated my research by granting me a visiting fellowship (and access to the library) at the Jordan Center for the Advancement of Russian Studies of New York University (January-April 2013). My participation in the research project “The Black Sea and its Port-cities, 18th-20th centuries, Development, Convergence and Linkages with the Global Economy” (www.blacksea.gr), was co-financed by the European Union and Greece and coordinated by Prof. Gelina Harlaftis and the Ionian University, proffered material and technical support for my research, the opportunity to visit Black Sea and Mediterranean port-cities, and to exchange views with colleagues also working on port-cities. A conference held in Odessa in September 2013 by the Black Sea Project further facilitated this process. My participation in the Annual Conference of Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian Studies (Boston, November 2013) in a panel organized by Gelina Harlaftis with the support of the Black Sea Project, again provided the opportunity for me to meet once more with Prof. Patricia Herlihy, whom I would like to thank for her attention and insightful observations on the chapters of my book. My debts of gratitude are myriad: to my friend Gelina Harlaftis, who is a joy to work with, to the director at the Institute for Historical

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Research of the National Hellenic Research Foundation for approving my leave of absence for an entire year, and to my colleagues who have displayed remarkable and much appreciated sensitivity and flexibility in coping with my disabilities; to Christine Agriantoni, Gelina Harlaftis and Nikolaos Chrissidis who supported me during difficult times; to Sofronis Paradeisopoulos, director of the Odessa branch of the Hellenic Foundation for Culture, who made of Odessa “my home”; to my son Leo who, with youthful wisdom and enthusiasm, held on tight during the darkest times and showed me how to live again; to doctoral student Anna Sydorenko, to whom I am especially indebted and grateful and who shared the expedition through the archives and daily life in Odessa with me, exchanging thoughts and ideas along the way; to my cousin, the architect Michael Dodson Sifnaios, who with persistence edited, translated and at times pressed me with apt commentary not only on the structure and style of the narrative but also on substantive issues, and together with whom we drew up the tour maps of Odessa. To all of you I dedicate this book as reciprocation for what you have given me and I hope that it will transport you to alternative realities and shining utopias!

chapter 1

Port: Mobility and Ethnic Pluralism The city is a space to be read. graeme gilloch on walter benjamin1 The port and the waterfront as urban spaces played a primary role in Odessa’s first period. The port was responsible for the city’s ethnic pluralism and mobility, which gave it its distinctive urban identity and made Odessa different from other Russian cities. This chapter highlights the importance of the port and the flow of people through and around it, and delineates the ways in which they contributed to the city’s economic and social development. Odessa was a city made of foreigners and its port area was its cosmopolitan stage. Trade brought constant mobility, seamen from the sea in front, waggoners from the land behind and connectedness with the West and East. Port-cities have engaged the attention of geographers, historians, sociologists, anthropologists and economists and have aroused considerable interest among specialisations of their disciplines, from transport geography to social anthropology.2 Numerous phenomena specific to this type of city, such as uneven demographics, greater population mobility and diversity, strong communication networks, distinctive municipal measures and policies as well as the emergence of particular identities, cultures, architecture and the arts (most

1 Gilloch, Myth and Metropolis, 265. 2 Port Cities as Areas of Transition: Ethnographic Perspectives, ed. by Waltraud Kokot et al. (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2008); Population and Society in Western European Port Cities, c.1650–1939, ed. by Richard Lawton and Robert Lee (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2002); European Port Cities in Transition, ed. by B.S. Hoyle and D.A. Pinder (London: Belhaven Press in association with the British Association for the Advancement of Science; New York: Halsted Press, 1992). Classic works on port-cities are The Growth of Seaport Cities, 1790–1825. Proceedings of a Conference Sponsored by the Eleutherian Mills-Hagley Foundation March 17–19, 1966, ed. by David T. Gilchrist (Virginia: The University of Virginia Press, 1967); Brides of the Sea. Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th Centuries, ed. by Frank Broeze (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1989); Cağlar Keyder, Eyüp Özveren, and Donald Quataert, “Preface” to Port-cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, 1800–1914, Special Issue of Review (Fernand Braudel Center), 16/4 (1993), v–vii. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004351622_003

port: mobility and ethnic pluralism

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prominently in literature and cinema) have been attributed to the nodal activities of their ports. Recently the importance of network analysis has become an indispensable tool for the advancement of the study of port-cities.3 B.S. Hoyle’s historical approach to the development of port-cities (Hoyle, 1989) brings to the fore the relationship between port and city as a system, which is subject to the influence of technology, environment, economic development, politics and legislation. In the pre-industrial period the close connection of the city to the port defined a phase in which, as Sarah Palmer suggests, the harbour made trade while in the industrial era trade made the harbour.4 During the latter, the increased size of ships and the need for updated port facilities altered the direct relationship between the port and the city and relocated port functions where extensive space was available thereby gradually cutting the city off from the port. The history of Odessa confirms such a conclusion. Planned ex nihilo following the mandate of the Empress Catherine ii for the new city to become a secure naval port and a centre of commerce, the foundation of the port and city of Odessa was entrusted to the General Governor Joseph de Ribas (1749–1800) and the Dutch engineer Franz de Volan (1752–1818). Although exposed to southern winds, the natural harbour of the Tatar village of Hadjibei was endowed with considerable depth, stable side banks and ice-free waters during most of the year while its competitors, Ochakov and Kherson, presented greater climate difficulties and higher cost projections for the dredging of their ports.5 The plans, like those for most of the city’s buildings, had to be approved by the empress and to conform in design and appearance to the regulations of the Building Code. The execution of the approved plans that de Volan submitted did not proceed quickly,

3

4 5

Port Cities. Dynamic Landscapes and Global Networks, ed. by Carola Hein (New York: Routledge, 2011); Trade, Migration and Urban Networks in Port Cities, c. 1640–1940, ed. by Adrian Jarvis and Robert Lee (St. John’s, Nfld.: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2008); François Gipouloux, The Asian Mediterranean: Port cities and Trading Networks in China, Japan and Southeast Asia, 13th–21st century (Cheltenham, uk: Edward Elgar, 2011). Sarah Palmer, “Ports” in The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, ed. by Martin Daunton, v. 3, 1840–1950, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 133–50. Apollon A. Skal’kovskii, Pervoe tridtsatiletie istorii goroda odessy, 1793–1823 (Odessa: Gorodskaia Tipografiia, 1837), 28–33. K. Smol’ianinov, Istoriia Odessy (Odessa: Gorodskaia Tipografiia, 1853), 16–22; Gabriel de Castelnau, Essai sur l’histoire ancienne et moderne de la Nouvelle Russie 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Paris: Rey et Gravier, Libraires, 1827), 3: 24–25; Skinner, “City Planning,” 39.

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chapter 1

and the city and its port works languished in the period between 1796 and 1800.6 The French diplomatic attaché Anthoine Ignace Anthoine de St-Joseph ­recounted in 1805 that although Odessa had been planned to be endowed with a quarantine, a lazaret and a custom’s house, its harbour looked more like a roadstead than a port.7 There were several reasons for the delay, including Emperor Paul’s unwillingness to support Catherine II’s project and collaborators; the creation of a dual local magistracy that decreased the city’s income; and financial mismanagement that slowed down the pace of infrastructure work. New impetus was given with the ascension to the throne of Alexander I in 1801 when the petition of the Odessa Magistracy was affirmed by the promulgation of the ukaz (decree) of 5 May 1804 that exempted all imports in transit from taxation, and the ukaz of 26 October 1808 that granted free port status.8 The full expansion of commerce in the Black Sea and the linkage of Odessa to the Mediterranean, for either trading or communication purposes, was always subject to Ottoman regulations for free maritime transportation in the Black Sea.9 Not only did Russia’s navigation through the Straits depend on its peaceful relations with the Porte but also the rights of passage for all nations were defined by separate bilateral treaties signed at the beginning of the nineteenth century with the Ottomans. According to travellers’ accounts and other contemporary sources, Odessa owed its affluence and fame to the meticulous work and administrative skills of the Duc de Richelieu, Odessa’s Governor-General from 1803 to 1814, and the lobbying of Second-Major G. S. Kir’iakov, Odessa’s permanent representative resident in St. Petersburg.10 A new quarantine facility, isolated by a ravine from the city, was built to the extreme right of the Odessa Staircase. Two moles divided the bay into three parts, one for the vessels that came from abroad (quarantine port), and the other for coastal vessels which did not need to pass

6 7 8 9 10

Henry A. S. Dearborn, A Memoir on the Commerce and Navigation of the Black Sea 2 vols. (Boston: Wells & Lilly, 1819), 1: 233. Anthoine Ignace Anthoine de Saint-Joseph, Essai historique sur le commerce et la navigation de la Mer-Noire (Paris: H. Agasse, 1820), 216. Skinner, “City Planning,” 62–63. Mose L. Harvey, “The Development of Russian Commerce on the Black Sea and Its Significance” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1938). de Castelnau, Essai, 3: 14–19; Skinner, “City Planning,” 65; Skal’kovskii, Pervoe, 283–86; V.  K. Nadler, Odessa v pervye epokhi ee sushchestvovaniia (Odessa: Tip. V. V. Kirkhnera, 1893), 40.

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through control procedures (free pratique in port) to the left, while the central part of the harbour formed a roadstead.11 What did visitors see as they approached the city by sea? The engineer Hommaire de Hell (1812–1848) gives us a detailed description of his arrival by steamer with other passengers in May 1838. Departing from Constantinople on a Russian vessel, which linked the two ports twice a month, they approached a lighthouse on the second day and, an hour later, were in front of the city walls. Their ship moored at the quarantine harbour from where they could admire, far above them on top of the cliff, Nikolaevskii Boulevard, the mansion of Count Michael S. Vorontsov, the Stock Exchange and the locals promenading in their Sunday best. Odessa’s appearance was strikingly European to their eyes (see Map 2). Passengers and sailors alike were then moved to the quarantine building and separated from their luggage, which underwent two days of fumigation while they themselves were subject to a fortnight’s isolation (see Map 3). The day of their release, they were pestered with endless customs house formalities until, at long last, they were permitted to check in to the Hotel de la Nouvelle Russie only to discover it lacked linen, bells and servants. The brilliant European façade did not extend beyond the first rows of houses. The city’s streets were filled with ox-drawn carts rolling in dust and accompanied by swarms of Russian and Polish peasants who lived and slept al fresco in the city’s public spaces, exhausted after their own journeys to the city from the hinterlands. Yet, Odessa’s new lazaret by all accounts was more agreeable than its hotels, served as a model of its kind and was far superior to the outmoded quarantine of Marseilles.12 The port as it could be seen from the city in the nineteenth century does not exist anymore. Relocated in the direction of Catherine’s naval port, to the left of the Odessa Staircase, it constitutes a world apart, unconnected to the city. Nowadays one may contemplate it only from the heights of the city’s bluffs. Beyond the neo-classical colonnade of Vorontsov’s serene belvedere a throng of colourful cranes pierce the sky, a mole pushes far out into the sea in front of the historical steps, ready to host the cruise ships that disgorge the throngs of French and American tourists who quite abruptly fill the city centre. The Straits Question was a permanent headache for Odessa’s commerce. Warfare with the Ottomans or even the threat of war disrupted the flow of trade between Odessa and the ports of the Mediterranean and the Atlantic,

11 12

Sheltered stretch of water near the shore in which ships can anchor safely. Xavier Hommaire de Hell, Travels in the Steppes of the Caspian Sea: the Crimea, the Caucasus &c.; with additions from various sources (London: Chapman and Hall, 1847), 1–10.

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map 3

chapter 1

The port area

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provoked substantial increases in freight and grain prices and hindered passenger transportation13 as happened in the Crimean War, the 1877–78 war between Russia and Turkey, and the 1911–1913 Italo-Turkish and Balkan wars. Retaliatory policies such as prohibiting exports by Russia or the closing of the Dardanelles by the Turks damaged trade and often bankrupted mercantile businesses. Odessa in the first half of the nineteenth century was port-oriented. The entire city, with its three initial districts, the Bul’varnyi, Aleksandrovskii and Khersonskii quarters, was surrounded by a semi-circular trench at the limits of Staroportofrankovskaia Street that delineated the free-trade zone area. The city faced the waterfront (see Maps 1 and 3). The port defined its northern edge, its window on the outer world, the gateway through which it connected to the global economy (see Map 1). The port was the interface between the city and the Mediterranean world, which was, all things taken into consideration, more readily accessible to Odessa than its own imperial capital. Likewise, Odessa’s port was the threshold over which modern ideas on city governance and the way a port-city should operate entered the empire. Mediterranean methods of administrating city ports (including the control of sea-transmitted diseases) and sustained attraction of immigrant capital through seafaring and commercial skills were techniques that were absorbed by the empire and stimulated Odessa’s economy during the first phase of its evolution. Although initially important as a naval and coastal one, Odessa’s port belonged to the entrepôts and free port typology.14 These ports guaranteed the unrestricted circulation of goods free of entry duties. Their aim was to promote international re-export commerce. They consisted of a ‘customs outland’ zone and a free-city, an urban unit, which was the ports’ immediate trading area.15 Such commercial port-cities, privileged by their status, flourished throughout the Mediterranean during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Marseilles, Genoa, Trieste, Ancona, Livorno,16 Fiume (and Hamburg in the north as well) had all benefited from free-trade policies that allowed them to handle a large portion of Europe’s maritime trade, accumulate wealth and mercantile expertise, and develop seafaring-related enterprises such as insurance

13 14 15 16

Harvey, “The Development,” 292–335. Richard Lawton and Robert Lee, “Port Development and the Demographic Dynamics of European Urbanization,” in Population and Society, ed. Lawton and Lee, 1–36. Richard Thoman, Free-ports and Foreign Trade Zones (Cambridge, Md.: Cornell Maritime Press, 1956), 14. Herlihy, “Russian Wheat,” 45–68.

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and banking. They were also efficient at re-distributing staple commodities throughout Europe according to demand, and guaranteeing the steady flow of merchandise that could otherwise be disrupted by local or national shortages. In Odessa, the prime instigator of the implementation of free port status was its governor, Duc de Richelieu. In many letters addressed to Tsar Alexander I, he described the experience of foreign free trade sea-ports and explicitly stressed Smyrna’s role as a centre of a flourishing transit trade.17 Richelieu’s plan was to detour part of Smyrna’s Anatolian trade via Trabzon and Odessa to Brody and Central Europe. Although Russia followed protectionist policies, import and export duties on Odessa’s port were gradually relaxed beginning in 1810 and formal free port status was granted in 1819. Serious economic repercussions might have been expected when the government rescinded Odessa’s free-port status in 1857 but they did not occur (see Appendix, Figures 2–5). Imports and exports of consumer goods in and out of the city during the period of the free-port status had reached a considerable size, and without ignoring the important role of smuggling in supplying the hinterland, growth of the surrounding markets had created a stable demand for goods that was not noticeably affected by the increase in prices caused by the addition of import/export duties. The railway had an increasing impact on the city’s development. It became a second pole towards which the city gravitated, as it was connected with the port and new suburbs grew around it, too. The city doubled in size through the incorporation of the Mikhailovskii, Petropavlovskii and Peresyp’ suburbs, and ultimately expanded beyond the original free-trade zone (see Map 1). The railway facilitated in-migration flows, industrial development, and the connection of the city to its hinterlands. The port remained a key factor in the city’s growth but not as important as in the first period, during which the urban community was predominantly influenced by it. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Odessa outgrew or transcended its port-city character. Incoming streams of immigrants from the hinterlands, former peasants and Jews, supplied the city’s labour force working in domestic service, urban industry and petty commerce. The expansion of the railway grid connecting the North of the Russian Empire to its South and the fertile plains of grain cultivation to new commercial outlets, promoted the emergence of new ports in the Black and Azov Seas. Odessa was no longer the only terminus of grain freight in the Black Sea. Handicapped by its lack of sufficient storage facilities near the moles and the hesitation of its local leaders to invest in up-to-date loading facility technology

17

Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, Fonds Richelieu, msric 70, Le Duc de Richelieu à l’ Empereur Alexandre sur la Nouvelle Russie, 1814.

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(as the new port of Nikolayev did) Odessa’s dominance in the export trade was challenged in the years 1905, 1908, 1909 and 1910.18 Ultimately, it lost its competitive edge as the major southern port for exports principally to Nikolayev, Rostov on Don and Novorossiysk (see Appendix, Figure 5).19 1 Port-City Identities and Cosmopolitanism Port-cities have been routinely associated with the concept of cosmopolitanism.20 A key feature of the age of empires, cosmopolitanism was an attribute that particularly applied to the societies of such Mediterranean cities as ­Trieste, Smyrna, Alexandria and Salonika.21 Their diverse ethnic groups coexisted and interacted primarily through commercial and maritime economic activities rather than cross-community socialising.22 In many instances, these 18

19

20 21

22

In the first decade of the 20th century, Odessa’s exports were surpassed by those of Nikolayev (in 1909 and 1910), and by those of Taganrog and Rostov (in 1905, 1908, 1909, and 1910), which used the Taganrog roadstead for loading. See Appendix, Figure 5. On the shortcomings of Odessa’s port, see Herlihy, Odessa, 222–28. On the influence of the grain trade on urbanization see Herlihy, “Odessa: Staple Trade”; Lewis Siegelbaum, “The Odessa Grain Trade: A Case Study in Urban Growth and Development in Tsarist Russia,” Journal of European Economic History, 9/1 (1980), 113–51. Henk Driessen, “Mediterranean Port Cities: Cosmopolitanism Reconsidered,” History and Anthropology 16/1 (2005): 129–41. For the presence of the Greek commercial diaspora in the Mediterranean port cities, see Evrydiki Sifneos, “Cosmopolitanism as a Feature of the Greek Commercial Diaspora,” History and Anthropology 16/1 (2005): 97–111; Marco Dogo, “Merchants Between Two Empires. The Ottoman Colonies of Trieste in the xviiith Century,” Études Balkaniques 33/3–4 (1997): 85–96. See the cases of Izmir and Alexandria in Driessen, “Mediterranean Port Cities,” 132–135. The ports of Patras, Syros and Piraeus have been studied in Sakis Gekas and Mathieu Grenet, “Trade, Politics and City Space(s) in Mediterranean Ports,” in Port Cities, ed. Hein, 89–103; Malte Fuhrmann, “Staring at the Sea, Staring at the Land: Waterfront Modernization in Nineteenth-Century Ottoman Cities as a Site of Cultural Change,” in Port Cities. Dynamic Landscapes, 138–55. In Salonika’s case we have examples of ethnic intermingling in the upper-class Hamidye district, off the city walls. See Vassilis Colonas, He Thessalonike ektos ton teichon. Eikonographia tes Synoikias ton Exochon (1885–1912) (Thessalonike: University Studio Press, 2014); Marc Baer, “Globalization, Cosmopolitanism, and the Dönme in Ottoman Salonica and Turkish Istanbul,” Journal of World History, 18/2 (June 2007): 141–70; Alexandra Yerolympos and Vassilis Colonas, “Un urbanisme cosmopolite,” in Salonique, 1850–1918: La “ville des Juifs” et le réveil des Balkans, ed. by Gilles Veinstein (Paris: Éditions Autrement, 1993), 158–76.

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ports were ruled by empires (Austrian, Ottoman and Russian) and were destined to play a significant role in Mediterranean trade. The maritime shortcomings of their respective empires were remedied by these hubs of foreign population23 characterised, as they were, with specifically designed incentives, free-trade policies, receptiveness to religious symbiosis and openness to naturalisation. Population groups that came from abroad, as in the case of Odessa during the first decades of its existence, constituted the majority of their inhabitants and, initially at least, outnumbered the natives of the host imperial power. On a social level, cosmopolitanism refers to characteristics of diaspora groups and their merchant elites who were the protagonists in the economic revitalisation of the ports supplying, as they did, capital, commercial and seafaring expertise, and entrepreneurial spirit.24 Their capacity for mobilising networks of kin and business acquaintances endowed them with the adaptability to conduct transactions in different socio-economic environments, quick decision-making and access to private capital and human resources. Nevertheless, cosmopolitanism may be framed within the geographical confines of port-cities in the period immediately preceding the nationalist movements that rendered ethnic differences more acute and accelerated the creation and spread of national identities. It is noteworthy that in the context of nationalism at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century a negative connotation was attached to the attribute “cosmopolitan”. The right-wing organisation Russian Assembly, for instance, was devoted to the defence of Russian society against “the spreading cosmopolitanism of the

23

24

Olga Katsiardi-Hering, “City-Ports in the Eastern and Central Mediterranean from the mid-sixteenth to the nineteenth-century: Urban and Social Aspects,” Mediterranean Historical Review 26/2 (December 2011): 151–70. Ina Baghdianz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, and Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, eds., Diaspora ­Entrepreneurial Networks. Four Centuries of History (Oxford: Berg, 2005); Evrydiki Sifneos, “Merchant Enterprises and Strategies in the Sea of Azov Ports,” International Journal   of Maritime History, 22/1 (June 2010), 259–68. On the use of immigrants with  trading and seafaring skills in the Sea of Azov ports, see Evrydiki Sifneos and Gelina Harlaftis, “Entrepreneurship at the Russian Frontier of International Trade. The Greek Merchant Community/Paroikia of Taganrog in the Sea of Azov, 1780s–1830s”, in Merchant Colonies in the Early Modern Period, ed. by Victor N. Zakharov, Gelina Harlaftis and Olga Katsiardi-Hering (London: Pickering and Chatto Publishers, 2012), 157–79 as well as Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, “Opportunity and Legislation: How the Armenians Entered Trade in Three Mediterranean Ports”, in Merchant Colonies, ed. Zakharov et al., 61–84.

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upper strata”.25 The ‘cosmopolitans,’ as those who pursued their individual economic interests were labelled, were accused of demonstrating insufficiently loyal national aspirations and consciousness. In Odessa, such characterisations referred to those members of the Greek community who demonstrated a lack of interest in the Greek national cause.26 Jews were mostly depicted as ‘cosmopolitans.’ As a diaspora group, they were transnational and rootless and were perceived as alien (inorodtsy). Their cosmopolitanism, when associated with revolutionary movements, was transformed into internationalism. Cosmopolitanism was considered a threat to national unity.27 The rapid shift from an apparent cosmopolitan status quo to the ethnic clashes of the last quarter of the nineteenth century was a common experience in multi-ethnic port-cities. It alerts us to the fragility of the peaceful coexistence of ethnic groups whenever economic recession or selective discrimination occurs. Receptivity to the disruptive features of nationalism was partly the result of failed assimilation, as was the case with Odessa’s Jews, and partly, as in the case of its Greeks, of political, social and economic turmoil, such as that which occurred in Southern Russia during the First World War. A further factor that encouraged such receptivity in the case of Odessa’s Greeks was the impact of Greece’s simultaneous territorial expansion following the Balkan Wars.28 Odessa, though, stands out as a city with a particular identity and even more as an atypical Russian city. An abundance of sources (particularly western travel literature) describes its European aspects, something that usually faded as the traveller distanced himself from the first city blocks.29 Yet, some structural factors in the city’s process of urban development suggest parallels with the experiences of Mediterranean port-cities.

25 26

27 28 29

Catherine Evtuhov and Richard Stites, A History of Russia: Peoples, Legends, Events, Forces since 1800 (Wadsworth: Cengage Learning, 2004), 191. Greek newspaper Phos (Odessa), 16 May 1909; Evrydiki Sifneos, “Indifference and/or Egocentrism: the Greek Paroikia of Odessa in the Face of Twentieth Century Social Turmoil,” in Social Transformation and Mass Mobilization in the Balkan and Eastern Mediterranean Cities (1900–1923), ed. by Andreas Lyberatos (Heracleion: Institute for Mediterranean Studies/Crete University Press, 2012), 289–300. Michael L. Miller and Scott Ury, “Cosmopolitanism: The End of Jewishness?” European Review of History 17/3 (2010): 337–59. Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 244–75; Sifneos, “Indifference and/or Egocentrism,” 293–95, 298–300. de Hell, Travels in The Steppes, 6–7.

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2 Enlightened Administrators First, Odessa governors’ efforts to attract populations from abroad, not only to the city itself but to the surrounding region as well, led to the settlement of German, Bulgarian and other Slav farmers, and Greeks from the Archipelago. Governor-General de Ribas gave permanent housing to between 200 and 300 Greek Albanians living on the city’s outskirts where they had settled following service with the Russian forces during the 1787–1791 war with Turkey.30 Charles Sicard, a prominent French merchant whose mansion (1835) today hosts the Pushkin Museum, came from Marseilles and set up his business in Odessa a year after de Richelieu assumed his duties (see Map 3).31 The governor’s concern for the adoption of measures that would emphasise and encourage trade was guaranteed to attract merchant capital. An inquiry into the list of the members of the Foreign Magistracy claimed to have permission to register in the town’s merchant guilds in 1799, enumerates 64 individuals, of whom 55 were Greek, 1 Albanian, 1 Jewish, 2 Moldavian and 5 Polish.32 Odessa was not simply a city of many foreigners; it was a city of foreigners. The unusual fact that they constituted a substantial majority at its foundation, quite literally imported from abroad, consolidated Odessa’s reputation as a non-Russian city. Secondly, the protagonists of Odessa’s urban growth and administration during the first decades of its existence were also foreigners, albeit in the service of the Russian crown: the Neapolitan Joseph de Ribas, and the Frenchmen Duc de Richelieu and his successor, Count Alexander Langeron. The city’s master plan was drawn up by the Dutch brigadier-engineer de Volan and its buildings conformed to the tastes of the Italian architects Boffo, Torricelli, Morandi and Dall’Aqua.33 Even the Russian native, Michael S. Vorontsov, who succeeded

30 31 32

33

Skinner, “City Planning,” 54. Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, Fonds Richelieu, msric 113, “Notice sur onze années de la vie de Richelieu à Odessa par Ch. Sicard,” Odessa, 1827. daoo, fond 59, opis’ 1a, delo 156, Odesskii Stroitel’nyi Komitet, Report of the Foreign Magistracy of Odessa to Office of the Treasury of Novorossiia, December 1799. All nonGreek merchants petitioned to enter the third guild. Two Greeks had sufficient capital to register in the first guild and seven in the second. The work of Franz Boffo (1780–1867) shows neo-classical elements (in the Primorskii Boulevard) and also neo-renaissance characteristics. During a forty-year career, which culminated in the position of major architect of the Odessa Building Committee between 1822 and 1844, Boffo built Vorontsov’s Palace and Belvedere (1826–1829) and a number of houses and grain warehouses. Torricelli (1796–1843) arrived in 1818 from Lugano and by 1826 he was involved in the Building Committee. He designed residences for Persiani

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Langeron as Governor-General, had a reputation for his British tastes as he had been brought up in England at the Russian Embassy.34 Delving into the remarkable example of de Richelieu’s administration, one may detect a modern style of governance. In his petition to withdraw the isolating cordon that separated the city from its surrounding area a year after the end of the devastating plague of 1812, de Richelieu wrote to Prince Aleksandr Borisovich Kurakin, a statesman and diplomat, “During Easter I have embraced more than 200 persons of all sorts. There is no trace of plague here anymore.”35 Being a fervent advocate of the beneficial role of trade for a nation’s well-being, he strongly believed that the strengthening of commerce in Odessa and its port was the only way out from the period of stagnation that followed Catherine II’s death. Not only did he allocate resources for municipal growth and building but also, by involving the merchants in this process, he managed to reap significant wealth for the city. Besides his experience in warfare, he had broad knowledge of economics and diplomacy. His meticulous correspondence regarding the maturation of the conditions that would allow the implementation of free trade policies in Odessa’s port are expressed in the letters he addressed to the tsar and other Russian officials even after he left Odessa to return to French politics. Odessa’s merchants were involved from the beginning in the modernising process that led to the city’s commercial boom. As Charles Sicard recounts, de Richelieu was in close contact with them. He knew them personally regardless

34 35

at 33 Grecheskaia Str. and for Gagarin-Stourdza at 21 Preobrazhenskaia Str. His plans for the market at Privoz gained him a first prize in 1832. Even after his death in 1842, his plans lay at the base of the creation of the Maritime Museum (6 Lanzeronovskaia). Francesco Morandi (1811–1894) came to Odessa first in 1839 and again in 1841. He designed the new building of the municipal theater and also redesigned the Municipal hospital at 5 Pastera Str. and (partially) the new building of the Preobrazhenskii Cathedral (see Map 3). In 1846 he became a main architect of the city. He designed the mansions of Ralli at 16 Preobrazhenskaia Str. (1847) and Mahs, in Ekaterininskaia Square (1849–1850) as well as Rodocanachi’s at 10 Primorskii Blvd. (1846), whose third floor was designed by Dall’Aqua (see Map 2) Ivan Dall’Aqua was active in Odessa in the second quarter of the nineteenth century. He completed Torricelli’s project of series of shops (lavki) at Palais Royal in Bul’varnyi district and designed the residence of F. Goldfart at 30 Pushkinskaia Str. 30 (1850) (see Map 7). See Valentin Piliavskii, Zodchie Odessy, istoriko-arkhitekturnye ocherki 2nd ed. (Odessa: Optimum, 2010), 25, 28, 32, 33, 38, 39, 54–56. Anthony L. H. Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov. Viceroy to the Tsar (Montreal: McGuill-Queen’s University Press, 1990), 8–12. Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, Fonds Richelieu, msric 91, Duc de Richelieu au Prince Alexis Kourakine, Odessa le 3 mai 1813.

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of their nationality; he visited their businesses and informed himself on their sector of commerce, their expectations and needs.36 The relationship between the governor and the merchant body was at odds with Russian politics since merchants as a social category (soslovie) were not perceived as agents of change in the still-enserfed society.37 Moreover, Odessa, due to its geographical position at the southern fringe of the empire, its distance from the capital, and the lack of means of transport other than by sea enjoyed a kind of unintentional “autonomy” and a laxity of etiquette. Its compliance with the imperial will as well as the implementation of measures emanating from the capital was sporadic. This situation proved to be particularly fertile for the circulation of revolutionary ideas and the organisation of subversive activities. It was in Odessa that the first preparatory plans for the Greek War of Independence of 1821 were conceived. De Richelieu and Vorontsov shared common ideas on how to modernise Odessa. Vorontsov had certainly gained a reputation as a commander of proven military skill in the Russian occupation army in France and as a liberal enlightened governor with unconcealed constitutional concerns.38 His father, Count Simon, was a passionate admirer of the constitutional system of Great Britain with its fixed laws and permanent and independent courts of justice.39 From the day of his appointment in 1825 as Governor–General of New Russia until his petition, as Viceroy of Caucasia, to retire from service in 1853, he was a permanent adversary of the “impenetrable system of regulations and fines” that hindered commerce. He clamoured for the improvement of transport networks, submitting projects for railroad construction and steamship navigation between Odessa and Constantinople.40 A successful entrepreneur in his own right, he understood the mechanisms involved in the commercialisation of agricultural production and gave special attention to the city’s merchant body, which, he boasted, increased from 280 to 1,633 members during his tenure,

36

Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, Fonds Richelieu, msric 113, “Notice sur onze années de la vie de Richelieu à Odessa par Ch. Sicard,” Odessa, 1827. 37 On the estate division of Russia’s society, see Gregory Freeze, “The Soslovie (estate) Paradigm and Russian Social History,” The American Historical Review 91/1 (February 1986): 11–36. On the particular problems of Western businessmen in Russia, see Walther Kirchner, “Western Businessmen in Russia: Practices and Problems,” Business History Review, 38/3 (Fall 1964): 315–27. 38 “Notes of a traveler in Russia from July to December, 1862,” 1–35, Knowsley Pamphlet Collection, 1863. 39 Letter of Count Simon to his son, Michael, dated London, May 3, 1801. Quoted in Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, 222. 40 Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, 112–13.

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as well as to its foreign trade.41 His dislike of serfdom and belief in religious toleration and individual rights were inspired by his formative years in Britain. During his mandate as a governor-general, he passed a regulation that no man could be detained for more than three days without trial, a measure that, according to a foreign traveller, met with formidable resistance from Russia’s bureaucracy.42 He protested to the ministry of finance against the unfair treatment of the Jews in New Russia and pointed out to the St. Petersburg Senate (1832) that it was economically unwise to allow persecution of religious minorities since he regarded them as among the most productive citizens.43 Joachim Tarnopol, an eminent Jewish intellectual, devoted special attention to Vorontsov’s support of Jewish education and care for the construction of a new synagogue (see Map 3).44 Vorontsov lobbied for the approval of an 1827 law that enabled all men in New Russia, including run-away serfs, to remain where they resided and continue their jobs.45 In this transitional phase, Odessa, which had enjoyed a legacy of non-Russian governance since its foundation, earnestly needed a Russian governor who would facilitate ethnic co-existence and enable its heterogeneous population to look outward and strive for economic betterment: Vorontsov was the right man in the right place at the right time. 3 The People of the Port Every day practices of the population in general were connected to the port. The city’s inhabitants “appropriated” the waterfront as an urban space and made use of Nikolaevskii (nowadays Primorskii) Boulevard overlooking the port. Scholars stress the importance of the port area either as a cosmopolitan “stage” or as the centre of a distinct culture that attracted foreign and native residents and offered opportunities for sociability, night-time entertainment, and job recruitment.46 41

St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of History, fond 36, opis’ 2, delo 39, Note dated May 12, 1825, quoted in Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, 235n27. 42 Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov 78; “Notes of a traveler,” 6. 43 Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, 87–89. 44 Joachim Tarnopol, Notices Historiques et Caractéristiques sur les Israélites d’Odessa. Precédées d’un aperçu géneral sur l’état du peuple Israélite en Russie (Odessa: A. Braun, 1855), 77–81. 45 Rhinelander, Prince Michael Vorontsov, 84. 46 Fuhrmann, “Staring at the Sea,” 138–55; Dirk Schubert, “Sea port cities,” in Port Cities, edited Hein (New York: Routledge, 2011), 54–69.

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The city was linked with the harbor by narrow, steep, cranked streets where law-abiding citizens preferred not to venture at night. At every turn, you came upon doss-houses with dingy latticed windows, with the dismal light of a single lamp inside. Still more numerous were the shops where you could sell yours clothes down to your sailor’s singlet or buy yourself any sea garb. There were also a great many beerhouses, taverns and eating-houses with expressive signs in all languages, and not a few brothels, public or illegal, from whose doorway at night coarsely painted women called to seamen in husky voices.47 Ports were hideouts for otherness, stepping stones for newcomers, or transient populations with precarious or seasonal jobs. The 1897 census illustrates the social complexity of the Bul’varnyi district in detail. On the avenues at the top of the bluff, facing the waterfront, resided an aristocratic and bourgeois population, isolated in nuclear families, surrounded by servants, with income derived from private properties or capital. In contrast, on the perpendicular side streets that tumbled down to the port below, a transient population of foreigners, unskilled port or dock workers and seafarers, were packed into makeshift quarters. As a case in point, a large number of unrelated first generation immigrants from the Aegean islands of Patmos, Mykonos, Santorini and Chios lived in the miserable apartments of the building at Karantiinaia Street and Pol’skii Spusk (Polish Descent), no 6. Although the typical family structure in the Greek community was of the bourgeois nuclear family type, with 3 or 4 members, in the above apartments non-family households were also reported. A predominantly male population of co-ethnics shared apartments 12, 17, 41, 42, 47 and 55 in groups of five or seven people and drew their income from seafaring and precarious jobs related to the port.48 The functions and demands of port life and business shape a port’s ethnic, religious, and vocational communities in specific and characteristic ways. Such is the case of the much-debated concept of the Port Jew,49 which describes the 47 48 49

A. Kuprin, “The Gambrinous,” in Kuprin, The Garnet Bracelet: Stories (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1982), 241–80. Evrydiki Sifneos and Sofronis Paradeisopoulos, “Hoi Hellenes tes Odessou sta 1897: Xanadiavazontas ten prote Rosike apographe,” Ta Historika 44 (2006): 81–122. Some scholars have emphasized the prominence of Sephardic Jews and their substantial contribution to the growth of Italian and Atlantic port cities, which ultimately led to their acceptance by both the cities’ institutions and their trading elites. Others believe that the concept of Port Jewry should not necessarily be restricted to the Sephardic Jews but may apply to port dwellers in general. In his critique of the Port Jewry concept D. S. Monaco

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distinctive role of the Jewish merchants who lived in dynamic Mediterranean and Atlantic port cities in early modern Europe.50 As facilitators of international maritime trade and as mediators they benefited from favourable civillegal status. In the case of Odessa, although its Jewry came from the landlocked Ashkenazim milieu of Central Europe, it was greatly influenced by the structure and functions of port cities. The city-port’s impact on Jewish culture and modernisation was unprecedented.51 Odessa proved to be the centre of Jewish Enlightenment in the Pale of Settlement and Jewish acculturation was rapid and widespread. The relationship between Jews and non-Jews will be treated extensively in the chapter on ethnic clashes in the city. Economic and social differences in occupation and residency patterns were central issues in the competition among Jews and gentiles.52 Commercial rivalry in specialised trading sectors and, in particular, in the grain trade was one of the reasons for ethnic clashes. I argue that Odessan Jewry, after a period of prosperity that led to economic and social emancipation (1830–1860s), confronted discontent and disdain from

50 51 52

argues that it does not apply to the case of the Curacao Jews. Odessa conveys both an image of traditionalism and modernism among its Ashkenazi Jews. Austrian Jews, in particular, who came to Odessa from the commercial town of Brody were among the first to embrace modernist ideas of secular education and religious reform and were among the leaders of the Haskalah movement. John D. Klier offers an explanation: Odessa’s Jewish population came from towns, not from shtetls. Therefore, the concept of the Port Jew needs to be revisited in the light of new paradigms. David Sorkin, “Port Jews and the Three Regions of Emancipation,” Jewish Culture and History 4/2 (2001): 31–46; Sorkin, “Beyond the East-West divide: Rethinking the Narrative of the Jews’ Political Status in Europe, 1600–1750.” Jewish History 24/3 (2010): 247–56; Jonathan Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Israel, “Diasporas Jewish and non-Jewish and the World Maritime Empires,” in Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks, ed. Bagdiantz McCabe et al., 3–26; Lois Dubin, “ ‘Wings on their feet … and wings on their head:’ Reflections on the Study of Port Jews,” Jewish Culture and History 7/1–2 (2004): 14–30; John D. Klier, “A Port not a Shtetl: Reflections on the Distinctiveness of Odessa,” Jewish Culture and History 4/2 (2001): 173–78; D. S. Monaco, “Port Jews or a People of the Diaspora? A Critique of the Port Jew concept,” Jewish Social Studies, n.s. 2 (Winter 2009): 137–66. On the Jews of Odessa: Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa”; Tarnopol, Notices Historiques. Lois Dubin, “Introduction: Port Jews in the Atlantic World Jewish History,” Jewish History 20/2 (2006): 117–27. Zipperstein, “Τhe Jewish Community of Odessa,” 67–107. Sifneos, “The Dark Side of the Moon: Rivalry and Riots for Shelter and Occupation between Greek and Jewish Populations in Multi-ethnic Nineteenth-Century Odessa,” The Historical Review/La Revue Historique, Institute for Neohellenic Research 3 (2006): 189–204.

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their economic competitors. The pressure of the continuously growing Jewish population on the demographics of the city, combined with the economic recession of the 1870s, transformed the perception of the Jews by the authorities and broader urban society from useful contributors (concept of utility) to a burden. The harbour was also a place of conflict and argument. By 1897, the effects of racial violence against the Armenians of Constantinople were “exported” to Odessa. The Armenian artel53 of dockworkers attacked the Turkish artel working on the same mole.54 The novelty of strikes first came from the port’s docks and the workers of the Russian Steamship and Trading Company (ROPiT) in 1903.55 Increases in salaries and regularisation of the working hours were among their principal demands. Militant reputation and the formation of a working class consciousness in the city (as well as revolutionary activism in the following years) emanated partly from the workers of the ROPiT. 4 Influences from Without and Within For the inhabitants of Odessa in the first half of the nineteenth century, modernist ideas and European tastes came from the sea, along with disease, overseas conflicts, war and ultimately revolution. For example, the conflict ­between Greeks and Jews was transferred partly from Constantinople and was deeply rooted in the respective historical experiences of the two communities vis-à-vis the Ottomans as well as in recent events such as the outbreak of the Greek revolution.56 During the Crimean War, the terrifying bombardment of the city by the Anglo-French squadron on 22 April 1854 was reported quite differently by both sides. The New York Times, quoting the British and French officers, gave an account of the results: the Imperial Mole and the magazine were blown up, 53 54 55 56

A cooperative association for craftsmen and artisans. daoo, fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 142, Letter of the Head of the Police department to the City-Prefect, January 6, 1897. National Archives and Records Administration (nara), Washington, dc, Dispatches of the American Consul in Odessa, August 6, 1903. For some fresh views see Jews, Turks Ottomans: A Shared History, Fifteenth through the Twentieth Century, ed. by Avigdor Levy (New York: Syracuse University Press, 2002); Christine M. Philliou, “Worlds, Old and New: Phanariot Networks and the Remaking of Ottoman Governance in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century” (PhD diss., Princeton University, 2004).

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the dockyard was set on fire and the lower part of the town was destroyed.57 ­Notwithstanding the orders to avoid firing against the pratique mole, where many English ships were moored, and to abstain from wanton destruction of private property, less than half of what was once Odessa remained. The Russian historian Osip Osipovich Chizhevich, an eyewitness to the event, related that the Russian defensive positions on the bluff extended from Langeron’s mansion and ended at the Odessa Steps expecting the enemy naval forces to approach head on (see Map 2). They were surprised when the foreign squadron approached from Peresyp’, whose waters had been considered too shallow for the purpose and began bombarding the port.58 The dockworkers, who carried war ammunitions on their carts fled and were replaced by some heroic students who descended the stairs amid a rain of artillery and kept Shchegolev, the officer in command, supplied. A few people were hiding behind the front row of buildings on the boulevard and only when a cannonball fell near de Richelieu’s statue did they disperse. All the vessels in the port were destroyed. As Chizhevich wrote the only resistance while the bombardment was going on came from the solitary cannon at Lieutenant Shchegolev’s defensive fortification. The bombardment did not disturb divine services and as soon as the canons fell silent and the enemy left for Sevastopol, the bells of all the churches pealed in celebration of the solemnity of Resurrection! It was Easter, a symbolic day for Christians to be attacked by Christians.59 Lieutenant Shchegolev became a hero, was congratulated by the tsar for his courage, received gifts from all over Russia and became a legend in his own time. This episode on the waterfront stage had unanticipated results. Hereinafter, ladies wore bracelets à la Shchegolev and smoked cigarettes à la Shchegolev.60 Despite the Crimean War’s negative impact on Russia’s prestige as a European power, it precipitated a series of reforms in all spheres of Russian public and private life. Mobility and ethnic diversity were fundamental ingredients of the port experience. To the city’s permanent population one must add the significant number of waggoners who delivered grain to the city and about 50,000 peasants who entered the city daily for seasonal employment.61 A weekly count of the carts that visited the city’s 571 warehouses in 1830 indicates that in June

57 58 59 60 61

The New York Times, May 27, 1854. O.O. Chizhevich, “Gorod Odessa i odesskoe obshchesvo (1837–1877),” in Iz proshlogo Odessy, ed. de-Ribas, 46–49. The New York Times, May 27, 1854. Chizhevich, “Gorod Odessa i odesskoe obshchesvo (1837–1877),” 47–49. Siegelbaum, “The Odessa Grain Trade”, 118.

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an average of 2,020 carriages per day unloaded grain (Appendix, Table 10).62 After delivering their cargoes, their drivers would hang around the city and devote themselves to drinking, shopping and general idling. They often intermingled with other loiterers and participated in riots and other forms of urban disturbance. It is not surprising therefore that secret police documents list half of those arrested during the 1859 riots as serfs and transients registered in other towns.63 In a report to the City-Governor of Odessa on the 1886 disturbances, the police officer of the Petropavlovskii district noted that those arrested were peasants from outside Odessa who had come to deliver grain and lived temporarily in the city.64 5 The Connectedness of Odessa Geographers insist on the importance of the links not only with the hinterland but with the forelands as well.65 The restructuring of shipping lanes in the second half of the nineteenth century brought the city into regular contact with other ports. Odessa was visited by foreign shipping companies and by the steamships of the Russian Steamship and Trading Company (ROPiT) whose fleet increased to 72 steamers in 1901. ROPiT was a joint stock company of private concerns, the largest in Russia.66 Founded in 1856 by Nikolai Arkas, it was partly subsidized by the state, which held one fifth of its stock.67 By 1865, it carried Russian passengers and freight cargo on seven lines that connected Odessa to Marseilles, London, Alexandria, Antwerp, Galatz, Taganrog and Kherson.68 By 1903, freight and passenger traffic also originated from the ports of Russia

62 63 64

65 66 67 68

Feuille de Commerce de la Nouvelle-Russie, no 11, March 15–27, 1830. See Appendix, Table 10, Carts entering the city of Odessa in 1830. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 539, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, List of the arrested during the riots of 13–17 April 1859. daoo, fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 67, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Politsmeistera, Correspondence between the Gradonachal’nik and the officers of the police departments on the riots of 1886. Letter of the Police officer of Petropavlovsk district to the Gradonachalink, April 14, 1886. Guido Weigend, “Some Elements in the Study of Port Geography,” Geographical Review, 48/2 (April 1958): 185–200. The New York Times, December 22, 1901. Putevoditel’ Russkogo Obshchestva Parakhodstva i Torgovli 1911 g. (Odessa, 1911), 51. Bradshaw’s monthly continental railways, steam transit, and general guide, for travellers through Europe, 1865.

39

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in the Far East via the Suez Canal, while regular communication with the Baltic Sea ports and St. Petersburg was already in effect from 1894 onwards. In 1903, the Volunteer Fleet (Dobrovol’nyi Flot), a new steamship company subsidised by the state, projected the opening of a new line to New York but there were too few passengers and immigrants to make the route profitable. Instead, a new plan to serve both Odessa and Naples was considered but it too was postponed until 1919. Most immigrants, born in Odessa, who arrived in New York after 1905 departed from European ports for the New World.69 By 1900, the ports with which Odessa had the most regular cargo ties were in the Black Sea, Galatz; in the Eastern Mediterranean, Alexandria; in the western Mediterranean, Genoa and Marseilles; in northern Europe, Cardiff and Hamburg.70 From among the Russian ports, it was visited most often by steam powered vessels originating in Nikolayev, Theodosia, Novorossiysk and Vladivostok (See Table 1.1). In an attempt to measure maritime traffic that had Odessa as its terminus we have identified the following groups of ports as foreland: Table 1.1

The foreland of Odessa in 1900

Arrivals from

Black Sea and Sea of Marmara (total) – Azov Sea and the Crimean Ports: – Danube Ports and the Northern Coast of the Black Sea (Romanian, Bulgarian and northern Black Sea ports) – Ports of the Sea of Marmara and Constantinople Eastern Mediterranean and Egypt (Egyptian, Middle East and Turkish Southern Black sea ports) Western Mediterranean Ports (Spanish, French, Italian, Maltese and Greek Ports) Ports beyond Gibraltar (British, German, Belgian, Baltic Sea Ports) Far Eastern Sea Ports (China, Russia, Japan)

Number of arrivals

365 141 162 62 151 178 193 27

source: daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2815, kantseliariia odesskogo gradonachal’nika, report of the administrator of the quarantine to the city-prefect for the year 1900

69 70

See chapter 5. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2815, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, Report of the Administrator of the Quarantine to the City-Prefect for the year 1900.

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The evolution of the city’s maritime transport can be measured by its connectedness to the outer world. In the 1850s Odessa was regularly connected with Constantinople three times a month, and Galatz.71 In the 1870s ROPiT’s vessels offered a passenger transport service to Constantinople once a week, to Alexandria every fifteen days, to Galatz and Vienna twice a month and to London every twenty days.72 By the 1880s the main British, French, Austrian, German and Italian steamship liner companies that serviced eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea routes approached Odessa.73 By the 1890s a greater choice was offered to travellers regarding the steamship companies that guaranteed service between Odessa and abroad. ROPiT added a route that stopped at the ports of the south Black Sea coast before arriving in Constantinople. The Black Sea-Danube Steamship Company (Chernomorsko-Dunaiskoe Parokhodstvo) served the route Odessa-Roustchouk, via Sulina, Galatz and Braila weekly. The Volunteer Fleet offered a connection between Odessa and Vladivostok and Madras, via Constantinople, Port-Said, Colombo, Singapore, Manila, Nagasaki, Shangai and Hankow.74 The increased interest in the Far East reflected Russia’s rise as a Eurasian power. Her colonisation policy towards Siberia was facilitated by the construction of the Trans-Siberian railway (1891–1903). Meanwhile, vessels from Odessa carried cargo and passengers, among whom were soldiers, emigrants and convicts. In 1899, the traffic between Odessa and the Far East comprised 1,836 passengers, 7,460 emigrants, 833 convicts and 13,344 military personnel.75 The steamboats returned with cargoes of tea from Hankow and copra from Singapore. By 1903, these numbers had fallen due to the development of the Trans-Siberian railway connection to Vladivostok. 6 Travel Destination and Relay Tourism provided a strong incentive for mobility. Odessa attracted not only the aristocracy but barefoot peasants as well. It became a stopover on the way 71 72 73

74 75

On Odessa’s maritime transport in the 1850s, see Novorossiiskii kalendar’ na 1850 g., Rishel’evskii Litsei (Odessa, 1851), 147–60. Novorossiiskii kalendar’ na 1871 g., Kantseliariia Novorossiiskogo i Bessarabskogo General-Gubernatora (Оdessa, 1870), 143–146. Evrydiki Sifneos, “P.M. Courdgis and the Birth of a Greek–Ottoman Liner Company: The Aegean Steamship Company” in Μaria Christina Chatziioannou and Gelina Harlaftis, eds., Following the Nereids. Sea Routes and Maritime Business, 16th-20th centuries (Athens: Kerkyra Publications, 2006), 121–35. Novorossiiskii kalendar’ na 1891 g., Odesskoe gorodskoe obshchestvo upravleniia pri gorodskoi publichnoi biblioteke (Оdessa, 1890), 128–38, 148–49, 160–61. National Archives, F.O., 65/1520, April 30, 1896 and December 31, 1903.

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to Crimea and the Holy Land. Crimea and the Caucasus represented for the Russian and Polish literary traveller what Russia represented for westerners, an exotic destination. The Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, who took a teaching post at the Gymnasium in Odessa in 1825, set off on one of his trips to the Crimea accompanied by Karolina Sobańska, née Rzewuska, an aristocratic socialite of Odessa, her former husband, her brother, the writer Henryk Rzewuski, two secret police informants (one of whom was involved in the surveillance of Pushkin), General Witt and the administrator of the Sobański estate.76 The following year he published the “Crimean Sonnets”, lyric, philosophical and landscape pieces bound together by the experience of his travelogue. Distinctive are the images of the Russian travellers who undertook the journey to the Holy Land. To the eyes of a Protestant western traveller who was obliged to share the deck with “a disgusting mob of pilgrims, mendicant monks, Jews, Russian or Cossack women, all squatting and lying about at their ease without regard to the convenience of other passengers” as they returned from Jerusalem, the mania for pilgrimages that possessed this army of barefooted beggars, with their wallets packs on their backs and rosaries in their hands, was puzzling.77 The quest for heavenly forgiveness appealed to both Muslim and Christian travellers. Orthodox peasants flocked to the city’s monastic dependencies (podvor’ia) and inns, waiting to board the next steamship. Around the 1860s (if not before) the pilgrimage to the Holy Land became a business enterprise for Odessa’s monks who undertook the legal procedures for the issuance of permissions and passports while they accommodated Christian travellers on their premises and “protected” them from the city’s insalubrious lures and attractions.78 In his report to the city government in 1900, the quarantine’s administrator reported the return from Jerusalem and Mt. Athos of 6,801 Christians, and 204 Muslims from Mecca, and 5,157 soldiers from the Far East out of the 24,421 passengers entering the empire through Odessa’s quarantine (see Map 3).79 Close to 90.4 percent of the passengers travelled on Russian vessels. Thirty seven per cent had Haifa as a port of embarkation and Odessa as their terminus, while 76 77 78

79

Izabella Kalinowska, Between East and West: Polish and Russian Nineteenth-Century travel to the Orient (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004), 16–18. de Hell, Travels in the Steppes, 2. On the logistics of pilgrimage and the trip to the Holy Lands see Nikolaos Chrissidis, “The Athonization of Pious Travel: Shielded Shrines, Shady Deals and Pilgrimage Logistics in Late Nineteenth-Century Odessa”, Modern Greek Studies Yearbook 28/29 (2012/2013), 169–91. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2815, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, Report of the Administrator of Odessa’s Quarantine for the year 1900.

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other trips to the holy lands were organised through Constantinople. The number of Muslim travellers who passed through Odessa for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca was estimated by 1900 at 25,000 every year.80 The railroads from Tashkent and the ROPiT from Odessa facilitated Muslim mobility to their holy places, while a project to build a hajj complex in Odessa with the aim of offering a “relay” during the months of the pilgrimage was finally substituted by renting the vacant House of Industry in Peresyp’ for this purpose. The last years of the nineteenth century saw high mobility of people who embarked from the port of Odessa for the Far East as well. 7 The 1897 Demographic Snapshot Odessa was the fourth Russian city in terms of population after St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw (Appendix, Figure 1). It exhibited an exceptional rate of urban growth, doubling its population every twenty-five years.81 By 1897 it had the highest percentage of foreigners in any Russian city and more than half of its population was born in other provinces (gubernii, sing. guberniia) or abroad.82 23.2 percent of its foreigners bore Ottoman passports, 22.65 percent Greek, followed by 17.6 percent Austro-Hungarian citizens.83 There were only 444 British citizens and 830 French. In the pre-reform era, the population grew proportionately to the increase in the volume of foreign trade and the expansion of settlement to the South, while in the second half of the nineteenth century the emancipation of the serfs and the construction of railroads influenced its demographic expansion. Unlike European urban patterns, the development of industry in Odessa was of secondary significance relative to the overall increase of its urban population.84

80

Eileen Kane, “Odessa as a Hajj Hub, 1880–1914,” in Russia in Motion. Cultures of Human Mobility since 1850, ed. by John Randolph and Eugene M. Avrutin (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2012), 107. 81 By 1811 it had 10,988 inhabitants; by 1825, 40,562; by 1840, 60,055; by 1856, 101,320; by 1870, 139,462; by 1885, 240,000; by 1897, 403,815; and by 1910, 620,143. Thomas Stanley Fedor, Patterns of Urban Growth in the Russian Empire during the Nineteenth Century (Chicago: University of Chicago, Department of Geography, 1975), 202. 82 Appendix, Tables 2–3; Herlihy, “The Ethnic Composition of the City of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 1/1 (March 1997), 53–78. 83 In Odessa foreigners constituted 4.9 percent of its population. Second ranked St. Petersburg with 1.7 percent of its population. Pervaia v. 47, table 11, 34–35. 84 Fedor, Patterns of Urban Growth, 173–78.

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For an uninformed traveller one of the paradoxes of today’s Odessa lies in the use of Russian as a daily language, although all street signs are in Ukrainian. There is a historical legacy concerning language that goes back to the 1897 All-Russian Census whose rich data trove we will use in our analysis. It was the first time in Russian history that a general census collected information on native language, religion, place of birth, and socio-economic status. According to the census only 9.39 percent of Odessa’s population reported Ukrainian as their maternal language.85 Despite the imperial government’s concern for masking ethnicity and the desire to present “Russianness” as the dominant trend, it is doubtful whether the empire’s inhabitants could answer questions on ethnicity, citizenship and the like.86 Many would be confused when answering questions regarding their estate category87 (for example peasant). Moreover, as the 1897 census shows, large segments of minority groups were already being assimilated, a fact that was undoubtedly implied by the number of those reporting Russian as their mother tongue.88 The ethnic composition of Odessa in 1897 presented some interesting features that differed from St. Petersburg and Moscow. Slavic languages were spoken by 56.73 percent of the population while religious affiliation indicates that only 54.02 percent of its inhabitants were Orthodox. The primary reason for this was the high proportion of the Jewish population (36.57 percent).89 Commonplace sayings of the period attest to the religious casualness of Odessa’s many ethnic communities. As foreign travellers noticed, in Odessa the vessels’ masts were more discernible than the churches’ golden domes and even the Jews, who were conventionally assumed to be more observant, were more devoted to trade and the stock exchange than to religious observance, attending synagogue sporadically and, more often than not, opening their shops on the Sabbath.90

85 86 87

88 89 90

Appendix, Table 2. Juliette Cadiot, “Searching for Nationality: Statistics and National Categories at the End of the Russian Empire (1897–1917),” Russian Review 64/3 (July 2005): 440–55. Estate categories were as follows: hereditary nobles, personal nobles and officials, clergy, personal and honorary citizens, merchants, petty bourgeois, peasants, military Cossacks, aliens, persons not belonging to the above categories, persons of unspecified class. There were 138,937 Jews from which 124,511 were Yiddish speakers. Appendix, Tables 2–3. Regarding the Greeks, see Appendix, Tables 2–3. Appendix, Tables 2–3. See the report of Moshe Leib Lilienblum soon after his arrival in the city in 1869. Moshe Leib Lilienblum, Igorot Moshe Leib Lilienblum le-Yehuda Leib Gordon, ed. by S. Breiman (Jerusalem, 1968), 80, quoted in Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 199.

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Yiddish folklore warns that “Seven miles around Odessa burn the fires of Hell”, an aphorism inspired by the city’s many pleasure seekers, shady underground culture, and prevailing moral turpitude. Robert Pinkerton, a Scottish missionary who visited the city in 1819 as a representative of the Foreign Bible Society, encountered difficulties attempting to persuade foreign merchants to attend his religious meetings.91 The historian A. Skal’kovskii adds that the archbishop of Kherson was concerned about poor church attendance in the city and that at least one third of Odessa’s couples lived out of wedlock.92 Evidence supporting this interesting statement can be found in the pages of the 1897 All-Russian census. Apart from the typical mainstream, canonical “breadwinner and wife” couples, the census also records households of informal couples with unspecified relationships. Apart from couples recognised by the Church through marriage there were many cases of female housemates of the declared head of the household who were neither wife, nor visitor, nor tenant. Although the word “sozhitel’nitsa” (co-habitant) is not frequently used in the census to identify the female companion of the household head, we may assume from her economic dependence on him that the two of them constituted an informal couple. At Moskovskaia 63 in the Peresyp’ workers’ neighbourhood for instance, the master of the house, Ignat Fedorov Sernitkii, a thirty- year-old unskilled worker at the metallurgical factory, lived in rented apartment no. 5 with Matrena Yukhimova Kuz, 38 years old, whom he supported.93 Informal couples were more often encountered when the male and female partner belonged to different religions. The Greek citizen Angeli Lisev Kalik, 35 years old and unmarried, resident at Iarmorochnaia Square 177 (again in Peresyp’), lived with Kadrila Frantsovna Edinger, 28 years old, and her three children. Kadrila was a Lutheran whose mother tongue was German; she depended on Angeli’s income from his employment as a tannery administrator.94 Such cases are much more evident in the lower social strata as it is explicitly noted that the female housemate lived on the income of the household breadwinner, while in the upper echelons of society women partners may have had their own income from property or capital and lived in households with a male partner and servants. Maria Motso, for example, a widow, 91 92

93 94

Robert Pinkerton, Russia: Or Miscellaneous Observations on the Past and Present State of that Country and its Inhabitants (London: Seeley and Sons, 1833), 139. Quoted in Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 128; Skal’kovskii, “Iz portfelia pervogo istorika v Odesse,” in Liudvig Mikhailovich de-Ribas, ed. Iz proshlogo Odessy: sbornik statei (Odessa: Tipografiia L. Kirkhner, 1894), 243. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 9, delo 91, Sheet of the 1897 All-Russian Census. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 8, delo 2593, Sheet of the 1897 All-Russian Census.

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38 years old, born in Constantinople and educated there, lived with a man of Russian origin, a 47-year-old bachelor working in the government committee on censorship, and with two servants. Referring to the male presence in her household, the census sheet informs us of his “being in the service of the woman” householder, while her income derived from the rents of immovable property.95 The not insignificant number of informal couples can be attributed to the process of urbanisation and industrialisation that eroded the traditional patriarchal family, to the in-migration phenomenon and to the Orthodox Church’s reluctance to approve divorce, annulment or separation.96 The needs of everyday life in the big cities and, as a consequence, the transformation process that affected family structure could not be effectively governed by the canonical regime of ecclesiastic law. If it is an exaggeration to judge the citizens’ evolving household structures at the beginning of the twentieth century as a sign of “dechristianization”, it would not be erroneous to note that the more secular behaviour of the urban population’s day-to-day life went hand in hand with the erosion of ecclesiastical control over family order. Questions specifically addressing ethnicity were not posed in the 1897 census. Ethnicity was inferred on the basis of declared mother tongues but this inference blurred rather than clarified the ethnic diversity of the empire. ­Although civic consciousness, nationalism, and politicisation were not dominant factors before 1905, changes in ethnic consciousness were felt from the 1880s onwards as discriminatory policies against certain groups and inter-­ ethnic tension escalated.97 The language marker, as revealed through the census, did not correspond to the ethnic composition of the empire. This was quite obvious in the case of the Greeks, for example. Greeks formed a small ethnic group, which participated dynamically in Odessa’s economic and social life. According to the census, 5,086 inhabitants had reported Greek as their mother tongue. A more in-depth investigation of the census, made possible by the unusual circumstance that Odessa’s archives still preserve the original forms filled for each household, reveals that Greeks, distinguished by surname, were hidden by their claims of Russian or Ottoman citizenship. We estimate that 20 percent must be added to the above census figure (5,086) which corresponds to declared Russian speakers; yet with Greek surnames, these were

95 96 97

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 8, delo 702, Sheet of the 1897 All-Russian Census. Gregory Freeze, “Bringing Order to the Russian Family: Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, 1760–1860,” The Journal of Modern History 62/4 (Dec.1990): 711. Cardiot, “Searching for Nationality,” 446–7.

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most probably descendants of the first inhabitants of the city.98 This same phenomenon occurs with second- and third-generation inhabitants of the city who belonged to other ethnic groups and were in the process of being assimilated. An example concerning the Jewish community is even more relevant: according to the census data, 138,937 residents were of Jewish faith while Yiddish speakers were 124,511.99 The principal ethno-linguistic groups in Odessa’s population (1897) were Russians 49.09 percent, Jews 30.84 percent, Ukrainians 9.39 percent, Poles 4.31 percent, Germans 2.54 percent and Greeks 1.26 percent. Other groups such as Armenians, Tatars, French, Turks and Belorussians were below 0.50 percent each.100 This is an evocative snapshot of the ethnic composition of fin-de-siècle Odessa. The ratio between genders indicates a disproportionately male population (116 males to 100 women)101 due to the presence of transient soldiers and seasonal workers, seamen, businessmen and merchants. Exceptionally, women outnumbered men in Jewish households. It seems that when Jews immigrated they did so as entire families in contrast to other ethnic groups.102 Odessa’s linguistic Babel and its ethnic pluralism demand to be studied in terms of three parameters that strongly influenced inter-communal relations as well as the relations of the different minorities with the state: residential patterns, specialisation of the economically active population and literacy rates. Initially the city’s districts were confined to the free-port zone. ­According to Francis de Castelnau’s city plan (1828), a deep trench encircled the inner neighbourhoods of the city. The Bul’varnyi, Aleksandrovskii and Khersonskii quarters were only accessible via gated checkpoints where the roads to Kherson, Tiraspol, Ovidiopol and the countryside crossed the barrier. After the abolition of its free-port status (1859) the city incorporated three more districts that had been previously considered outskirts: Petropavlovskii, Mikhailovskii and Peresyp’. These peripheral quarters were inhabited by latecomers to the city. Petropavlovskii was the most populated district of the city (22 percent of the city’s population), followed by Aleksandrovskii (20 percent) and Mikhailovskii (19 percent), while Peresyp’ (5 percent) was an industrial suburb where most of Odessa’s industry was located.103 Housing in the outer

98 99 100 101 102 103

Sifneos and Paradeisopoulos, “Greeks in Odessa in 1897,” 104–107. Appendix, Tables 2–3. Appendix, Table 2. Appendix, Table 2. Herlihy, “The Ethnic Composition,” 57. Appendix, Table 4, distribution of the population in the city’s quarters in 1892 and 1897.

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circle was characterised by poor living conditions and lack of facilities.104 In contrast, the population of the inner quarters belonged to the first wave of settlers and had a middle- and upper-class outlook. Nobility, administrative officials, merchants and middle-class city dwellers predominated in the inner circle facing the waterfront.105 A clear social divide distinguished the inner circle districts from the outer. Therefore, ethnic allocation in the city’s quarters partly reflects the social status of each ethnic group. Russian speakers resided in both parts of the city, with a slight majority in the inner section (54 percent). 53 percent of the Jewish population was located on the periphery. On the contrary, Greeks, Poles, and Germans were mainly residents of the first section of the city (by 68, 63 and 59 percent each).106 Literacy is a critical statistic and, inversely, illiteracy a key to understanding the fomentation of “mobs”, rioting and the emergence of ethnic hatred. The French, due to their small numbers and a specialised female work force largely occupied as educators in private houses, yielded the highest degree of literacy, 92.2 percent. Russian speakers were in the middle at 51 percent, while Ukrainian and Yiddish speakers were among the most illiterate (35.1 and 47.4 percent). The Germans and Greeks displayed high rates of literacy (77.1 and 70 percent), followed by the Poles (62.9) and Armenians (55.8).107 Specialised professional skills can be linked to the traditional expertise, knowledge and experience of particular ethnic groups. Among Russian speakers, 4.7 percent were wealthy residents who lived on income from capital and real estate. Servants and day labourers formed the largest occupational group, followed by those employed in the military, construction workers, ironworkers, tailors, seamstresses and apprentices in ready-made clothing workshops.108 32.7 percent of Ukrainians were domestics and 6.3 cart carriers while 25.6 were in the military.109 The military employed 34 percent of Poles while 21.6 percent of their compatriots were in domestic service and 5.2 percent were wealthy nobles whose income came from the same sources as those of their Russian-speaking equivalents. Germans followed similar occupational patterns: 15 percent were in the army, 19.8 percent were servants, metal and

104 Odessa 1794–1894, 62–63. 105 76.1 percent of nobles and 84.8 percent of merchants inhabited the inner part of the city. Elaborated data from Pervaia v. 47, Table 8, 14–15. 106 Elaborated data from Pervaia v. 47, Table 13, 36–37. 107 Appendix, Table 6. 108 Appendix, Table 7. 109 Appendix Table 7.

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wood craftsmen (5.6. and 3.5.) as well as workers in the food industry (4.5);110 31 percent of Odessa’s Jews were employed in different sectors of trade (chiefly grain-trade, trade of other agricultural products, cloth trade and trade of readymade clothes). A few were artisans in wood and metal processing, 15.9 were tailors, seamstresses and apprentices in garment workshops and 14.3 were employed as domestic servants. Despite high illiteracy rates in their community, there were 139 Jewish scientists and artists, and 339 doctors and other health workers.111 Only 3 percent of the economically active Jewish population lived on rents, 4.1 percent specialised in the grain trade and 10.8 percent were traders of other agricultural products. Although the number of Greeks in Odessa was radically smaller than that of the Jews, their middle class profile was similar. The Greeks too had a substantial middle class (36 percent of its economically active population), while wealthy property owners who lived off rents (8.8 percent) surpassed the city’s average. Astonishingly enough the percentage of the lower classes (servants, industrial workers, daily labourers and have-nots) reached 52 percent of the Greek economically active population, a significant marker of the proletarianization of the lower-middle class.112 The percentage of Italian speakers who were occupied in science, literature and arts amounted to 15.4 percent of their workforce and another 13.4 percent lived on the returns from stocks, bonds and dividends. French nationals, women in particular, were engaged in education (34 percent of their work force). English speakers were employed as private tutors and in household service. 16 percent of the workforce of the Armenian-speaking population was in domestic service and 16 percent worked in the baths and spas of the city.113 Half of the Finns and Romanians who worked in the city were employed in the military.114 The social stratification of the city in the late nineteenth century displays the pre-eminence of the lower-middle class. As a major trading centre, Odessa’s population was 56.2 percent of meshchane (common city dwellers who were not nobles, merchants or honorary citizens – I refer to Russian estate categories deriving from the feudal taxonomy of the population) and 27.9 percent emancipated peasants.115 Where were these estate categories hidden in 110 Appendix, Table 7. 111 Appendix, Table 7. 112 Patricia Herlihy, “The Greek Community in Odessa, 1861–1917,” Journal of Modern Greek Studies 7/2 (October 1989): 235–52. Sifneos and Paradeisopoulos, “Greeks in Odessa in 1897,” 97–98. On the Greek women’s jobs see Sifneos, “Rentiers, Teachers and Workers.” 113 Pervaia, v. 47, Table 22, 143. 114 Pervaia, v. 47, Table 22, 142. 115 See Appendix, Tables 8–9.

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the city’s workforce? Among the first, many were innkeepers and petty traders, while the latter flocked to the city in search of job opportunities, mainly in the domestic sector and the port. 8 Residential Porosity: The Mikhel’son Apartment Building in Aleksandrovskii District A distinctive feature of the city was that its ethnic groups were not confined to restricted areas. Rather, the ethnic groups were dispersed among the city’s districts based on wealth and on how long their families had been settled in the city. This was a recipe for interaction. Odessa’s buildings, streets and squares were a theatre that offered stage and auditorium for reciprocal observation of and exposure to each other’s life-styles and everyday practices, usages and customs. Much of the city’s physical structure offered possibilities for easy coexistence as individual buildings often hosted households of varying ethnicities. The urban morphology of Odessa permitted porosity and loose ties among its different ethnicities and languages. I borrow this term from Walter Benjamin’s navigation of the city of Naples, in which street and home-life interpenetrated.116 In Odessa, ethnic mixing in some quarters was so pervasive that in the late nineteenth century even streets that were named for a specific ethnic group hosted a mix of ethnicities and languages. A glance at Evreiskaia Ulitsa (Jewish Street), situated in upper-middle class Aleksandrovskii, the city’s second district, is indicative. Aleksandrovskii was located immediately behind the rows of houses of the Bul’varnyi waterfront area, along Aleksandrovskii Prospekt. It hosted private houses and public spaces such as Aleksandrovskii Prospekt, the Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity, and the great Brodskii Synagogue, built by Austrian Jews who migrated from the Galician town of Brody. It was also a much sought-after market place for local produce (see Map 3).117 On Evreiskaia Ulitsa, at number 20, stood the Mikhel’son Apartments, named after a recently deceased Jewish merchant of the second guild (see Map 3).118

116 Walter Benjamin, “Naples,” in One-Way Street and other Writings (London: Lowe and Brydone Printers Limited, 1979), 167–74. 117 Stara Odesa: Arkhitektura Prichernomor’ia (Odessa: Odes’kiiĭ derzhanyĭ khudozniĭ muzeĭ, 1927). 118 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 8, delo 609, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, Evreiskaia Ulitsa 20, Aleksandrovskii district, Mikhel’son’s Apartments.

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The building consisted of seven apartments. His son Haim’s family lived on the top floor. Haim and his wife, Feiga, were educated Russian speakers born outside Odessa. They had six children and three servants. A first indication of ethno-religious boundary crossing was that the family employed two live-in Russian Orthodox servants who were entrusted with the important duties of cooking meals and attending to the children.119 The family also rented a room to a Protestant Swiss governess who earned a living teaching French. Another large household in the same building was inhabited by a family of ten in apartment 6a. It consisted of a Russian Jewish couple with six children and two Orthodox servants. The householder was educated at a commercial school and worked as a clerk in a trading house. On the second floor lived a family of Italian citizens and speakers, named Stamta, with their new-born child, their elderly aunt and three servants. The householder was born in Constantinople and schooled in Braila (Romania). The whole family belonged to the Roman Catholic Church. Signore Ceasar Stamta earned the family income as a clerk in a foreign steamship company. On the first floor lived a family of German nationality and Lutheran persuasion. The household head, a German speaker, owned a shoe store. His wife was a Russian speaker and they had six children. Their extended family included the husband’s elderly parents. At the same building, Mikhel’son’s widow Alta, 59 years old and a Yiddish speaker, who lived comfortably off rental income, resided on the ground floor. Her domestic situation was a microcosm of the city’s social structure reflecting both its multi-ethnicity and the casualness of its social arrangements. She shared the apartment with her younger son whose wife was a Polish speaker from Warsaw. It can be inferred that she had invited a friend of her age from her hometown to live with the family. A widower, of Alta’s age but not a relative, also lived in the apartment and served as superintendent of her properties. Alta employed two Jewish servants, a cook and a maid, both widows as well. Finally, a Jewish widower with no specified occupation or family relation (but not listed as a renter) was also reported by the census as a resident of Alta’s apartment. Is this an indication of the difficulties faced by the authorities on how to report non-official relationships, which were run of the mill in Odessa, or even cases of “ménages à plusieurs”? Some smaller apartments

119 The Municipal Duma’s deliberation on the rights and the obligations of servants implied that ethno-religious status was not a criterion for finding a job as a domestic servant. Moreover, the employee was allowed to perform his or her religious duties without being restricted by his or her employer. See “Proekt obiazatel’nykh pravil o domashnei prisluge” in Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy № 1, September 1895, (Odessa, 1895), 84–91.

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were created by subdividing residences originally of the same size as those on the upper floors to rent more profitably to smaller households. They bore the numbers 2a and 2b. In 2a, there resided four Russian speakers with no family relationships among them: two women servants and a pair of ex-peasants, all of them employed in different workplaces. In 2b there lived a Russian couple of meshchane (city dwellers), with a sixteen-year old Cossack servant who spoke Ukrainian. The man was a sample tester of grain varieties. In this linguistic and ethnic Babel, families of different origin and language co-existed, became familiar with each other and observed otherness. After the construction boom of the 1870s, most of Odessa’s residential area was covered by apartment buildings occupied by households of various ethnicities. Odessa’s residential buildings acted as mediators between the physical structure of the city and the activities of its inhabitants. They formed containers for action in which human subjects left traces, signs of their passing and clues to their mode of existence. The city was singularly, if unintentionally, designed and built to breed such intermingling. Whether or not this symbiotic pattern could persist under extreme economic and social pressure and intensifying ethnic discrimination, neither denies its existence nor minimises its significance. 9 Images, Representations, Comparisons The port and the city’s ethnic plurality were responsible for Odessa’s distinctive urban identity. If the unifying umbrella of “Russianness” was a much-contested identity in the late nineteenth century, the self-identification as Odessan citizens transcended social and ethnic boundaries. The city conferred on its inhabitants a sense of uniqueness that all shared regardless of their mutually exclusive or complementary identities. There is no more eloquent way to describe the distinct flavour of Odessa than in K. Paustovsky’s words: Odessa – it is the Black Sea, warm wind from the Bosporus, descendants of Greek smugglers from Piraeus, Italian garibaldians, captains and dock workers. The riches of all countries, the influence of France, the ghetto of the Moldavanka, gangsters who valued most of all a smart joke, grey-moustached workers from Peresyp’, Italian opera, the memoirs about Pushkin, acacias, yellow stone, flowers, love for an anecdote, and enormous curiosity of little things. All of this is Odessa. But the most important part of it is the Sea.

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The idyllic image of the sea offered by Paustovsky brings to mind Constantinople, another city defined by its geographical position and its inextricable link to the maritime nexus around which it is built. Orhan Pamuk writes in similar terms about the Bosphorus (Bogaz) which in Turkish means “throat” and also “breathe in air”: “If the city [Istanbul of the 1950s] speaks of defeat, destruction, deprivation, melancholy and poverty, the Bosphorus sings of life, pleasure, and happiness. Istanbul draws its strength from the Bosphorus.”120 Paustovsky acknowledges the dominant role of the sea in the city’s economic life and leisure but also in the psychological well-­being of its residents. Above all, the excerpt evokes nostalgia for the city the author has left and the loss of the sea’s vital influence that occurred during wwi. This literary appraisal was not shared by everyone, particularly the in-­coming population, seasonal workers, immigrants, and transients. In the eyes of the “others”, Odessa was a place of abundance, freedom and, also, of high risk. This view of the city has been preserved by Ukrainian folklore songs through the eyes of the itinerant merchants (sing. chumak) of the Ukrainian countryside:121 The city of Odessa stands bravely Atop the hill by the sea To the right and to the left Lanterns shine along the streets A chumak can see in the night, Where he could buy hay [for his oxen] Sweet peas [as treats for girls], biscuits [for himself to eat], tobacco And where he could have a drink of vodka. (402) It is so nice to live in Odessa One doesn’t have to carry sacks of grain One doesn’t have to work for the landlord One doesn’t have to pay poll tax 120 Paustovsky’s text as cited in Rebecca Jane Stanton, “Odessan Selves: Identity and Mythopoesis in Works of the ‘Odessan school’” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2004), 45–47 (note Stanton’s cautionary remarks on p. 47n45; for another version of Paustovsky’s text, see Richardson, Kaleidoscopic Odessa, 15); Orhan Pamuk, Istanbul. Memories and the City (New York: Vintage, 2006), 47. 121 Aleksei I. Markevich, “Odessa v narodnoi poezii,” Trudy 6-ogo arkheologicheskogo s’ezda v Odesse 4 vols. (Odessa: Tipografiia A. Shul’tse, 1886–89), 2 (1888): 398–418. I would like to thank Professor Sasha Halenko for acquainting me with these texts.

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One doesn’t have to work by plough I am addressed to like a sir. (405) It’s so nice to live in Odessa There is food and drink there And one can walk hand in hand With the brunette girl. (410) A chumak who experienced bankruptcy in Odessa says: Or [either] I will drown myself Or I will take a job of [as] a carriage conductor Then I will drive someone’s oxen, As I still want to live as [a] chumak. Paustovsky and the Ukrainian folk songs illustrate the land/sea dichotomy. Their points of view are nonetheless quite different, one from the Ukrainian hinterland as seen by the chumak and the other from the sea as seen by the author. Odessa was attractive to some and provincial or even appalling to others. For the painter Vassily Kandinsky it was a strange urban hodgepodge. Originally, from Moscow, Kandinsky spent his school years in Odessa in the 1870s when his father, a tea merchant, moved there. “ [We] were forced to go and live in the south on account of my father’s health. We went to Odessa, at that time a still small and not-overcomfortable city, where I went to school. While living there I could not get over the feeling of being a transient in a strange city, particularly as the spoken language there was surprising, and often, downright incomprehensible to us”.122 As Kandinsky’s first ethnographic paintings reveal, he was mostly attracted to the colourful folk art of inner Russia and was homesick for Moscow, his native city. This is evident in his painting of the port of Odessa, which, rather than emphasising its modern aspects, the elevated railway lines that transported grain to the port or the steam-driven ships that gathered outside it, depicts an old-fashioned sailing vessel on a yellowish background hard by a provincial mole. By contrast, in his stories Maxim Gorky evokes another aspect of Odessa’s busy port emphasising the sounds of modernity: “The jingle

122 In Memory of Wassili Kandinsky. The Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation presents a survey of the artist’s paintings and writings. 1.3-15.5.1945, ed. by Hilla Rebay (New York: Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, 1945), 71–72.

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of the anchor chains, the rattle of the links of the trucks that bring down the cargoes, the metallic clank of sheets of iron falling on the stone pavement, the dull thud of wood, the creaking of the carts plying for hire, the whistles of the steamers, piercingly shrill and hoarsely roaring, the shouts of dock labourers, sailors, and customs officers – all these sounds melt into the deafening symphony of the working day, that hovering uncertainty hangs over the harbour, as though afraid to float upward and be lost.”123 Culturally, Odessa gave its name to a school of literary writers who published prolifically during the two decades following the Revolution and whose nostalgic narratives evoked a city that had already changed.124 Isaac Babel, Yuri Olesha, Alexander Kuprin, Ilya Ilf, Valentin Kataev, Eduard Bagritsky, Vera Inber and Evgeny Petrov belong to this group.125 Written in Russian, in autobiographical first-person narrative form, their short stories emerge from the city stage and reflect the lure of the dazzle and contradictions of life in the city. Three prominent features have been detected in the group’s writings: the glorification of Odessa as a unique, southern, cosmopolitan port city, the presence of Jewish characters and themes, and the use of Odessa’s local vernacular to create a distinct literary style. Through descriptive narratives and the characters’ dialogues, these works evoke the city and remain loyal to a regionalism that opposed itself to the precepts of socialist realism. The Gambrinus and the Odessa Tales are the most often mentioned examples of the “Odessa text.” They transmit a joyful optimism despite the difficulties of life, the traumas of urbanisation and the impact of war. As Babel narrates: During the war, people have flocked to our town, strange Jews who are foreign to us, refugees from Latvia and Poland. Serbs and Rumanians have come. But nobody who loves Odessa can say a word against these Rumanians. They have brought life back to Odessa. They remind us of the days when the streets were full of trade, when we had Greeks trading in coffee and spices, Germans sausage makers, French book peddlers, and Englishmen in steamship offices. The Rumanians have opened restaurants, play 123 Maxim Gorky, “Chelkash,” in Chelkash and Other Stories (London and New York: Dover Publications, 1999), 3–55. 124 Stanton, “Odessan Selves”; Rita M. Feld, “The Southwestern School of Writers,” (PhD diss., Georgetown University, 1987); Walenty Cukierman, “The Odessa School of Writers, 1918–1923,” (PhD diss., University of Michigan, 1976). 125 Olesha, Envy; Il’f and Petrov, Twelve Chairs, Little Golden Calf; Kataev, The Lonely White Sail, The Embezzlers; Paustovsky, Romantics (1923) and The Black Sea (1936); V. Inber, How I was a Little Girl (1954); A. Kuprin, In the Circus (1902), The Garnet Bracelet.

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music with cymbals, fill taverns with their fast foreign speech. They have sent us handsome officers with yellow boots, and tall elegant women with red lips. These people fit the style of our town. Not that it is a problem if the other newcomers do not fit Odessa’s style…. Odessa stands strong, she hasn’t lost her astonishing knack for assimilating people.126 Yet, as Rebecca Stanton argues, the “Odessa text” was entwined with but distinct from the historical reality of the city.127 These narratives recount the personal mythologies of their authors and of the city, in which the influence of the port leaves an indelible mark. On the contrary, the “St. Petersburg text” is often striking for the image it conveys of a difficult and unhealthy place to live with a pernicious climate that influences peoples’ lives and transmits a depressive atmosphere with its rain, fog, humidity, penetrating winds and damp cold.128 Odessa was different from other major Russian cities. Its demographic composition with its large foreign contingent, the way it was planned and built, its social fabric and the impact it had on the organization of the labour movement, and its response to the October Revolution were all distinctive. In contrast to St. Petersburg with its bad weather and gloomy inhabitants (often and famously depicted in literature), Odessa’s milder climate, brightness and openness to the sea shaped the character of its people.129 As Joseph Bradley remarks, the idea of the sea as an open space and means of escape cultivated a feeling of freedom in Odessa that was in stark contrast to the hostility of the wild ocean and the fear of water (and drowning) in St. Petersburg.130 The capital, planted on the delta of the Neva River, shared some features with Odessa. Both were built with the aim of modernising the empire and attracting a migrant population.131 Yet, the port of the capital was at a distance from the city and there was no close tie and, certainly, no privileged view to compare with the one looking

126 Isaac Babel, “The Aroma of Odessa,” in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. by Nathalie Babel and translated by Peter Constantine (New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company, 2002), 82. 127 Stanton, “Odessan Selves”, 36 128 Julie A. Buckler, Mapping St. Petersburg: Imperial Text and Cityshape (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), 18. 129 Buckler, Mapping St. Petersburg, 230. 130 Joseph Brodsky, “A Guide to a Renamed City,” in Less than One: Selected Essays (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1986), 75. 131 James H. Bater, “Between Old and New. St. Petersburg in the Late Imperial Era,” in The City in Late Imperial Russia, ed. by Michael F. Hamm (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 42–78.

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down to Odessa’s port from the heights of Primorskii Boulevard. The most significant difference, though, stemmed from the two cities’ patterns of economic development: Odessa remained predominantly mercantile while Petersburg shifted to industry, which largely transformed the urban fabric and defined its labour movement and revolutionary activism. Another city with which Odessa can be compared to is Kiev. The administrative centre of the South, renowned as both a religious and commercial hub, it coalesced in the second half of the nineteenth century from a number of settlements scattered on hills separated by ravines.132 Its leading industries, primarily sugar refineries and tobacco processing plants, employed a larger workforce than Odessa’s and were successfully administrated by a Jewish entrepreneurial group. Kiev’s population also had multi-ethnic characteristics, Jews being relatively fewer than Odessa (19 percent as compared to 23 percent) and Poles more (9.3 percent as compared to 4.3 percent in Odessa). Problems resulting from the assimilation and co-existence of ethnic minorities in a multi-ethnic society therefore arose in both cities. Inequitable civil rights laws promulgated fragmentation and segregation and were instrumental in provoking ethnic clashes. Social unrest, a common feature in both cities, intensified as class and ethnic differences deepened. Odessa, however, in the late Imperial period was not as closely tied to the central administration as Kiev. Its “southerness” and orientation toward the sea ensured looser ties with the central state. However, in 1906, restrictions on the expression of civil liberties by the autocratic state severely depressed urban life. Such was the case during Ivan Tolmachev’s “reign” as City-Prefect and Provisional Governo-General (1907–1911) or with the breakdown of urban modernisation projects due to the “counter-reform” law of 1892 that ultimately reduced the municipal electorate to a handful of propertied owners within the city. In Odessa, the centrality of its port in the city’s economic and social life dominated its growth process, and had a strong impact on its demography, migrant flows, religious and leisure tourism, psychological mood and identity of its residents. Mobility and ethnic plurality were key features of the city’s profile and determined the residential co-existence of ethno-religious groups. This fusion assigned to Odessa a particularity recognisable in few Russian cities. 132 Michael F. Hamm, “Continuity and Change in Late Imperial Kiev,” in The City, ed. by Hamm, 79–121.

chapter 2

Toward a Consumer Society: Tastes, Markets and Political Liberalism Markets formed the heart of Odessa city. Trade determined the city’s tastes and markets. The political liberalism of the area introduced by the Governor-­ Generals’ progressive ideas provided a political environment not enjoyed in other parts of the empire. Through the market streets and areas of Odessa, the New Bazaar, the Old Bazaar, the Greek Market or Moldavanka, this chapter unfolds the economic, social and political life of the city particularly in its first Europeanised phase (1784–1856). Grecheskaia Ulitsa (Greek Street) is the first parallel south of Deribasovskaia, Odessa’s best-known pedestrian street and a popular destination for ambling promenades. The members of the Greek community of the city traditionally built their houses here, many of which can still be seen lining the sidewalks on both sides of the street. Grecheskaia Ulitsa terminates at the Greek Market in the centre of which an unusual oval building was constructed in 1840. Named, not coincidentally, Afina (Athens), it continues to serve to this day as one of the city’s indoor markets and is, in effect, a mall. Small two-storey houses in the Balkan style have been preserved on the side streets that intersect with Grecheskaia Ulitsa. On Krasnyi Pereulok (Red Lane or Cloth Lane) at numbers 16, 18, and 20, three of these have been combined to house the Hellenic Foundation for Culture. The original interiors have been preserved in the middle of the three, which was, in the early 19th century, the grocery store and residence of the merchant Grigorii Marazli.1 Members of the Philiki Etaireia (Society of Friends), the secret fraternity founded in 1814 by 1

Grigorii Marazli [Grigorios I. Marazlis (1770–1853)] was a merchant of the first guild from 1816 on. He began his commercial career in Kherson. In 1803, he established himself in Odessa and worked as a grain exporter. He was among the supporters and organizers of the free port. From 1818 to 1821, he served as a member of the Commercial Court. He was a founding member of the first insurance company, which supported Greek merchants and provided them credit. At the end of the 1830s, he abandoned commercial affairs and in 1837, he was granted the title of Hereditary Honorary Citizen. He was married to Zoe Theodoridis, daughter of the merchant Theodore Theodoridis. See Vladimir Morozan, Delovaia zhizn’ na iuge Rossii v xix–nachale xx veka (St. Petersburg: Izdatel’stvo Dmitrii Bulanin, 2014), 518.

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Greek merchants to promote liberation of the Greeks from Ottoman dominion and to plan the struggle of Greek Independence of 1821, met here.2 The historical building serves as a reminder of the importance of commerce as a conveyor of revolutionary ideas in the Greek immigrant community. Indeed, the merchants’ contacts among Russian administrative and military personnel and their broad business networks were crucial facilitators for the transportation of materials and exchange of information and ideas essential for successfully pursuing the cause of Greece’s independence. 1 The Rise of a Consumer Society In the 1820s Odessa was a city of great opportunity, an eastern El Dorado, the destination for adventurers and up-and-coming entrepreneurs. Property frequently changed hands as self-made men defaulted on their obligations. Money was scarce and courageous investors willing to risk capital scarcer still. The weekly Journal d’Odessa in French and Russian, kept its readers informed of the latest public auctions of real estate and small businesses whose foreign owners were defaulting on loan mortgages from the Imperial Bank.3 Auctions presented business opportunities as in the case of the café of the Quarantine, which was rented to the highest bidder on a yearly basis by the City Council. During this period, regulation was at best inefficient and civic institutions generally ineffective. Only the commercial court supported by the police could enforce laws. The city’s economy was far from stable: bankruptcies and failed enterprises were the order of the day. Odessa, nonetheless, set the standard for

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Theophilus C. Prousis, Russian Society and the Greek Revolution (Dekalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1994); George Frangos, “The Philiki Etaireia: A Premature National Coalition,” in The Struggle for Greek Independence. Essays to Mark the 150th Anniversary of the Greek War of Independence, ed. Richard Clogg (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1973), 87–103; Grigori L. Ars [Grigorii L. Arsh], He Philike Hetaireia ste Rosia. Ho apeleutherotikos agonas tou hellenikou laou stis arches tou 19ou aiona kai oi hellenorosikes scheseis, trans. from the Russian by Panagiota Matere and Demetrios Pateles (Athens: Papasoteriou, 2011); Ioannis K. Philemon, Dokimion historikon peri tes Hellenikes Epanastaseos 4 vols. (Αthens: Tip. P. Soutsa kai A. Ktena, 1859–1861); Sakellarios Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia (Odessa: K. Khrysogelos, 1909); I. A. Meletopoulos, He Philike Hetaireia. Archeion P. Sekere (Athens, 1967). Journal d’Odessa, no 4, January 12, 1824, 28. Public auction of Nikolaos Karvouni’s house, in the second district, no 37. The property was valued 8,300 roubles and the auction took place at the Commercial Court.

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stylish living. Wine of every kind was available from the cheapest of the Greek Archipelago, Cyprus and Spain, through Marsala, Malaga and Madeira, up to the choicest red Bordeaux and finest white wines from France.4 And this was not all, since Hungarian and Moldavian vintages were greatly appreciated and champagne was cheaper than water, since water was scarce and expensive, and champagne duty-free. English porter and beer and Jamaican rum were also most welcome. One could buy white sugar from Havana, coffee from Martinique, figs from Smyrna, oranges and lemons from Italy and the Archipelago, Dutch cheese, French silk, even envy-provoking six-seater horse-drawn coaches and two-seater coupés manufactured in England, and available chez Mifflet, coin des Allemands. A wide selection of books in French, English and German was available at Mr. Stieffel’s auction house while the restaurant at the Hotel du Nord offered dinners with soup and three starters, main course, desert and coffee, accompanied by a half-bottle of French wine.5 Young men looking for employment as clerks in commercial houses advertised their fluency in Russian, French, Italian, German and English; dancing teachers from Warsaw offered private lessons at affordable prices; and Italian teachers and French dames de compagnie were much sought after listings in the paper’s classified columns.6 How did Odessa’s high-flying lifestyle compare to that of the European metropolises it attempted to emulate? Judging by the available consumer options, including the three hundred and thirty one wine shops that dotted the city, commercial urbanisation had generated an upper-middle class eager to imitate the way of life and to assimilate the aesthetic choices of the rich much as it did elsewhere. Unlike other Russian cities, Odessa’s high life and its attendant consumerism was, in this period, emblematic of a new city’s speculative WildWest ethos where great fortunes were made (and lost) in the blink of an eye rather than the established wealth of a Paris or London. 2 Markets Markets were the heart of the city’s economic life, places of exchange designed by city planners to bring together buyers and sellers. They were regulated and overseen by the civic authorities who allocated the public spaces, type of goods, and working hours, and certified the traders who could sell products in each in order to assure proper distribution of goods to the city’s population 4 5 6

Journal d’Odessa, no 29, March 30, 1824. Journal d’Odessa, no 21, March 12, 1824. Journal d’Odessa, no 41, May 21, 1824; no 44, June 1, 1824.

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and protect it from speculation by middlemen. Only local residents were allowed to make purchases until noon after which wholesale buying was permitted.7 The city council, the Municipal Duma, monitored the process through select members and merchant representatives as well as the overseers of the local markets. Local government drew substantial income from fees charged for the allocation of market venues according to their location and the quality of infrastructure provided by the municipality. Vendors could display their wares in temporary rows of open-air counters, tents and booths. High-ranking merchants invested in permanent shops with display and storage capacity on the perimeter of the open market area and their growing presence assured that the markets operated on a daily basis.8 Moreover, successful mercantile and real estate entrepreneurs invested in commercial rental properties like the oval building at the Greek Market which, in the early 1840s, was financed and run by John (Zannis in Greek or Ivan in Russian) Ralli, the us consul and prominent grain merchant of Greek ancestry. In order to operate successfully, markets needed the entrepreneurial skills of merchants and the purchasing capacity of the population. Capital and marketing know-how were essential, as was the urban population’s ability to acquire material possessions. In addition, expansion of economic activity presupposed changes in patterns of consumption. In contrast to the practice of rural consumers in the villages and town markets, they visited predictably and inflexibly at best once a week or month whereas their urban counterparts shopped all the time. Two markets were designed during the first decade the city was under construction.9 The Old Bazaar in the inner city specialised in local foodstuffs and artisanal artefacts, and the Greek Market, nearer the port, was devoted to imported products. The latter’s Greek merchants were provisioned by sailing vessels from the Mediterranean via the Black Sea, while the Old Bazaar received

7

8

9

A report to the City-Prefect (gradonachal’nik) in 1851 informs us that merchandise arriving in the city would be directed to specific marketplaces according to kind. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 301, ll. 94–102, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, Report of the City-Prefect of Odessa for the year 1851. For a comparison with the evolution of the London markets, see Colin Smith, “The Wholesale and Retail Markets of London, 1660–1840,” Economic History Review 55/1 (2002): 31–50. On the architecture of the markets, M. M. Siniaver, Arkhitektura staroi Odessy (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Leningradskogo oblastnogo soiuza sovetskikh pisatelei, 1935), 51–6; A.A. Orlov, Istoricheskii ocherk Odessy s 1794 po 1803 god (Odessa: Tip. A. Shul’tse, 1885), 20–21; V. I. Timofeenko, Odessa: Arkhitekturno-istoricheskii ocherk (Kiev: Budivel’nyk, 1983), 27.

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The markets

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goods by cart from the city’s outskirts or the immediate hinterland. Connected by a wide avenue with planting in its centre (esplanade), the Aleksandrovskii Prospekt, the two markets were on the same commercial axis that originated at the port and ended at Bol’shaia Arnautskaia. Besides the open market square, both were dotted by the buildings on the four sides of their perimeters and associated infrastructure, including warehouses, inns and taverns that served clients and visitors. Dealers in the same trades clustered in streets or rows of buildings, in permanent stores or temporary outlets. Select consumer goods, predominantly imported, exclusively available in the Greek Market or certain shops along Aleksandrovskii Prospekt and the area surrounding the Old Bazaar, were neither affordable for the average mass ­consumer of the Old Bazaar nor, in any case, part of their habitual diet (see Map 4). The short distance linking the two markets along Aleksandrovskii Prospekt can be seen, however, as evocative of the small metaphorical step between the purchase of basic consumer needs and the acquisition of the luxuries required to mimic a fashionable urban lifestyle. It also implied a rise in family earnings fuelled by the success of the grain trade and the receptivity of Russian exports in European consumer markets. Oleg Gubar’, who has written extensively on Odessa’s markets, provided me with a noteworthy description of the original layout and use of the shops in the Greek Market.10 As he recounted, they were located in four distinct blocks of buildings, one on each side of the square, formed its perimeter, and were built between 1803 and 1810. A group of importers, primarily Greek, including Yanopoulos from Mytilini (Aegean Sea), Marazli from Philippoupoli (Plovdiv), Inglesis and Metaxas from the Ionian islands, Papahadzis11 and Groza owned grocery stores in the 4th block; Amvrosios12 several shops in the 2nd block; Paleologos, Velissarios, Manesis13 and Paterakis in the 1st block. Interspersed among them were a few Russian merchants, Kramarev, Kislov and Filogorov

10 11

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13

Author interview with Oleg Gubar’ in Odessa, June 2011. Kyriakos Papahadzis was a first guild merchant in 1814. daoo, fond 4, opis’ 1a, delo 229, List of merchants who declared their capital in 1814 (Spisok o kuptsakh obiavivshikh kapitaly na 1814). Ioannis (Ivan) A. Amvrosios (1770–1852): third guild merchant in 1799, second guild in 1800 onwards and first guild in 1804; head of Odessa’s Duma during the periods 1806– 1809 and 1821–1824; cofounded the Greek Insurance Company with Ilias Manesis and S. Ksidas in 1814; awarded the title of Hereditary Honorary Citizen in 1838. Ilias A. Manesis (died 1843): second guild merchant (1815–1827) and first guild merchant in the period 1827–1837. After 1837, he was downgraded to the status of the third guild for two years, only to be raised to the second guild in 1839.

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and a Bulgarian, Milovanov. According to the building plan of Francesco Frappoli14 each block consisted of twenty-two storey units with the shops and display areas on the ground floor and residences above. Most had an interior double-height court or atrium where foodstuff could be stored temporarily in bulk or carts and horses parked. Commercial court records attest to the merchants’ demands for additional space. The resulting chaotic congestion of people and merchandise were a hindrance to trade and increased the risk of fire, but had the unanticipated benefit of facilitating the secret meetings of the Greek clandestine organisation, the Philiki Etaireia, the Society of Friends described below, by making effective police surveillance nearly impossible. The Old Bazaar (Free Market) was planned by Franz de Volan and erected earlier than the Greek Market.15 Like the Greek Market, it was an open square with four rectangular building blocks designed in neo-classical style defining its edges, and with ground floor shops opening onto colonnaded arcades.16 The market was demarcated by four streets: two main streets, Uspenskaia and Bol’shaia Arnautskaia and two side streets, Onilovoi and Uspenskii Pereulok. Although Giorgio Torricelli’s plan called for thirty-four shops with 3 sazhen (21 foot) wide facades and a depth of 15 sazhen (105 feet), by the 1820’s twenty-­eight shops had been built. They were one-storey high and were intended to have the shop in front and residence in back. The total cost of their construction was estimated at 1,000 roubles and the four blocks were named after the merchant-entrepreneurs who built them, Tserepennikov, Ialovikov, ­Posokhov-Kumbaris, and Shishmanov. According to Oleg Gubar’, a row of butchers shops was added in 1806 behind Malaia Arnautskaia, another dedicated to the sale of wooden artefacts just behind it and, finally, a row of metal ware stores owned by Jewish vendors whose modest means delayed their installation until 1817, bringing the total to seventy-two commercial establishments by 1820.17

14

15 16

17

Francesco Frappoli (1770–1817): Neapolitan architect who participated in central Odessa’s building under de Richelieu’s governance. His works include the Theatre Square, the Greek Church of Holy Trinity at 55 Ekateriniskaia Street and the Greek market (see Map 3). Piliavskii, Zodchie, 17–18. Odessa 1794–1894, 350. John Moore, A Journey from London to Odessa with Notices of New Russia (Paris: Printed for the Author and to be had of Messrs. A. and W. Galignani, 1833), 166. The journey was realized in 1824. Oleg Gubar’, “Funktsii Odesskogo stroitel’nogo komiteta v kontekste istorii gradostroitel’stva Odessy. Arnautskaia slobodka i Vol’nyi rynok.” Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 40 (2010): 29–35. http://www.odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/alm_40/alm_40_356-359.pdf (accessed 21 April 2015)

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Rejecting the original two-storey shops proposed for them by the city authorities, fishmongers demanded a location of their preference and, by 1818, a row of twenty-eight shops selling salted fish was in operation. A third market, the New Bazaar, was built around 1810 in the Greek Forstadt at Khersonskaia Square in order to alleviate congestion in the Old Bazaar and serve the inhabitants of the Khersonskii quarter. Five distinct blocks of buildings along Torgovaia, Nezhinskaia, Konnaia and Kniazhenskaia streets defined the perimeter (see Map 4). The competition between the traders who had permanent shops and the temporary occupants of wooden market counters was intense.18 In 1811 de Richelieu and the Building Committee (the institution governing public and private construction in the city) decided to encourage merchants to build their shops in the New Bazaar, according to Torricelli’s plan. The same procedure that had been applied in the Old Bazaar was followed here: the municipal authorities made plots available by lottery and the merchants provided the capital and manpower to build their own stores. Eighteen merchants and twenty-one meshchane (city dwellers belonging to the middle-lower class) won the lottery. Twenty-two were Slavs, ten were Jews, six were Greek and one was German.19 If the construction were not completed in the time frame set by the municipal authority, the rights to the plot would be transferred to another trader. Their complaints about unfair competition from transient traders in the market led to the destruction of temporary installations in April 1812.20 A petition to de Richelieu from twelve merchants requesting financial aid to help recover from the depletion of their capital as a result of the investment in the construction of their stores coincided with the severe loss of business that followed the cholera year in 1813. By 1815, the local authorities were regulating both the Old and New Bazaars on an equal basis and allowing all branches of trade in foodstuffs, especially meat and fish, to do business in both places. The unpaved roads, dust in summer and mud in winter, made the passage from one market to the other problematic so that residents of each district had to choose the one that was most accessible. The markets engaged in both wholesale and retail trade. As they grew so too did the number of retailers. It appears that the authorities did not resist pressure from members of the city’s lower economic strata who wanted to

18

19 20

Oleg Gubar’, “Novyi bazar (Khersonskaia ploshchad’): istoriia zastroiki.” DeribasovskaiaRishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 32 (2008): 11–17. http://www.odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/alm_32/alm_32_11-17.pdf (accessed 12 December 2014). daoo, fond 2, opis’ 5, delo 262, ll. 201-201v and fond 4, opis’ 3, delo 433, ll. 115–116, 119. daoo, fond 59, opis’ 1, delo 65, ll. 260–63.

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engage in petty trade, although the rights and obligations of merchants and townspeople were clearly differentiated. Townspeople, for instance, were subject to military recruitment and corporal punishment when they violated the penal code (Commercial Code, v. 6, art. 155).21 Mobile vendors increased consumer activity by bringing supply nearer to residents, although they adversely affected the profits of permanent stores. Petty trade remained a source of income for poor residents and immigrants without stable employment. As Gubar’ remarked, had the authorities suppressed this kind of trade, they would have undermined the livelihood of the city’s poorer traders and the wealth of the population in general.22 The basic agricultural product that was marketed and sold in large quantities to the exporters was wheat and all its complementary cereal products. At the end of the century, wholesale transactions of wheat took place at the New Stock Exchange, a specialised institution housed in an impressive building on 17 Pushkinskaia and Bunina, designed by A. Bernardazzi in 1899, and situated in close proximity to the premises of several banks and hotels (see Map 5). The Exchange (birzha) was a kind of selective closed market where an elite clubby membership focused on sample-selling and suppliers displayed their products to grain exporters. The institution was regulated by maklers, city deputies who set the rules that governed transactions in the grain trade and arbitrated in case of disagreements.23 Markets have been described as the location where supply and demand intersect.24 Yet, since the early middle ages, their purpose was not exclusively economic. Markets were primary public spaces where sociability and state power were inextricably connected, the sites of public announcements, not to mention of general police oversight.25 Local and long distance trade were organised through the agency of temporary fairs and permanent markets. Fairs, as M. Casson suggests, were established in order to bring high-value commodities to areas where consumerism was slow.26 As a result, permanent markets 21 22 23 24

25 26

Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (amae), Correspondance Consulaire Comerciale, v. 8, Russie, Odessa, July 25, 1858, Mémoire sur la question des guildes. Gubar’, “Novyi bazar,” 13. See also chapter 3. On the economic role and development of markets, see Mark Casson and John S. Lee, “The Origin and Development of Markets: A Business History Perspective,” Business History Review 85 (Spring 2011): 9–37. James Masschaele, “The Public Space of the Marketplace in Medieval England,” Speculum 77/2 (April 2002), 391–97 and 412–18. Casson and Lee, “The Origin and Development of Markets,” 17.

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operated at the expense of traditional fairs. The proliferation of markets in the urban environment diminished the number and frequency of fairs so that by 1851 only one operated in Odessa, yearly on the day of the Feast of the Cross (Krestovozdvizhenskaia).27 3 Provisioning the City The evolution of Odessa into the biggest port of the South is attributable to two factors: the state’s policy of mercantile protectionism and private initiative. The qualitative jump in development was provided by its free port status (1819–1857) and the related regulations that eliminated the previous custom tariffs on imports and exports.28 Following repeated consultations between the French Governor-General, Duc de Richelieu, who recommended it and the tsar, free port status was granted to Odessa in August of 1819. Ten years later, the measure had yet to be implemented as a result of delays by the local authorities in the construction of the double ditch of the free trade zone that would encircle the city and its four gateways.29 The free port was chosen as the empire’s strategy in order to promote the rapid development of the new city, to attract the finances and human resources that would transform Odessa into the centre of trade of South Russia. Anticipating the opening of the Free Port and Town of Odessa, the British Consul James Yeames wrote to Joseph Planta, the Under Secretary of the Department of British Foreign Affairs, that after the considerable delay due to preparatory works that should have been completed by the Town Committee and the Governor-General’s severe reprimand to the local authorities, the port was expected to open in 1819 and a considerable quantity of merchandise, mainly by British traders, was ready for importation.30 Under free port status, imports paid only 1/5 of the duty imposed on other ports. This income was appropriated for the embellishment of the city. Re-export of the incoming merchandise to destinations outside the free port zone required the payment of the remaining balance of 4/5 of the duty.31 27 28 29

30 31

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 301, Report of the year 1851. For the total commerce of Odessa see Appendix, Figure 4. National Archives, F.O., 65/118, Letter of the British Consul James Yeames to Joseph Planta, His Majesty’s Under Secretary of the State Department of Foreign Affairs, July 24/2, 1819. National Archives, F.O., 65/118, July 24/2, 1819. nara, Washington, dc, Report of the us Consul of Odessa to the us Secretary of State, 20 January 1842, no 33.

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Beyond state policy, the critical task of provisioning the city was left to private enterprise and was a huge undertaking. The market for imported goods developed through the initiative of its suppliers and the vitality of their businesses. Inquiry into the means and commercial patterns through which foreign merchants achieved success reveals that they were supported by indispensable networks of producers, intermediaries and seafarers. Beyond meeting demand, these private enterprises generated new markets for imported goods and altered the consuming habits in the southern Russian territory as it was integrated into the world economy. 4 Profile of the Merchant-Entrepreneurs Involved in Foreign Trade and Their Specialisations As a result of the trading policies of the Russian Empire in the first half of the nineteenth century, Russian merchants were restricted to domestic trade, while international trade was left mostly to foreigners who had access to commercial and maritime networks throughout the Mediterranean and the Atlantic seaboard. The latter were distinguished by their ample resources and commercial know-how. Foreign merchants in Odessa could either opt for Russian citizenship and enrol in the gradated domestic guild system based on the amount of their declared capital, or maintain their original citizenship and enrol in the first guild (the only one open to foreigners), if they could afford it. They were also ideally suited for satisfying the consumer demands of the foreign communities that had settled in Odessa and responded to the needs and customs of first-generation immigrants who constituted an important part of the city’s population. Arcadius Kahan claims that Russia’s trade was lost to foreign merchants because of the shortcomings of Russian merchants, i.e. their lack of capital and the means and skills to organize foreign commerce.32 Paul Bushkovitch compares seventeenth-century Moscow merchants who traded with the port of Archangel with English and Dutch traders in the following manner: “The Moscow merchant rarely left his country, had no sophisticated book keeping methods and did not participate in the great currents of European overseas trade.”33 The import trade in the northern ports of Russia was dominated by

32 33

Arcadius Kahan, The Plow, the Hammer and the Knout. An Economic History of EighteenthCentury Russia (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1985), 162–64. Paul Bushkovitch, The Merchants of Moscow, 1580–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 1–2.

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the northern Europeans, mainly Dutch, English and Hamburg merchants from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and in the southern ports by the Mediterranean merchants, Venetians, Neapolitans, French and Ottoman Greeks in the late 18th century.34 In contrast to Western laissez-faire, Russian trade was heavily controlled and patronized by the state.35 The first entrepreneurs to appear on the domestic scene were aristocrats who had acquired exclusive state-granted concessions for the production or trade of liquor, woollens and metals. From the point of view of the entrepreneur, Walther Kirchner claimed, the monopolistic practices originating in the Russian government during the eighteenth century left little breathing room for merchants and restricted initiative. As a consequence, they were reluctant to take risks in Russia, if not backed by state support.36 In contrast, Mediterranean merchants, like Greeks and Italians, were in an advantageous position to engage in trade with Odessa due to geographical proximity, familiarity with the networks of Mediterranean foodstuff producers, and collaboration with the seafaring people of the region, usually from their own homeland, who could guarantee the safe transport of goods and often owned the very means of transportation. In the case of the Greeks, their familiarity with the procedures that regulated trade and maritime enterprises in the Ottoman Empire was very advantageous in dealing with similar regulations imposed by Russia, particularly in the early years.37 Knowledge of foreign languages and a sure grasp of institutional regulations (laws and duties, custom house rules and quarantine procedures), not to mention a long history of trading with the coastal towns of the Black and Azov seas before these 34

35 36 37

Eric Amburger, “Der Fremde Unternehmer in Russland bis zur Oktoberrevolution im Jahre 1917,” Tradition, Zeitschrift für Firmengeschichte und Unternehmerbiographie, 2nd year, 4 (1957): 337–55. For the import trade in the port of Taganrog, the second most important port of the Black and Azov Seas, see Sifneos and Harlaftis, “Entrepreneurship at the Russian Frontier,” in Zakharov et al., eds., Merchant Colonies; Victor N. Zakharov, “Foreign Merchant Communities in Eighteenth-Century Russia,” in Zakharov et al, eds. Merchant Colonies, 103–125. William Blackwell, The Beginnings of Russian Industrialization, 1800–1860 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 25. Kirchner, “Western Businessmen in Russia.” Gelina Harlaftis, “The Role of the Greeks in the Black Sea Trade, 1830–1900,” in Shipping and Trade, 1750–1950: Essays in International Maritime Economic History, ed. L. R. Fischer and H. W. Nordvik (Pontefract: Lofthouse, 1990), 63–95; Harlaftis, A History of Greek-Owned Shipping: The Making of an International Tramp Fleet, 1830 to the Present Day (London: Routledge, 1996); Vasiles Kardases, Diaspora Merchants in the Black Sea: The Greeks in Southern Russia, 1775–1861 (Lanham, md: Lexington Books, 2001); Sifneos, “Merchant Enterprises.”

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territories were conquered by the Russians, gave the Greeks a prodigious edge over their competitors.38 Import trade in Odessa may therefore be systematically categorised as follows:39 1. Foodstuffs: fresh and dried fruits, olive oil 2. Products of colonial trade: coffee, sugar, tobacco, cigars, pepper, cinnamon, mastic, vanilla 3. Fuel: coal, wood for burning 4. Luxury goods: wines, champagne, porter beer, other beers, pearls, coral, tortoise shell, perfume, cork stoppers 5. Construction materials: wood, lead, steel powder, oil for paint, bricks, tiles, stones 6. Housewares: crockery, porcelain, carpets, textiles, pottery, cutlery 7. Plants and seeds Greek merchants formed the most important group of importers in the 1820s.40 More particularly, in 1824 for example, they imported fresh and dried fruits from the Archipelago and Constantinople, olive oil and tobacco. Dimitrios Dumas imported carob, olive oil, tobacco and lemon juice from Samos; Alexander Mavros, coffee, olive oil and tobacco from Constantinople; Constantin Artinos, tobacco, Moldavian wine, and walnuts; Basil Yanopoulos, a­ lmonds, coffee and mastic from Chios and incense and dates from Constantinople; ­Alexander Kumbaris, salted fish, dates and the various currencies of the Ottoman Empire from Constantinople; Grigorii Marazli, coffee, halva and Ottoman currencies from Constantinople, wood from the Black Sea, olives, jars, soap bars, olive oil, oranges and pomegranates from Genoa; Constantin Papudov, dates, carob, incense, tobacco and red raisins from Constantinople and Syros (Aegean Sea); Rodocanachi Sons and Co., sugar from London, white cotton thread from Constantinople, coral from Livorno; Fred. Cortazzi, colonial goods 38

39 40

Oleksandr Halenko, “He Hellenes epicheirematies kai nautikoi stis voreies aktes tes Maures kai Azophikes Thalassas kata ten periodo tes Othomanikes kyriarchias kai ton rosikon katakteseon kata ton 15o-18o aiona,” in Evrydiki Sifneos and Gelina Harlaftis, eds. Hoi Hellenes tes Azophikes, 18os-arches 20ou aiona. Nees prosengiseis sten historia ton Hellenon tes notias Rosias (Athens: National Research Foundation, Institute of Historical Research, 2015), 245–63. Journal d’Odessa, elaborated data from the weekly arrivals and departures of ships in Odessa’s port for the year 1824. Journal d’Odessa, issues of the year 1824.

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from London; Kriona Papa Nikola, tobacco for his workshop, rose oil, raisins, almonds and empty barrels from Constantinople and Syros; Antonios Economos, Moldavian wine; Buba Frères, red cotton thread from Marseilles and sponges, books and clothing from Constantinople; Grigorii Rossolimo, wine from Galatz. Serbian firms41 of medium size that were active in the early part of the century and by 1824 represented the second largest group of importers after the Greeks, carried commodities from Livorno and Trieste in Northern Italy mainly on Austrian brigs piloted by Ragusan (Dalmatian) captains. The free state of Ragusa (today’s Dubrovnik), whose strong seafaring tradition rivalled that of Venice, was annexed along with other Adriatic maritime republics to the Habsburg Empire in 1813. It is not surprising therefore, that the skills of Ragusan captains and crews were exploited by the Austrians to transport commodities from Trieste and other Italian ports to Odessa. The disruption of Mediterranean maritime trade during the Greek war of Independence (1821– 1830) offered Dalmatian captains a prime opportunity to seize a share of the Greek seafaring business towards Russian coasts. Giovanni Risnich42 imported lemons, oranges, wine and olive oil from Messina and tobacco, cotton, coffee and raisins from Trieste; Giorgio Collich, oranges and bitter oranges from Messina, marble and alabaster, jams and pickles from Trieste and dates from Zante; Philipp Lucich focused on ordinary porcelain from Marseille, slate and stone gravestones, toys, soaps, corks for wine bottles, salted fish, and cheese from Holland and Switzerland. Italian firms43 were either Neapolitan or enterprises from the North Italian ports of Genoa and Livorno. Sarato and Verani, the most prestigious firm of all, imported white wine from Marseille, household objects from Trieste, sardines and salted fish from Constantinople, fresh fruits and coffee from Chios, bottle corks from Liege, cheese and ordinary porcelain from Marseilles. Their mansion, built in the classical style between 1824–1826 at 4 Primorskii Boulevard, still remains in the first row of houses overlooking the port. Pietro Sartorio and Son imported coffee and sugar from Trieste, almonds from Livorno, olive oil from Genoa and oranges from Messina; Niccoló Corsi brought rope, iron and copper from Sevastopol, flowers from Constantinople, beer from Trieste and 41 42

43

Journal d’Odessa, issues of the year 1824. Risnich was a member of the Serbian community of Trieste. On the Serbian merchants in Trieste see, Marco Dogo, “Una nazione di pii mercanti. La comunità serbo-illirica di Trieste, 1748–1908,” in Storia economica e sociale di Trieste, ed. by Roberto Finzi and Giovanni Panjek, v. 1 (Trieste: Lint, 2001), 573–602. Journal d’Odessa, issues of the year 1824.

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red cotton thread from Marseille; Giovanni Almalli, tobacco and saffron from Constantinople, pearls from Marseilles, incense from Trieste, carob, Muscat wine and red raisins from Samos; Il’ia Trabotti, pepper, sugar and coffee from Trieste. Additionally, in the 1820s a few British firms44 imported coal from Liverpool (Lander and Yeames) and Newcastle (E. Moberly and Co.), porter beer from Liverpool (Walther and Co.), colonial goods (coffee, sugar), potatoes and cheese (Lander and Yeames), manufactured products (cotton thread) from London, wood and carpets from the Persian trade (J.H. Atwood and Co.), beer, lead, steel in powder form and white iron (E. Moberly and Co.). French firms45 imported wines (Sicard and Co.), perfumes (Philibert and Co.), construction materials (Rey Revilliod et Co.), champagne (F.J. Raynaud, A. Collin and B. Langlois), olive oil and carob (Philibert and Co.), wine, cotton and roof tiles (Haggia Frères et Co.). All French imported goods came from Marseille. The French had exclusive import rights for plants and seeds for Odessa’s boulevards, public gardens and private summer-houses by the sea. More acclimated to Odessa’s environment were plants originating in Constantinople, such as oleanders and laurels, which were particularly resistant to humidity and salt from the sea. Very popular as imports, corks de liège were indispensable for wine cellars and the bottling of beer, wines, liqueurs and beverages, which arrived in barrels and were sold in bottles. Equally in demand were smoking accessories, long cherry-sticks from Tiflis for smoking à la Turque and mouthpieces made of amber and ornamented with enamel or gold. The traveller John Moore describes how, in most of the houses he visited, the water pipes were ranged against the wall, in the same way as cues are placed in billiard rooms.46 After dinner, it was common to offer coffee, liqueurs and pipes. The wine shop at 32 Politseiskaia in the house of Matvei Petrovich Milovanov in the 4th block of the Greek Market was typical of its kind in the 1840s: it sold all sorts of wines together with paints, vegetables and playing cards, which were at the time a state monopoly.47 Bread was produced by bakers of different origins who specialized in many varieties: French frantzol, Turkish simit with sesame, Italian galettes, Russian 44

The categories of firms according to their ethnic origin are also elaborated from Journal d’Odessa, issues of the year 1824. 45 Journal d’Odessa, issues of the year 1824. 46 Moore, A Journey from London to Odessa, 190. 47 Gubar’, “Dom na Politseiskoi,” Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 20 (2005): 67–71 http://www.odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/alm_20/alm_20_329-333.pdf (accessed 10 April 2012).

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black bread lightly seasoned with cumin, German style baked goods, poppy seed sprinkled Ukrainian kalach in the shape of key holes.48 They were distributed to the open-air markets and were displayed on counters along ethno-­ religious lines. By 1890, there were 108 bakeries in the city as well as public bakeries at the monasteries, the synagogues, the Municipal Bakery at Slobodka (Gorodskaia Ulitsa) and the bakery of the Women’s Philanthropic Society in Moldavanka. 5 Patterns of Successful Business The plethora of consumer goods that filled Odessa’s markets and the diversity of imported products presupposed merchants who knew their business well and had the required abilities and knowledge to penetrate and establish themselves in local markets. It is well worth examining the start-up strategies of their enterprises. The example of Odessa illustrates three distinct ways in which foreign merchants sought to establish themselves in the south Russian market. The first was diplomacy. Foreign consuls assigned to port-cities were granted trading privileges, enjoying tax exemption and access to confidential information relating to commercial agreements and governmental policies. A good example was the case of the British firm Yeames and Co. in Odessa and Taganrog. Henry Savage Yeames, who became the first British consul in Odessa in 1803, was also a founding partner of Yeames and Co., the first English mercantile house in Odessa. Yeames’s first commercial venture involved supplying, at the Foreign Office’s command, Odessan hard wheat to Malta in an effort to break Napoleon’s embargo of the island.49 English subjects found it difficult to accept the strong autocratic tradition of eastern absolutism and as Yeames exclaimed to his sons: “Even an Englishman’s life was unsafe in Russia.”50 His son James succeeded him as consul (1819), not relinquishing the post until the outbreak of the Crimean War (1853). His brother William, British Consul in Taganrog, headed a British mercantile house that specialised in exporting grain and merino wool. Foreign merchants typically took the risk of settling and trading in

48

Gubar’, “Chto takoe ‘franzol’?”, Vecherniaia Odessa 168–169 (8905–8906), 8 November 2008, http://vo.od.ua/rubrics/raznoe/9408.php (accessed 2 February 2014) 49 Stephen N. H. Smith, Art and Anecdote. Recollections of William Frederick Yeames, R. A. His Life and his Friends (London: Hutchinson and Co), 29–30. 50 Smith, Art and Anecdote, 26.

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Odessa only after fostering personal relationships with Odessa’s high officials. This was the case with the British Cortazzi brothers, who were intimate friends with the then governor Michael Vorontsov and the Frenchman Charles Sicard, who became the commercial advisor of the Duc de Richelieu.51 Sicard decided to settle permanently as a merchant in Odessa only after de Richelieu became the city’s governor.52 Another way of entering the market was through association with a previously established firm. This was the case with the German firm Ernst Mahs and Co., established in Odessa in 1838.53 Ernst Mahs and his son Arist were prominent merchants in the grain trade and handled 6 percent of Odessa’s exports in the 1840s.54 The father, a resident of St. Petersburg, was sent to Odessa in 1817 to trade on the account of the German banker Baron Stieglitz. In 1835 Ernst became a partner of the Stieglitz and Mahs banking and commercial house in Odessa and the city governor’s preferred banker. Vorontsov often turned to Stieglitz for Odessa’s financial needs, most notably in order to combat the 1833 yield shortage.55 In 1838, the firm was dissolved and Ernst Mahs, with the approval and support of his former partners, set up as an independent merchant in the Odessan market. The case of Ernst Mahs is indicative not only of the importance of networking with the right people at the right time but also of the power of merchants as bankers at a time when purely financial institutions did not yet exist. Stieglitz belonged to the group of international merchant bankers, like the Rothchilds and Barings, capable of lending vast sums to cash-strapped European rulers. The third method was that of the captain-merchant enterprise, most frequently seen among the Greeks, Slavs, Italians and the British. It was based on a close collaboration between captains and resident merchants usually from the same place of origin. The enterprise would begin as a partnership between a merchant or supercargo and a captain who was willing to take risks in new markets and share profits.56 If the enterprise was successful and gains stable, the cooperation would split the jointly held business into separate 51

O.O. Chizhevich, “Gorod Odessa i odesskoe obshchesvo (1837–1877),” in Iz proshlogo Odessy, ed. de-Ribas, 16–18. 52 Bibliothèque Victor Cousin, Fonds Richelieu, msric 113, “Notice sur onze années de la vie de Richelieu à Odessa par Ch. Sicard,” Odessa, 1827. 53 See chapter 3. 54 Sartor, Das Haus Mahs, 38. 55 Sartor, Das Haus Mahs, 39. 56 Harlaftis, A History of Greek-Owned Shipping: The Making of an International Tramp Fleet, 1830 to the Present Day (London: Routledge, 1996), 43–55.

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entities. The merchant would attempt to gain temporary resident status and, ultimately, the right to reside and do business in Odessa on a permanent basis. Having succeeded in this, he maintained his collaborations with the captains from his homeland. He would meet them at the port, inform them when new grain consignments were available, entrust them with the transport of his merchandise, commercial and personal correspondence, cash and bills of exchange. Ad hoc collaboration in the purchase and, ultimately, sale of grain at ports of their choice were a permanent feature of the merchant-seafarer enterprise.57 Greek firms had a performance advantage over Russian and other foreign competitors. They possessed the know-how for organising and establishing trade in territories that lacked infrastructure.58 Russia’s state paternalism, the blurring between the roles of state officials and monopoly holders, and merchant privileges and exemptions did not, as they did for their Western European competitors, present insurmountable obstacles to the penetration of the Russian market. This and geographic proximity constituted important advantages. The use of Constantinople as port of origin for business ventures in Russia’s southern ports and the early acquisition (long before their competitors) of the right to access the Black and Azov seas flying the Ottoman or Russian flag, allowed them to gain a privileged position.59 The port records for arrivals and departures of Greek ships in Odessa in 1824, during the Greek War of Independence, highlights that most Greek captains, in order to enter the Black Sea, employed British ships from the Ionian Islands that were under British protection and made use of English or Russian flags of convenience, thereby assuring uninterrupted passage through the Straits into the Black Sea. Until the Crimean War moreover, Greek medium-scale businesses were import-export, a distinct and profitable advantage over Western European concerns, which mainly exported. The small and medium-sized Greek sailing vessels were better adapted to exploit the shallow Azov Sea ports with their shorter navigating season. Ultimately, large-scale mercantile enterprises invested in their own means of

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58 59

On forms of ownership in the Greek sailing vessels see Harlaftis, A History of Greek-owned Shipping, 134–46; on the sermagia type see, Vassilis Kremmydas, Archeio Chatzepanagiote. 1. Chatzepanagiotes–Polites (Athens: Genike Grammateia Neas Genias, 1973), 49–151. Sifneos, “Merchant Enterprises,” 264. Gelina Harlaftis and Sophia Laiou, “Ottoman State Policy in Mediterranean Trade and Shipping, c.1780–c.1820: The Rise of the Greek-Owned Ottoman Merchant Fleet,” in Marc Mazower, ed. Networks of Power in Modern Greece. Essays in Honour of John Campbell (London: Hurst Publishers, 2008), 1–44.

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transport.60 Combining trade and shipping under one roof reduced transaction costs and was very competitive. Merchant ship owners acquired two types of vessels, those of small capacity (barges) to transport grain from the river estuaries to Odessa, and sailing ships of bigger tonnage for the open seas. As Eastern Orthodox Christians, Greek merchants also took advantage of religious affinity in acquiring grain from their co-religionists in the Russian countryside during the first half of the nineteenth century. Among other things, this allowed them to supply the vast Russian market with the non-edible olive oil needed for lightning church lamps, which was produced in their land of origin. 6 The Evolution of Markets in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century The proliferation of markets was a sign of Odessa’s expansion and demographic growth and a marker of further specialization in commodity trading and artisanal production. By the end of the Crimean war (1856), new market places sprang up (eight in total) and seventeen piazzas were designated where business could be transacted.61 Odessa’s population had grown considerably (97,024 inhabitants including the suburbs) and its increasing demand for edible and manufactured goods gave employment to 1,530 shops, 554 wine cellars, 174 spirit shops, 572 bakeries and 482 booths of different trades.62 Yet the entrepreneurial class, mostly merchants who were accredited to operate in the import and export trade, constituted less than 1 percent of the population. Shopkeepers and innkeepers belonged to the middle-lower strata of the population and were the driving force for petty trade and businesses geared to the population’s leisure activities (including 110 middle-upper class tea houses, 18 ordinary eating houses as well as seven coffee houses and restaurants). Trade and petty trade were under the supervision and regulation of the civic authorities. The police attempted, often unsuccessfully, to suppress hawking by ambulant hawkers in the vicinity of the marketplaces. In a report to the City-Prefect (gradonachal’nik), the chief of police claimed that he had arrested 60

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See John Ralli and Theodore Rodocanachi of Odessa as well as the Greek merchants in the Azov Sea. Evrydiki Sifneos, “Greek Family Firms in the Azov Sea, 1850–1917,” Business History Review 87/2 (July 2013): 289, 294–302. nara, Washington, dc, us Consular Dispatches, Statistical Account of the Town of Odessa, Report of the Consul John Ralli to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 30 June 1856. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 498, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, Report of the Head of the Police to the City-Prefect for the year 1857.

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1,233 peddlers and itinerant peddlers within the city limits in 1857.63 By 1895, the number of retail traders who paid the Duma the fee to have the right to sell their merchandise in the city’s marketplaces increased dramatically. Moreover, the Duma’s resolution to allocate retailers to specific markets demonstrates social and ethnic mobility as well as changes in shop ownership.64 Thus, in the Greek market, at Aleksandrovskaia Square, only two of the thirty-four retail merchants were still Greek, the others being Russian and Jews. Another surprising indicator was the gender ratio as illustrated by the high percentage of women who were free from family or other institutional constraints to shift into market-related employment. In the first district of the city, with the exception of Aleksandrovskaia Square, where the Greek market was, a smaller concentration of retailers on Evreiskaia Street consisted exclusively of Jews. The image that emerges from the distribution of locations occupied by traders in the Old and New Bazaars in 1895 reflects the growth of these markets in size, retailers and specialisation. New rows of counters were designated specifically for trading foodstuff such as vegetables, fruit and tallow. Others were reserved for the sale of onions, potatoes, watermelons, fodder, straw, firewood and shoes. Fishmongers were segregated according to whether their product was salted or fresh while butchers, similarly, according to type of meat (typically beef, lamb or pork). Jews occupied separate rows for meat, fish and vegetables reflecting, in all likelihood, the requirements of their kosher diet, which forbade pork, shellfish, catfish and particular vegetables that according to tradition, had to be inspected for insects prior to consumption. For all other products, they intermingled with traders of other ethnicities. In the second district, another market was founded on Posokhovskaia Square dedicated mostly to wheat, ironware, new and used books and furniture of all kinds, shoes and boots, sheep-skin coats, novelties and knickknacks. One particular row was dedicated to barter. The row for samovars reminds us that drinking tea had become a habit for average Odessans and, therefore, the samovar an everyday household appliance. Russian literary stars from Tolstoy to Dostoyevsky to Chekhov have elegised drinking tea as the ultimate symbol of Russian hominess and warmth.65 John Moore, who visited

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daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 498, Report for the year 1857. Vedomosti Odesskogo gorodskogo obshchestvennogo upravleniia, 1895, no 2, resolution on the retailers who have paid their duties to the city council for their installations in the city’s marketplaces, 41–82. Audra Jo Yoder, “Myth and Memory in Russian Tea Culture,” Studies in Slavic Cultures 8 (August 2009): 65–89.

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Odessa’s bazaars in the 1820s, noted that Russian peasants were very fond of tea and that vendors stationed themselves in the bazaars with brass kettles.66 Tea originally came to Russia from China via the Caravan Road but after the opening of the Suez Canal, Kyahta tea from the Russo-Mongolian border travelled more quickly to Moscow and the fair of Nizhnii Novgorod via the ports of Vladivostok and Odessa than overland.67 By 1895, more than 2,800 Odessites were sellers in the city’s bazaars.68 These included the Old and New Bazaars, the Greek Market, a stretch of Jewish Street, the Posokhovskaia Market and the market at Ol’gievskaia Street. Women played an essential role as 34 percent of the work force. New loci for wholesale and retail sprang up in the city. The New Bazaar, with its twenty-three rows of commodities and more than 850 vendors, was located at Khersonskaia Square in the district of the same name. New rows appeared for honey, tobacco, earthenware, caged birds, hay or oats, ready-made food and salted beef. The expansion of the indoor wing of the New Bazaar was one of the reasons for the decline of the Greek Market. In 1900, citing health issues in such a central and densely populated area as well as diminished municipal income, the municipal council decided to shut it down.69 Only a few spots for the sale of fish, vegetables and bread remained at the Greek Market at the time. The new bakeries opened by Liebman, Raspopov, Durian and Ambatiello in this aristocratic neighbourhood made the temporary stalls and sales points of the Greek market superfluous. Two new markets for the purchase and sale of horses were established in Peresyp’, and for fodder at the Ol’gievskii Bridge by the end of the nineteenth century. Nowadays the Old Horse Market at Moldavanka (Starokonnyi bazar) is one of Odessa’s most visited places, not only for what can be purchased but for its ambience as well. Organised in the 1830s, it consists of a typical market square and open-air marketplace along its sidewalks where one can buy pigeons, second-hand clothing, old post cards, cd’s, and Soviet era items.70 As the journalist Vadim Evdokimov put it, it is simultaneously a zoo, workshop, interest club and open-air museum.71 66 Moore, A Journey from London to Odessa, 167. 67 Catherine Evtuhov, Portrait of a Russian Province. Economy, Society and Civilization in Nineteenth-Century Nizhnii Novgorod (Pittsburg: University of Pittsburg Press, 2011), 75. 68 Vedomosti Odesskogo gorodskogo obshchestvennogo upravleniia, 1895, resolution on the retailers. 69 Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy, February 1900, № 3, Report no 26, “Doklad chlena upravy K. E. Andreevskogo po voprosu o zakrytii Grecheskogo bazara,” 357–61. 70 Richardson, Kaleidoscopic Odessa, 129–134. 71 Vadim Evdokimov, “Proshloe i nastoiashchee Starokonnogo,” Slovo March 23, 2001.

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As elsewhere, the urban middle-upper class of the city was exposed to the influence of department stores, aptly characterised as “cathedrals of consumerism.”72 Between 1898 and 1899 a covered retail arcade, the Passage, was built at 33 Deribasovskaia and 34 Preobrazhenskaia by Moisei Iakovlevich Mendelevich, a first-guild merchant and owner of a big grain export firm (see Map 4).73 It was designed by the architect Lev L’vovich Vlodek to house high-end shops that returned equivalently high rents to the entrepreneur. The complex also hosted one of Odessa’s best hotels, the “Passage,” under the directorship of I. S. Kulinets. Under the gallery’s glass ceiling, one could visit luxurious shops for exotic tea and coffee brands, the candy shop “Bonbons de Varsovie”, beer halls, jewellery makers, fashion boutiques, art galleries for old post-cards, bookstores, pharmacies and the private library of I. P. Raspopov. Mendelevich’s development was followed by the three-storey department store at 28 Grecheskaia owned by the Petrokokkino Brothers that has now been demolished. The department store was a late nineteenth-century innovation in the retail trade and similar stores were erected in Moscow at the beginning of the twentieth century and served as extensive exhibition spaces for everything that could be sold to both the upper and middle classes.74 The department store brought together products and services associated with a bourgeois culture and lifestyle. In contrast to individual small-scale shops, it offered a great variety of goods at fixed and often low prices, standardisation of merchandise, mail-order purchases and home-­ delivery, reduced price sales, and purchase returns and refunds.75 In economic terms its success was based on the quick turnover of stock: the entrepreneur owners of department stores bought goods in bulk on credit from suppliers at low cost and, eliminating intermediaries, sold at reasonable prices or better and only in cash rather than on credit, while publicity and the promotion of sales were successful methods for selling most goods prior to their original suppliers’ credit payment due date.76 The store itself was its own best advertisement.

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Geoffrey Crossick and Serge Jaumain, Cathedrals of Consumption. The European Department Store, 1850–1938 (Adlershot: Ashgate, 1999). 73 Gubar’, “Passazh (Deribasovskaia, No. 33, Preobrazhenskaia, No. 34,” DeribasovskaiaRishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 30 (2007), 18–35, http://www.odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/alm_30/alm_30_18-35.pdf (accessed 19 March 2015) 74 See the Muir and Mirrielees department store, erected in Moscow in 1908 by a Scottish partnership. Kharvi Pitcher [Harvey Pitcher], Myur i Meriliz: Shotlandtsy v Rossii (Moscow: Moskovskii Rabochii, 1993). 75 Michael B. Miller, Le Bon Marché. Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 41, 48, 69; Revue des Deux Mondes, “Le Commerce des Grands Magasins,” 1892, per. 3, v. 109, 133–156. 76 Miller, Le Bon Marché, 58.

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The pram tumbling down the Odessa Staircase in Sergei Eisenstein’s film on the 1905 Revolution was sold at the Petrokokkino department store, together with products from the colonial trade, cosmetics and perfumes, iron beds, electric and kerosene lamps, garden furniture, fishing, hunting and photo accessories, sports goods and house wares of all kinds (glass and porcelain, pottery, enamel and cast iron utensils) (see Map 4).77 Dolls and children’s toys as well as decorative Christmas trees, a rather western habit, were sold on the spot. Their in-house porcelain series was numbered and bore the seal of the firm. Petrokokkino Brothers gave special attention to marketing and publishing printed catalogues, post-cards for the New Year, posters for local exhibitions of home and manufactured goods, and advertised their mail-order services.78 Returning for a moment from the urbane Odessa of the end of the imperial period to the Odessa of the 1820s, one can imagine the city with its markets as a living hive where merchandise and ideas were exchanged. In this process of ‘pollination’, the protagonists were the foreign merchants with their experience of travel, their exotic habits, and their familiarity with other ways of life. In the microcosm of Odessa’s markets, new products were tested and fresh ideas on trade, communication, management and the practices of foreign cultures were absorbed by local merchants. The founding of the secret society, Philiki Etaireia, in the Greek Market, is worth looking at closely in respect to the political climate in Odessa in the 1820s and the parallel activities of other societies in the Russian armed forces that sought to subvert the imperial regime. As with consumer goods, it can be argued that progressive political ideas were imported, duty free, through the free port of Odessa. 7 Political Liberalism: The Parallel Activity of the Union of Welfare and the Greek Secret Society Inspired by their sojourns and experiences in Europe during the 1812 War, Russian officers were exposed to new political and philosophical ideas while simultaneously becoming aware of their own country’s backwardness.79 On their return to Russia, they formed several societies whose members were

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Vsia Odessa, adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga vsei Odessy s otdelom Odesskii Uezd na 1914 g. (Odessa: Tipografiia “Poriadok” S.K. Tsessarskogo, 1914), 318. L.G. Belousova, To genos ton Petrokokkinon (Chios: Alpha-pi, 2007), 147–49, 167–69. For a collective portrait of the Decembrists, see W. Bruce Lincoln, “A Re-Examination of Some Historical Stereotypes: An Analysis of the Career Patterns and Backgrounds of the Decembrists,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, new series, 24/3 (1976): 357–68.

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united by their common military experience and interest in reform.80 The ­societies were originally philanthropic in nature but became increasingly political.81 Constitutional monarchy and the abolition of serfdom were at the core of their debates. Meanwhile Tsar Alexander I, following his decisive victory over Napoleon, took the lead in the Holy Alliance whose intended purpose was to ensure a lasting peace in Europe. Although initially hailed as the “liberator and benefactor of Europe” for his liberal inclinations, he gradually came to accept Austrian Chancellor Metternich’s ultra-reactionary arguments that the Holy Alliance should function as a military watchdog to preserve the old order in Europe. In Portugal, Spain and Naples, military uprisings with constitutional aspirations challenged local monarchies. Despite the moderating influence of Count Ioannis Kapodistrias, a diplomat of Greek origin and Russian foreign minister, Alexander feared that revolution was the chief menace to order in Europe and aligned himself with Metternich and Karl Nesselrode, Russia’s foreign co-minister, in their effort to subjugate the insurgencies that were sweeping Europe. Although Kapodistrias went so far as to present a Russian proposal to the Troppau Congress in November 1820 that would have allowed small countries to proceed to reforms with authorisation of the powers, Alexander ultimately consented to Metternich’s methods beginning with Austrian military intervention in Naples.82 As Alexander’s biographer underlines, the mutiny of the Semenovskii Life-Guard Regiment83 abruptly and irrevocably reversed the Emperor’s position against military intervention.84 During Alexander’s long absences in Europe (Congress of Vienna, November 1814 to March 1815; Aachen, September and November 1819; Troppau, 1820, Leibach, 1821; Verona, 1822), domestic policy was relegated to his ministers. Opposition swelled among the elite in Russia. The potentially subversive “philanthropic” societies of military personnel proliferated in the capital and at several regimental headquarters. In February 1816, the Union for Salvation

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The most prominent were the Society of Welfare, the Union of Public Good, the Polish Patriotic Society and the Society of United Slavs (1823). 81 On the Decembrist movement, see Marc Raeff, The Decembrist Movement (Englewood Cliffs, nj: Prentice-Hall Inc., 1966); Anatole G. Mazour, The First Russian Revolution 1825. The Decembrist Movement. Its Origins, Development, and Significance (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1937). 82 Marie-Pierre Rey, Alexander I: The Tsar who Defeated Napoleon (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2012), 335–40. 83 Semenovskii Life-Guards Regiment: one of the Russian Imperial Army’s oldest guards’ regiments. 84 Rey, Alexander I, 341.

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was founded in St. Petersburg with branches in Moscow and at the headquarters of the Second Army in Tul’chin, Podolia (a western-central region of today’s Ukraine bordering on Moldova).85 The society dedicated its meetings to the reform of serfdom. It was replaced by the Union of Welfare in 1818. The members of the Union of Welfare were liberal officers and had branches in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Tul’chin, and Kishenev in Moldavia. In January 1820, a secret meeting of the society’s executive board was held in St. Petersburg to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the monarchist system. One of the most active members was Pavel Pestel, of the Tul’chin army division, who came to the capital and stayed from January to May 1820. Pestel, who was sentenced to death in 1826 after the Decembrist revolt, was a prominent child of the 1812 generation. Twice wounded during the retreat of the French army across Europe, he became adjutant to General Count Peter Wittgenstein, later Commander-in-Chief of the Second Army based in Tul’chin. His organisational activity as one of leaders of the Tul’chin branch of the Union of Welfare continued until May 1821 when the Union of Welfare decided at its congress held in Moscow to abolish itself because of increased government surveillance of suspect senior officers’ movements. Ironically, Pestel was not in attendance for the very same reason even though he was adamantly opposed to the society’s dissolution. As a result, the Tul’chin branch established a new, more radical, organisation, known as the Southern Society. In order not to draw attention to their founding meeting, it was timed to coincide with the Epiphany Trade Fair held at Kiev at the beginning of the year 1822. Its political agenda endorsed the main points of Pestel’s manifesto “Russian Justice or the Instruction to the Supreme Provisional Government” that envisioned a coup d’ état and a provisional government in order to achieve constitutional reform and a republic in Russia.86 For the first time the use of force was envisaged for achieving political goals.87 8 Imagining Greece’s Independence in Odessa’s Greek Market Meanwhile, in the microcosm of Odessa’s Greek market, similar agitation was taking place, not among military officials this time, but among merchants. The

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Patrick O’ Meara, The Decembrist Pavel Pestel. Russia’s First Republican (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2003), 49–138. 86 Raeff, The Decembrist Movement, 98–116. 87 O’ Meara, Pavel Pestel, 141.

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Philiki Etaireia (Society of Friends) was established by Greek merchants of the diaspora in Odessa in 1814. It was the driving force and soul of the Greek Revolution against Ottoman dominion, the prime source for the organisational structure and ideological framework of the war until it was disbanded in 1821. Out of a membership of 1,093, 53.7 percent were merchants.88 Among its members 122 were merchants recruited in Odessa in the manner of the Carbonari and Freemasons (oaths, initiation rituals, lodges, secrecy).89 Odessa was one of the principal centres of support for Alexandros Ypsilanti’s uprising in the Principalities in February 1821. Odessa sent money, arms, and combatants to support the rebels in this region. The Society planned to launch simultaneous revolts in the Danubian Principalities, Constantinople and the Peloponnese. Alexandros Ypsilantis was a high-ranking officer of the Russian cavalry and aide-de-camp to the tsar who had participated in the Napoleonic Wars, and was injured in the Battle of Dresden, where he lost his right hand. A noble of Greek descent and an enthusiastic advocate of the Greek insurrection against the Turks, he accepted the leadership of the Society of Friends in the early months of 1820. This appointment was crucial for the Greek movement in that it bolstered the myth of Russian support and placed at the head of the Society a military man of action and proven heroism. Ypsilantis increased the organisation’s prestige among Russian officers and his military colleagues. Pestel and other Decembrists officials, including Major-General Mikhail G. Orlov, expressed admiration for Ypsilantis’ cause.90 Pestel wrote to General Kiselev that Ypsilantis’ revolt was worthy of the highest respect91 and the latter expressed himself in a letter to General Zakrevskii, in March 1821 in the following manner: “Ypsilantis has left his name to posterity”.92 These officers’ parallel involvement in the Union of Welfare’s branches at Kishinev and Tul’chin created a convenient climate for the Society of Friends’ own activities in Κishinev. Ypsilantis requested permission for a leave of absence from Russian service for health reasons and made his plans as the leader of the Philiki Etaireia. After visiting Moscow and Kiev, he came to Odessa in August 1820. On the basis of his social standing, he enjoyed the hospitality of a retired general, George 88

Frangos, “The Philiki Etaireia,” 87–103. Philemon publishes 692 members in Dokimion Historikon, 1: 389–416; P. Sekeres listed 520 members: see Meletopoulos, Philike Hetaireia, 98–165; V. G. Mexas published 541 names in Hoi Philikoi. Katalogos ton melon tes Philikes Hetaireias ek tou archeiou Sekere (Athens, 1937), 1–80. 89 Frangos, “The Philiki Etaireia,” 94. 90 Prousis, Russian Society, 49–50. 91 O’Meara, Pavel Pestel, 49, letter of P. Pestel to P. D. Kiselev, 3/15 March 1821. 92 Prousis, Russian Society, 42.

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Kantakouzino, who later followed him in the Moldavian expedition, with the aim of meeting Greek merchants. The presence in Odessa of the leader of the Philiki Etaireia was the catalyst that unified the old guard and the new members and introduced the Society to the merchants of the city and military men from Greece, many of whom became members. Despite Ypsilantis’s successes and gaining some material support for his military plans,93 monetary donations failed to meet expectations. In the fall of 1820, he left for Kishinev from Odessa where the atmosphere had become explosive, recruitment of volunteers increased daily, and rumours regarding Greek organizational activity were rampant.94 On the 22nd of February, Ypsilantis crossed the Pruth River into Moldavian territory and began mustering his forces. Tsar Alexander I was informed about the Greek insurgency and Ypsilantis’s drive at the Leibach (now Ljubljana, Slovenia) Congress of the Holy Alliance. He immediately condemned the revolt and dismissed Ypsilantis from Russian service.95 Through the Russian consul in Jassy he severely questioned the motives of Odessa’s Governor-General Count de Langeron regarding his ongoing correspondence with Ypsilantis, in particular his receipt of Ypsilantis’s confidential letter of 26 February 1821 announcing the insurrection and requesting that de Langeron not raise obstacles to the movement of Greek troops in the direction of the Moldavian border.96 The Governor-General was ordered to explain himself in regard to his issuing passports to individuals moving from or via Odessa to the Moldavian border in the months previous to March 1821.97 De Langeron replied to the foreign secretary that the individuals in question were merchants, most of them Ottoman subjects, who had asked to visit Moldavia for business and that their intercepted letters referred exclusively to commercial affairs.98 After Ypsilantis’ revolt was quelled by Ottoman troops at Dragasani in Bessarabia and refugees from both the Principalities and Constantinople fled to Odessa, Russia showed signs of shifting policy. Ottoman reprisals and the assassination by order of the sultan of the Greek Patriarch 93 Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 66. 94 Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou v. 2, 17–23. 95 Prousis, Russian Society, 27–28. 96 Letter of Ypsilantis to Langeron, 21 February 1821, as cited in the original in George F. Jewsbury, “The Greek Question: The View from Odessa, 1815–1822,” Cahiers du Monde Russe 40/4 (October–December 1999): 755. 97 Letter of Nesselrode to Langeron, 14/26 April 1821, as cited in the original in Jewsbury, “The Greek Question,” 756. 98 Letters of Langeron to Nesselrode, 24 April/6 May 1821 and 28 April/10 May 1821, in Jewsbury, “The Greek Question,” 756.

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Gregorios V in Constantinople on Easter Sunday 1821 had a powerful impact on Russian public opinion, which exerted pressure on imperial foreign policy. On 17 July 1821, Russia delivered a strongly worded message to the Porte. The ultimatum, prepared by Ioannis Kapodistrias, reiterated Russia’s right to act as protector of its persecuted co-religionists and to evacuate refugees, and demanded that the sultan withdraw from the Principalities and restore damaged Orthodox churches. Upon receiving no answer from the Ottoman authorities by the stipulated deadline, the Russian ambassador in Constantinople broke relations with the Porte and left for Odessa on 27 July 1821. 9 History of the Philiki Etaireia The Philiki Etaireia was conceived by humble Greek merchants, clerks at Greek commercial houses and traders who struggled to stay above water. Nikolaos Skoufas, a fervent and enthusiastic advocate of Greek liberation, was a craftsman from Kompoti (near Arta in mainland Greece). He began his career as a hat maker and was drawn to Odessa in 1813 by business opportunities. Emmanuel Xanthos, from the Aegean island of Patmos, had studied at the religious school there. He was involved in commercial ventures between Smyrna and Trieste and arrived in Odessa in 1810. In 1812, he was a partner in the purchase of a quantity of olive oil from the island of Lefkas (Ionian Sea), where he was initiated into a Masonic lodge. He returned to Odessa in the autumn of 1813. Athanasios Tsakalov, from Ioannina in Epirus, was a shipping agent and clerk. His father was a fur merchant in Moscow. He had been in Paris in 1813 and was a member of the Greek Language Hostel, an association aiming to promote enlightenment among Greeks. As Grigorii Arsh described it, after the foundation of the Philiki Etaireia in June 1814 its members set off in different directions.99 Skoufas and Tsakalov went to Moscow in the hope of persuading the wealthy Greek merchants there to join the cause, while Xanthos went to Constantinople, where he worked as a clerk for the Greek merchant Lemonis Paleologos. They corresponded via letters written in secret code. By 1816, Skoufas had returned to Odessa and was living in the residence of the merchant Athanasios Sekeris. Both Sekeris and his clerk Panayiotis Anagnostopoulos were members of the Society. Between 1818 and 1820, the nexus of

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G. L. Arsh (G. L. Ars) and G. M. Piatigorsky, “Horismena zetemata tes historias tes Philikes Hetaireias hypo to phos ton neon stoicheion ton Sovietikon archeion,” in Ars [Arsh], He Philike Hetaireia ste Rosia, 487–513.

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the Society’s activities gradually shifted to Constantinople, where many new members were recruited from the local Greek population and from those who passed through on their way to or from subjugated Greece.100 As part of an attempt to raise the Philiki Etaireia’s profile, it was agreed that a personality of much higher profile than those of its founders should be recruited to head the organisation formally. With this goal in mind, Xanthos was sent to Moscow and St Petersburg in an attempt to convince the most prominent Greek of the Russian Empire, the foreign minister Count Kapodistrias, to accept the post. On his refusal, Xanthos contacted Ypsilantis, who eagerly accepted the offer and briefly energised the movement as described above. While Ypsilantis’s failed operation was a severe setback, his role as a galvanising figure for the future of the ultimately successful struggle for Greek independence cannot be underestimated, and as such a great deal of the credit must go to the Philiki Etaireia, the mercantile networks that supported it (with Odessa figuring prominently) and its humble founders. Following the defeat in Moldavia in June of 1821 and the refugee crisis that ensued, a new board of directors was elected and the name of the Society was changed from Society of Friends (Philiki Etaireia) to the Philanthropic Society. Top-ranked merchants from the Greek Market and the Free Bazaar were elected to head it, including Ioannis Amvrosios, Grigorii Marazli, Ilias Manesis, Alexander Mavros and Alexander Kumbaris.101 Despite a severe economic downturn during 1821, they donated important sums of money to support the new Society’s goals. They worked with Russian institutions and the Holy Synod in order to collect funds from sympathetic Russians and manage its distribution to needy refugee families. Seven thousand refugees had passed the Moldavian border by the end of April 1821 and totalled 40,000 by September.102 In addition, these merchants continued to support the Greek Revolution in the Peloponnese with munitions and foodstuffs. In December of 1821, however, a private message from Governor-General de Langeron, who, until then, had tacitly permitted the survival of the Society by approving its change of name, informed the members of the tsar’s desire to dissolve all secret societies and ordered them to obey Alexander’s ukaz to this effect.103 After the abolition of the Society in December 1821, its members worked for the Russian authorities in the refugee relief campaign. Dimitrios Inglesis, head of the city council in 1820, was appointed treasurer of the Odessa Relief 100 Jewsbury, “The Greek Question,” 753. 101 Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 23; Prousis, Russian Society, 68. 102 Prousis, Russian Society, 57. 103 Quoted in Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 269–70.

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Committee and sent reports documenting donors, sums, types of assistance and allocation of aid twice a year to the Minister of Religious Affairs and Public Education, Aleksandr N. Golitsyn. While at the head of Odessa’s municipality, Inglesis had kept contact with the insurrectionists in Moldavia and as early as March 1821 had sent 20,000 kurus to Ypsilantis at the Focşani camp for assistance.104 His correspondence with Loukas Valsamakis, who, together with a group of Cephalonians, had joined Ypsilantis’ forces, reveals that Inglesis had elaborated a plan for arming commercial vessels and turning them into battleships in order to patrol the Black Sea coast and prevent Ottoman reinforcements by sea.105 The aspirations of the Philiki Etaireia for a broader Balkan uprising against Ottoman rule were initially embraced by the Balkan merchants who resided in Odessa and the Principalities. Although originating from the Bulgarian, Serbian and Romanian territories of the Ottoman Empire, many were reported in the Russian archives as “Greeks” because the use of Greek as a common language in trade among the Orthodox Balkan merchants106 confused Russian authorities. In the early years following the foundation of Odessa, Bulgarian and ­Serbian traders belonged to and were administrated by the “Greek Magistracy”.107 Using the land trade routes through the Balkans and the frontier city of Nezhin, they relocated to Odessa when the new port established itself as an important trading outlet for the southern Russian region. Vasil Aprilov, the Palauzov Brothers and Moustakov were among the most prominent.108 They shared common trading backgrounds with their Greek counterparts and the enlightened desire to promote education among their compatriots. Bulgarian and Greek merchants in the Balkans and Vienna not only financed the publication of books in Greek but also contributed to their dissemination

104 daoo, fond 268, Dmitrii Spiridonovich Inglezi, opis’ 1, delo 1, Letter of thanks to Dimitrios Inglesis from Alexandros Ypsilantis at Focşani, 11 March 1821. 105 daoo, fond 268, opis’ 1, delo 1, Letter of Loukas Valsamakis from Kishinev to Dimitrios Inglesis in Odessa on the issue of the fleet. In the same letter he announces that he will send Inglesis revolutionary pamphlets via their messenger, 5 March 1821. 106 Traian Stoianovich, “The Conquering Balkan Orthodox Merchant,” The Journal of Economic History 20/2 (June 1960): 234–313. 107 See the list of members of the Greek magistracy, 1799. daoo, fond 59, opis’ 1a, delo 156. 108 Oliver Schulz, “Port-cities, Diaspora Communities and Emerging Nationalism in the Ottoman Empire: Balkan Merchants in Odessa and their Network in the Early Nineteenth century,” in Trade, Migration and Urban Networks in Port Cities, c. 1640–1940, ed. Adrian Jarvis and Robert Lee (London: International Maritime Economic History Association, 2008), 127–48.

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as subscribers.109 In Odessa, Balkan merchants donated money for the Greek Commercial Gymnasium, an institution for basic commercial education, whose classes were held mostly in Greek. Vasil Aprilov, Odessa’s most prominent Bulgarian merchant, who dealt in Moldavian wines,110 was a member of the Philiki Etaireia before 1821. Aside from substantial financial contributions, he also offered the use of his shop, next to his vodka factory, to equip volunteers, many of whom were Bulgarians preparing to join Ypsilantis’ forces.111 According to Nikolai Todorov, these were mostly refugees who had sought shelter in Bessarabian cities during the Russo-Ottoman War of 1806–1812, Bulgarian soldiers who fought for the Russians in the same conflict, or natives of Bulgarian territories of the Ottoman Empire. In July 1821, Russian officials counted 132 Bulgarians among the 1,002 military survivors of the Ypsilantis insurrection gathered at a retention camp in Orgiev.112 Ypsilantis’s revolt in Bessarabia failed to effectively address local social issues, specifically the agrarian population’s interests, and focused exclusively on the uprising of the Balkan people against Ottoman rule. After its defeat and the banning of the Philiki Etaireia, the Bulgarian merchants emancipated themselves from what they had come to consider Greek tutelage and pursued their own national goals by promoting school funding and a Bulgarian literary renaissance.113 10 Facilitating Factors for Political Fermentation The activities of Russian and other secret societies in the 1820s and their propagation in the south of the empire were facilitated by a series of factors directly related to the size of the empire and the inability of the central government to control or supervise it efficiently. The administrative and military

109 Nadia Danova, “L’idee des ‘nôtres’ et des ‘autres’ dans les milieux de la diaspora bulgare au xixe siècle,” Études Balkaniques 47/4 (2011): 57–75. 110 The journal Odesskii Vestnik reported Aprilov as an importer of Moldavian wines in 1824. Odesskii Vestnik, no. 103, 20 December 1824. 111 Νikolai Τodorov, He valkanike diastase tes Epanastases tou ’21 (Athens: Gutenberg, 1990), 112. 112 Todorov, He valkanike diastase, 191–294; daoo, fond 1, opis’ 249, delo 40, no. 3465, List of members of Ypsilantis’ defeated army retained at Orgiev, Kishinev, 14 July 1821. 113 Andreas Lyberatos, Oikonomia, politike kai ethnike ideologia. He diamorphose ton ethnikon kommaton ste Philippoupole tou 19ou aiona (Herakleion: Panepistimiakes ekdoseis Kretes, 2009).

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apparatus were both divided along regional lines that allowed relative autonomy in governance and decision-making. After the Napoleonic War of 1812, the army was reorganised into two territories from which army corps, divisions and regiments received orders, one based in Mogilev, Belarus, and the other in Tul’chin, Podolia. The administration of territories distant from the capital proved to be very difficult. Moreover, after the creation for the first time of central government ministries in 1802, conflicts of authority emerged between the appointed regional representatives of the central government and the local governors-general.114 Fragmentation and the creation of regional centres of power ensued and impeded strict compliance to imperial guidelines. The specific factors that abetted the emergence of secret societies in the southern territories can be categorised as follows: Distance from the capital: The emergence of revolutionary activity was facilitated by the geographical distance of 2,000 km, via Kiev and Moscow, between St Petersburg and Odessa. Regular mail required two to three months to be delivered, and consequently imperial orders, decrees and ukazes were necessarily applied retroactively. In the case of the Society of Friends and major clandestine societies operating in the south, the ukaz that banned all conspiratorial organisations was delivered in August 1822, eighteen months after the Greek uprising in Moldavia and fifteen months after the Moscow congress of the Union of Salvation secret society.115 Relative autonomy of the governors-general in local administration: After the Napoleonic War, governors-general were appointed in the provinces.116 They were imperial representatives at a regional level, responsible for both military security and civilian administration. The Governor-General of Novorossiia (New Russia), Count de Langeron, was responsible for administrating a vast territory. The paucity of means of transportation and the difficult climate

114 John P. LeDonne, “Administrative Regionalization in the Russian Empire, 1802–1806”, Cahiers du Monde Russe 43/1 (January–March 2002): 5–34. 115 daoo, fond 18, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, opis’ 5, delo 16, no 3662, Letter of the City-Prefect of Odessa to the Head of the Commercial Court implementing the tsar’s decision (1 August 1822) to shut down all secret societies, as well as the masonic lodges, 20 September 1822. The Philiki Etaireia, however, was already informed from the end of 1821 about the governor’s will to shut it down. See the letter of the Society to P. Saravinos, K. Tsiropoulos and M. Magoulas in Taganrog announcing Langeron’s order to liquidate the Society, 26 December 1821. Quoted in Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 269–70. Τhe Moscow Congress of the Union of Salvation took place in Moscow on the 15th of May 1821. 116 John P. LeDonne, “Russian Governors General, 1775–1825: Territorial or Functional Administration?” Cahiers du Monde Russe 41/2 (January–March 2001): 5–30.

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obliged him to be absent from Odessa, the capital of the territory, frequently and for long periods of time. His predecessor, the Duc de Richelieu, required three months to travel through Crimea in order to compile an extensive report on the empire’s southern territories for the tsar. Moreover, the military and administrative duties of the governor-general were overwhelming and could not be attended to satisfactorily. This sense of ineffectiveness was amply conveyed in Count de Langeron’s “Reflexions sur la necessite de concentrer l’administration,” which he submitted in 1827 to the tsar; in it, he proposed a division of Novorossiia whereby Odessa and Kherson would form one guberniia and Ekaterinoslav and the Crimea another.117 Travel permits: In the 1820s movement from one place to another was also hindered only for fiscal and bureaucratic reasons. The imperial state wanted to ensure that its subjects would not leave their places of registration, temporarily or permanently, unless they had met their tax obligations and were debt-free.118 Russian citizens required a guarantor in order to be issued a travel passport. They would apply to wealthy or first-guild merchants who would usually guarantee the eventual payment of debts to the authorities. Existence of major secret societies: The imperial authorities were primarily interested in detecting the existence of secret societies that included army officers, government bureaucrats and the nobility, and to observe their members’ movements, the circulation of subversive texts, and their expansion through recruitment. Tsar Alexander was primarily concerned with the existence of secret societies among “his” people, military and administrative personnel. The Greek secret society was a minor issue concerning mostly foreigners, primarily Ottoman subjects. It became an annoyance to the tsar from the moment it compromised Russia’s foreign policy, especially in relation to its partners in the Holy Alliance. Moreover, the tsar was concerned that the appearance of interfering in the internal affairs of the Ottoman Empire in support of rebels would destabilise his own government and provoke a ban on Russian shipping through the Straits. As declared in the ukaz prohibiting secret societies the tsar’s main concern was to assure that his military and administrative apparatus in the periphery was immune to subversive movements.119 The repercussions against the Greek insurgents following the suppression of the Ypsilantis revolt made the Russian philhellenic movement stronger. We must not underestimate the importance of the attitude of particular

117 LeDonne, “Administrative Regionalization,” 26. 118 Richard Pipes, Russia under the Old Regime (New York: Macmillan, 1992), 314. 119 daoo, fond 18, opis’ 5, delo 16.

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individuals who held prominent government posts in the south and sympathised with the Greek cause. Among them was de Langeron, Ivan N. Inzov, the military vice-regent of Bessarabia, Major-General Mikhail F. Orlov, the diplomats Alexandre Stourdza and Ioannis Kapodistrias, and army generals P. D. Kiselev, A. A. Zakrevskii and A. P. Ermolov. Theophilus Prousis identified them as members of a pro-war party that supported a Russian military intervention against the Porte and expected the tsar to approve it during the summer of 1821.120 In reality, however, Russian foreign policy’s foremost priority was the bolstering of the established order, including the territorial integrity of the Ottoman Empire; aid and support for Russia’s Orthodox co-religionists in Greece was a secondary concern. De Langeron, like many others in Russian service, was a French aristocrat who had fled his country during its revolution. He maintained a correspondence with the Duc de Richelieu after the latter returned to France to assume the post of prime minister (1815–1818 and 1820–1821). Before the Ypsilantis uprising, de Langeron maintained good relations with the Greek merchants of Odessa. They made his working plan to transform Odessa’s port into a gateway for the export of Russian grain to Europe possible, and he reciprocated by facilitating their ventures and their access to the hinterland and other port cities. He often relied on their economic support and appointed merchants as heads of the city council. His relationship with Dimitrios Inglesis reveals that they shared common views on the evolution of Odessa’s commerce and the measures to be taken to promote it. Inglesis, although not an official member of the Society of Friends until 1821 supported the Ypsilantis revolt by covertly sending money and munitions as the correspondence between them testifies (letter of 25 March 1821).121 De Langeron was equally positive toward and friendly with Ypsilantis who, as previously noted, had gained respect among the Russian officer corps as the tsar’s military aide-de-camp. The two men met when Ypsilantis visited Odessa in the summer of 1820 and engaged in discussions on topics of common interest and on Ypsilantis’ political thoughts on the Greek cause. His “benign neglect”, as it was qualified by Prousis, towards the movements of the Greek insurgents in Odessa and Bessarabia gave the Greek organisation breathing room at a very critical moment in its history.122

120 Prousis, Russian Society, 42. 121 Theophilus C. Prousis, “Dimitrios S. Inglezes: Greek Merchant and City Leader of Odessa,” History Faculty Publications, Paper 6 (1991), http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/ahis_facpub/6 (accessed 14 June 2014) 122 Prousis, Russian Society, 43.

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Russian society’s acknowledged philhellenism and the general inclination of Russian policy in favour of the Orthodox Greeks, as formally delineated in the 1774 Treaty of Kuchuk Kainardji, were in flagrant contrast with the repressive measures of the Holy Alliance. George F. Jewsbury and Prousis have argued that de Langeron was unaware of the latest shifts in Russian foreign policy and continued to work in accordance with the policy of defending Russia’s Greek co-religionists. They also argued that the presence of Ypsilantis, the tsar’s former aide-de-camp, as head of the Society gave the impression that its ideas were supported by the upper echelons of Russia’s military and civilian administration.123 Ypsilantis’s letter to de Langeron insinuated that the tsar was aware of the uprising, underlined the secrecy of the communication and pleaded for the governor to facilitate Greeks wanting to join him without compromising Russia’s foreign policy.124 Langeron, on his part, continued to issue passports for Bessarabia, allowing 300 individuals to cross the border between February and April 1821.125 It seems very probable that the tsar’s frequent and extended absences abroad in Europe, as well as his major role in European politics, were detrimental to keeping provincial governors up to date on Russia’s shifting foreign policy. Poor communication with the south impeded the quick receipt of diplomatic correspondence. News from Laibach had to go via the Russian ambassador in Constantinople and then on a four- to six-day sea journey to Odessa. Strict quarantine measures on all passengers, regardless of rank, increased the travel time from Odessa to St Petersburg to more than 20 days. The Russian ambassador, Baron Grigorii Stroganov, left Constantinople on 27 July 1821 after the expiration of Alexander’s ultimatum to the sultan and arrived in Odessa on 2 August; he was released from quarantine 30 days later and departed for St Petersburg on 1 September.126 Gaps in intelligence were apparent on all sides. Langeron was not informed in a timely manner about the latest agreements among the members of the Holy Alliance and, inversely, the tsar was first made aware of the existence within his army of secret societies with political aims as late as 1821, several years after they were established.127 The practical hindrances in communication and de Langeron’s potentially flimsy excuse regarding the suspicious movement of foreign merchants towards the 123 Prousis, Russian Society, 44; Jewsbury, “The Greek Question”, 755. 124 Ars [Arsh], He Philike Hetaireia, 421. It quotes Ypsilantis’ letter to Count de Langeron of 26 February/10 March 1821. 125 Todorov, He valkanike diastase, 115. 126 Jewsbury, “The Greek Question,” 761. 127 Rey, Alexander I, 143.

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Moldavian border in 1821 convinced the authorities that he was innocent of the tsar’s well founded suspicion of complicity in Ypsilantis’ revolt. In fact, Tsar Nicholas I’s 1825 invitation to de Langeron to take part in the investigation of the Decembrist Uprising was a certain affirmation of his status as a loyal subject of the Russian Crown.128 Another high-ranking military official who rendered indirect assistance to the Philiki Etaireia was the military commander of Bessarabia, I. M. Inzov. Both he and his staff were aware of Greeks crossing the Bessarabian border and of the logistical preparations for the uprising in Kishinev. He maintained close ties with the officers of the Southern Society, M. F. Orlov among them, who assisted Ypsilantis in finding housing and logistical support. He had previously approved the appointment of Greek merchants from Kishinev to key administrative posts responsible for access across the Pruth River border (quarantines, document control, etc.), thus creating a protective bubble of secrecy that enabled, for instance, the critical meeting at the quarantine in Izmail on 1 ­October 1820, a crucial gathering of a great number of the Society’s members, who came from Constantinople, the Peloponnese and elsewhere in mainland Greece and the Principalities, and which was devoted to deciding on the strategy for the insurgency.129 11 The Commercial Outlook of the Greek Society of Friends Unlike other conspiratorial groups operating in the southern provinces, the Greek secret society had a fundamental advantage that camouflaged it and made detection of its activities nearly impossible. The overlap of its operations with the everyday business of international trade, such as frequent correspondence within and beyond the borders, letters transported not by official post but by private means (ship crews or merchants), great mobility among the principals and agents of the commercial concerns, and the habitual transportation of money and letters of credit were alibis that seamlessly camouflaged the Society’s activities and structure. Of course, the use of a foreign language provided yet another barrier to inspection and surveillance by local authorities. Reading and deciphering letters handwritten in Greek by people lacking

128 Jewsbury, “The Greek Question,” 762. 129 On the meeting, see I. K. Mazarakes-Ainian “He Philike Etairia. Gegonota tou 1820,” in Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou (Athens: Historike kai Ethnologike Hetaireia tes Hellados, 1997–2002), vol. 2: 12.

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formal education required time and expertise. As Emmanuel Xanthos’ archive shows, most of the letters addressed to him from Odessa in the 1820s were signed simply with merchants’ initials, a very common practice for repetitive correspondence among people who knew each other but which also obscured the identity of the sender from the uninitiated. The letters provided news about “our commerce” in the Mediterranean foodstuffs that were popular in Russia, which was coded terminology for the progress of the Philiki Etaireia’s organisation and affairs in general. The terms “our friend” or “friend” were part of the merchants’ vocabulary whenever they did not want to name clients, partners, creditors or a major merchant, often of a different ethnicity. The same terms were used to designate comrades and members of the Society. He did not want to appear as “our friend” but they exposed themselves, wrote Stamatis Kumbaris to Emmanuel Xanthos, criticising the behaviour of two Odessa merchants who had recently become members of the Etaireia.130 The encrypted messages used by the Society often referred to “our commerce” for “our Society”, to “receive money in advance” or “down payment for our olive oil” for initiation into the Society, and to “receive money for our purchases” for member contributions. “Our trade (which meant our Society) has been revealed to everybody,”131 Kumbaris warned Xanthos in the autumn of 1820. “In regard to our trade, it has been divulged and everybody knows about our partnership, we suffer from not being silent […] notify the Good One that our goals are known here”, deciphered as “our secret society and its members have been discovered […] Ypsilantis must be warned that our purpose is known.” In September 1820, Ypsilantis also wrote to Xanthos, “I am leaving for Kishinev. After six days they have started to talk a lot and it is no  good, speed is necessary.”132 “Send me the passport”,133 urged Dimitrios Themelis to Xanthos (in order to be able to join Ypsilantis at any time). The issuance of passports was crucial for their travel in and out of Russia and for the propagation of the Philiki Etaireia’s message under pretext of settling business obligations.

130 Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou, vol. 1, Letter of Stamatis Kumbaris from Odessa to Xanthos at Renni, no. 1819/25, 29 May 1819, 79. 131 Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou, vol. 2, Letter of Stamatis Kumbaris from Odessa to Xanthos in Kishinev, no.1820/119, 17 November 1820, 220. 132 Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou, vol. 2, Letter of A. Ypsilantis from Odessa to Xanthos in Bucharest, no.1820/85, 9 September 1820, 165. 133 Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou, vol. 2, Letter of Dimitrios Themelis from Galatz, no. 1820/103, 21 October 1820, 192–193.

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It has been pointed out that prominent merchants were unwilling to participate in subversive organisations.134 Yet, a closer look at surnames and their relation to mercantile houses reveals a more complex pattern of involvement. Merchants who worked overtly for the Philiki Etaireia were not businessmen of the highest rank but, typically, their clerks or minor partners. Xanthos was employed at the trading company of Vassilios Xenis, a merchant featured in the 1813 list of members of the first guild of the city who had paid their taxes to the municipality, according to the quantity of grain they had exported.135 Anagnostopoulos was an employee of Athanasios Sekeris. Nikolaos Spiliadis (1785–1867), Secretary of State of Greece in 1829 under the authority of Ioannis Kapodistrias, worked as a clerk in the Mavros and Paleologos trading firms in both Odessa and Constantinople: the clerk and his bosses all became members of the Philiki Etaireia.136 In fact, several Greek family firms with branches in Odessa and Constantinople were involved in the secret society. The Kumbaris, Sekeris, Mavros and Paleologos firms constituted the principal commercial nodes of the Greek secret society in both cities. Of such firms, those with three partners were preferred for recruitment, since a third brother, less involved in the company’s business, could typically be counted on to devote himself to the Philiki Etaireia while providing access to the family firm’s assets and networks. This is evident in the case of the brothers Kumbaris and Sekeris. Stamatis Kumbaris, who was the key person in the Philiki Etaireia’s Odessa branch in the 1820s, introduced Ypsilantis to important merchants such as Alexander Mavros, Alexander Kumbaris, Grigorii Marazli, and Theodore Serafinos when Ypsilantis visited Odessa in the 1820s. As Sakellarios Sakellariou recounted, these magnates were personally invited to dinner with Ypsilantis at a khutor (hamlet) on the outskirts of the city and were informed about the existence of the ­Society and its leader. Under the cover of the prominent Kumbaris firm, Stamatis Kumbaris was able to exchange a 500-pound sterling bank note sent to him by Ypsilantis for the purchase of the first shipment

134 Prousis, Russian Society, 19–20. On the reluctant attitude of the wealthy Greek merchants of Moscow towards the Etairist members, see Ars [Arsh], He Philike Hetaireia, 241. 135 daoo, Fond 4, Odesskaia Gorodskaia Duma, opis’ 1a, delo 204, List of first guild merchants compiled by the town magistrate, 11 June 1813. 136 See his contribution to the literature on the Revolution and the Greek War of Independence: Nikolaos Spiliadis, Apomnemoneumata 3 vols. (Athens: Typ. Ch. N. Philadelpheos, 1851–1857).

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of munitions.137 The Society of Greek Insurers donated a sum of 2,500 roubles to Ypsilantis. However, business was slow in 1819–1820, and the merchants were financially strapped. Statistical data shows that the quantity of grain exported by ships from Odessa’s port dropped after 1817 and would continue to shrink until 1822.138 The year 1820, which was a crucial year for collecting money for the Philiki Etaireia in order to prepare the Ypsilantis insurgence and for buying munitions, was a bad year for trade during which exports fell from 128,166 to 111,902 tons.139 Moreover, a comparison of the total turnover of renowned merchants in 1817 and 1821, both those involved in the Greek insurgency and those just making use of the maritime lanes of the Mediterranean and the Aegean Sea, demonstrates a reduction in their commercial affairs. Indicatively, Dimitrios Dumas lost 46.5 percent of the value of his import-export transactions, while the wealthy merchants Dimitrios Inglesis, Grigorii Marazli, Vassilios Xenis, Athanasios Sekeris and Lemonis Paleologos did not appear on the merchants’ list of 1821.140 Αntonios Tsounis wrote to Xanthos that he was unable to send money, “because the losses I have suffered from our wheat have reduced my good intentions. I hope that in a short period of time I will participate in a new venture and then I will undertake to meet any of our trading friends.”141 Entrepreneurs knew that the grain trade could not yield profits in recession years and that the only source that could do so was tax farming of the liquor trade. Therefore, it was recommended that members of the Philiki Etaireia in Bessarabia should devote themselves to it. Another scheme for raising funds was an elaborate proposal of the Moscow merchants Antonios Komitzopoulos and Nikolaos Patzimadis involving the establishment of a public corporation by the name of Greek Commercial Society of Friends of the Muses and People, 137 The money was changed and resent by a personal agent from Kumbaris to Xanthos at Kishinev; Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou, vol. 2, G. D. Stamatis Kumbaris from Odessa to Xanthos in Kishinev, 10 August 1820, 146. 138 National Archives, F.O., 359/1, Grain exported from Odessa by ships, 1814–1824. Elaborated data from Panos Kapetanakis, New Approaches of British and Ionian Presence in Ports and Grain-Markets of the Russian Black Sea and the Danube (mid-18th–mid 19th century). (Athens: National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2015), https://britonian.eu 139 National Archives, F.O., 359/1, Grain exported from Odessa by ships, 1814–1824. 140 Gosudarstvennaia vneshniaia torgovlia 1817 goda, v raznykh ee vidakh (St Petersburg: Pri Departamente Vneshnei Torgovli, 1818), table xi, 118–23; Gosudarstvennaia vneshniaia torgovlia 1821 goda, v raznykh ee vidakh (St Petersburg: Pri Departamente Vneshnei Torgovli, 1822), table xi, 122–29. 141 Archeio Emmanouel Xanthou, vol. 1, Letter of A. Tsounis from Odessa to Xanthos to Kishinev, 19 July 1819, 103.

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whose shareholders would be Russian and foreign philhellenes. The official activities of the company would include ship-building, printing presses, book publishing and the foundation of schools, while its covert objective would be the raising of funds for the liberation of the nation.142 In the last months of 1820 and the beginning of 1821, a great number of Greek merchants in Odessa became members of the Etaireia.143 All of them were prominent first and second guild merchants. G. M. Piatigorskii, who wrote the biographies of 16 of them, estimated that approximately 20 percent of Odessa’s male Greek population were members of the Etaireia.144 Among them, we may discern powerful merchants of the grain trade and Odessa’s import-export businesses (Theodore Rodocanachi, Constantin F. Papudov, Alexander Mavros, Grigorii Marazli, Theodore Serafinos, Ilias Manesis, Ioannis Amvrosios, Dimitrios Inglesis, M. N. Petrokokkino, Kriona Papa Nikola, Mattheos Mavrocordatos, Ioannis [Ivan] Scaramanga). Governor-General de Langeron, in a reply to Nesselrode on 14 May 1821, named the leaders of the Society and indicated that Ioannis Amvrosios was at the head of the Odessa branch.145 Following Ypsilantis’s defeat and imprisonment and the resulting change of the Philiki Etaireia’s focus from revolution to philanthropic support of Greek refugees (combatants and non-combatants alike) fleeing the Principalities to Odessa, big name merchants became more openly involved. They devoted themselves to this task, cooperated with Russian authorities, and supported the work of various committees. As mentioned previously, they also expedited the issuing of passports by providing guarantees for their agents and revolutionaries who required access to insurrection-torn territories. The merchant Vayanos Paleologos, a member of the board of the Society in 1821, helped Ottoman and Greek subjects in obtaining passports for the Russian interior or Constantinople.146

142 Philemon, Dokimion Historikon, vol. 1, chap. 1, 27–28. 143 Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 70. 144 G. M. Piatigorsky [Piatigorskii], “De l’histoire de l’activite de la Philiki Etaireia a Odessa dans les annees 1814–1821. Les données récentes des archives sovietiques sur les biographies des Eteristes d’Odessa,” in Troisième Colloque. Les rélations entre les peuples de l’urss et les Grecs, fin du siècle xviii, debut du xxe siècle (Thessaloniki: Institute for Balkan Studies, 1992), 138. 145 Piatigorsky, “De l’histoire,” 115–37. 146 Paleologos participated in the meeting of the Society’s board at Marazli’s shop on October 3, 1821, together with Ilias Manesis, Ioannis Amvrosios, Kyriakos Kumbaris and Mikhail Nastos. See Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 16. In March 1824 Paleologos was reported by the Russian police as as warrantor for the issuing of passports of 15 Ottoman and Greek subjects who asked permission to travel to Constantinople, Moldavia, Nikolayev and the Crimea. See Journal d’Odessa, 27–33 (March 1824).

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It seems that the Society’s most active members on Russian soil were Ottoman subjects who could move more freely, and were not impeded by oaths of allegiance to the tsar. The fine balance between multiple loyalties, Russian homeland, Ottoman citizenship and Greek revolutionary aspirations required “craft and mimicry” and was a salient characteristic of pre-national identity. Grigorii I. Marazli (Grigorios I. Marazlis), the father of Odessa’s municipal leader Grigorii G. Marazli, headed the Odessa branch of the Society in its second, “philanthropic”, phase (June 1821–December 1821). His bustling establishment at Krasnyi Pereulok was a centre for the Society’s activities, which were camouflaged by the busy coming and going of carts and loading and unloading of merchandise. Clients could find olive oil and olives, mastic and carob, halva, oranges, pomegranates, coffee, and wood for fireplaces. Suppliers from the port and various others dallied on the upper floor, drank tea, smoked in the Ottoman style and discussed the Society’s relief aid to Greek refugees. The central role of hospitality in the Society’s philanthropic work is illustrated by Sakellariou when he points out that in October 1821 Marazli hosted the Orthodox clergyman Gregorios, Metropolitan of Eirinoupolis and Vatopediou, “as usual”. During the course of the visit, Gregorios was selected to represent the Society in the Russian capital in an effort to collect donations for its philanthropic aims.147 Anatole Mazour characterised the Decembrist Uprising of 1825 as the first Russian Revolution.148 The political liberalism that pressed for limits on absolute power in Russia and throughout Europe and the uprisings for national self-determination in the Balkans challenged the legitimacy and territorial integrity of the established states that the Holy Alliance struggled to maintain. The broader picture of the interconnected uprisings in the Balkans of the 1820s stresses the significance of merchants not only as agents of economic integration and development of backward areas, but also as channels for an intellectual renaissance that fermented enlightened principles and encouraged political liberalism and reform. The isolation of the southern provinces from the imperial centre and the dispersion on many fronts of several conspiratorial societies created an ideal environment for the Philiki Etaireia’s expansion and organization. Time proved to be on the Greek revolutionaries’ side. The philhellenic disposition of Russian society and the Society’s links with the pro-war party in Russian diplomatic and military circles enabled the successful relief campaign for the first victims of the uprising and added pressure for a new direction in Russo-Ottoman relations that favoured the Greek insurgents in

147 Sakellariou, Philike Hetaireia, 25–27. 148 Mazour, The First Russian Revolution.

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the years from 1822 to 1829, and ultimately led to the decisive defeat of the Ottoman fleet by the three Great Powers at the naval Battle of Navarino on 20 October 1827. This chapter has investigated the emergence of the city’s markets and the creation of consumer patterns and tastes based on imports. The determining factors in this process were the free port and the initiatives of the import merchants. The merchants’ profiles, ethnic origins and the ways that they established themselves in Odessa were outlined. As loci for interactions between consumers and producers, Odessa’s markets evolved over time, expanded or contracted, and responded to the consumer demands of all the vastly expanded city’s social classes. Using the Greek Market as an example and the formation of the Philiki Etaireia by Greek merchants of Odessa, the political context of the 1820s was explored by comparing the Philiki Etaireia’s activities to those of organisations based in the Russian army whose goal was liberalisation of the autocratic regime.

chapter 3

Merchants and Entrepreneurs: The Driving Forces of Odessa’s Economy This chapter deals with Odessa’s entrepreneurship and workforce according to its ethnic origins and urban space. In this way, it explores industry in Peresyp’, trade and shipping in the port or small shop-keepers in Moldavanka and the warehouse areas in the age of railways. It further investigates the merchants who drove the economy of Odessa and formed the city’s upper middle class, despite the tsarist policy and the social estates structure of Russian society that encouraged their gentrification. The principal ethno-religious category of Russian speakers had a weak presence in the middle classes and social elites. Although in the first, European phase, 1784–1856, it was mainly Greek merchants followed by Italians, French, German and British, that predominated in the social elite of the city, in the second, imperial phase (1857–1905) it was mainly Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs, followed by Greeks, Germans and other western Europeans. After the 1870s, in particular, the Jews predominated in all mercantile specialisations and fuelled the trade of the city both in imports and in exports. If, in the first “European” phase Odessa’s entrepreneurial class, albeit characterised by ethnic pluralism, seemed as if it converged, in the “imperial” period it remained ethnically and politically fractured.1 The Industrial Exposition of Odessa opened on May 25th, 1910 at the initiative of the Russian Technical Society. Some 450 local and foreign businesses were on display in eighteen and a half hectares that extended over part of Aleksandrovskii Park by the sea and the whole of the extensive Mikhailovskaia Square. The Odessite industrialists, competing with each other and their Muscovite counterparts, advertised their products in very innovative ways.2 The “G. E. Veinshtein and Sons” flour mill constructed a minaret in the Moorish style, while L. H. Douvartzoglou’s “oriental sweets” kiosk was decorated in Ancient Egyptian style, and the flour industrialists “Anatra Bros” ­reproduced an entire flour mill at booth scale. The Muscovite tea retailers “Caravan” selected 1 2

See Appendix, Tables 8–9 for distribution of social estates. Eva Krasnova and Anatolii Drozdovskii, “Odesskaia vystavka 1910–1911 godov,” Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 47 (2011), 8–21 2015, http://www. odessitclub.org/publications/almanac/alm_47/alm_47_377-379.pdf (accessed 4 ­February 2015).

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004351622_005

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Modernism as their aesthetic intervention in the allocated space while the well-known French champagne producer Moet & Chandon opted for Louis Seize. The latter’s local competition, the Odessan champagne manufacturer Ηenri Rederer [Roederer], constructed a tasting room in the shape of a Champagne bottle, the metal factory “G. and Μ. Rauchberger” of Odessa a giant samovar, and ROPiΤ, the steamship company, a portion of one of their ships designed by the architect Α. P. Κlepinin (see Map 6). The exhibition continued until the fall of 1911 and drew in Odessites with its many noteworthy attractions including the moving walkway modelled on that of the Parisian Exposition Universelle of 1900, the newest airplanes from the flying club, the cinema “Giant”, which was later relocated to Moldavanka, the lighted fountains whose water jets moved and changed shapes and, finally, the newly-created tram. The tram’s “Exhibition Line” set off from the Greek Market and continued through the city. The tram, which was quite dangerous and in fact was the cause of many injuries,3 left a strong impression during its maiden voyage. In his book No Day without a Line, the writer Yuri Olesha noted: I remember standing in a crowd on Grechesky Street and waiting with everyone else for the appearance of the trolley that had that day just gone into service for the first time. It would appear at the corner of Kanatnyi Street but, from where we stood, that corner wasn’t visible being too far away and concealed in the distance by the slight rise of Stroganovskii bridge, and so we saw the trolley only when it reached the middle of the bridge. Yellow and red with a glass-enclosed platform in front, the trolley finally appeared. It was moving quite fast although nowhere near the speed we had imagined. Greeted by our shouts, it passed in front of us, its platform crowded with people including even a high-ranking priest who sprinkled water in front of himself and the Mayor of Odessa Tolmachev4 who wore glasses and had a rust-colored moustache and even Mr. Legoder [Raymond Lehoday] the director of the Belgian firm that had built that first trolley line in Odessa.5 The tramway lines connected the central part of the city with the suburbs, the seashore, the Khadzhibeiskii estuary and the summer dacha houses at Malyi,

3 Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa, 194. 4 Ivan Tolmachev was City-Prefect and Provisional Governor-General. 5 Υuri Olesha, No Day Without a Line, trans. and ed. by Judson Rosengrant (Michigan: Ardis, 1979), 88.

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Srednii and Bol’shoi Fontan (see Map 6). Modernising transportation contributed to the development of the city as a centre of health care and tourism and altered residential patterns as the dacha summerhouse area became regularly connected with the city and available for year-round living.6 Electrification in Odessa (Société dʼÉlectricité d’Odessa), telephone service (Societé des Téléphones d’Odessa), the tramway (Tramways d’Odessa), the cement factory (Societé pour la fabrication de ciment à Odessa) and gas distribution (Consortium Gaz d’Odessa) were associated with Belgian direct investment in which French shareholders were prominent. Belgian streetcar companies, either horse-drawn trams or electrically powered vehicles, operated successfully in most Russian cities. By 1911, 23 Belgian streetcar companies had acquired concessions from Russian municipalities to install and operate tramway transportation. Most of these public utility corporations were listed in the Brussels exchange and were doing fairly well, most notably Odessa Tramways. Between 1895 and 1899, even prior to beginning operation, profits paid in dividends to common stockholders amounted to an annual 8.5 percent in comparison to other foreign corporations whose dividends dropped from 8.9 percent in 1895 to 5.8% in 1899.7 The success of the tramways as a business enterprise was such that the Belgians attempted to renegotiate their agreement with the municipal council in 1898. In addition to extending the concession, they also hoped to eliminate a clause in the original agreement that gave the municipality the option to repurchase the firm in 1905 and offered to provide electric trams and to increase the municipality’s share of profits as sweeteners. Odessa’s councilmen hesitated to agree, hinting that other foreign consortiums were interested in the concession8 and, while ultimately renewing the franchise, added stipulations much to the municipality’s benefit. Furthermore, personal gain was also at stake, as exemplified by the dispute between the Provisional Governor-General, I. Tolmachev, and the City-Head, N. I. Moiseev9

6 7

8 9

Skinner, “City Planning”, 324–28. Data provided by Edward F. Yurick, “The Russian Adventure. Belgian Investments in Imperial Russia,” PhD diss., Ohio State University, 1959, 89 and compared with P.V. Ol’, Inostrannye kapitaly v narodnom khoziaistve dovoennoi Rossii (Leningrad: Izdatel’stvo Vsesoiuznoi Akademii Nauk, 1925), 12–13, as referred in John P. McKay, Pioneers for Profit. Foreign Entrepreneurship and Russian Industrialization, 1885–1913 (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1993), table 3, 26–27. Yurick, “The Russian Adventure,” 89–90. Moiseev was a candidate of the extreme right who had won the municipal elections of 1907. Hausmann, Universität, 482.

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regarding who would benefit from the substantial gratuity offered by the Belgian Tramway Co.10 Russia attracted 14,000 skilled Belgian professionals and Belgian jointstock companies proliferated between the years 1895–1900. Their exodus following the industrial depression of 1901 and the Russo-Japanese War (1904–5) was spectacular. Belgian investors, disappointed by the failure of “Russian fever”, found solace in renewing their foreign investments in the Belgian Congo.11 John P. McKay reiterates that the principal motivation of foreign entrepreneurs in Russia was the high probability of anticipated profits (from 10 to 20 percent on invested capital) in sectors of the Russian economy that needed dynamic capital and technological expertise.12 Belgians also contributed their organisational model by proposing solutions involving mergers or trusts when a crisis of overproduction hit the South Russian industrial complex.13 1 Industry in Odessa Odessa was an urban centre that maintained a strong trade component d­ espite the problems that existed in the export of grain. Shaped by trade, its industry was light, relied on low labour intensity, and primarily produced processed foodstuffs (milled flour, packaged tea, refined sugar) and products from animal processing (leather, candles, soap). Only the metal processing sector followed a classic heavy industry pattern with a skilled workforce of Russian origin; it was, however, small in size compared to other cities.14 Industry in Odessa is inextricably linked with the industrial zone of Peresyp’. Isolated from the rest of the city by a cliff, it spread along the coast on sandy,  salty soil. Despite its recent transformations, it still hosts industrial plants of that period such as the Rodocanachi’s Jute and Rope factory, a monument to industrial archaeology. Located at 2/1 Vasilii Stus Street, it was built f­ollowing the plans of the architect Paul Klein in 1888–9. Strolling

10

National Archives, F.O., 371/1745, British Consul General, Odessa, Political, no 6, copy to St. Petersburg on the municipal elections, 16 June 1913. 11 Yurick, “The Russian Adventure,” 94. 12 McKay, Pioneers, 72–73. 13 On the different choices proposed by the Belgian industrialists and the Russian state in order to overcome crisis, see Yurick, “The Russian Adventure,” 103–35. 14 Weinberg, The Revolution, 4–7.

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around the old industrial buildings of Peresyp’ brings to mind the words of Isaac Babel: “And a little distance from the sea, smoke billows from the factories and Karl Marx plies his familiar trade”.15 Peresyp’s wheat warehouses, ­machine shops, tanneries, distilleries, grain mills, dye, candle and sunflower oil factories crowded the area, as did the municipal slaughterhouses and livestock markets.16 All the men of Peresyp’s households were industrial workers. All the male breadwinners in the 5 apartments at 46 Shchelakova Street, regardless of whether they were heads of households or merely renters, were unskilled labourers (chernorabochie), coachmen, or workers at the cast iron factory.17 Worker housing was located cheek by jowl with refuse dumps and lacked even the most basic hygiene. In most cases, the absence of heating, ventilation and sewers was characteristic of the unsanitary living conditions. The Board of Health of Peresyp’ repeatedly urged the municipality to pass laws requiring sanitary inspections and the monitoring of labour conditions in the factories.18 A strike by 4,000 workers took place in 1905. The Board of Health, through its president, Diatropov, and doctor, E. Vel’shtein, demanded, among other things, the right of free assembly for factory workers, mediation by the municipality in the resolution of disputes between workers and factory owners in respect to work rules and, in addition, the establishment of two public kitchens for the families of the unemployed.19 Despite ongoing protest, the municipal council declined to accede to these demands and, furthermore, suspended substantial funds previously earmarked for improvements of hygienic conditions in the industrial area in favour of other projects.20 The conservative policies of the Duma’s right-wing elected members and its nature as an institution of the property owners in the city was evidenced by the absence of projects aiming at improvement of the housing conditions for the city’s unprivileged. Street paving of the central part of the city was deemed more important than the sewage plant at Peresyp’.

15 16 17 18 19 20

Isaac Babel, “Odessa,” in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. Babel and transl. Constantine, 76. Odessa 1794–1894, 43. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 9, delo 193, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika. 1897 Census sheets. Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy, 10th year, no 1, 2, January 1905, 2–3. Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy, 10th year, no 91, 1906, 1250–52. Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy, 10th year, no 91, 1906, 1254–55; Weinberg, “Worker Organizations and Politics,” 104; Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa, 41.

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The area of merchants and entrepreneurs

Reports by the city’s medical inspector clearly indicate that labour conditions in the workplace were well documented; however, the necessary processes for eradicating unhealthy work environments and ensuring consumer

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protection simply did not exist. In a report following the inspection of bread bakeries, S. Ι. Isakovich, president of the supervising board for sanitary conditions of the second sector of the city, Aleksandrovskii, wrote: The spaces of the bakeries are filthy. The floors are mopped and walls painted only rarely, once a year under the best of circumstances. Cockroaches and other vermin freely roaming the walls were discovered in several bakeries and it seemed that relations between them and the bakers were quite friendly…. None of the bakeries included a room for the workers to rest…. The workers sleep on the ovens, the shelves where the baked bread is stored and on the tables where the dough is kneaded. In the same areas, the workers’ unwashed clothing hang from the walls and shoes, galoshes and socks are strewn about the floors … the sieves, containers, and other utensils required for the preparation of bread are also very dirty; rarely are they washed…. The hands of many of the workers are covered with a layer of dirt. The workers’ heads are uncovered in all the bakeries and their hair, as we witnessed, hardly shines from being clean. They rarely wear aprons and, when they do, it is from the waist down without covering the upper part of the body. There is no monitoring of hand washing. They are not required to wash their hands before kneading. We found neither wash basins, nor towels.21 Industry in Odessa developed gradually after the 1880s. Factories in the city supervised by the Factory Inspectorate (a commission whose jurisdiction covered mechanically powered plants with more than 15 workers) increased from 206 in 1883 to 513 in 1898.22 Yet, Odessa maintained a strong trade component despite the problems that existed in the export of grain. By early 1905, the workforce was distributed as follows: 46,200 in workshops, 25,300 in factories, 13,860 in transportation, 33,000 as sales clerks, and 16,210 as daily dock workers.23 In contrast to the middle class neighbourhoods, the workforce was divided along occupational and ethnic lines and inhabited different boroughs. Jewish workers were unlikely to work with Russians in factories. Jews were not preferred as apprentices by Russian master workers. They mainly worked in

21

Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy, 4th year, no 4, February 1898, “O khlebopekarniakh. Doklad v sanitarnuiu komissiiu predsedatelia 2-go Aleksandrovskogo sanitarnogo popechitel’stva S. I. Isakovicha.” 22 Weinberg, The Revolution, table 1, 4. 23 Weinberg, The Revolution, table 4, 32.

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workshops and were the backbone of the city’s garment industry.24 Sales clerks and shop assistants were also predominantly Jews. Most industrial concerns employed Russians who worked in Peresyp’ and lived there or in nearby Slobodka Romanovka. A typical example of workers’ housing was the building at 71 Moskovskaia, which bears similarities with American tenements in that it served primarily as a dormitory. The building had thirty apartments and 220 residents.25 Most of the tenants worked at Odessa’s sugar mill, which likely belonged to Jewish interests. Among the residents were the many members of the family of the Jewish assistant-director of the factory. The factory workers were primarily Russian and Ukrainian aged 20 to 45 years of age. The census reveals the agricultural origins of these workers who came to find work in Odessa from other provinces (Podolia, Kursk, Chernigov), sometimes up to 600 km away. In several cases, we can determine how recently they moved to Odessa by the out-of-town place of birth of their young children. This working class can therefore be said to be recently established in the city and yet unleavened by the mentality of the factory workers and even less aware of itself as a class per se. The many non-family households in the building at 71 Moskovskaia are of interest as they are composed of ­all-male roommates by the dozen in the same apartment and from the same village or province. Eighteen of the thirty apartments were dormitories for workers mostly from the Chernigov uezd26 and Brachalov volost’.27 This was the result of either chain migration or the fact that the land near the villages of origin belonged also to the factory owners. The workers of the sugar mill were ethnically Russian and Ukrainian. Even when the employers were Jewish, a fact that can be deduced from the religion of the assistant-director mentioned above and because the family of the Jewish magnate Brodsky owned a sugar refinery in Odessa, there was a preference for Russian workers. Employers avoided hiring Jews and Gentiles at the same workplace in order to avoid the likelihood of ethnic antagonisms. The ethnic and residential distribution of the workers, as described by R. Weinberg, played a crucial role in the development of trade unions and political consciousness as well as in the initiation and propagation of violence between the ethnic

24 Weinberg, The Revolution, 49. 25 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 9, delo 95, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika. 1897 Census sheet. 26 Uezd: administrative and territorial unit in prerevolutionary Russia, a component of the guberniia (province). 27 Volost’: the smallest administrative unit of the uezd.

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groups of the working class.28 Unskilled Orthodox Russian workers, latecomers to the city, had never worked side by side with Jews and were unfamiliar with the latter’s habits and way of life. Segregation in the workplace and working class residential areas enhanced prejudices against ethnic minorities who continued to be considered alien outsiders rather than brothers with common interests. The prejudices against Jews, held by the recently transplanted Russian and Ukrainian peasants who viewed them as exploiters, were many and intense and were transposed to the urban labour environment. While Peresyp’ was a factory district, the Moldavanka neighbourhood in the Mikhailovskii district was, as described by Isaac Babel, a ‘notorious’ area where Jews gravitated.29 Babel describes the place through the eyes of its denizens including grotesque figures of gangsters, rogues and schnorrers.30 Moldavanka is also depicted through its human capital, represented by the young Jewish violin players: Zagursky (the music professor) ran a factory that churned out child prodigies, a factory of Jewish dwarfs in lace collars and patent leather shoes. He went hunting for them in the Moldavanka slums and the reeking courtyards of the old bazaar.31 A present day visit to the neighbourhood begins at Gradonachal’nika Street, which resembles a small scale version of Odessa as a whole. One-storey houses of standardised design, as created by Francesco Boffo and Caetan Dalakva, project a first impression of suburban tranquillity. As one proceeds, however, the structures become denser and the streets narrower, the houses jammed tightly, one hard by the next, hemmed in by the natural boundary of the ravine and by the artificial one of the border of the free port zone. For this reason, the streets of Moldavanka do not continue the grid of the city. Ι see the prominent Jewish hospital (see Map 5), scattered former candle, soap and pasta factories, people who know each other and exchange greetings, and the typical wide streets where the wagons used to arrive to unload wheat in the days when 28 Weinberg, The Revolution, 32–53. 29 Babel, “How it was done in Odessa,” and “Justice in Parenthesis,” in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. Babel and trans. Constantine, 140–45, 146–54. 30 Odessa from the perspective of its myth as a Jewish city is depicted in Sylvester’s, Tales of Old Odessa, and Jarrod Tanny’s, City of Rogues and Schnorrers. Russia’s Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011). 31 Babel, “The Awakening,” in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. Babel and trans. Constantine, 628.

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Moldavanka was mostly vegetable patches and warehouses. On the repeal of its free-port status, the area was absorbed by the city and construction began to receive the new immigrants from inside Russia, primarily Jews. It is said that Benia Kirk, the protagonist, and the other characters of Babel’s short story The King were born on Bolgarskaia and Zaporozhskaia Streets, next to Ioska and Maria Ivanovna’s twin houses of ill repute.32 Despite its reputation, Moldavanka was not exclusively Jewish (nor was it exclusively lawless for that matter). The writer’s pen exaggerates in order to emphasise the neighbourhood’s distinctive identity. Its residents’ origins and their occupations were what actually set Moldavanka apart from Peresyp’. They were registered as meshchane33 and were either from Odessa itself or from other cities or towns, urban middle-to-lower class people not of peasant origin unlike their Peresyp’ counterparts. Among them were the Jewish immigrants to Odessa who were, due to residential restrictions, obligated by law to live in the cities. The apartment building at 27 Iuzhnaia and Kolontaevskaia provides a revealing glimpse of the demographic composition of the area.34 Among the 107 occupants of the twenty-three apartments there were ten Russian families, nine Jewish, two Polish, one Ukrainian and one Armenian. The householders’ income came from middle-lower class professions (barbers, cobblers, tobacconists), owners of small shops, open air stalls, street money exchanges, low level employees, guards, etc. In contrast to Moscow and Saint Petersburg, the merchant and industrial elite of Odessa were composed of entrepreneurs of non-Russian origin. Using newspaper obituaries as his source, Guido Hausmann has devised a group portrait of Odessa’s entrepreneurs.35 Although they represented the city’s business elite and were involved in all its institutions (municipal and judicial councils, stock exchange [birzha] and port steering committees) as members of the establishment, they also acknowledged, and honoured their respective ethno-religious communities of origin. They played leading roles in associations and initiatives geared toward social welfare and the development of professional skills for Odessites in general and their own ethno-religious groups in particular. Jane Burbank argues that these entrepreneurs, most of whom were Honorary Citizens, belonged to a group of privileged individuals who, unlike 32 Babel, “The King,” in The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, ed. Babel and trans. Constantine, 133–39. 33 Social estate category that comprised city dwellers, mainly of the middle-lower strata. 34 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 8, delo 2540, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika, 1897 Census sheet. 35 Guido Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute,” 41–65.

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their working class counterparts, could exploit multiple group identifications for their personal benefit. They could assert rights, avoid duties and undertake activities not only as a function of their soslovie but also according to their religion, ethnicity or other collective designations so long as these were not mutually exclusive.36 Their compound identity was expressed through multiple loyalties and staunch participation in both all-Russian and ethnically exclusive social, charitable and political activities. That real pluralism and ethnic tolerance in the pre-revolutionary period did not come from below, but from above, is a controversial topic. Before World War I, Odessa’s wealthy and successful entrepreneurs practiced what was in effect social integration across national and ethno-religious affiliations despite not identifying as a coherent group pursuing common economic interests. Capable of alternately embracing an all-Russian socio-economic profile and, seamlessly, a heterogeneous ethno-cultural outlook, they achieved a harmonious coexistence of phenomenologically conflicting attributes that was beyond the ability of the city’s other social groups. Cosmopolitanism was one of their outstanding traits, especially in the case of Jewish entrepreneurs. This was perceived as a negative attribute by the middle class and workers influenced by the emerging nationalist and social-democratic movements. 2 Types of Entrepreneurs and Strategies In order to achieve economic development in Southern Russia and tie it to the world market the issues of human resources, capital investment, and the development of entrepreneurship had to be addressed. The absence of business esprit was among the most salient inherent weaknesses of Russian capitalism with the exception of the Moscow group of Old Believers who developed an entrepreneurial profile quite similar to the western bourgeois type.37 Foreign entrepreneurs had to adopt a different state of mind when

36

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Jane Burbank, “Thinking like an Empire: Estate, Law and Rights in the Early Twentieth Century,” in Russian Empire: Space, People, Power, 1700–1930, ed. by Jane Burbank, Mark von Hagen and Anatolyi Remnev (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 196– 217. A group separated from the Russian Orthodox Church that was against the reforms introduced by Patriarch Nikon in the mid-seventeenth century. For the Moscow entrepreneurs who were Old Believers, see Alfred J. Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs in Imperial Russia

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attempting to penetrate the Russian market with its many restrictions on merchants, including on movement and travel, and the continuous intervention of the state in the economy manifested as either state paternalism or, arbitrary, autocratic measures.38 Western economic theory lauded the entrepreneur as an innovative agent of change while the Russian merchant far preferred to escape his status than to maintain it. According to some scholars, such as Mikhail V. Briantsev, Orthodoxy fomented a growing disinterest toward material goals among the Russian people that expressed itself in apathy, lack of initiative, indifference to the accomplishment of tasks, aversion toward innovation and technology, and resulted in the formation of a regressive attitude towards trade and professionalism, one very far indeed from the tenets of dynamic capitalism, although the applicability of such an argument is highly disputable.39 In general and ideally, an entrepreneur should be endowed with certain basic skills: the ability to detect profitable opportunities and raise capital, managerial competence, and judgmental acuity in order to avoid moral hazard. In South Russia specifically, these skills had to be supplemented by the capacity to adjust to the ways the grain trade was changing, while understanding its role as the stimulator of economic development in other sectors of trade and industry. And, as if this were not enough, trading techniques had to be supplemented with a mastery of shipowning since no indigenous merchant fleet existed. A thorough knowledge of sea-borne trade and of ports and markets throughout the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, as well as ship brokerage and the capacity to close deals with clients overseas, were also prerequisites.40 In an age of rudimentary communication technology, acquiring accurate information on the state of trade in overseas markets required a high level of skill and extensive assets.

38 39

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(Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982), 133–177. Of course there is the example of the highly successful Orthodox Greek merchants of Odessa. Kirchner, “Western Businessmen in Russia.” M.V. Briantsev, Religiozno-eticheskie osnovy predprinimatel’stva v Rossii (xix v.) (Moscow: Kompaniia Sputnik, 2000), 45–66, and on the exception of the Old Belief followers, 69–93. Ioanna Pepelasis Minoglou, “The Greek Merchant House of the Russian Black Sea: A Nineteenth-Century Example of a Traders’ Coalition,” International Journal of Maritime History 10 (June 1998): 61–104.

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The Dacha area

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3 The Port and the Exporter In the first phase of development of the Russian grain trade, made possible as a result of the Treaty of Adrianople of 1829 which permitted access to the Black Sea to shipping of all nations, the standard entrepreneur was the exporter, usually a foreign merchant established in Odessa as a “guest” or “Russian subject”,41 who controlled the most important economic function of the city: the export of wheat. It was the period when state intervention attempted to boost the import-export trade and, by securing advantages for the city’s merchants, assure that Odessa would be the principal export gateway of southern Russia. Such advantages included the establishment of the free zone of the port, the dutyfree importation of products which were sold within the boundaries of the free town of Odessa, the reduction of export duties and, not least, the creation of a substantive legal framework to protect and legitimise the business operations of foreign merchants (Commercial Court from 1808 onwards, Stock Exchange from 1807). The lists of importers-exporters published yearly from 1833 to 1860 in the journal Odesskii Vestnik enumerate the commercial firms engaged in foreign trade to and from Odessa (Appendix, Table 12). During this period, a group of 20 to 25 Greek traders dominated the import-export business; three of them were among the ten most successful exporters in the city (Ivan Ralli, Theodore Rodocanachi and Constantin Papudov). The others formed a dynamic group of capital holders who invested in import-export activity, giving priority to the import business: Ivan Scaramanga, Mattheos Mavrocordatos, Alexander M ­ avros, Ivan Mavros, Grigorii Marazli, Efstratios Sevastopulo, Mark Sevastopulo, Ivan Konstantinovich Ralli, Aleksandr Zarifi, Mihail Miliotti, Anastasi Buba, Kriona Papa Nikola, Grigorii Rossolimo, Pavel Iraklidi, Panaioti Dialegmeno, Georgii Avierino, Thoma Vlangali, Paraskevas Nikolaou, Georgii Vucina, Alexander Kumbaris, Dimitri Paleologos, Khristofor Velara, Georgii Dialegmeno, Nikolai Inglezi, Nikolai Papadimopoulo, Epaminond Vlasopulo. They were followed by British and Italian merchant houses, while the Russian presence in foreign trade was slight. The British were represented by the Cortazzi brothers (James and Friedrich), Moberly and Simpson, Thomas Carruthers (British Consul in Odessa) and Walter Isai. The merchant James Cortazzi was a protégé of Governor-General Count Vorontsov and took on

41

In order to conduct foreign trade in Russia a foreign merchant had to subscribe as a guest for a limited period of time or to apply for Russian citizenship and become a merchant guild’s member.

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municipal responsibilities while delegating the business itself to his partner William Wagner.42 English merchants concentrated their commercial activities on exports and, as the British Consul noted, most of the British firms left Odessa after the Crimean War because of sharp competition from Greeks and Jews. The consul blamed the dishonest practices of local dealers for the ab­sence of British firms and accounted for their inability to deal with local con­ditions under which trade took place with the following – rather self-serving – commentary: “English merchants are too respectable ever to succeed in such a country.”43 The group of French merchants was headed by Sicard and Co. and Rocca Frères from Marseilles, the German by Ernst Mahs, and the Italian by Il’ia Trabotti, Pietro Sartorio, Bartholomei Ponchio, Jacob Porro, Vicenso Rossi, followed by a group of Slav exporters, Philipp Lucich, Franz Persich, Nikolai Dzhuranovich, and finally, a group of Jews, Rosalia Zaks, Abraham Tzigarchich, Iosif Yietlinger, Solomon Yurovich, Joachim Efrussi and Abraham Raffalovich (Appendix, Table 12). The exporters’ lists illustrate the importance of the Mediterranean import trade at the beginning of their mercantile careers. This market exploded as a result of the establishment of the free port in 1817,44 despite competition from smugglers who, hiding their supplies in mines dug for construction materials below the city, sold them to buyers in the areas outside the free market zone. The import trade was concerned with a range of products that the foreign merchants specialised in according to their country of origin. Most of the Greek merchant houses were primarily importers of Mediterranean goods. Their supremacy prior to the Crimean War is not difficult to explain: it was based on a set of advantages, which gave them pre-eminence in critical matters of organisation and transport in the wheat trade. These advantages included the combination of shipping and trade, the reduction of costs and increase of profit resulting from engaging in both imports and exports, and the proximity of client markets. In the case of the latter, the relatively short distance from Odessa to Mediterranean45 (as compared to the Atlantic) ports provided Greek ships under various flags of convenience (Ottoman, Ionian, Russian), and the merchant houses that owned them, the 42 43 44

45

Chizhevich, “Gorod Odessa i odesskoe obshchestvo,” 16–18. National Archives, uk, Foreign Commonwealth Office Library (F.C.O.L.), Russia, A.S., Odessa, November 16, 1872, report by Consul-General Abbott. As Figure 3 in the Appendix indicates, statistics of exports begin in 1830 with a total of 25 million French Francs and reach in 1860, more than 100 million with small fluctuations in 1840, 1842 and the Crimean War years. Sifneos, “Merchant Enterprises and Strategies,” 264–65.

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incontestable advantage of completing more voyages a year. However, their greatest advantage was the organisation of their enterprises: headquarters in Odessa or England and a network of branches in various ports of the Mediterranean administered by brothers or close relatives.46 It should be noted that the reach and extent of the commercial networks of the major Greek family businesses of Odessa were developed prior to or simultaneously with their establishment in the city. Greek merchants were in an advantageous position to engage in trade with Odessa due to geographical proximity, familiarity with the  networks of Mediterranean foodstuff producers, and collaboration with the seafarers of the region, usually from their own homeland, who could guarantee the safe transport of goods and often owned the very means of transportation.47 In addition, their familiarity with the procedures that regulated trade and maritime enterprises in the Ottoman Empire was another benefit in dealing with similar regulations imposed by the Russian Empire, particularly in the early years.48 The use of Constantinople as port of origin for business ventures in Russia’s southern ports and the early acquisition of the right to access the Black and Azov Seas flying the Ottoman or Russian flag, allowed them to gain a privileged position in these markets.49 Knowledge of foreign languages and a sure grasp of institutional regulations (laws and duties, custom house rules 46

Stanley Chapman, Merchant Enterprise in Britain. From the Industrial Revolution to World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 204–05, 292–93; S. E. Fairlie, “The Anglo-Russian Grain Trade, 1815–1861” (PhD diss., London School of Economics and Political Science, 1959), 265–75; Patricia Herlihy, “Greek Merchants in Odessa in the Nineteenth Century,” in Eucharisterion: Essays Presented to Omeljan Pritsak on his Sixtieth Birthday by His Colleagues and Students, ed. by I. Sevčenko and F. E. Sysyn, 2 vols., Harvard Ukrainian Studies iii (1979): 399–420; Gelina Harlaftis, He Historia tes hellenoktetes Nautilias, 19os-20os ai. (Athens: Nepheli, 2001); Harlaftis, “The Role of Greeks in the Black Sea Trade, 1830–1900”, in Shipping and Trade, 1750–1950: Essays in International Maritime Economic History, ed. by R. Fischer and H. W. Nordvik (Pontefract: Lofthouse Publications, 1990), 63–95; Harlaftis, “Mapping the Greek Maritime Diaspora from the Early Eighteenth to the Late Nineteenth Centuries,” in Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks, ed. by Bagdiantz McCabe et al., 147–69; M. C. Chatziioannou, “Greek Merchants in Victorian Britain,” in Greek Diaspora and Migration since 1700. Society, Politics and Culture, ed. by D. Tziovas vol. 3 (London: Ashgate Publishing Ltd., 2009), 45–60. 47 Sifneos, “Greek Family Firms in the Azov Sea Region,” 289–90, 294–302. 48 Kardases, Diaspora Merchants. 49 Harlaftis and Kardasis, “International Bulk Trade and Shipping in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea,” in The Mediterranean Response to Globalization, ed. by Jeffrey Williamson and Şevket Pamuk (London: Routledge, 2000), 233–65.

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and quarantine procedures), not to mention a long history of trading with the coastal towns of the Black and Azov Seas before these territories were conquered from the Ottomans by the Russians, gave the Greeks a prodigious advantage over their competitors.50 A shared religion with the Russians (Orthodoxy) also facilitated their transactions in the Russian hinterland. In a period of poor communications, success in the wheat trade depended on the one hand on a low purchase price and, on the other hand, on knowing where the highest selling prices could be found, through the merchants’ network of branches in Mediterranean ports and elsewhere. As a result of his company’s presence in both Odessa and London, the American consul, John (Ivan) Ralli, who was of Greek descent and one of the great exporters of the city, had acquired in 1833 “encouraging news” that Americans were buying linseed of Odessan origin in London at very high prices and was able to offer to sell it to them directly from Odessa at even lower prices.51 As trade required political connections to survive and flourish, prominent merchants sought to represent one of the Great Powers as unremunerated consuls, thereby benefitting from the privileges offered for civil service, the social caché that allowed them to mingle with nobility, and the otherwise inaccessible confidential information made available through political and diplomatic contacts. Big merchants invested in ship ownership and merchant banking in order to assure the expansion of their commercial activities. Most of the shipowners in 1903 were also partners in renowned trading houses.52 The absence of merchant banks (until the 1870s) obliged them to seek credit to fund their businesses through loans from other merchants. Financing became a standard activity of big merchant houses of the period since private banks did not emerge as separate institutions until the end of the nineteenth century.

50

51

52

Evrydiki Sifneos, “Diaspora Entrepreneurship Revisited: Greek Merchants and Firms in the Southern Russian Ports,” Entreprises et Histoire 63 (June 2011): 40–52; Sifneos, “Can Commercial Techniques Substitute Port Institutions? Evidence from the Greek Presence in the Black and Azov Sea ports (1780–1850),” in Istituzioni e traffici tra età antica e crescita moderna, ed. by Raffaella Salvemini (Rome: Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Istituto di Studi sulle Societá del Mediterraneo, 2009), 77–90; Sifneos and Harlaftis, “Entrepreneurship at the Russian Frontier” in Merchant Colonies, ed. by Zakharov et al., 157–80. nara, Russia, Odessa, The American Consul John Ralli to the Secretary General of the State Department, Marcy, January 15, 1834. See also, Sifneos, “Cosmopolitanism as a Feature,” 97–112. Y. and L. Dreyfus had seven steamers, Anatra Bros seven, I. Y. Kovalenko and R. Webster six. Russkii Torgovyi Flot. Spisok sudov k 1 ianvaria 1903 g. (St. Petersburg: Tip. V. Kirshbauma, 1903), 16–17.

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From the city’s very beginning, some foreign merchants specialised in providing credit to others. Charles Sicard, Ivan Rainaud, M. A. Kramarev, Gems and Rey were among Odessa’s first merchant-bankers.53 In 1808, French merchants associated with Odessa’s Governor-General de Richelieu founded the Camera Imperiale delle Assicurazioni, while the Greeks Ivan Destounis, Theodore Serafinos and Ivan Petalas founded the Greco-Russian Insurance Company (Greko-russkoe strakhovoe tovarishchestvo). A third insurance company, the Society of Greek Insurers (Tovarishchestvo grekov-strakhovatelei), was established by Ioannis Amvrosios, Ilias Manesis and Sergios Xidias. The Greek merchants who were the preferred customers of their compatriots’ insurance companies, benefitted from the availability of insurance for their merchandise, warehouses and the securing of loans. Τhe founding of the Merchant Treasury of Odessa (Torgovaia kassa Odessy) in 1810 was meant to free merchants from private lenders by offering lower interest rates due to the lack of cash flow, however, the merchants continued to borrow from private lenders even at substantially higher interest rates. An alternative model of financing was offered by the bank offices (sing. bankirskaia kontora) operated by trading firms such as E. Μahs, A. Trabotti and Th. Rodocanachi. The firm of Th. Rodocanachi was a founding shareholder of several state owned banks: the Internationational Commercial Bank of St. Petersburg (Peterburgskii Mezhdunarodnyi kommercheskii bank), the Merchant Bank of Odessa (Odesskii kommercheskii bank), the Azov-Don Merchant Bank, the Kishinev Merchant Bank (Kishinevskii kommercheskii bank), the Berdichev Merchant Bank (Berdichevskii kommercheskii bank), the Kherson Merchant Bank (Khersonskii kommercheskii bank), the Russian Bank of Foreign Trade (Russkii dlia vneshnei torgovli bank). In the second half of the nineteenth century, a powerful group of Jewish bankers attained prominent positions in the financial market. German A. Raffalovich, Joachim Efrussi, M. Ashkenazy, O. Khais, S. Zusman and D. Ginzbourg became Odessa’s financial elite. They followed Rodocanachi’s entrepreneurial strategy of investing in shares of other regional banks and collaborated with Jews and Gentiles in entrepreneurial joint stock ventures.54 Merchants in the years 1830–1860 were the yeast in the development of a merchant bourgeoisie in Odessa. They possessed many prerequisites for the 53 54

V. V. Morozan, “Krupneishie torgovo-bankirskie doma Odessy xix v.,” in Ekonomicheskaia istoriia 2007 (Moscow: Tsentr ekonomicheskoi istorii; rosspen, 2008), 144–49. See the foundation of the Commercial and Industrial Bank of Odessa (Odesskii torgovo-promyshlennyi bank) by G. Raffalovich, S. Zusman, O. Khais and D. Ginzbourg in 1899 as well as the participation of G. A. Raffalovich, I. I. Efroussi in the administrative board of the Commercial Bank of Odessa, together with P. Rodocanachi, N. M. Chikhachev and A. Ya. Novikov. Morozan, “Krupneishie torgovo-bankirskie doma”, 165–74, 183–86.

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formation of such a social group, as Jürgen Kocka has defined it: cohesion, common understanding, and collective action.55 They satisfied the basic criteria for intermediate middle-class status below the gentry and above the lower middle class of urban dwellers; they did not perform manual labour, they employed wage earners, and they owned some property or capital.56 They were an emerging social group that conducted the most important economic activity in the city. Mostly self-made businessmen, they distanced themselves from both the nobility and the unprivileged; they had gained wealth, reputation and respect for their individual self by the precarious and insecure “status” of the merchant, and shared an urban culture, expressed in both their private and public lives. Yet, their ethnic divergence was considered as an ambiguous attribute, appraised both positively and negatively, as an element that facilitated modernising processes in the city or hindered social homogenization mechanisms. What actually happened was that this group, as a representative of the upper strata of the middle class, was absorbed in the 1860s–1870s into new composite elite through the granting of the status of the hereditary Honorary Citizen, which moved them closer to the nobility. Their eagerness to ascend from the merchant strata and their melding with the elite can be explained by privileges and facilities granted that diminished insecurity in the economic and long-term planning. 4 Middlemen: The Period of Transition Before the railroads, the market fairs in the region of Odessa were pure gold but the railroads scattered the distribution of wheat and encouraged every rag-trading Jew in every village to become a middleman ­consequently leaving our market fairs with only the produce of their immediate vicinity and, when crops fail as they did the past two years, not even a grain. As a result, we too are running hither and thither trying to find the right place.57 55

56

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Jürgen Kocka, “The European Pattern and the German Case,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Kocka and Allan Mitchell (Oxford and Providence: Berg, 1993), 3–37. Eric Hobsbawm, “The Example of the English Middle Class,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Kocka and Mitchell, 133. Kocka, “The European Pattern,” in Bourgeois Society in Nineteenth-Century Europe, ed. by Kocka and Mitchell, 7. elia (The Hellenic Litterary and Historical Archive), Couppas Correspondence, Letter of Gregorios Couppas from Taganrog (Azov Sea) to his uncle in Lesvos island (Aegean Sea), May 19, 1875.

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The advent of the railroad changed the structure of the wheat trade. With the development of the rail network, it was no longer important to stockpile wheat at a single final destination, usually the warehouses of Moldavanka, or as close to the port as possible. Instead, pockets of wheat storage along the train lines and the mobilization of local country capital for the sale and expeditious resale to another middleman of a usually small quantity of wheat became the new model. As attested by Gregorios Couppas, a merchant employed by the traders Sevastopulo Bros, the Greek trading houses did not have enough employees to cope with such a task.58 Jewish small venture capitalists in townships (shtetls) of the Ukrainian hinterland, often the owners of inns or local alcohol resellers, were ideally situated to do so.59 They engaged in the buying and selling of small quantities and their exchanges were characterised by the quick circulation and return of their capital with a limited profit. Firmly anchored and isolated in the hinterlands they were indifferent to the international price of wheat, which determined the purchase and sale strategies of their Greek competitors who were controlled by the exporters of the port. Such practices go a long way towards explaining Gregorios Couppas’ resentment of his Jewish colleagues: “They were everywhere, even in the smallest markets, they did not care about international prices and they bought even when prices were high with the consequence that the markets did not stop and prices could not fall.”60 The collective incapacity of the Greeks to respond to the changes in the Russian wheat trade following the Crimean War provoked resentment and vindictiveness. Intense competition, the recession of the 1870s, and alien religious and cultural practices often led to clashes between Christian and Jews. Such was the case at Easter 1871, when the traditional firing of weapons in the air (following the service of Resurrection at the Orthodox Church of the Holy Trinity) by Greek sailors frightened and provoked the Jews of the neighbourhood into violent reaction.61 The numerical superiority and the dynamism of the Jewish population, its ability to penetrate the domestic markets of Galicia,

58 59

60 61

Sifneos, “Hoi allages sto rosiko sitemporio kai he prosarmostikoteta ton hellenikon emporikon oikon,” Ta Historika 40 (June 2004): 53–96. S. M. Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland from the Earliest Times until the Present Day, transl. by I. Friedlaender, 3 vols. (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1916–1920), 3: 22–23. elia, Couppas Correspondence, Letter of July 23, 1880. An account of the events from the Jewish side in M. Morgulis, “Bezporiadki 1871 goda v Odesse,” Evreiskii mir 2 (December 1910): 42–66. On the narrative of a Greek eye-­witness, see elia, Couppas Correspondence, Letter of Gregorios Couppas, April 11, 1871. Explanatory historiographical approaches of the 1871 pogrom in Ζipperstein, “The Jewish Community”, 258–75; Brian Horowitz, Empire Jews. Jewish Nationalism and Acculturation in

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Bessarabia and the former Polish territories where many resided prior to these regions’ incorporation into the Russian Empire, the right to settle in the villages and cities within the confines of the Pale of Settlement, and the liberal policies of Alexander ii, all contributed to expand the Jews’ economic and political influence.62 As middlemen, they connected the villages to the cities and undertook the transport of wheat from the former to the latter. They provided immediate payment for harvested produce, small loans to the peasants for buying seed at sowing time, or the pre-purchasing of future harvests at low prices. The Jews’ enduring role as intermediaries in the wheat trade until the early decades of the 20th century is confirmed by Albert Libow who was born in a Ukrainian township and emigrated to America: In our Shtetl for instance, we had about five hundred families living. … Practically a whole week, very few people have anything to do. Usually they are waiting for Thursday. Thursday was a market day. In Yiddish it’s called the “Yerid”. That’s the day when the people from the villages, the non-Jewish farmers that lived in the villages came to market. The Shtetl or small town was occupied by Jews. … Now Thursday was the day of the Yerid, … and the villagers used to come, bring their grain, their cows, whatever they had to sell and also buy their supplies or whatever they needed. Such as clothes, groceries, which they didn’t need too many of those … But they needed to look out for horses to shoe them, to repair the wagon … My father would buy grain. Incidentally he was not alone. There was something like a corporation, loose, with no papers, and no agreements. But they worked together, and they would buy grain from the peasants. … My father with the other people that I mentioned before, would buy the grain from the farmer, convert that into flour. … Now they would take that grain, and work it into flour and sent it to various parts of Russia where flour was more expensive than it was in the Russian Ukraine.63

19th- and early 20th-Century Russia (Bloomington, Ind.: Slavica Publishers, 2009), 164–68; Dubnow, History of the Jews, 2: 190–94; Sifneos, “The Dark Side of the Moon;” Sifneos, “Ethnikos autoprosdiorismos se ena oikonomika metavallomeno perivallon. He martyria henos Hellena emporoypallelou apo to rosiko emporio siteron,” in Diaspora, Diktya, Diaphotismos, ed. by Maria Stasinopoulou and Maria Christina Chadzioannou, Tetradia Ergasias 28 (Athens: Institute for Neohellenic Research / National Hellenic Research Foundation, 2005), 116–25. 62 On Alexander’s policy towards the Jews, see Dubnow, History of the Jews, 2: 61–72. 63 University of Florida, Samuel Proctor Oral History Program. Interview by Alec Jacobson to Albert Libow, in Palm Beach, 1982, 1–2, 4, 5. Albert Libow was born on July 16, 1903 in a shtetl near Odessa. http://ufdc.ufl.edu/UF00006657/00001

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The role of the middleman was between the producer and the exporter or urban consumer, and profit was secured through pressure to lower purchase prices; price gouging made them unpopular. L. Jurowski asserts that four or five such parties buying and selling small quantities of wheat with capital investments of 200 to 400 roubles were involved between the producer and the exporter. The commercial tactics of these intermediaries were entirely different from those of the big mercantile exporters.64 The financial rise and pervasive presence and success of Jewish businesses provoked broad resentment and ethno-religious tensions. A Jewish presence among the big exporters was slow to be felt. Even in 1859 there were only two Jewish trading houses, Joachim Efrussi and Abraham Raffalovich, among the top seventeen exporters of the port with an income (from imports and exports) of more than a million roubles.65 The Jewish presence increased however as the scale of the business decreased. In January of 1874, a season of the year of little export activity in the local market of Odessa, the buyers and sellers of wheat on a weekly basis were primarily Jewish.66 The foreign traders waited for the availability of large quantities that would arrive in spring. By contrast, the Jews’ characteristic approach was to buy small quantities of rye, girka (soft wheat), linseed, etc., for not more than 4,000 chetverts67 in order to generate reserves for export. Among them, the following names stand out: Raffalovich Bros, Efrussi and Co., Barzhanskii, A. Fingert, Dall’ Orso Bros (of Italian origin), who purchased from the resellers Feldman, Pasternack, Fischerovich, Finkelstein, Hildesheimer, Salzmann and Barbasch. The distribution of Jews in the merchant guilds’ membership confirms the small size of their transactions. In 1856, among the twenty-five merchants subscribing to the first guild five were Jews, fifteen among the fifty-two merchants of the second guild, and 367 among the 728 of the third.68 The “change of hands” among the trading houses from the 1860s onwards is amply illustrated by the merchants’ register in 1887. As Gregorios Couppas noted, most middlemen were Greek and some Russian when he first became a grain purchaser on behalf of the Greek trading firm in Moldavanka in 1864 (see Map 2). “Nowadays [in 1879] there are no Russians and as for the Greeks, they are 64

Leo Yurowsky, Der Russische Getreideexport: Seine Entwicklung und Organisation, Münchener Volkswirtschaftliche Studien 105 (Stuttgart and Berlin: J.G. Gotta, 1910): 51–87; Sifneos, “Hoi allages sto rosiko sitemporio,” 80–83. 65 Odesskii Vestnik, February 26, 1860. 66 Odesskii Vestnik, Commercial Bulletin, January 17–24, 1874. 67 A chetvert’ is equal to 209.91 litres or 5.772 bushels. 68 ναra, Ralli to Marcy, Statistical Account of the Town of Odessa, 1856.

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counted on the fingers of one hand. Jews are the ones who have taken over the market.”69 Guild membership rolls confirm the increased Jewish presence among Odessa’s traders. In 1887, among 140 merchants belonging to the first guild, 45 percent were Jews while in the second guild, they reached 41.2 percent of the 976 merchants.70 5 Real Estate Owners in Odessa How, in fact, did the wheat trade change hands in Odessa? The generally accepted hypothesis that there occurred a mass exodus of Greek entrepreneurs after the Crimean War is inaccurate. The geographic relocation in the direction of the Azov Sea was one of the adjustments made by the Greek wheat trading businesses of Odessa in response to altered conditions and the expansion of the Russian wheat trade.71 In these difficult years for the Greek bulk traders, a new opportunity for profit presented itself in the construction and real estate sectors in Odessa, building housing to meet the city’s increasing demand. Investing in land and the construction of profit making apartment buildings of two storeys or more was, as noted by the British consul in 1871,72 an undisputed fact in regard to the direction taken by Greek investment capital as it moved away from the wheat trade after 1860. Real estate development was exceptionally profitable. The conversion of residences from mansions to apartments and the construction of apartment buildings in empty lots secured rental income for their owners; rents in the centre of the city were particularly lucrative. Based on statistics from 1894, the rent for one room in the Bul’varnyi area was 122 roubles a year, in Alek­ sandrovskii 84, Khersonskii 99, at the port 76, in Petropavlovskii 71, Μikhailovskii 54, Peresyp’ 47 and in Slobodka Romanovka 30 (see Maps 1 and 2).73 The apartment buildings in the centre of town were at least two storeys and contained on average 10.2 apartments and 47 residents.74 Beginning in 1870, 69 70 71 72 73 74

elia, Gregorios Couppas’ Correspondence, Letter of Gregorios Couppas February 26, 1879. Spisok Odesskim 1oi i 2oi gil’dii kuptsam 1887 goda (Odessa: Slavianskaia Tip. N. Khrisogelos, 1887). Sifneos, “Hoi allages sto rosiko sitemporio,” 80–81. National Archives, uk, Foreign Commonwealth Office Library (F.C.O.L.), Report by Consul-general Abbott on the trade of Odessa for 1872, 1024. Odessa 1794–1894, 62. Odessa 1794–1894, 63.

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new construction materials and technology adopted from the railroads allowed for less expensive construction of three and four-storey buildings. Typically, these buildings had stores on the ground floor, offices on the floor above and apartments on the rest. A detailed list of real estate owners who were subject to municipal property taxes, and were granted subsequent voting rights for the Duma, underscores the importance of the Honorary Citizens in real estate investment.75 Ex-merchants who had gained a membership in the most “respectable” strata of the society (Honorary Citizens) after ten years of successful career as first guild members, or other professions as landowners, capital holders and actual merchants, were the dominant investment group. In 1873, the average value of a property in Zone 176 was 25,825 roubles and in Zone 277 11,314 roubles. The first ten wealthiest property owners in these two parts of the city were Stephen Ralli 78 (10 properties of an estimated 75 76

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daoo, 274, opis’ 1, delo 2, Odesskii statisticheskii komitet. Svedeniia o chisle domov i o zastroenii, 1863–1873. The first part of the city comprised Novaia str., Kanatnaia str. (part), Karantinaia str., the square next to the customs, Pol’skii descent, Pol’skaia str., Remeslennaia str. (part), Italianskaia str. (part), Rishel’evskaia str. (part), Prisutstvennaia str., Ekaterininskaia square, Ekaterininskaia str. (part), Krasnyi pereulok, Pokrovskii pereulok, Gavanskaia str., Aleksandrovskaia square, Aleksandrovskii Prospekt, Nadezhnaia str., Kolodeznyi pereulok, Avchinnikov pereulok, Preobrazhenskaia str. (part), Uspenskaia str. (part), Troitskaia str, Evreiskaia str., Pochtovaia str., Politseiskaia str., Grecheskaia str., Deribasovskaia str., Lanzheronovskaia str., Lanzheronovskii descent, Teatral’naia square, Small shops (lavki) on Lanzheronovskaia str., Small shops on Ekaterininskaia Str., Small shops on Teatral’nyi pereulok, Teatral’nyi pereulok, Bul’varnaia str. (part), Vorontsovskii pereulok, Kazarmennyi pereulok, Malyi pereulok, Karantinnaia seafront, Platonovskaia seafront, Prakticheskaia haven, Primorskaia str., Dachas by the sea (see Map 6). The second part of the city comprised Uspenskaia str. (part), Bazarnaia str., Bazarnaia square, Between Tiraspol’skaia and Ovsiannyi pereuok, Bol’shaia Arnautskaia, Malaia Arnautskaia, Starorezhnichnaia str., Rybnaia str., Bul’varnaia str. (part), Novodegtiarnaia row, Kanatnyi pereulok, Novokanatnyi pereulok, Kanatnaia str. (part), Bezimennyi pereulok, Remeslennaia str. (part), Tiuremnyi pereulok, Italianskaia str. (part), Rishel’ievskaia str. (part), Ekaterininskaia str. (part), Bazarnyi descent, Aleksandrovskaia str. (part), Uspenskii pereulok, Preobrazhenskaia str. (part), Meshchanskaia str., Trekhugol’nyi pereulok, Dachas on the seaside from Bul’varnyi to Malyi Fontan, Dachas from Malyi Fontan to the Hippodrome, Properties that look on the Hippodrome, Properties from Sennaia square to Bol’shoi Fontan, Properties from building 2 and part of the Hippodrome, Dachas towards Kulikovo pole, Properties at the ex-botanical garden, and Properties behind the botanical garden towards Bol’shoi Fontan. Stephen Ralli (1821–1901) Rentier, ex-merchant, son of John Ralli, Consul of the United States in Odessa.

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value 539,500 roubles), William Wagner79 (2 properties of 328,475 roubles), Iakov Cherepennikov80 (10 properties of 311,089 roubles), Grigorii Marazli81 (10  properties of 275,283 roubles), Alexander Kumbaris82 (4 properties of 222,125 roubles), James Cortazzi83 (9 properties of 213,590 roubles), Theodore Rodocanachi84 (8 properties of 220,425 roubles), Constantin Papudov85 (5 properties of 192,592 roubles), Nathan Villenz86 (5 properties of 164,318 ­roubles), and Mordko Vurgaft87 (5 properties of 161,143 roubles) (see Maps  5  and 6). Therefore, among the wealthiest residents according to the payment of municipal taxes were five Greeks, one Russian, one German, one British, and two Jews. Eight out of ten were Honorary Citizens and had had successful careers as merchants of the first guild while two were still actively engaged in trade. Real estate fever swept the Greek grain merchant community. A typical example was Constantin Papudov who converted his two large grain warehouses on Sobornaia Square (today’s 61 Sobornaia) into apartments in 1870 (see Map 5).88 On 1 Primorskii Bul’var, the three-storey mansion of Count Pototskii, built in 1826, was purchased in the mid–1850s by G. Marazli. To the design of the architect F.V. Gonsiorovskii, the central wing of the building was enlarged, several additional four-storey buildings were built on the garden side, and Renaissance-style detailing was affixed to the facades. A building on 66 Pushkinskaia that belonged to the Greek merchants Marazli and Palauzov (a Greek 79

William Wagner (1803–1882), Foreign Merchant of German descent, Calvinist, partner of James Cortazzi. In 1833 he became a first guild merchant. He founded the company “V. Vagner and Co.” 80 Iakov Cherepennikov was Russian and Honorary Citizen of Odessa. 81 Grigorii Marazli (1831–1907), son of the Greek merchant Grigorii Marazli, Orthodox, Russian subject. He lived in Paris during his youth. He was a collector of rare books, philanthropist and City-Prefect of Odessa for fifteen years. 82 Alexander Kumbaris (1763–1861), Greek merchant, Orthodox, member of the 1rst guild in 1830 and Honorary Citizen in 1841. 83 James Cortazzi, British Merchant, Anglican, Russian subject, first-guild merchant in 1826. From 1830 onwards he became director of the Odessa branch of the Commercial Bank. 84 Theodore Rodocanachi (1797–1882), Greek merchant, industrialist and banker, Orthodox. Member of the first guild since 1819. 85 Constantin Papudov (1789–1879), Greek merchant, Orthodox, Russian subject. Member of the first guild, Honorary citizen and commercial counselor. 86 Nathan Villenz was a Jewish merchant. 87 Mordko Vurgaft, Jewish merchant and Honorary Citizen. In 1853 he was a member of the second guild and in 1856–57 he became member of the 1st guild. 88 Gubar’, Starye doma, 131–32.

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of Nezhin in northern Ukraine), was designed by the Italian architect Franz Iosipovich Morandi in Renaissance style; in the 1880s it was transformed into apartments for rent and was donated by its owners to the Greek Philanthropic Society in 1898. The society collected the twenty-three rents from the three-storied building on an annual basis securing a stable income from this property.89 During the first decade of the twentieth century, Odessa’s grain trade suffered from serious drawbacks that restricted the transactions of the big export companies in favour of small middlemen. A long series of harvest failures and the disorganisation of trade caused serious deficits and forced large capital-­ intensive firms such as Mahs, Anatra, Ashkenazy, Dreyfus Bros and Valler Bros to suspend operations. To fill the void caused by their absence, banks and small middlemen formed companies, which were unreliable, both in respect to the quality of products exported and in keeping to the terms of their contracts. As a result and as the commercial press noted, confidence in Odessa’s export trade was undermined.90 6 The Diversified Entrepreneur Starting in the 1870s, a new kind of diversified businessman appeared in response to the crisis in the wheat trade in Odessa and in order to exploit the new opportunities for profit that were becoming available principally through the expansion of the banking system and industry. This was the so-called multifarious entrepreneur, a respectable and successful businessman91 who engaged simultaneously in trade, industry, banking and sea transport. Two examples of this type of entrepreneur are Theodore Rodocanachi of Greek origin and Ernst Mahs of German extraction, two of the biggest exporters in the grain trade in the years 1830–1880. Studying their parallel trajectories reveals common characteristics and strategies in their careers. The first point of comparison relates to the year and manner of their entry into the Odessan market. Ernst Mahs and Co. was established in Odessa in 1838. Mahs first moved to Odessa as a partner in the firm of the St. Petersburg banker Baron Ludwig Stieglitz, which opened a branch in Odessa and was the largest

89 90 91

daoo, fond 765, opis’ 1, delo 14, Odesskoe grecheskoe blagotvoritel’noe obshchestvo, Income and expense documents of the gbao for the years 1903–1905. Torgovo-Promyshlennaia Gazeta, no 248, November 20/December 3, 1905. Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute,” 41, 44–47.

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exporter of wheat there from 1833 to 1836.92 Consequently, and until he set up his own company, Mahs relied on Stieglitz’s capital, derived from the financial sector of the business as Stieglitz also was Governor-General Vorontsov’s personal banker.93 The mercantile firm of Ernst Mahs and Co. (later Arist and Thomas von Mahs) engaged in the international trade of grain and wool and in banking. Theodore Rodocanachi arrived in Odessa in 1819 a few years before the island of Chios, his place of origin located in the Aegean Sea, was entirely destroyed by the Ottomans in 1822. The other members of his family had previously dispersed to ports across the Mediterranean (Livorno, Marseilles, Syros, and Smyrna) thereby generating an extensive network of importer-­ exporters. He undoubtedly arrived in Odessa with substantial funds since he immediately joined the first guild of the city’s merchants. Both men availed themselves of significant sums of money to join the export sector, Mahs devoting himself to exports from the start, while in Rodocanachi’s case income from exports only surpassed that of imports in the 1840s. The Rodocanachi family engaged in business through the mercantile firms “Theodore P. Rodocanachi”, “Rodocanachi Sons and Co.” and “Pericles Theodore Rodocanachi”. Their primary business interests were trade, shipping and banking. Following the economic crisis of the 1870s in Odessa, both firms expanded their geographic reach by establishing new branches in ports that were ­gaining momentum in the grain trade.94 Rodocanachi in Nikolayev, Mariupol and Rostov-on-Don, Mahs in Νikolayev from which he supplied wheat to Odessa and Kiev but also to Brody, Lvov and the frontier of Austrian Galicia (he also participated in the founding of the Commercial Bank of Nikolayev in 1872). Another response to the crisis was diversification of industrial investments. In 1864, Mahs invested in Odessa’s gasworks company with his partners Eugen Schulz and August Riedinger.95 In 1871, he purchased the property of a great landowner in Deriabchinsk, Podolia, for his son Arist Aristovich, who wanted to apply his knowledge of agrarian economics. Theodore Rodocanachi and his son Pericles, participated in the industrial expansion of the region by opening a flourmill in Sevastopol, a tannery, a jute factory to produce sack and rope, 92

Stieglitz registered a turnover in exports of 3,028,469 roubles in 1833, 1,609,021 in 1834, 3,172,392 in 1835 and 3,581,310 in 1836. See Odesskii Vestnik February 24, 1834, March 9, 1835, March 14, 1836, April 7, 1837. 93 Sartor, Das Haus Mahs, and on the cooperation of Stieglitz and Mahs, 38–39. 94 Κostas G. Avgitidis, Theodoros Paulou Rodokanakes. Ho megalemporos, epicheirematias, ploioktetes kai trapezites tes Odessou (Chios: Alpha pi publishing, 2004), 53; Sartor, Das Haus Mahs, 64. 95 Sartor, Das Haus Mahs, 67.

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wine and champagne processing plants, a brewery and, in addition, invested in gold extraction consortia in East Siberia.96 Participation in societies and social welfare was another common practice that marked the social aspect of the entrepreneurs’ activities, an overnight asylum and the Evangelical-Lutheran Hospital in the case of Arist and Thomas von Mahs and the Rodocanacheion Greek School for girls for Rodocanachi (see Map 5). Both men were members of the City Duma for many years and bore the title of Honorary Citizen. In the early 1890s, the birzha (stock exchange) played a crucial role in regulating the grain trade and promoting the interests of the merchant elite. Designed by the architect Aleksandr Bernardazzi in commemoration of Odessa’s 100th anniversary, the new birzha building was highly organised to facilitate the purchase and sale of samples of grain and was run by professional brokers (maklers) according to fixed rules. Thirty-eight merchants of the first guild and forty seven of the second were members of the Association of the birzha (Odesskoe Birzhevoe Obshchestvo) in 1894.97 The board of directors was elected from among the membership and included Eugen I. Shults (Arist Mahs’ partner and ceo, of German descent), Αngelo Α. Anatra (shipowner, merchant and industrialist), Solomon G. Zusman (of Jewish descent), M. M. Kozhevnikov, P ­ ericles Th. Rodocanachi (banker, industrialist, of Greek descent), A. N. Trabotti (merchant, of Italian origin) and Osip S. Khais (of Jewish descent). The multi-ethnic collegiality of the stock exchange board of directors is noteworthy in that it unambiguously demonstrates the absence of ethnic discrimination among Odessa’s elite. On the contrary, common interests generated a united pressure group culled from across the city’s economic sectors (trade, shipping, industry and banking), which pressed for improvements in commerce and the economy and was a voice the authorities could not ignore. From the birzha annual report of 1894, it is evident that aside from regularly updating the Railway Commission and the Ministry of Commerce on the prices of wheat, fuel and freight tariffs, the managing committee of the birzha also communicated with and briefed various state agencies. To these agencies, it also addressed demands regarding taxation and the rights of the traders’ soslovie, amendments to customs’ duties, adjustments to labour rules in the factories and manufactories of Odessa. In addition, the committee participated in conferences with representatives of the Ministry of Transportation regarding the creation of a new port for international trade on the lower reaches of the Dnieper.

96 Avgitidis, Theodoros Paulou Rodokanakes, 63–65. 97 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2166, ll. 150–55, Report on the activities of Odessa’s Birzha for the year 1894.

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Thirty accredited maklers (brokers) at the birzha managed the rules under which financial transaction contracts for the buying and selling of wheat were executed and had final authority in resolving disputes that resulted from any infringement of the rules.98 The maklers were supervised by the General Head Broker (Gof-makler) who held the position for life. In 1894, I. G. Kovler, due to illness, retired from the board of directors of Odessa’s birzha and, on November 11, appointed D. Μ. Xanthopoulos as the new Gof-makler. Xanthopoulos’ appointment was confirmed by the Department of Trade and Industry in 1895 and his first undertaking was the selection of wheat samples for the upcoming agricultural exposition in Bordeaux in France. In conclusion, the consolidation of Odessa’s economic elite and its formulation of demands for improvement in the general economy of the city preceded the granting of political rights and the liberalisation of the tsarist regime (1905), an occurrence that foreshadows the establishment of a bourgeoisie in the last decade before the revolution. The birzha was an early first step in selfexpression for the entrepreneurs and was in essence mercantile. The industrialists were slow to organise independent special-interest associations. The formation of the familiar type of industrialists’ associations occurred only in 1910. As such, industry only promoted its economic interests seriously during wwi. It should be noted here that censorship of the press prior to 1905 clouds the study of the degree to which the economic elite pressed political claims. For lack of evidence, we can only extrapolate and attempt to interpret tangentially whether municipal authorities or the state acceded to the demands. As a result, it is difficult to follow the process by which the entrepreneurial elite matured or emancipated itself economically and politically and to what extent they did so. 7 The “Political” Entrepreneur After 1905, entrepreneurs were more openly involved in politics and joined political affinity groups in the City and State Dumas such as the progressive and the conservative alliances. Guido Hausmann describes the “political” entrepreneur as one who became involved in politics after the Manifesto of 1905, which included for the first time freedom of association, abolition of censorship and formation of labour unions and political organisations.99

98 99

daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 3907, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Instructions on the duties of the maklers, August 1, 1915. Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute”, 58–64.

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An  example is Artur Antonovich Anatra (1875–1943), banker and member of the City Duma, who pioneered the aircraft manufacturing industry (Anatra Aircraft Works) and built more than 1,700 aircraft for Russia’s war industry, most of them designed by the firm’s own engineers.100 The history of the Anatra entrepreneurial family offers an example of the evolution and the adaptation of Odessite entrepreneurs to the economic changes in the city during the nineteenth century. In the 1820s Giuseppe Anatra, a merchant captain from Palermo, imported Italian goods to Odessa. His grandsons, Giuseppe, Antonio, Angelo and Bartolomeo, founded the Anatra Trade and Shipping Company, which engaged in the grain trade and coastal and maritime transport. In the 1870s, Bartolomeo Anatra diversified the family’s enterprises into banking and industry: the Anatra Flour Mill, the Odessa Discount Bank, and an important share in the Bessarabian-Tauride Bank were his enterprises; he also sponsored the Odessa Flour-Milling School and founded an insurance fund for the workers in the mill.101 Finally, Artur Anatra was the entrepreneur who established aircraft aviation in Odessa, employing a thousand workers in manufacturing and assembly during wwi. He also sponsored the journal Zaria Aviatsii and was a founding member of the Odessa Air Club. At the end of the Imperial period, Odessa was endowed with a dynamic group of entrepreneurs who were flexible and capable of adapting to new conditions and changes in the economy. Yet it did not incubate a bourgeoisie conscious of its requirements and needs as a class that could impose its political and economic agenda on the authorities. There were undoubtedly many causes for the debilitation of the bourgeoisie’s political identity. Perhaps the most important reason for this can be ascribed to the strategy pursued by the state, privileging members of the bourgeois elite through the bestowal of titles and perks. The granting of the title of Honorary Citizen to the most successful merchants, an imperial invention of 1831–2, and the attendant changes that it brought to their lives had the consequence of isolating the dynamic part of the putative bourgeoisie, the upper middle class, from the rest of the mercantile community. Incorporating the entrepreneurial elite into the echelons of the city’s aristocracy and bureaucratic and military notables, created a serious impediment to the formation of the bourgeois class. Social recognition at the side of titled society, not to mention exemption from taxes, was generally irresistible motivations for acquiring or accepting the title. From Odessa’s founding to

100 Igor Yeykelis, “Artur Anatra: Odessan Entrepreneur, 1914–1919,” The historian 61/2 (1999): 311–26. 101 Yeykelis, “Artur Anatra,” 315.

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1895, a total of 245 inhabitants of the city had been granted the title of hereditary or personal Honorary Citizen, among them the most successful merchants and commercial counsellors of Russian, Greek, Jewish, German, and French origin.102 Merchants who had more than ten years of successful membership in the first guild were eager to apply for and even to buy the title. The application was submitted to city hall, which forwarded it to the Imperial Senate103 or tsar for approval along with a recommendation praising the applicant’s value to the city.104 Alfred Rieber has underscored that the fragmented character of the middle classes in Russia was one of the principal reasons that a profile of political and social consciousness did not emerge and that they did not evolve into a cohesive class that would struggle for political and cultural supremacy.105 Entrepreneurs referred to themselves not as a bourgeoisie, a term that was unpopular with the bureaucracy, intellectuals and workers, but as members of the trade and industry class, even at the peak of their power. Sergei F. Shtern, a member of the State Duma from Odessa who belonged to the Kadet Party said: “In Russia an industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, in the European sense of the word, had not appeared yet. There were of course isolated merchants and industrialist but no coherent social class, no common decision making, no common ideology.”106 Two factors prevented the bourgeoisie from dominating Odessa although it was an urban centre par excellence. The first concerned the ethnic divisions among the members of the middle class and, more precisely, the fact that the largest ethnic group, Russians, was proportionately smaller in the middle strata in comparison to Jews, Greeks and Germans. The 1897 All-Russian Census, which casts light on the professions of the ethnicities of the city, decodes the class structure of these ethnicities.107 Only 11 percent of the Russianspeaking population was employed in middle class professions compared to 18 percent of those speaking German, 36 percent Yiddish and 36 percent 102 daoo, fond 16, opis’ 125, delo 2. At least 29.9 % of the entitled citizens were Jews. 103 Together with the State Duma these institutions were legislative, judicial and executive bodies. 104 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 312, Case of the merchant Pavel Iraklidi, 21 January 1852. Letter of the City-Prefect of Odessa to the Governing Senate. 105 Alfred J. Rieber, “The Fragmented ‘Middle Ranks’,” in Μajor Problems in the History of Imperial Russia, ed. by James Cracraft (Lexington, ma: D. C. Heath and Co, 1994), 494–504. 106 Penter, Odessa 1917, 185. 107 See, Appendix, Table 7, Social stratification of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Greeks, and Jews by source of income of the economically active population, 1897.

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Greek. A second hindrance was the low level of collaboration between merchants and industrialists, a fact that is associated with the nature and development of Odessa’s industry. Both factors weakened the power of the bourgeoisie relative to other classes and its evolution towards political emancipation. Despite the merchants’ presence on the Board of the Stock Exchange as described above, entrepreneurs and merchants cooperated only loosely in upholding common economic concerns in Odessa. The industrialists attempted to separate themselves from the merchants and promote their own specific interests, particularly as they related to labour relations and the procurement of raw materials, by establishing the Union of Industrialists of Odessa. This tendency was followed in 1915 by the Committee of War Industries (Voenno-promyshlennyi Komitet), which included representatives of the Union, bankers, insurance companies, and merchants and extended its responsibilities to the Podolia, Bessarabia, Kherson and Tauride regions. In 1816, Odessa’s entrepreneurs founded another regional industrialists’ organization, the Association of Industrialists of Southern Russia (Obshchestvo promyshlennikov iuga Rossii – Proiug). As a result, the organisation of the industrialists of the South accelerated. The establishment of institutions representing the entrepreneurs of the South, Moscow and St. Petersburg had become a fact, as had organisation at a regional level by branch of industry, like the Association of Southern Coal and Steel Producers. Nonetheless, despite the great economic power, the industrialist groups had acquired regionally, they were not unified at a national level and were not able to translate their economic predominance into a political one.108 As Tanja Penter suggests, even on the eve of 1917, the economic elite of Odessa was fractured.109 Despite the influence that the Committee of War Industries exerted, the opinions of its member industrialists diverged. The armaments industry had profited greatly from military procurement while those that dealt in the import of raw materials were devastated. In addition, antagonistic economic interests were in evidence between the large and small to midsize businesses, the latter of which did not have representative organizations. 8 At the Commercial Court Τhe archives of the Commercial Court provide an opportunity to observe interethnic relations and the ways in which merchants resolved their trade

108 Rieber, Merchants and Entrepreneurs, 333–412. 109 Penter, Odessa 1917, 426.

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disputes. Commercial courts were among the first judicial institutions created in newly-born South Russian port-cities early in the 19th century. Their purpose was the resolution of disputes between merchants and, thereby, the facilitation of their role as the engines of the economic development of South Russia’s’ continental and maritime zones. In the pre-reform era, each social class had its own separate judicial system. There were courts for peasants in village districts, municipal ones for cities, aulic for the aristocracy and further specialised ones such as the ecclesiastic and military courts. Their members were nearly always elected but mostly had no professional training for the offices they filled. Moreover, the diversity and complexity of pre-reform court procedures, the elaborate formality that denied access to illiterates and the non-existence of lawyers (until 1864), or trained assessors, made the functioning of the legal system impossible.110 More than 2,000,000 cases were awaiting decision at the beginning of Nicholas I’s reign and 127,000 persons were in jail pending sentencing.111 Bribery was so widespread that it was the subject of Gogol’s satirical play The Inspector General of 1836. Russia urgently needed a new and independent judiciary to reform its inefficient and corrupt administration and bolster the plummeting morale of its officers. The development of industry and trade depended entirely on this being accomplished.112 In Odessa, the commercial court was founded on November 26, 1808 by imperial decree. Duc de Richelieu, the city’s first governor, fully supported the institution, which he considered essential for convincing merchants to settle in the city and, consequently, the development of trade. Commercial courts were established in 12 Russian cities involved in international trade and relied on foreign merchants: Archangelsk (1821), Moscow (1833), St. Petersburg (1832), Warsaw, Tiblisi, Kharkov, Ismail (1824), Novocherkassk (1835), Kerch, Theodosia (1819) and Taganrog (1818). The members of the court of Odessa were elected from among the most distinguished merchant traders and met on a daily basis and reviewed three to twelve suits a day.113 The cases involved 110 Samuel Kucherov, Courts, Lawyers and Τrials under the Last Three Tsars (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1953), 1–19. 111 Kucherov, Courts, 3. 112 W. Bruce Lincoln, The Great Reforms. Autocracy, Bureaucracy and the Politics of Change in Imperial Russia (Dekalb, il: Northern Illinois University Press, 1990), 107. 113 Liliia Belousova, “Fond Odesskogo kommercheskogo suda kak istochnik dlia izuchenia delovoi zhizni Odessi 19 – nachala 20 vv.,” in Hrets’ke pidpryemnytstvo i torhivlia u Pivnichnomu Prychornomor’ï 18 – 19 stolittia. Zbirnyk naukovykh statei, ed. by H. V. Boriak et al. (Kiev: Instytut istoriï Ukraïny, Natsional’na akademiia nauk Ukraïny; Kentro Neoellenikon Ereunon, Ethniko Hidryma Ereunon, 2012), 35–49.

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the resolution of conflicts between individual traders and their transcripts, as recorded in the session logs of the Commercial Court, reveal much about the manner in which business was transacted and about the leading characters of the mercantile community, their social position and ethnicity. The Court’s rulings were either final or, in some instances, could be appealed to a higher tribunal. Police officers were responsible for the enforcement of the law and the court’s decisions. In addition, the Commercial Court was responsible for keeping records tracking the city’s businesses and their owners’ assets, the taxes they paid or owed, all contracts and other documents that affected their and their families’ estates, their real estate transactions, loans, mortgages, wills, securities, asset exchanges, gifts, marriage contracts and dowries, etc.114 The instability of the business environment that characterised the first decades following the foundation of Odessa is corroborated by the frequent decisions of the Commercial Court regarding bankruptcies or inability to service debt and confiscations of stores or merchandise as publicised in the press.115 In 1875, during the economic downturn and crisis in the grain trade of Odessa, the Court registered the insolvency of forty companies.116 The Commercial Court provided detailed inventories of merchants’ assets and evaluated the price of land, buildings and movable possessions for reference in case of death or change of ownership.117 It could also impose confiscation of assets for outstanding debts to the city.118 114 Belousova, “Fond Odesskogo kommercheskogo suda”, 38–45. 115 In 1824 for instance, a ruling of the Commercial Court dissolving the French owned company Charles della Vos et Cie was published in the Journal d’Odessa, no 68, August 23, 1824. 116 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 958, Letter-response of Odessa’s City-Prefect to the inquiry of Odessa’s Gof-Makler Bernshtein concerning the economic crisis and addressed to the Minister of the Interior, January 2, 1875. 117 One such assessment involved the residence of the prominent Odessite merchant and municipal leader, Demetrios Inglesi, a native of the Ionian Islands. The value of his house in the third sector of the city, on block 78 facing Khersonskaia and Torgovaia Streets, along with its storefronts was assessed at 200,000 roubles (asignat) by the city’s architect Torricelli in 1837. The property comprised a two-story stone house with two stone propylaea on the facade, twelve rooms and a cellar, three two-story shops, a warehouse, and a courtyard with a well. daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 1894, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Report of Torricelli to the Commercial Court, January 29, 1835. 118 For non-payment of a municipal fine of 24,700 roubles levied on the merchant German Gerchenstein, the Commercial Court resorted to the sale of his private residence and dependent structures located on block 67 no 723, in the first sector of the city. Odesskii Vestnik, no 22, March 16, 1846.

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Evidence from the minutes of the Commercial Court in the second half of the nineteenth century may shed light on the modus operandi of traders, and the ways companies attempted to resolve disputes and to streamline their trade transactions. The cases described offer priceless insight into the investigation of inter- and intra-ethnic relations among the merchant and entrepreneurial strata of Odessa and challenge our assumptions about whether and to what extent ethno-religious affiliation affected the professional or class factor and vice versa. The commercial community at the level of the first and second guilds had its own “language”, and its own rules to which the registered merchants adhered regardless of ethnic or religious background. Trade was, first and foremost, a matter of cooperation and, as such, was governed by commonly a­ ccepted rules. These covered trade’s fundamental organisation, the content of and how contracts were signed and sealed for the purchase and sale of wheat as well as the manner in which loans were given and repaid. This was especially true for contracts regulated at the birzha by the maklers. Free from all personal relationships with trade and traders, Odessa’s maklers strove by strict adherence to the rules to create standard practices that responded to the demands of the international market. Their primary goal was the homogeneity of the product and the improvement of the quality of wheat for export.119 An example of the application of standardised regulation is that wheat containing more than 6 percent foreign matter was considered officially adulterated. Any divergence between sample and actual cargo had to be declared to the birzha within a day. In cases of disagreement between buyers and sellers, testing for contaminants was executed by the birzha’s overseers.120 In cases where the seller did not deliver in a timely manner, the buyer could request the return of his down payment. Should a buyer not take possession of merchandise in the term agreed to in the contract of sale, the seller could, after 3 days, sell the consignment on the birzha and charge the original buyer any difference in the price along with any expenses resulting from the process. Measures to control contaminants were extended to all types of wheat and were further reinforced as a result of increased competition from other exporting nations, principally the usa, and

119 daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 3907, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Regulations of the Birzha, found in the suit of the commercial house “Anatra Bros” versus Shmul Shlemov Finkel’ for 6,000 roubles, August 1, 1915. 120 The American consular reports attest to many inconsistencies regarding the export of merino wool from Odessa and Rostov on Don to New York. νara, American Consular Dispatches from Odessa, January 28, 1897, January 8, 1897, December 16, 1897.

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following frequent complaints regarding inconsistencies in, and the quality of, Russian exports. The regulations of Odessa’s market were free of ethno-religious reference. The grain market was an arena open to all. Those with religious and other restrictions on their commercial activities were obliged to work around its regulations. Jewish stores and workplaces, for instance, tended to adjust by generally not closing on Saturdays. The same applied in factories where most Jewish industrialists not only adhered to the Christian Orthodox calendar in order to be competitive but quite often preferred Christian workers for the same reason.121 The greatest number of disputes to be resolved by the Commercial Court involved past due promissory notes, which the accused party, once found guilty, had to pay with additional costs for being overdue. Most such parties did not present themselves in court resulting in final rulings against them without resort to appeal.122 Cases involving the violation of the terms of trade or financial exchange agreements were presented daily at the Court. The plaintiff in such cases sued anyone and everyone who damaged his financial interests regardless of ethnicity.123 The court adjudicated cases between powerful mercantile firms as well as between parties of unequal economic heft. There is no evidence of discrimination or of forced compromises based on ethnicity or inequality of financial means.124 Ethnicity itself was not a protection against legal action (although social status as we will discuss later, could constitute a

121 Weinberg, “Worker Organizations,” 80–81. 122 daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2140 and fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2151, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Lawsuits of The Board of the mining company Golobovkoe Berestovo-Bogodukhovskoe [tovarishchestvo] against the commercial firm “Spivakov and Flaks” for three promissory notes of 1,500 roubles, due May 13, 1905; fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2151, Lawsuit of the Jewish Firm “D. Baram and Co” versus “G. Tarle and A. Landau,” for nine promissory notes of a total value of 1,850 roubles, due May 27, 1905. 123 See the following lawsuits as indicative: Anatra Bros (of Italian origin) against the Jewish merchant Moisei Makhlis, lawsuit of the second guild Jewish merchant Yersha Kogon from Olvidiopol against the prominent firm C.B.M. Rabinovich of Odessa, lawsuit of the Greek first guild merchant Efstratios Sevastopulo against the Greek P. K. Sklavos. daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2540, March 3, 1906; fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2509, March 16, 1906; and fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2540, August 7, 1868. 124 See indicatively the lawsuit of the meshchanka Hana Reiza Brandt against the commercial counselor O. Khais of the merchant firm “O. Khais” for a debt of 1,000 roubles he owed her. The court obliged Khais to reimburse her. daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2536, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, from February 28, 1906 to March 14, 1906.

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refuge where extra-judicial compromise might be sought when vital economic interests were at stake). A case in point: In 1868, the Greek merchant Efstratios Sevastopulo sued a compatriot, P. Κ. Sklavos, for not collecting or paying for the balance of an order of stearin candles supplied by Sevastopulo from the Krestovnikov Bros’ factory in Odessa.125 Sklavos’ intent was to resell the product in question in Constantinople. Despite receiving candles of a different quality from the first batch, Sklavos had not specified the quality or required a sample of the product in question and, furthermore, did not protest on receipt of the batch. The rules set by the maklers for contracts demanded as precise a description of the quality of an order as was practically feasible, and gave the dissatisfied purchaser a certain amount of time to protest and the right to submit samples to the birzha for testing. Sklavos had not followed the birzha’s requirements in his purchase contract. As a result, the Commercial Court was obligated to side with Sevastopulo and only offer Sklavos the opportunity to auction off the remaining candles if he did not want them. Resolutions of lawsuits between economically viable parties typically resulted in the impositions of fines while punitive settlements against those unable to pay them led to the auctioning of assets or merchandise, the establishment of creditors’ committees, or, in extreme cases, imprisonment. In the case of the Jewish merchant of the first guild Iacov Rabinovich of the firm Leon Rabinovich against Moisei Iakovlevich Rakhat, also a Jewish merchant, for non-payment of three promissory notes totalling 1,127 roubles, the plaintiff demanded the seizure of moveable assets (scrap iron) located in stores and warehouses in the event that promissory notes and the appropriate interest were not forthcoming. The Court sided with the plaintiff and further imposed the court costs on the defendant.126 So also in the case of two lower middle class Jewish residents of Odessa, Srul Froim Edvabnyi of Golovanevsk against the bankrupt Leon Shmul Khortik of Odessa: the former having sold a quantity of flour without ever receiving payment from the latter was demanding the latter’s imprisonment, given that all his assets had been sold at auction.127

125 daoo, find 18, opis’ 1, delo 959, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Lawsuit of Efstratios Sevastopulo against P. K. Sklavos, August 7, 1858. 126 daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 1717, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Lawsuit of Iacov Rabinovich against Moisei Rakhat, September 11, 1891 to January 30, 1893. 127 daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 2077, June 15, 1904 and ll. 1–1v, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, Lawsuit of Srul Froim Edvabnyi against Leon Shmul Khortik, April 7, 1891.

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In bankruptcy cases a committee of creditors was established, which oversaw the auction of insolvent debtors’ assets or even approved further loans with the goal of rescuing the businesses in question in the hope of recouping outstanding debts. The Commercial Court also protected lenders whether large loan institutions or individuals who lent small sums. When in 1874, for example, the wine merchant of Greek origin, Andrea Troiano of Odessa went bankrupt; the proxy for the branch of the Commercial Bank of Moscow requested that repayment of Τroiano’s debt of 9,850 roubles to the bank be given precedence over his other debts. Needless to say, the council representing the parties who had loaned Troiano smaller sums (including the Greek merchants Panagi Philipaki, Ivan Sklavos, Christofor Doriza, the attorney L. Raskov, D. Gerasimov, not to mention his wife Laoura Troiano) disagreed. In the end, the Court decided on the forfeiture of the merchant’s assets and the auction of his stock of wine in order to repay all his creditors.128 In respect to bankruptcy, it seems that the higher the social position of the merchant in question the greater the court’s reluctance to dragging his name in the dirt. The judges who handled cases involving business disagreements were distinguished merchants and Honorary Citizens themselves and took care to protect both plaintiffs and defendants by proposing compromise solutions. So it was in the case of the dissolution of Pericles Theodore Rodocanachi’s anonymous holding company when disagreement occurred regarding the degree of financial responsibility of the partners G. Synadino and Constantin Petrovich Kalotti; specifically whether they were active or silent partners and therefore equally liable for the bankruptcy as Rodocanachi or only on a limited basis. The Court’s panel of judges, composed of important merchants (A. A. Anatra, S. Y. Ζysman and Isaac Germanovich Tiktin), accepted the personal mediation of Grigorii Gr. Marazli; the confidential advisor, Honorary Citizen, City-Prefect of Odessa and patriarch of the Greek community was permitted to arrange an out-of-court settlement in order to ensure that “Pericles Rodocanachi’s name was not exposed in a common court room.”129 Apparently, the company directed exclusively by Rodocanachi yielded profits and substantial dividends in its first year of operation but subsequently depleted its capital reserve. Synadino attempted to disengage but Rodocanachi,

128 daoo, fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 1045 and fond 18, opis’ 1, delo 1047, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud, January 10, 1874 to January 12, 1877, Lawsuits of his creditors against Andrea Troiano. 129 daoo, fond 188, opis’ 1, delo 18, Semeinyi Fond Rodokanaki-Iur’evichei, Rodocanachi’s Papers, Proceedings of the Court of Third Instance, 1901–1906.

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in whom he had complete confidence and respect, asked him to continue to support the company. He was not, however, prepared to shoulder the damages resulting from Rodocanachi’ unfortunate handling of the company and considered it quite appropriate that Rodocanachi’s heirs pay the debts. Ultimately, all parties involved accepted Μarazli’s suggestion that the case be settled ­privately out of court. Although the resolution of the case remains unknown, it illustrates how entrepreneurs and “respectable” citizens of Rodocanachi’s influence could screen themselves from exposure to the public humiliation of court proceedings by securing the extra-judicial cooperation of equally “­respectable” mediators as Marazli. Regardless of their ethnic origin, plaintiffs were frequently represented by Jewish lawyers, proving Jewish prominence in matters of law. In the 1880s, in fact, the law was nearly exclusively a Jewish profession. In 1886, twenty one of the twenty five graduates of the University of Novorossiia were Jews.130 Graduates worked for the city as lawyers or interns, or were employed by the courts but could also go into private practice, thereby avoiding the restrictions imposed on Jews by the state. G. Hausmann notes that segregation in the liberal professions reflected the restrictions imposed on Jews’ access to middle and higher education (numerus clausus).131 Until 1904, most Jewish graduates of the law school worked as legal assistants and not as lawyers, due to the difficulties involved in acquiring a license that the authorities were reluctant to issue to Jews. Thus the licensing application of the famous legal assistants D. Kogan-Bernshtein and G. Bliumenfel’d for promotion to full attorney status were rejected by the provincial court.132 9 Transcending Communal Boundaries in Capital Raising An interesting aspect of business relationships to explore as regards the degree of cross-ethnic cooperation is the contribution of entrepreneurs of different ethnic origins in the formation of equity capital for, or simply the management (as general or limited partners) of, mercantile or entrepreneurial corporations. As certified by documents of the Commercial Court where the firm, its equity capital and the entrepreneurs involved were recorded, the most frequent type of company was family-run under the commercial trademark of the father or

130 Hausmann, Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 362. 131 Hausmann, Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 362. 132 Hausmann, Universität und städtische Gesellschaft in Odessa, 362.

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brothers. In the middle years of the nineteenth century it seems that the big companies of the first guild amassed capital of around 200,000 to 250,000 roubles and the shareholders were usually first or second degree relatives. Family relationships ensured trust, reduced operating expenses, and perpetuated the founder’s business traditions within the company culture. This was the case in the family firm of Raffalovich and Co., one of the most successful Jewish wheat traders, which included the first-guild trader Abraham Raffalovich and his son Lev and operated with a capital of 250,000 silver roubles.133 Another thriving firm with branches in Odessa and Taganrog was a professional collaboration between the titans of trade, Ralli and Scaramanga.134 In keeping with the traditional customs of the island of Chios of very close professional relationships and frequent marriages between first or second cousins135 and following extensive experience in Odessa’s international trade, the Ralli firm inaugurated a new company in mid-century: “Ralli Cousins,” a partnership among first cousins, which covered all of South Russia and was responsive to the changes in the wheat market following the Crimean War. This required greater geographic mobility and relocation in the direction of the Sea of Azov. After the Crimean War the Odessa-based founder of the family business, John Ralli (Ivan Stepanovich Ralli 1797–1873), and his brothers in London were expanding their business interests toward India, while his son, Stepan (Stephen) Ivanovich Ralli (1821–1901), withdrew from trade in favour of real estate in Odessa, like many of his contemporaries. However, John Ralli senior (Ivan Stepanovich Ralli) chose, just prior to retirement, a joint venture with his relatives, the Scaramanga brothers, in the direction of the Sea of Azov, the up-and-coming region for wheat production. The petition submitted to the Duma announced the formation of the company among John Ralli, trader of the first guild of Odessa, and his brother Thomas Ralli, trader of the first guild of Constantinople, and the three Scaramanga brothers: Pandia, trader of the first guild of St. Petersburg, Εfstratios, trader of the first guild of Kerch who lived in Τaganrog, and Ιvan Scaramanga, trader of the first guild also of Κerch who lived in Rostov.136

133 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 255, Report of the City-Prefect of Odessa on the commercial company Abraham Raffalovich, May 31, 1850. 134 On the merchant houses of Ralli and Scaramanga, see Kardases, Diaspora Merchants, 159–162; Chapman, Merchant Enterprise, 155–56. 135 See the intermarriages among members of the Chiot merchant network in Odessa, Kardases, Diaspora Merchants, 152–53, 162–63. 136 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 237, Report to the City-Prefect of Odessa, January 27, 1850.

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The company had posted its partners in the grain export epicentres of South Russia and Constantinople, and was in a good position to respond to the geographic explosion of the wheat trade with a new organisational structure. The five partners contributed equally to the company’s investment capital of 200,000 silver roubles, although profits were divided 50/50 between the two sets of brothers, Ralli and Scaramanga, reflecting the value of the nonmonetary assets contributed by the Ralli firm (more contacts, larger client networks, easier access to credit, among others). The City-Prefect of Odessa had little to do other than to forward the petition to the Department of Industry and International Trade of the Finance Ministry. It is noteworthy that the participants in the Ralli-Scaramanga partnership signed no written agreements or contracts among themselves as was customary in other commercial firms; the agreement for the founding of their company was exclusively verbal. This instance demonstrates the degree of trust that existed in the economic and family n ­ etworks of natives of Chios who had developed global business concerns.137 Research into the contracts of the trading houses rarely comes across partnerships between merchants of different ethnicities, implying that there was a limit to the degree of trust when it involved absolute responsibility for the fate of a company.138 A rare exception was a company founded in 1871 specifically to exploit Odessites’ need for ready cash during the economic downturn and accepted personal property and jewellery as guarantees for loans. This private pawn brokerage was a collaboration of former merchants of diverse ethnic origins who had all become Honorary Citizens. Included among them were Greeks (Zarifi and Kriona Papa Nikola, Palauzov), Bulgarians (Milovanov), Russians (Kislov and Posokhov), and the Collegiate Counsellor Viktor Dubetskii.139 Another example was the houses of Iosif Moiseievich Neimann and Stelian

137 Chapman, Merchant Enterprize, 154–156; Fairlie, “The Anglo-Russian grain trade,” 265–275; Harlaftis, A History of Greek-owned Shipping, 43–51; Katerina Vourkatioti, “The House of Ralli Bros (c. 1814–1961)” in Following the Nereids, ed. Chatziioannou and Harlaftis, 99–110; Maria Christina Chatziioannou, “Nees prosengiseis ste melete ton emporikon diktyon tes diasporas: he hellenike koinoteta tou Mantsester,” in Diaspora, Diktya, Diaphotismos, ed. Stasinopoulou and Chatziioannou, 156–164; Pepelasis Minoglou, “The Greek Merchant House of the Russian Black Sea;” Harlaftis, “Mapping the Greek Maritime Diaspora, 147–169; Sifneos, “Diaspora Entrepreneurship Revisited,” 44–48. 138 Spisok torgovykh domov i kupechestva g. Odessy na 1892 god (Odessa: Izdanie Odesskogo birzhevogo komiteta, Slavianskaia Tipografiia N. Khrisogelos, 1892). List of companies in business in Odessa in 1892 compiled by the Stock Exchange. 139 Ustav Odesskogo chastnogo lombarda (Odessa, 1871).

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Panaiotovich Triarchi, as well as Georghi Tvidi and Co., a partnership among Georghi Tvidi, Genrikh Yord, William Christi, and John Gint.140 The industrial sector and, in particular, joint-stock companies were more open to inter-ethnic collaborations than were the merchants. In 1898, Fokion Gavrilovich Koussis, president of the Greek Benevolent Association and first-guild merchant and Moisei Rosenberg (Jewish second-guild merchant) were the founding members of a sugar refinery (Tovarishchestvo Odesskogo sakharo-rafinadnogo zavoda), with a capital investment of 500,000 roubles.141 Finally, the same Pericles Theodore Rodocanachi mentioned above, whose relationship with the Greek community was entirely limited to his name and his father’s inheritance, was a general partner in the company founded by Friedrich Melkhiorovich Enni in 1883.142 Rodocanachi, diversified entrepreneur and landlord, married the Polish noblewoman Wenceslawa de Barczewska despite his father’s wishes that “he wed a compatriot approved by his mother.”143 Yet Pericles is not a representative example of cross-ethnic business collaboration. As an assimilated Greek, he represented a new hybrid establishment class, as Jane Burbank describes it, which primarily identified itself as “Russian”.144 Rodocanachi symbolises a new generation of wealthy heirs who distanced themselves from the prototype of their rich merchant ancestors. He forged his own entrepreneurial strategy far different and often in contradiction to his father’s advice as elucidated in his will: “If you wish to continue in trade you must do so carefully and with logic and you must do so as a profession not only to increase your fortune. Because the fortune I’m leaving you is enough to live well for a lifetime, I advise you to be careful and to be aware that it’s more difficult to preserve a fortune that you inherit than one you make on your own”.145 Rodocanachi had a laissez faire managerial approach, delegating responsibility rather than assuming control of the companies himself, which, to a great extent, explains the case described above and instances of corruption and mismanagement.

140 Spisok torgovykh domov, 95, 22. 141 Ustav Visochaishe Utverzhdennogo Tovarishchestva Odesskogo sakharo-rafinadnogo zavoda (Odessa, 1895). 142 Spisok torgovykh domov, 12. 143 daoo, fond 188, opis’ 1, delo 4, Rodocanachi’s papers, Will of Theodore Rodocanachi 1882. 144 Burbank, “Thinking like an Empire,” in Burbank et al., eds. Russian Empire. 145 daoo, fond 188, opis’ 1, delo 7. Rodocanachi’s papers. Will of Theodore Rodocanachi, 1882.

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The lack of evidence for collaborations between businessmen of different ethnic backgrounds in the trading sector may be the result of the legal system that governed trading firms (torgovye doma) and, in particular, the restricted application of limited partnerships that included both active and silent partners. The structure of a hypothetical business of this type could include active full partners (pol’noe tovarishchestvo) and outside investors or limited partners of any social estate (tovarishchestvo na vere) who took no part in the management of the firm.146 Only three firms of this type are registered in the registry of companies of 1892: Friedrich Krone and Co. (from 1858), Georgii Vucina (from  1830) and Georghi Tvidi and Co. The most common form of trading company was a partnership between two or three merchants, who collaborated in order to operate in the risky environment of the Odessa market, and their alliance was reflected under the multiple names in the company title of the type Blank and Efrussi or of the type Brothers Dreyfus and Co. with Nathan, Constantin and Ruben L’vovich Dreyfus as general partners with full responsibility for the operation of their business. Partners in these cases assumed full responsibility for the debts of the firm.147 Therefore, their liability extended beyond the amount of investment capital they contributed to the firm at its inception to include all their personal assets. The list of firms of the first guild in 1892 demonstrates that the most common form of partnership in trading companies was single proprietorship. It was the simplest form of business, with a single merchant enrolling in one of the guilds, and required only the annual purchase of a trade certificate. The limited liability that the law on corporations and joint-stock companies established removed hindrances in joining capital for big entrepreneurial ventures. Yet, as Thomas Owen points out in respect to Moscow, the distinction between a company with shares and a joint-stock company often remained blurred in Russia. Many family-centred companies were considered corporate because they had shares, but with a very high face value, which were purchased by a restricted circle of people.148 Share companies (sing., aktsionernoe obshchestvo) as they were implemented in Russia had two inefficiencies: first, their inability to function as a real corporate company with low face-value shares, so as to be purchased by a 146 For the various patterns of business firms in merchant Moscow, see Thomas C. Owen, “Doing Business in Merchant Moscow,” in Merchant Moscow. Images of Russia’s Vanished Bourgeoisie, ed. by James L. West and Iurii Petrov (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1998), 31–36. 147 Thomas C. Owen, The Corporation under Russian Law, 1800–1917. A Study in Tsarist Economic Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 11. 148 Owen, The Corporation, 34.

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large number of shareholders; second, their incorporation by concession of the tsar, as required in Russia, and not by simple registration, as in the usa, demonstrated that the main attribute of an incorporation remained unexploited. The financial sector offered more opportunities for inter-ethnic cooperation for big entrepreneurs. As mentioned above, the need for easy access to commercial credit inspired many merchants to found their own banks (­Rodocanachi, Mahs, and Ralli) and to invest capital in buying shares of existing private banks. In 1872, the Land Bank of Bessarabia and Kherson was founded by G. G. Marazli, F. O. Raffalovich, A. F. Steward, K. I. Pisarzhevskii and K. S. Stamerov. The Azov-Don Commercial bank had partners both from the “northern” and “southern” entrepreneurial groups. Founded in 1871, with headquarters in Τaganrog, its founding members were Ivan Scaramanga, Mari Vagliano (Mark Valliano) and Iakov Poliakov, first guild merchants from Taganrog, Mark Drashkovich, first guild merchant from Rostov and the St. Petersburg entrepreneurs, Theodore Rodocanachi (located in Odessa), ­Samuel Gvaer, Leon Rosenthal, the counsellor Mark Varvaki and Samuel ­Poliakov. This strategic allegiance of wealthy Jewish, Russian and Greek entrepreneurs began with the aim of promoting the financing of southern industry and export firms but gradually led to conflicts over leadership. The lack of qualified managers with the requisite financial skills and conflicts of interest between administrators and stockholders produced imbalances that ultimately led to the takeover of the company by the St. Petersburg-based partners and the transfer of the Bank’s headquarters to the capital.149 Limited liability, and the need to draw large sums of capital for big entrepreneurial ventures in anticipation of high profitability in sectors such as banking, railroads, and the heavy industrial complex of the South, promoted broader cooperation between Russian nationals and foreigners. Foreign investment took the form of direct investment in the steel and coal industries and in portfolio investment in corporations operating in Russia.150 There were both exclusively foreign and Russian companies but there were also cases of mixed capital ownership and even more cases in which foreign capital and technology mobilised dormant Russian resources and allowed them to develop dynamically.151

149 Vladimir V. Morozan, “Deiatel’nost Azovskogo-Donskogo Kommercheskogo banka na iuge Rossii xixv” (paper presented at the iiiii Nauchnye chtenia pamiati professora V. I. Borykina, Moscow State University, 31 January 2007), http://hist.msu.ru/Science/ Conf/01_2007 (accessed 14 May 2009). 150 McKay, Pioneers, 13, 225–28, 240–41. 151 McKay, Pioneers, 386–87.

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Foreign capital investment in South Russia from 1890 to 1915 stimulated the exploitation of Russia’s mineral and ore resources and generated heavy industrial complexes. It was this industry that provided the foundation for the development of the Soviet State after 1917. Yet, the penetration of foreign capital was the subject of constant and intense negotiations between the entrepreneurs, the tsarist Ministry of Industry and the bureaucratic apparatus on both the local and the national level. As the Belgians who, along with the French, were among the first to exploit the sources of wealth-generation by investing in the coal and steel industries in southern Russia, themselves admitted, their expansionism in the country was contested by rising Russian nationalism. In this way, the decision taken by the revolutionary government in 1917 to nationalise the industries may also be explained as a reaction to a deeply felt “sense of colonisation”.152 This chapter dealt with the individuals who drove the economy of Odessa and who might have, under other circumstances, been representative of a politically-active bourgeoisie. The traders were few in number and were the de facto upper middle class. Tsarist policy and the social estates structure of Russian society encouraged them to accept gentrification. A much larger group of third guild merchants found itself closer to the proletariat and the city poor. The principal ethno-religious category of Russian speakers had a weak presence in the middle classes. In contrast, Jews, Greeks and Germans were amply represented as is evident from their professions. Although Greek merchants were dominant in the first, European phase of Odessa from 1794 to 1856, by the 1870s the Jews predominated in all mercantile specialisations and fuelled the trade of the city both in imports and exports in the second imperial phase of 1857–1905. They operated through the birzha, which regulated and promoted their interests while the industrialists were rather scattered and unorganised until the eve of wwi. Odessa’s entrepreneurial class remained ethnically and politically fractured. In respect to business, partnerships were conducted without obstacles related to ethno-religious practices and tended toward uniformity and agreement based on market rules. Co-ethnics and compatriots were preferred as a first choice. Trust was an important criterion in corporate and interethnic collaborations, which occurred with more ease at the higher ranks in industrial and financial sectors but less among traders. Τhe legal nature of the firm

152 J–L Moreau, “Les archives d’entreprises et la Russie.” Unpublished paper discussing the archives of Belgian companies active in Russia before the First World War, now held in Belgian repositories.

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and the subsequent issue of economic responsibility played an essential role in inter-ethnic cooperation and alliances. Corporate institutions were easily founded in banking and big-size industry. Nevertheless, in trade, where trust was required and personal companies were more used to losses affecting individual properties, entrepreneurial joint ventures remained within the limits of the family or the ethnic group.

chapter 4

The Springtime of the Public Sphere 1 Public Spaces In a city created from the top down, modelled on European urban design prototypes, the presence of public spaces was a given: parks, squares, markets, gardens, boulevards and also religious houses, restaurants, entertainment clubs, theatres, libraries, and reading rooms were all loci where residents could meet and interact and the business of civic life could unfold. Odessa’s much frequented Municipal Theatre was a landmark and its portals were the symbolic boundary between the elite and the rest of the populace. Thus, this chapter shows that public places could be points of both convergence and divergence. The chapter focuses on the third phase, the period of the city of political reform (1905–1917), when the convergence is more obvious, although it also considers earlier developments. The novelist Vladimir Jabotinsky raises the curtain in Τhe Five with a scene set in the theatre during a performance of the lyric opera Μonna Vanna (1909) composed by Henri Février.1 His description of the Milgrom family’s box at the theatre reminds us of the degree to which the Jewish middle class had become familiar with the theatre and integrated in the cultural life of the city in general. The existence of a flourishing Jewish theatre house (ultimately closed in 1882) and dramaturgy illustrates the alternative and parallel cultural spaces that were available to Odessa’s Jewish community as supplementary sources for artistic expression and entertainment. Minority cultural spaces coexisted, overlapped and intersected with all-Russian cultural spaces. Ethnic tensions at the beginning of the twentieth century and the unequal way government policies intervened to ban or restrict ethnic initiatives segregated the different ethnic communities and set Odessa’s citizens against each other. Attendance at the theatre had become a status symbol and excluded anyone unable to afford the cost of tickets, a provocative social line in the sand. In an official report dated 1881, the chief of police noted that the throng of ticket buyers at the theatre for an appearance by the famous French actress Sarah Bernard resulted in theft, small-scale rioting, and the smashing of shop

1

Vladimir Jabotinsky, The Five: A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn of the Nineteenth Century (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 3–6.

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004351622_006

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windows by “respectable” crooks. One-hundred armed Cossacks intervened to restore order.2 As Leon Trotsky, the Menshevik revolutionary, remembers it, the theatre was the only topic in pre-1905 newspapers where differences of opinion could be expressed and a “semblance of temperament” was allowed.3 He recalls the catalytic impressions provoked by the theatre on himself as a teenage schoolboy in Odessa: Τhe magic of the theater held its spell over me for several years. Later I developed a fondness for Italian opera, which was the pride of Odessa. In the sixth grade, I even did some tutoring to earn money for the theatre. For several months, I was mutely in love with the coloratura soprano bearing the mysterious name Giuseppina Uget, who seemed to me to have descended from heaven to the stage-boards of the Odessa theatre.4 The library was an entirely different kind of public space. Founded in 1829 it was housed in a building on Primorskii Boulevard. By 1851 its collection consisted of 11,720 tomes, principally dedicated to historical and geographical subjects, a number which increased by approximately 300 a year.5 Aside from books, one could also browse the Russian and foreign press, magazines and informational bulletins issued by government ministries in a friendly and well-heated environment. Books could be borrowed from the library, which was open daily to the public from 10 in the morning to 2pm. Annual visits increased from 2,305 in 1844 to 50,302 in 1890.6 In 1883 the library was relocated to the building that hosted the Imperial Historical and Archeological Society (4, Lanzheronovskaia Street) and later, in 1907, to a new building at 13, Pastera Street designed by the architect F. P. Nesturkh. The collection of the Gorky Library, as it was christened, included the 600 deluxe editions of French classics donated by Count

2

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 1364, O vsepodanneishem otchete za 1881 god (dated 1882). The delo contains materials for the otchet of the City-Prefect. Folios 236–246 contain the report of the Odesskii Politsmeister; a reference to the arrival of Sara Bernard appears on folio 240. 3 Leon Trotsky, My Life. An Attempt at an Autobiography (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1930), 65. 4 Trotsky, My Life, 64. 5 daoo, fond 2, opis’1, delo 301. Report of the President of the Public Library for the year 1851 to the City-Prefect. 6 M. G. Popruzhenko, Odesskaia gorodskaia publichnaia biblioteka, 1830–1910. Istori­ cherski Ocherk (Odessa: “Slavianskaia” Tipografiia E. Khrisogelos, 1911), 27, 68.

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map 7

The public sphere area

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Vorontsov, 10,000 volumes from Grigorii Gr. Marazli’s collection and 40,000 from Count Michael M. Tolstoy, who was the library’s trustee from 1897 to 1917. Library branches and neighbourhood reading rooms were established during the prefecturate of Grigorii Marazli, some funded by him personally or by the municipal authority. Smaller libraries, public and private, grew in the late Imperial period, as did a novelty, free reading halls. Vsia Odessa (1914) enumerates twenty-four libraries belonging to public or private associations both national and professional, including ethnic-based societies and unions of employees and workers.7 Practical training and the ethical improvement of the working classes were among the goals of the latter, and emphasis was placed on organising lectures and establishing lending libraries. Significant public facilities where respectable society could engage socially and aspire culturally were built during the prefecturate of Grigorii Marazli. His stay in Paris (1858–1863) had inspired him to transform Odessa into a notable centre of arts and sciences during his term in office (1878–1895). The new Municipal Theatre, designed by the Viennese F. Fellner and H. Helmer, opened in 1887. The Fine Arts Museum (1889) which at present houses the city’s gallery at 5a Sofievskaia, was donated by Marazli to the Odessa Society of Fine Arts; the present Archeological Museum (formerly the Imperial Historical and Archeological Society), the Gr. Gr. Marazli Municipal Reading Room, the Home for the Aged, the Municipal Microbiology Laboratory, and the M ­ unicipal Shelter with its inexpensive restaurant and dining hall for children (1888) were all built at his expense (see Map 7).8 The city’s meeting points were many and varied: streets, public squares, bazaars, theatres, hotels, restaurants, teahouses and cafés as well as clubs. One of the best-known and oldest clubs was the Odessan Club, which was founded in 1831. It was dedicated to the leisure and entertainment of the elite. The club’s exclusivity was confirmed by the limit of 150 members drawn from the upper echelons of the military, the nobility, and the first and second merchant guilds. Potential new members had to be recommended by alumni.9 By 1911, thirteen clubs were based in the Bul’varnyi district. Six theatres and nine cinemas attracted audiences while 35 hotels, 26 first-rate restaurants and six teahouses lured both local and international tourists of high- and middle-income 7 8

9

Vsia Odessa, adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga vsei Odessy s otdelom Odesskii Uezd na 1914 g., 184–185. Hellenic Foundation for Culture, Gregorios Marasles–175 chronia apo te gennese tou, ed. by Oleg Demin and Sofronis Paradeisopoulos (Odessa: Filiia Hrets’kogo Fondu Kyl’tury, 2006), 50–60. Ustav Odesskogo kluba (Odessa: V Gorodskoi Tipografii, 1839).

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levels.10 The silent cinema was a great attraction for rich and poor, as apparent from its distribution in all districts of the city: 9 in Aleksandrovskii, 11 in Khersonskii, 6 in Mikhailovskii, 7 in Petropavlovskii, and 2 in Peresyp’.11 Cosmopolitan Odessa had acquired hangouts for the well-to-do as well as for the proletarian classes. The circus, the skating ring, and the winter velodrome were among the most popular. While Mr. Smith, a “respectable” foreign citizen was greeted by a bomb at the Café Libman (see Map 7), where he had gone to read the newspapers at the outset of the 1905 Revolution,12 working Odessites were caught unawares at every kind of tavern, billiard hall, traktir (a proletarian type of pub serving alcohol), and buffet (a makeshift cafeteria for cold foods). Among the primary meeting places were the public baths, which typically belonged to merchants and were located in the centre of the city. Frequently they were in the style of Turkish hamams, built near the ravines or markets; others were simple structures without domes or with Mikveh13 to accommodate the Jewish population.14 In response to the economic crisis of the end of the 19th century, strategies were designed to exploit the tourist potential of the city. Odessa could be developed as a health resort relying on sea therapy, mud baths and swimming. Listings in the press for regular daily transport connections to the Langeron shore and seaside suburbs of Arcadia, Malyi, Srednii and Bol’shoi Fontan were supplemented with directions for prospective bathers and articles on the benefits of the sea to their health.15 Cheap tickets were available for horse-drawn trams from various points in the city. The mud baths at the nearby estuaries ­(Khadzhibeevskii and Kuial’nitskii), in the opposite direction from the city, were considered therapeutic as were the lukewarm natural water sources in Peresyp’ and elsewhere. Small pits would be dug in the sand along the shores of the lakes

10

daoo, fond 314, opis’ 2, delo 11, Report of the City Police on Bul’varnyi Quarter, 16 March 1913. 11 daoo, fodn 314, opis’ 2, delo 11, 16 March 1913, 13 February 1913, 21 March 1913, 4 November 1913, February 2, 1912. 12 nara, Dispatches of the American Consul in Odessa, Letter of W. Smith to the American Consul, January 1, 1906. The Café Libman was at the corner of Sadovaia and Preobrazhenskaia. 13 Mikveh is a bath used for the purpose of ritual immersion in Judaism. 14 Οleg Gubar’, “Gorodskie i chastnye bani plius soputstvuiushchie obstoiatel’stva” Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 49 (2014): 27–29. 15 Vsia Odessa 1900 god. Spravochnik nidvizhimykh imushchestv vsego Odesskogo gradonachal’stva ….adresnaia i spravochanaia kniga…. (Odessa: Tip. Aktsionernogo Iuzhno-Russkogo O-va Pechatnogo Dela, 1900), 229–230.

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and left to warm under the sun after which the patient would be buried up to the neck in damp sand for several hours.16 Hourly train service to Kuial’nitskii Estuary where the public hydrotherapy clinic was located originated at the Odessa-port station at the lower end of Primorskii Boulevard from May to September. The facilities at the lakes, both public and private, were available for single or multiple day visits for patients suffering from neural, muscular, and dermatological illnesses, syphilis, tuberculosis, or post-operative trauma. Therapies were supplemented with massage, exercise programs, and hikes supervised by doctors, most of whom had opened private sanatoria in Kuial’nitskii and Malyi Fontan, but also at central points in the city itself. Tickets priced according to the services to be provided indicate that the spas were visited by all levels of the society, from the royal family to simple labourers. The Society for Hydrotherapy and Swimming of Odessa was established in the 1900s with a 500,000 rouble share offer. Its aim was to establish an infrastructure for hydrotherapy and thalassotherapy for the city. The company intended to purchase a building in the centre of the city for warm seawater spas, a massage centre modelled on the institute of Doctor Gertz in Vienna, areas for thermotherapy, electrotherapy, and an orthopaedic institute.17 2 Civil Society? Clubs and societies were another indicative node of social expression for Odessites. Antonio Gramsci, in a renowned observation, wrote that, as a result of the pervasive role of the autocracy and omnipresence of the Russian state, the development of civil society was primordial and gelatinous.18 Recent historical research regarding the development of class/group mobility and the highly diverse manifestations through which social classes contributed to the shaping of the public space have, to a great extent, disproven Gramsci’s generalised statement.19 Despite an authoritarian state that strove to monitor and control 16 17 18 19

Matvei Veselovskii, “Vospominaniia protoiereia Matveia Veselovskogo. O limanakh Kuial’nitskom i Khadzhibeiskom,” in de-Ribas, ed., Iz proshlogo Odessy, 130–33. Vsia Odessa 1900 god, 235. Adele Lindenmeyr, “Primordial and Gelatinous?: Civil Society in Imperial Russia,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12/3 (Summer 2011): 705–20. Joseph Bradley, Voluntary Associations in Tsarist Russia: Science, Patriotism, and Civil Society (Cambridge, ma: Harvard University Press, 2009); Bianka Pietrov-Enker [Pietrow-Enker] and Galina Ul´ianova, eds., Grazhdanskaia identichnost´ i sfera grazhdanskoi deiatel´nosti v Rossiiskoi imperii: Vtoraia polovina xix–nachalo xx veka (Moscow: rosspen, 2007).

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the public’s modes of expression there emerged countless groupings that did not address political issues.20 Especially after the Great Reforms of 1860s, social groups in Russia fiercely devoted themselves to the creation of every possible type of society, volunteer association, congregation and company. This movement was evidence of a process of emancipation from the tutelage of the state which was not, incidentally, a priori anti-state: its primary characteristic was that it contributed through the active participation in social and interest groups to the increasing sense of self-determination of the citizens. The interests and claims of the social groups, which the state ought to have embraced, were frequently diametrically opposed to its own official priorities and politics. From the third quarter of the 19th century onwards, public life in Russia and particularly in the large urban centres increasingly freed itself from state patronage and diverged from the government’s policies on a national and local level. It was a dynamic that brought to the fore claims for increased freedom and the granting of political rights as well as resistance to the prevalent surveillance and policing which ultimately led to the revolts of 1905. As A. Rieber has suggested, Russian society in the megalopolises of the late imperial era was no longer sedimentary.21 Yet it failed to form a coherent middle-class that could reinforce its identity through political action.22 The inquiry into Odessa’s voluntary associations and societies, as we shall see further on, offers proof of the wealth but, also, the weaknesses of this civic movement. 3 Associations, Societies, Professional Societies The all-encompassing term obshchestvennost’, which describes a broad concept of citizenship and public life within the Russian imperial realm, includes all kind of societies as well as publicly-owned shareholder companies. There is no equivalent term in western political theory and its generally accepted translation as “civil society” in English does not do justice to its historical and 20

21

22

Joseph Bradley defines them as a “network of human relationships and institutions outside the direct control of the state that structure individual action and allow private persons, unconnected by personal attachments, to manage their affairs.” Bradley, Voluntary Associations, 6. Alfred J. Rieber, “The Sedimentary Society,” in Between Tsar and the People. Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. by Edith D. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow and James L. West (Princeton, nj: Princeton University Press, 1991), 361–63. Samuel D. Kassow, “Russia’s Unrealized Civil Society,” in Between Tsar, ed. Clowes et al., 367–81.

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practical significance.23 It is not a matter of accurate translation but of essence: the term “civil society” applies by definition to western political culture and is not applicable in Russia. Taking this into consideration, obshchestvennost’ tackles the problem of the formation of the middle classes in Russia, whether they in fact existed or not and, if they did, to what extent they were powerful enough to hold autonomous political discourse.24 The difficulty in defining the middle social strata, their resistance to classification or inclusion in the established social estates generated a broad range of social groupings and occupations bracketed between the peasants at one end and the aristocracy at the other.25 Urbanisation and industrialisation, notably in the large cities, gave rise to new social groups in the middle and lower classes. In the case of the latter, primarily workers and servants recently migrated from agricultural regions, no forethought had been given to their integration in the social structure or to their rights and obligations as a new social stratum in respect to the rest of society and the state. In addition, the suppression of political expression nullified the effectiveness of every kind of mutual support association including the truncated labour unions and “proto-syndicates”, which attempted activism while hobbled by the ban on political expression prior to 1905. The absence of a civil society capable of free action, independent from the state and church, leads to the conclusion that the public sphere, in the sense intended by Jürgen Habermas, did not exist in Russia.26 The state only allowed initiatives from its citizens when it could monitor or survey them. One method for accomplishing this involved the submission of applications and monthly progress reports, which the City-Perfect (gradonachal’nik) and the Office of the Minister of the Interior would review in minute detail including income and expenses, the number of members and their identities, the

23

24

25 26

Vadim Volkov, “Obshchestvennost’: rossiiskii variant kontseptsii grazhdanskogo obshchestva,” in Grazhdanskoe obshchestvo na Evropeiskom Severe: poniatie i kontekst. Materialy mezhdunarodnogo seminara (Sankt-Peterburg, 18–19 ianvaria 1996), ed. by E. Zdravomyslova and K. Kheikkinen (Saint Petersburg: TsNSI, 1996), 250–56. Joseph Bradley emphasizes the contribution of voluntary societies to the process of becoming conscious citizens. Joseph Bradley, “Subjects Into Citizens: Societies, Civil Society and Autocracy in Tsarist Russia,” The American Historical Review 107/4 (Oct. 2002): 1120–1123. See Appendix, Tables 8–9 for distribution of social estates in Odessa. Habermas defines the public sphere as a society engaged in critical public debate. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere – An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, trans. by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawerence (Cambridge Massachusetts: The mit Press, 1989), 52.

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beneficiaries of the society’s charity and its contributors.27 The associations were admissible so long as they expressed no political opinions. In contrast to western societies, the tsarist state feared and mistrusted grass-roots initiatives and required that it be fully apprised of their intentions prior to approving them.28 For example, in order to publish a pamphlet or newspaper, even of exclusively literary content, its content had to be approved by the Interior Ministry; the same applied to organising concerts for philanthropic purposes,29 hanging posters, and publishing books. The censor’s seal could be found on the title page of every book. The common-interest societies of minorities and ethnic groups were subjected to the same scrutiny.30 To the statutory articles of the Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (gbao), which was founded in 1871, for example, the Interior Ministry appended articles forbidding the revision of the statutes of its School for Girls by the society’s board of directors based on their “experience” without prior approval of the state.31 Τhe autocracy’s distrust of associations organised by ethnic minorities intensified from the late 1890s onwards and the Jews were the first whose activities were restricted.32 The long list of associations in Odessa corroborates the impressive degree of its residents’ involvement in a variety of activities and concerns and the conclusion that in the period from 1880 to 1914 volunteerism was at its zenith.

27

28 29

30 31

32

See indicatively the yearly report of the Société Française de Bienfaisance d’Odessa submitted to the City-Prefect in July 13, 1902 among the reports of seventy-four voluntary associations. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2834, O vsepodanneishem otchete za 1881 (dated 1881–1882). Reginald E. Zelnik, “Revolutionary Russia, 1890–1914,” in Russia. A History, ed. by G ­ regory E. Freeze, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 205. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2807, Petition to organize a popular dancing soirée with a ­buffet, no alcoholic beverages, songs, orchestra and extracts from movies, March 26, 1901. Indicatively the Catholic Philanthropic Society submitted a petition to organize a theatrical play in the Polish language, daoo fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2807, March 21, 1901. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 723. In the response of the authorities to the statutory articles for the foundation of the Greek School for Girls we read: “In paragraph 16 it is noted that the present statute may be revised, added to and corrected based on ‘experience.’ Experience however has shown that the persons elected to the board of the school by the Greek community frequently revise or add to ratified statutes illicitly. In order to avoid future recurrences of such incidents relating to paragraph 16, a clause must be added stating that such statutory revisions and additions can be enacted only with the approval of the government.” Adele Lindenmeyr, Poverty is not a Vice. Charity, Society and the State in Imperial Russia (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996), 204.

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From the cycling (1888),33 homeopathy34 and flying clubs of the early twentieth century to “correct” hunting35 and the promotion of vegetarianism,36 the citizens of Odessa devoted themselves passionately to associational life in a way that promoted special interests and sensibilities and shaped a new urban identity. These associations distinguished themselves from the learned or imperial societies that had existed since the first half of the nineteenth century, such as the Imperial Agricultural Society, in that they were distinctly not aristocratic in character and the state and its representatives were not involved in their memberships. In fact, the members were no longer limited to wealthy citizens, state functionaries, the intelligentsia and the nobility but were primarily from the middle classes. They entered the public arena and organised venues where sociability merged with education, improvement of everyday life and philanthropy. One category of such associations included those of general interest of a philanthropic, educational and cultural nature. In the second half of the nineteenth century such associations sought to “rectify” chronic social problems or those congenital to urbanisation and industrialisation by assisting marginalised social groups often anticipating or complementing the responsibilities of the local government administration. A case in point was the Association for the Protection of Minors in Odessa’s Correctional Institutions, which was founded in 1886. Its stated mission was to create opportunities for vocational training and education for the children who emerged from the institutions (orphanages, prisons). Its founding membership included the Municipal Administration of Odessa, the associations of the sosloviia of merchants and meshchane, shareholder companies such as the banks and ROPiT (the Russian Steamship and Trading Company) and private individuals of all social classes and ethnic affiliations.37

33 34 35

36 37

Ustav Odesskogo obshchestva velosipedistov-liubitelei (Odessa, 1888). Ustav Odesskogo obshchestva posledovatelei gomeopatii (Odessa, 1898). The “Correct” Hunting Club of Odessa was established to ensure that its members could have proper opportunities to hunt during the season while protecting prey species, especially endangered ones, helping the authorities to suppress poaching off-season or in restricted areas, raising of public awareness regarding hunting and how to distinguish between useful (and not) species of animals and birds, eliminating of pest species, enhancing hunting dog pedigrees, and helping improve the members’ shooting accuracy. Ustav Odesskogo obshchestva pravil’noi okhoty (Odessa, 1910), 3. Ustav Odesskogo vegetarianskogo obshchestva (Odessa, 1912). daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2834, “Ob otchete blagotvoritel’nykh obshchestv,” 1901.

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A significant example of an association in which representatives of the state were involved in philanthropy and which illustrates Odessa charity from, as it were, above, was the Association for the Care of the Poor/Beggars of Odessa (Odesskoe obshchestvo prizreniia nishchikh) founded in 1883 at the initiative of Major-General Konstantin Matveevich Mintsaki.38 The association erected its own shelter for the homeless on a plot of land donated by the Duma on today’s Staroportofrankovskaia Street. The cost of construction and equipping the shelter was borne by a Jewish Honorary Citizen of Odessa, Abraham Markovich Brodskii (see Map 2). The building, completed by the end of the summer of 1883, was the most comfortable and up-to-date philanthropic institution of the city. Odessa’s city-prefect compared Brodskii to Saint Paul adding that, in regard to philanthropy at least, there was no difference between being a Christian or a Jew. For the ensuing twenty years, the Chief of Police of Odessa, Colonel Iakov Ivanovich Bunin, was the president of the association. In 1893 the society was renamed the Association for the Care of the Poor and Assistance for the Needy (Obshchestvo prizreniia neimushchikh i pomoshchi nuzhdaiushchimsia). In response to the original shelter operating beyond capacity, the society constructed a new building, which included a workshop to house the underage while providing them with vocational training. In 1895 the Odessa Duma granted a plot in Peresyp’ for the construction of the building, which was to be overseen by the City-Prefect (gradonachal’nik) Pavel Alekseevich Ζelenoi. New life was breathed into the association when Prince Pavel Pavlovich Shuvalov, a colonel serving at the imperial court, was appointed to Zelenoi’s post in 1898. Shuvalov enthusiastically supported the association and, at his urging, the Duma granted yet another plot of land, this time located behind the city’s prison, for the construction of a new shelter named after him (Shuvalovskii priiut).39 While the two previous asylums only accepted Russians, the new one provided separate facilities for Jews and attended to their dietary requirements. We can conclude that the campaign for the relief of poverty often originated from the philanthropic sensibilities of the administrative and economic elite, was frequently aided by the state, and aimed primarily at supporting the ethnic Russian poor. Exceptions depending on the “vision” or policy of the benefactors were frequent, as in the case described above. 38 39

Viktor Mikhal’chenko, “Zhizn’ nuzhdaetsia v miloserdii: k istorii Shuvalovskogo priiuta,” part 1, Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 49 (2012), 15–16. Mikhal’chenko, “Zhizn’ nuzhdaetsia v miloserdii: k istorii Shuvalovskogo priiuta,” part 2, Deribasovskaia-Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 50 (2012), 32–43; Mikhal’chenko, “Zhizn’ nuzhdaetsia v miloserdii: k istorii Shuvalovskogo priiuta,” part 3, Deribasovskaia-­ Rishel’evskaia: Odesskii Al’manakh 51 (2012), 72–75.

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Odessa’s professional groups formed a second category of citizen associations and included teachers, engineers and architects,40 and physicians among others who were not classified in any of the existing legal estate categories. They formed their own associations demanding improvements in their professional standing, autonomy of action and the freedom to make their own contributions to civil society. Among them were the worker associations (since labour unions were prohibited) organised by labour unit or industry branch whose main purpose was the creation of mutual aid societies, well in advance of the state’s assuming responsibility for social welfare as it ultimately did in 1912. As an example, the statutes of the Mutual Aid Society of the Κ. Leonard Company provided interest-free loans and benefits to its employees.41 The fund’s capital was accumulated through contributions of its members who deposited 4 percent of their salaries. They could borrow up to 30 percent of their individual cumulative contributions for up to a year. The fund would also provide benefits in old age or in case of illness. Thanks to the benefits of such factory-based funds, the workers of Odessa were able to participate in the labour strikes of long duration in 1903 and 1905, which brought about the curbs on the powers of the monarchy and the establishment, with the October Manifesto, of political rights (suffrage at a national level and political parties) and labour unions.42 4 Workers’ Associations One of the weaknesses of the citizens’ association movement was its ethnic fragmentation, especially the establishment of separate workers and employees associations. The Jews, for example, who constituted the largest ­demographic group after the Russians themselves, had founded their own associations such as Odessa’s Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Salesclercks (omasjs), which counted 800 members in 1898 and was one the most tireless in representing its members’ interests. An equivalent Christian-based association of salesclerks boasted 531 members.43 Even the associations devoted to charity and philanthropy were focused along parochial lines, which, it should be noted,

40 41

Ustav Odesskogo obshchestva inzhenerov i arkhitektorov (Odessa, 1864). daoo, fond 2. opis’ 1, delo 2796. “Ustav sberegatel’no-vspomogatelnoi kassy sluzhashchikh i rabochikh masterskikh K. Leonarda v Odesse.” 42 Weinberg, The Revolution, 81. 43 Weinberg, The Revolution, 55–57.

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were the case of every ethno-religious group, at least in regard to education and healthcare. The Greek community of Odessa for instance, maintained its own schools, the Greek Commercial School for Boys and the Rodokanakeion School for Girls, while the Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa provided welfare services to poor Greeks or Russian nationals of Greek descent. As such, however, the segregation of workers organisations, even those devoted to philanthropy (such as the Association for Aid to Jewish Middlemen and Merchants),44 de facto worked against the movement’s overall unity and obstructed channels of communication between people in the same social and economic position. In his Memoir of a Bolshevik,45 Osip Piatnitsky, recalls the difficulty among representatives of political parties attempting to call for a joint political strike in October 1905: The [Bolshevik] committee invited all the revolutionary organizations to issue a joint call for the strike and to organize a joint demonstration. The Bund group and the Mensheviks consented, but they could not agree with us on the time. We suggested that the strike should begin on Friday. The Bund46 argued that the Jewish workers among whom they were active received their pay on Friday, and that therefore they would not respond to the call. In fact, they added, the strike in any case should not be called for that day, because the Jewish workers would have nothing to live on if they did not get their pay on Friday. The Mensheviks, agreeing with the arguments of the Bund group, added that it would also be a mistake to call the strike for Saturday, because the Russian workers get paid on that day…. The Bolshevik committee decided to call the strike for Friday and the demonstration for Sunday. This excerpt reveals the complexity of the organisation of the labour movement among people with different ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds and their political leaders’ lack of flexibility in overcoming differences in order to gain the maximum of unity. It also testifies that, for the lower-middle and

44 45 46

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2500, “Proekt ustava obshchestva posobiia kupecheskim agentam i raznym torgovtsam evreiam v Odesse”. O. Piatnitsky, Memoirs of a Bolshevik (New York: International Publishers, [1925]), 81. Bund (General Jewish Workers’ Union) was a Jewish socialist party. It was a proponent of secular Jewish nationalism and opposed Zionism. See Jewish Virtual Library, accessed 18 February 2015, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_ 03730.html

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working classes who constituted the majority of the economically active population, any distraction from the need to mature politically and unite against the oppressive and antiquated political system could only damage their common prospects. The discriminatory imperial policies against Jews at all levels (the May Laws of 1882), in secondary education, in university attendance, in municipal representation (counter-reforms of 1892), were catastrophic for the creation of social harmony among Odessa’s ethnicities. Moreover, they provoked a strong anti-tsarist politicisation in the Jewish community. The Jewish workers’ movement was more prepared than its Russian counterparts to claim political rights and, as a result, came into contact with the radical political ideology of the time. In contrast, a majority of Russian industrial workers organised themselves in associations modelled on government prototypes inspired by the chief of police (Zubatov’s movement )47 whose goal was to keep the labour movement isolated from the influence of the political parties.48 Even after the October Revolution, the widespread opinion among the urban population was that revolution and the overthrow of the ruling class was the product of a Jewish conspiracy. This was a misinterpretation of Jewish militancy and was bolstered by the presence of Jews in the front ranks of those arrested following every demonstration, uprising and armed protest.49 The fracturing of the workers’ movement and bigotry towards those of different ethnicity and religion who constituted an ever-increasing portion of the population in a context of economic recession and socio-political destabilization led to the tragic pogroms of October 1905. 5 Ethnic Minority Associations A third category of associations was those addressing ethnic minorities that organised activities for their members. The Germans, Greeks and Jews had 47

Founded by Sergei Vasil’evich Zubatov (1864–1917), a revolutionary in his youth, and later an agent of Moscow’s Okhrana bureau, the tsarist secret police. Zubatov promoted the organization of pro-government trade unions to channel protest away from revolutionary agitation between 1901 and 1903. “Sergey Vasilyevich Zubatov,” Encyclopaedia Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sergey-Vasilyevich-Zubatov. 48 Weinberg, The Revolution, 79. 49 Indicatively, during the May Day arrests of 1903, 18 Jews and 12 Gentiles were imprisoned for disturbing public order, hailing red flags and shouting “Liberty” and “Death to the Tsar”. nara, Dispatches of the American Consul in Odessa, June 13, 1903.

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schools (from the first half of the 19th century onwards), hospitals and nursing homes responsible respectively for the education of the young and care of the ill and elderly of their communities. Even the Swiss, who were very few in Odessa, had a philanthropic club (est. 1845). Institutions such as the schools and hospitals of the ethnic communities were the result of private initiatives funded by the wealthy members of each community, and quite frequently supported economically by the municipal administration as well, as in the case of the Jewish hospital.50 The educational institutions were responsible for the propagation of the respective languages and cultural values of the ethnic groups. While they did not restrict the student body to members of the community, inevitably the students overwhelmingly belonged to the ethnic group in question. From the 1880s onwards, anti-minority imperial policy became increasingly aggressive in promoting systematic cultural “Russification.”51 The first to feel the consequences of this in Russia were the Baltic Germans, an elite group that had faithfully served the empire. The German University of Dorpat was renamed Iur’ev University (1889–1993).52 “Polishness” and Catholicism were considered hostile to the Russian state. In this sense, Lithuanians after the Polish uprising of 1863, although linguistically different from Russians or Poles, because of their Catholicism were viewed as “Potential Poles”.53 Russian “nationality policy” was not coherent, however, and applied contradictory measures and laws depending on which ethno-religious group of the Empire they were aimed at.54 In 1887, quotas reducing the number of Jewish students in secondary schools and universities were proclaimed. In the Pale of Settlement, the quota was 10 percent, outside the Pale 5 percent and 3 percent in the two capitals. In his Attempt at an Autobiography, Leon Trotsky describes arriving in Odessa a year after the measure was enacted.55 He tried to gain admission to a realschule,

50

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 1364, ll. 206–19. The City Council donated to the Jewish Hospital 9,000 roubles in 1881. 51 Cultural Russification aimed to replace a population’s native culture by Russian. 52 Gregory L. Freeze, “Reform and Counter-reform 1855–1890,” in Russia. A History, ed. by Freeze, 198. 53 Theodore R. Weeks, “Russification and the Lithuanians, 1863–1905,” Slavic Review 60/1 (Spring 2001): 99–103. 54 For the religious map of Odessa see Appendix, Table 11. On bureaucratic and cultural Russification in the northwestern region of the Empire, see Theodore R. Weeks, “Russification: Word and Practice, 1863–1914,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 148/4 (December 2004): 471–89. 55 Trotsky, My Life, 44–46.

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a public school of technical orientation of the German type, where he had better hopes of success, instead of a classic gymnasium, and enrolled at St. Paul’s school, a German institution founded by the Lutheran parish. A Russian Jew, he attended Lutheran services along with the other students and heard a church organ for the first time (see Map 3). Such multi-cultural experiences became increasingly rare as the number of German students and staff decreased. Due to the lack of German students in the last grade, he had to transfer to another realschule in order to take university entrance exams. Zemstvos,56 in 1890, and city councils in 1892, followed the example of secondary schools and universities in reducing Jewish representation. During this period all minority schools were under intense pressure to integrate into the uniform Russian educational system, to alter their curricula, and finally to restrict the use of their ethnic languages. The authorities however, did not apply these restrictions uniformly. The Jewish schools were subjected to the changes while the Greek Commercial School for Boys, by altering its charter from that of an institution of general learning to that of a private vocational school, evaded the suffocating pressure of the education inspector and remained under the administration and control of the Greek community.57 Consequently, it managed to survive several more years before being absorbed into the Russian educational system. Obviously, this reflected the different attitudes of the authorities in respect to the Jews and Greeks even though their schools fell under the same umbrella category of ethno-religious minority associations and institutions. 6 Charity as a Culture In Russia, the culture of giving was particularly widespread and was primarily a personal and individual obligation of the faithful. Official Orthodoxy did not consider poverty a transgression and therefore, ironically, felt no obligation to eliminate it. In contrast, Protestantism frowned upon personal, face-to-face charity and restricted personal alms giving.58 For Jews, philanthropy was not an 56

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Created by the reforms of 1964, the zemstvos were elected bodies of representatives, charged with tasks of local administration at the district level. See entry on “Zemstvo,” https://www.britannica.com/topic/zemstvo Mazis, “The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (1871–1917). Private Charity and Diaspora Leadership in Late Imperial Russia,” (PhD diss., University of Minnesota 1998), 109–10. Adele Lindenmeyr, “The Ethos of Charity in Imperial Russia,” Journal of Social History 23/4 (Summer 1990): 680–82.

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option but a duty, a commandment that shaped their daily behaviour regardless of their wealth; in addition, charity had to be anonymous. Odessa’s ethnic and religious pluralism, explosive urbanisation and the resultant boom of dispossessed persons were ideal preconditions for the implementation of charity. Charity was administered by all the religious communities and associations as well as by committees of the state on a national and ministerial level, the municipal authority and the social estates. Catherine the Great secularised charity and created social welfare boards at the local level. During the reform period of the 1860s, the zemstvo and the estates were responsible for relief to the poor but the lower the social estates and the more their indigent, the fewer the resources. The public relief system did not prove successful.59 Only the Ministry of the Interior had a special department that surveyed all the societies which were under the patronage of the Empress Maria Fedorovna (wife of Emperor Alexander iii), granting it a semi-official character. In Odessa, her Asylum for Children was founded in a grandiose building and was one of the three run by the Odessa City Guardianship of Children’s Asylums. As Adele Lindenmeyr remarks, the name of the empress on its façade underlined the parental yet aloof solicitude of the imperial family towards its needy subjects.60 7 Αn Example of Commercial Charity: The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa The Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa (gbao) is an example of how the Greek merchant elite understood the concept of charity. It was a way to bolster and magnify social status while generating a critical clientele of dependent and grateful poor. Philanthropic and vocational societies selected a board of trustees from among their memberships and provided social services to poor or ailing Greeks or those of Greek descent, offered financial aid on a permanent or recurring basis, provided dowries for indigent girls, and secured berths in the Greek old-age home. Philanthropy was not anonymous but had to be recommended and often guaranteed by a named individual, usually a member of the board or other “respectable” member. The official in question was not veiled behind the institution but mediated on a personal level and publicly projected his role. In this powerful manner, the Greek merchants of Odessa used charity, the most essential bourgeois behavioural pattern, as a form of

59 Lindenmeyr, Poverty is not a Vice, 48–73. 60 Lindenmeyr, Poverty is not a Vice, 76.

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publicity either to enhance their upward mobility or to consolidate their already acquired high status.61 John Mazis, who examined the requests for charity made in Greek or Russian by indigent Greeks, states that in the last years of the nineteenth century, while the number of the poor increased, the funds provided by the gbao gradually decreased.62 The consecutive shocks suffered by the economy of Odessa at the end of the nineteenth century, and the international events of the first decades of the twentieth, such as the closure of the Straits (1912), the First World War (1914–1918), and the arrival of Greek refugees from Romania (1917), generated waves of people requiring assistance. This assistance however was provided in the traditional patronage manner, with the addition of some scholarships for indigent students, and did not aim to improve the condition of its beneficiaries, for instance through the provision of technical or vocational training, or the creation of jobs. Business philanthropy was associated with late nineteenth century entrepreneurial behaviour and was part of the entrepreneurs’ strategy for social mobility. The gbao, manifestly an association that promoted the interests of the upper and middle strata of Odessa’s Greek community, viewed charity as an important issue for Greek individuals who relied on the Greek collectivity for relief. The duty to execute social service, paternalistic aspirations, and nurturing of their social status were equally important for the Greek merchants. The high level of urbanisation, social and economic power based on trade, and the consequent development of a bourgeois consciousness among middle-class Greeks made them the dominant figures in the community and transferred the administration of charity from religious institutions, primarily the Greek Orthodox Church, to the powerful gbao. This was symbolised by the fact that while the archpriest of Greek Orthodox Holy Trinity cathedral was the head of gbao’s board he was surrounded entirely and exclusively by powerful merchant-entrepreneurs, leaving no doubt that in the spiritual-worldly partnership represented by the board, the latter had the upper hand. The ailing and homeless, the unemployed, the blind, widows with many offspring, all directed their requests for financial and other support to the gbao: funds for medicine, hospitalisation, the cost of the return journey to Greece, a share of the 100-rouble dowry fund donated by Grigorii Marazli for young women of restricted means, scholarships, clothing, meals and every kind of

61

Sifneos, “Business and Philanthropy in fin de siècle Odessa. Class and ethnicity issues in the light of the Greek example,” (working paper 2015). 62 Mazis, The Greeks of Odessa, 149.

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aid that might relieve their difficulties. Most were unemployed due to illness and were not covered by the social services of the state. The provision of benefits by the gbao generated binding obligations. The gbao appeared to be the ultimate pillar of support even to those members of the community who had miscalculated and failed in their business endeavours during a particularly difficult economic period. Philanthropy was a mechanism of social control and patronage that encouraged the dependency of the beneficiary on the donor, preserved and propagated a personal but authoritarian relationship between the economically powerful and the feeble. The increasingly dramatic tenor of appeals for help and the surge in their frequency at the approach of the twentieth century reflected, as it did in other ethnic-religious groups, the process of proletarianisation and marginalisation of a substantial portion of the Greek community in Odessa.63 8 Towards a Longed-for Multi-Ethnic Society: Odessa 1907–1914 The period from 1907 to just before the First World War can be described as a new springtime for the society of Odessa. Somewhat released from the afflictions of monarchical absolutism and the anxieties of ethnic persecution (pogroms), Odessites had an opportunity to develop free thought and action. The Revolution of 1905 broadened the public space by allowing the expression of opinions through a multitude of community-oriented newspapers in ethnic languages. Citizens were overtly exposed to political dialogue. From the dead end of prejudice, there emerged a new opportunity for social integration. Members of similar social classes could embrace across ethnic and religious lines and heal the wounds of recent ethnic conflict. The decisive influence of new political ideas reshaped the relationship between society and the state. Society was hoping for change and leaning toward a new kind of balance where the old values would collapse and new ones emerge. The inability of the social estates to address the new middle and working classes, and the resulting outmoded social order that harked back to the French Revolution and its États Généraux, provoked a determination to establish contemporary social structures. These transcended the traditional divisions and homogenised formerly disparate groups into an overarching order leaving, among other things, ethnic conflicts behind. The spread of socialist ideas and the appearance of political parties were essential in this process. The social paragon of the honest but 63

See Appendix, table 7.

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apolitical entrepreneur was replaced by that of the highly politicised urbanite, while the traditional businessman philanthropist acquired a negative connotation, that of the capitalist exploiter of the working class.64 The image of the city’s associational life at the onset of wwi reflected the uniqueness of the southern Russian megalopolis with its mosaic of ethnic, religious and social particularities. According to Vsia Odessa, the city numbered more than three hundred volunteer organisations.65 Technically, many of these societies were grafted onto private and public institutions such as the Imperial University of Novorossiia, ethno-religious communities, religious fraternities and churches, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the City Duma, the Judicial Administration of Odessa, businesses and shops. Through them, an astonishing number of citizens enhanced their civic identity by engaging in social services. Both private and institutional charities were at their peak. In respect to charity, the middle class and the state joined their efforts in an activism that targeted the poor and the dispossessed. Odessites could participate in societies and associations that reflected their multiple loyalties according to their interests and idiosyncrasies. One could simultaneously be a member of the Red Cross, the Society for the Care of Young Children, The Doctors’ Society of Odessa, and the Society for the Campaign against Tuberculosis. Likewise, if an individual was, for example, a Pole, he or she could have an active membership in the Polish Philanthropic Society, the Polish Cooperative of Consumers or the “Lyra”, a Polish musical theatre society. Odessan society seemed open to new technologies and alternative dietary approaches and forms of medicine; it was aware of new forms of citizen participation that echoed avant-garde social movements around the world. Some examples are indicative: a Vegetarian Society; a Society for the Promotion of Homeopathy; two Societies for the Protection of Animals; a Society for the Dissemination of Accurate Information about the Jewish Community; the Association for the Promotion of Esperanto; the Ido–the International Language Society; the Odessa branch of the Society for Equal Rights of Polish Women; the Odessa Automobile Club; the Odessa Air Club; the Odessa branch of the Society for Waste Management of the City and Railways; and an Aid Society for Converted Jews. The plethora of associations and societies was primarily targeted toward the underprivileged segments of the population. So much so, in fact, that one might be forgiven for imagining that being poor in Odessa was hardly a bother with

64 65

See also Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute,” 51, 57–59. Vsia Odessa, adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga vsei Odessy s otdelom Odesskii Uezd na 1914 g., 142–84.

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all the available assistance from public and private entities alike. Sick children, abused children, orphan children, new-born abandoned children, child beggars, and children in general, all had societies that looked after them, private and public and always in multiples. All of the city’s private and public educational institutions (52 in total), classical, scientific, or technical, grade schools, high schools and universities, had their own societies for indigent students. Women requiring protection were under the auspices of the benevolent society headed by the Princess Evgeniia Maksimilianovna Ol’denburgskaia, while working women and young ladies requiring care, poor women, sick women, retired governesses, Catholic house maids, poor pregnant women and their new-born children, were the focus of many other societies often with exclusively female membership. The sick, blind, deaf-mute, and the poor from the working class neighbourhoods of Moldavanka and Peresyp’, indigent enlisted and decommissioned soldiers all had people concerned for their well-being. Alcoholism, an issue that was of concern for the whole country, was an increasingly serious problem in Odessan society. After the Minister of Finance, Sergei Witte, recommended that the sale of alcohol, previously in the hands of Jewish resellers, become a state monopoly in 1894, the state acquired an important source of income. This was especially true after the Russo-Japanese War when the liquor monopoly helped the state refill the Treasury.66 The consumption of alcohol was the predominant leisure activity of the workers and the unemployed. Despite their well-meaning attempts, the Odessa Temperance Society (1891) and other associations67 were unable to overcome the lower classes’ resistance to their messages. In contrast to St. Petersburg, the Odessa Temperance days proclaimed in spring 1914 failed.68 Temperance associations as well as the Guardianship Committees created by the state in each city made special efforts to establish alternative entertainment, reading and study programs in an attempt to disassociate the workers’ free time from the consumption of alcohol. With a similar purpose in mind, a temperance society requested the use of a public hall from the Prefect of Odessa to organise an 66

Patricia Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire. Vodka and Politics in Late Imperial Russia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 15. 67 The Odessan Temperance Society was founded in Odessa in 1891 with the purpose of reducing the overconsumption of alcoholic beverages. Using ineffective methods such as preaching the moral and material damage caused by drink, personal example, exchanges with members of other societies with shared goals, publishing of cheap moralistic leaflets, and, ultimately, reporting people who encouraged alcoholism to the police, they attempted to fight alcohol abuse. Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire, 125–126. 68 Herlihy, The Alcoholic Empire, 126.

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evening of dancing for the poor;69 the request emphasised that the evening would be low-key and proper, that a buffet meal would be offered but no alcoholic beverages, and that the entertainment would include song, live music and the projection of excerpts from movies. Many temperance societies established tearooms, in the case of Moscow successfully associated with employment agencies, but, in truth, tea was fighting a losing battle against alcohol; they also promoted billiards and the music preferred by the lower classes in the multitudinous traktirs of the city. Permit inspections of the traktirs were established in Odessa by the police, who in communications to the prefect’s office requested the revocation of licenses for the introduction of gambling which encouraged further alcohol consumption on the part of the patrons. The revocation of operating licenses, occurring as it did under pressure to reduce alcohol abuse, led to precipitous decisions to close establishments, at times without justification. In one such case, the poor state of cleanliness of the traktir at 58 Preobrazhenskaia Street led the police to the conclusion without any further proof that the owner must also be violating the rules regarding the consumption of hard drinks.70 Alcoholism was an issue before the National Duma in December of 1907 when it was proposed that funding of state-run temperance committees be cancelled due to their ineffectiveness.71 Besides alcoholism, the authorities were increasingly preoccupied with issues related to prostitution in the early 1900s. The demands of residents on much trafficked streets, such as Krivoi Street, for the closure of houses of ill repute that degraded the neighbourhood and reduced property values, was not effectively responded to by local authorities.72 The issue was raised again due to the spread of syphilis and other venereal diseases, and a municipal commission was formed in 1901 to study the problem and propose measures to the City Council. There were twelve official brothels in Mikhailovskii and Petropavlovskii districts with 272 registered women.73 The number was remarkably small,

69 70 71 72 73

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2813, Petition addressed to the City-Prefect of Odessa on Μarch 26, 1901. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2856, Letter of the Direction of Taxes of the Ministry of Economy to the City-Prefect of Odessa, January 24, 1901. National Archives, F.O., Russia, 371/512, Summary of the Proceedings in the Duma during the fortnight ending January 1, 1908. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2885, Claim of the inhabitants of Krivaia Street addressed to the City-Prefect, June 3, 1898. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2885. According to the list of brothels there were three in Glukhaia Str., three in Bolgarskaia Str., and two in Mikhailovskaia Str. (Mikhailovskii district). In Petropavlovskii there were three in Kartamisefskaia and one in Karmazinova Str.

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as was noted at the time; the real problem was hidden prostitution with unregistered women, who were not under medical supervision. In 1900, in its report on prostitution, the police had observed 251 women in officially recognised houses, and 209 women who lived in individual apartments, while 618 were arrested for illegal prostitution.74 Inquiries were made to find out how the authorities in St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw dealt with the same problem. Finally, it was decided to shut down all illegal houses and that the police was to survey apartments and hotels where encounters took place more closely. Personal identification cards with photographs would be issued for every working woman and the ten-rouble fee for medical treatment would be abolished. The problem of prostitution required a new institution for registering prostitutes and tracking their health by issuing tickets with a darker colour than yellow75 in order to be treated in hospitals and by emphasising medical assistance instead of police surveillance. Many philanthropic societies were already working to address the problems of poor and marginalised women. In Odessa, the branch of the Russian Society for the Protection of Women that operated under the auspices of Princess Evgeniia Maksimilianovna Ol’denburgskaia had the noble goal of protecting young women from scams and exploitation and offered shelter and employment to those who wished to escape life on the streets.76 The lack of state welfare for the working poor was addressed by the Mutual Aid Societies and Funds (17) which were established in individual businesses or the business sectors, Funeral Funds (8), Loan and Savings Accounts (13) and the Society for the Protection of Odessa Workers against Accidents at the Workplace. Another important sector concerned with the citizens’ quality of life included associations devoted to consumer protection (6) that monitored prices and promoted the inexpensive provision of food. Seventeen benevolent societies and religious brotherhoods were devoted to philanthropy in general. The city had sixteen public and private shelters, some for overnight stays and others addressing specific segments of the population. Among these were those who bore the names of the Empress Mariia Fedorovna and the Crown Prince Αleksei Nikolaievich (son of Tsar Nicholas ii and Alexandra Fedorovna). There were also five orphanages and three homes for the elderly. Arts and letters in general were supported by eight clubs, not including the Mutual Aid 74 75 76

gaoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2815, Report of the Head of the Police to the City-Perfect for the year 1900, September 15, 1901. Yellow tickets for regular medical checks were distributed to officially registered prostitutes. Vsia Odessa, adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga vsei Odessy s otdelom Odesskii Uezd na 1914 g., 153.

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Associations for artists and artists belonging to specific ethnic groups (Russian painters, Jewish artists and writers, etc.). Among the longest-established societies was the Imperial Historical and Archeological Society of Odessa. Seven associations were devoted to medical specialisations and two more were affiliated with the Imperial University of Novorossiia in Odessa. Independent professionals such as teachers, lawyers, midwives, owners of photography studios, physicians, pharmacists, oculists, and dermatologists had founded their own professional associations. As ascertained by G. Hausmann, there was a parallel development in the collective organisation of capitalists and entrepreneurs,77 who founded new associations, noticeably lagging behind those of the middle classes. The A ­ ssociation of Factory Owners and Industrialists (Obshchestvo fabrikantov i zavodchikov), the Council of Conferences of Representatives of Industry and Commerce of South Russia (Sovet s’ezdov predstavitelei promyshlennosti i torgovli Iuga Rossii), the Union of Promotion and Development of Nutrition Industries (Obshchestvo dlia sodeistviia i razvitiia promyshlennosti po proizvodstvu pishchevikh produktov) and the Society for Surveying Steam Boilers (Obshchestvo dlia nadzora za parovymi kotlami) were some of the organisations that brought together prominent businessmen and capitalists. The Association of Factory Owners and Industrialists was founded in 1910.78 Its founding members included: the director of the “F. Enni and Co.” brewery and Hereditary Honorary Citizen, Vassilii Ivanovich Ansel’m; the owner of flour mills and counsellor Grigorii Emanuilovich Veinshtein; the owner of the canning plant and Odessa merchant Shaul Isakovich Sokolovskii; the Hereditary Honorary Citizen Karl Fedorovich Ermish; the owner of a limited company that manufactured chemical products and sunflower seed oil, Austrian national Frants Frantsevich Linke; the owner of the metal foundry of the commercial firm “D. Val’tukh”; the Hereditary Honorary Citizen Iakov Iosifovich Krantsfel’d; the director of the sugar-producing factory “Aleksandrovskaia” engineer Aleksandr Andreevich Gulev; the Odessa merchant Emilii Vasil’evich Restel’; and the Hereditary Honorary Citizen Ivan Ivanovich Gen. These men represented a new kind of entrepreneur who believed that the business world had to be represented autonomously and engage with the state apparatus to make proposals and submit petitions regarding the development of industry and the resolution of the problems it faced, to accumulate statistical data and to participate in conferences and committees as representatives of industry in the surrounding districts. Among the

77 78

Hausmann, “Die wohlhabenden Odessaer Kaufleute,” 60. Ustav Odesskogo obshchestva fabrikantov i zavodchikov (Odessa, 1910).

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association’s primary concerns were the provision of legal protection and advice to its members and the organisation of exhibitions, museums, competitions and awards. In addition, but well in the context of the paternalistic exercise of power, the association concerned itself, at least on a theoretical level, with addressing relations between capital and labour and the provision of schools, vocational institutes and inexpensive housing for the workers. Seventeen clubs were devoted to sports, mountain climbing, bicycling, soccer, horseback riding, sharpshooting and archery, aviation, sailing and hunting.79 Finally, quite a few societies had as a primary goal the embellishment and improvement of a neighbourhood, a suburb or a school. Hydrotherapy and thalassotherapy clubs promoted therapeutic tourism and resorts at the 29 facilities devoted to bodily well-being and relaxation.80 The ethno-religious groups had their own associations led by the Jews with twenty seven and followed by the Germans and Poles who had six each, the Greeks with five, and the Lithuanians and Karaites with two each. All the ethnicities had at least one philanthropic society: Latvians, Austrians, Belgians, Serbs, Italians, and French. The Jews, due to the expansion of their numbers and disproportionate representation among the poor, were the leaders in philanthropy. The fact that most Jewish households were near the level of absolute destitution was primarily the result of social habit and family structure. Underage marriage, high fertility and high divorce rates hindered many Jews from establishing economically viable households.81 Some organisations like the Association for Granting Assistance to Jews in the Form of Combustibles and Matza (unleavened bread), the Society for the Care of Poor and Homeless Jewish Children, the Society for Assistance to the Poor Choristers of Odessa’s Synagogues, illustrate the scale of poverty among the Jews but also the degree of support within the Jewish community. Two more organisations of interest appeared in 1913 that supported the project of Jewish resettlement in Palestine. These were the Jewish Palestine Committee (or the Society for Aid to Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine) [Evreiskii Palestinskii komitet (Obshchestvo vspomoshchestvovaniia evreiam zemledel’tsam i remeslennikam v Sirii i Palestine)] and the Odessan Jewish Committee for Colonization (Odesskii Komitet Evreiskogo Kolonizatsionnogo Obshchestva). The oldest Jewish Association in Russia was 79 80 81

Vsia Odessa, adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga vsei Odessy s otdelom Odesskii uezd na 1914 g., 142–84. gaoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2815, Report of the Head of the Police on buildings, shops, factories etc., 1900. ChaeRan Y. Freeze, Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia (Hanover, nh: Brandeis University Press 2002), 73–74.

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the Society for the Dissemination of Enlightenment. It had an active Odessa branch, founded in 1866, with the aim of fostering modern attitudes in the Jewish community and of promoting the use of Russian among Jews.82 The association was bolstered by two Jewish newspapers edited in Russian, Rassvet (1860–1861) and Sion (1861–1863). Following the 1871 pogrom, the society closed and its funds were transferred to the Society for the Promotion of Crafts and Practical Knowledge, known as Trud. The pluralism of associational expression does not suggest that the established ethnic tensions had been overcome. On the contrary, several of the associations were exclusively focused on national identity, which was the determining criterion for membership or exclusion. What was the point, for example, of the Medical Association of Novorossiia University coexisting with the Association of Russian Physicians at the same institution? A chary reader of Vsia Odessa, cognisant of Odessa’s troubled history, might wonder what the point of the Union of Russian Painters of the South might be: were the interests and aspirations of non-Russian painters (or those whose mother tongue was not Russian) different from those of their Russian colleagues? As mentioned previously, such redundancies promoted fracturing of the workers’ movement and, often, conflict between them. How does one interpret two distinct mutual aid funds for shop assistants of mercantile companies, one for Christians and the other for Jews, other than as an entrenchment along ethnic lines that inevitably led to the splintering of a social and professional class with common interests? In this particular case, we also know that the two were under the sway of different political parties.83 Why were there two associations for printers, the Union of Russian Printing Press Workers, which did not admit Jews, and the Professional Association of Lithographers? Attempts at hegemony and segregation also took place on the part of the minorities themselves. In locales such as the depressed neighbourhood of Moldavanka, primarily inhabited by poorer Jews, what could an organisation such as the Aid Society for the Poor Jews of Moldavanka and Nearby Neighbourhoods signify other than a reflection of the exclusive policies of Russian and all-Russian organizations? And who, other than this same association, was practically better suited to address the needs of the Christian poor of the same neighbourhood? Exacerbated ethnic tensions were the new ideological cloak espoused by the middle classes under the centrifugal pressure of political instability, economic

82

Brian Horowitz, Jewish Philanthropy and Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 2009), 42–51. 83 Weinberg, The Revolution, 107,108.

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crisis and the preservation and deepening of inequality among the ethnic groups that resulted directly from government policies. Despite all this, there were hopeful voices proposing new solutions amid the uncertainties of this political period. The membership of the Ukrainian association Prosvita (Enlightenment), founded after 1905 by independent professionals and intellectuals to promote Ukrainian culture and language in Odessa’s Ukrainian community, was at least one-fifth non-Ukrainian.84 The association increasingly aimed its activities to the all-Russian public, encouraged political discussion and did not prohibit the politicisation of its members. Accused of close ties with the program of the outlawed Ukrainian Social-Democratic party, it was shut down in 1909.85 Prosvita changed its title to Ukrainian Club, and was also banned in 1913, followed by the Ukrajinska Hata (Ukrainian House), another Ukrainian society aimed at organising musical and dramatic events. The attempts of the ethnic minority associations to address the general public of the city as described above in the case of Prosvita were a first step in overcoming of the boundaries of ethnicity in favour of the harmonious coexistence of the ethnic minorities of Odessa. Similar activities were undertaken by individuals, mostly of the wealthy elite and regardless of ethnic origin. Grigorii Marazli for example, a Russian subject and Christian Orthodox of Greek origin, donated sums to the Swiss Philanthropic Society,86 while the Jewish magnate Brodskii supported all-­Russian public institutions or social welfare, as discussed earlier in this chapter. The diffusion of this new spirit of social homogeneity opposed to ethnic conflict was the result of a process of osmosis of ethnic traits, which aimed at creating a harmonious space for the coexistence of ethnicities and an authentic cosmopolitanism, under both the autocratic regime and the sort of parliamentary system that followed it. The emergence of a common language was critical in achieving these goals. The Esperanto Association was noteworthy in that the goal of creating a universal language of communication was particularly apt in multi-ethnic Odessa. A bust of Esperanto’s creator, Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859–1917), a Jewish Polish ophthalmologist, can still be seen in the courtyard of 3 Deribasovskaia Street. Zamenhof, a resident of multi-ethnic Warsaw, advocated the creation of an international language that would be neutral,

84 85 86

Oleksandra Shevchenko, “Building a Ukrainian Public Sphere in Odessa, 1905–1917” (ma Thesis, Central European University, 2007), 35–40. Shevchenko, “Building a Ukrainian Public Sphere”, 45. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 858, “Vsepodanneishii otchet za 1873 god,” Report of the Swiss Philanthropic Society to the City-Prefect of Odessa, January 7, 1874.

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belonging to no nation or ethnic group that would be privileged by its use over those obliged to learn it as a foreign language.87 Less complex than Greek or Latin, Esperanto would be particularly useful in science and commerce and, Zamenhof believed, could fit in countries with diverse language groups especially in the fields of government administration and societal life. The Esperanto Association in Odessa was followed by the Ido–International Language Society, which promoted a reformed and improved version of Esperanto and was a product of the Delegation for the Adoption of an International Auxiliary Language that met in Paris in 1907. In the climate of emerging nationalism, which swept through all the ethnic groups, Russians, Ukrainians, Poles, Greeks, and Jews alike, Zamenhof’s heretical at the time, but enlightened stance, remains to this day relevant and progressive. In 1914, in declining to join the Hebrew Esperanto Association, he wrote: I am profoundly convinced that every nationalism offers humanity only the greatest unhappiness…. It is true that the nationalism of oppressed peoples – as a natural self-defensive reaction – is much more excusable than the nationalism of peoples who oppress; but, if the nationalism of the strong is ignoble, the nationalism of the weak is imprudent; both give birth to and support each other…88 The dream of a cosmopolitan megalopolis with a strong bourgeois society did not come true. It was cut short by the First World War and the Russian Revolution. This chapter reviewed Odessa’s most familiar public spaces and the labyrinthine system of its voluntary associations. The complicated context in which the associations operated as a result of intense state regulations generated operational contradictions and restricted their capacity to act freely. Nonetheless, while such bodies often promoted progressive ideas, they also replicated social pathologies, the most obvious being segregation along ethnic lines as seen in the professional and labour associations. The next chapter will address the much-debated phenomenon of the ethnic clashes, which were a feature of the dual nature of the city, as much a space of convergence and cooperation as an arena of ethnic conflict.

87

Aleksander Korzhenkov, Zamenhof. The Life, Works and Ideas of the Author of Esperanto, trans. with notes by Ian M. Richmond, edited by Humphrey Tonkin (New York: Mondial, in cooperation with Universal Esperanto Association, Rotterdam, 2010); L. L. Zamenhof, Mi Estas Homo (Kaliningrad: Sezonoj, 2006), 33–38. 88 Korzhenkov, Zamenhof, 46.

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The Two Sides of the Moon: Ethnic Clashes and Tolerance in a Cosmopolitan City This chapter examines the inter-ethnic relations through the prism of co-­ existence and ethnic clashes mainly in the second, imperial phase of the city (1857–1905). This particular period of time was marked by the pogroms that upset the delicate balance of the city, but also by nationalistic and socialist movements as well as political violence that was unrelated to ethnic differences. Florence Weinberg was born in Odessa in 1901. She came from a well-todo Jewish family and was married to a Jewish doctor who held a government position. After migrating to the us in 1923, she engaged in charity work and was a member of the National Council of Jewish Women. In an interview she gave for the archives of Jewish oral history, she described the family residence in Odessa at the beginning of the 20th century as follows: We lived in the area where the university is, you know, and schools and all that. It was a very nice area. Our owner of the building was a Jew and there were 75 percent Jews. It was a nice building, beautiful apartments but the gentile people that lived in that building were very friendly with the Jewish people and when there was a pogrom, they used to hide and help the Jewish people. The gentiles who lived in the building were not anti-Semitic.1 She went to a private Russian gymnasium for girls and had very close relationships with her gentile friends: I was with them like that, very close and they loved me and they loved us, all the Jewish girls, we were very good friends. [We didn’t feel no anti-­ Semitism.] All the holidays I would spend with them and Jewish holidays they would spend with us, it was a very nice relationship at that time…. My girlfriends used to sleep in my house and when we were preparing

1

New York Public Library, American Jewish Committee Oral History Collection. Transcript of an interview with Florence Weinberg conducted by Clifford Chanin, November 17 and November 21, 1977, 3–4.

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for the examination, sometimes I would stay over there because in the evening I would not go home by myself.2 Food and the ceremonies surrounding it left indelible memories of Jewish family life. “In the Pesach [Passover] we would invite Jewish boys who were from small towns that were not able to go home for Seders [the ritual meal of Passover].”3 The parents were not strictly observant. They spoke Russian to their children but the couple would speak Yiddish when they wished not to be understood. The family was not socially isolated. It was exposed to the practices and cultural habits of its Christian neighbours and was familiar with the exchange of gifts on Christian religious holidays. The family was tolerant of Jews who converted to Christianity and of religious dissimulation in order to facilitate one’s social mobility in the tsarist regime. The parents did not object to the fact that their son had a friendship with the son of a family that had converted. For Florence, friendly relations among people of different religions was based on mutual understanding, respect for diversity and the building of a new environment of co-existence based on cultural acceptance. I’ll tell you something, his mother never went to church, but they observed Russian holidays. For instance, like we have Passover, they have Easter you know. So for Easter the Russian people bake some kind of a special cake, we call it here “babka”, but it’s a very high coffee cake, very rich, and his mother always sent us a very big cake for their holiday. When it was Purim,4 my mother would send his mother Hamantashen,5 and fladin6 and all the things that go with it, because she wasn’t Jewish, I mean, but she knew about Jewish holidays and she would enjoy it. It was a friendly relationship.7 1 Co-existence and Tolerance in the Upper Classes The “new environment” created by a certain laxity of religious restrictions and the “social intermingling” that prevailed in the upper class regardless of 2 3 4

Interview with Florence Weinberg, 10. Interview with Florence Weinberg, 7–8. Purim is a festival celebrating the survival of Jewish people, while living in Persia. www. jewishvirtuallibrary.org/purim (accessed 2 February 2015) 5 A hamantash is a small triangular cookie, usually eaten on Purim. 6 A multi-layer pastry, stuffed with jam, nuts, and coconut. 7 Interview with Florence Weinberg, 33–34.

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ethnicity even permeated employer/employee relations. The story of Florence and the maid at the temple, not only reminds us of The Five, Jabotinsky’s novel about an archetypically assimilated well-off Jewish family, but surpasses it in terms of daring and originality: I remember when I went to the temple with the maid, we had a Russian maid, and I was crying, “I want to go to mama” so the shammes [sexton in the synagogue] would chase us out of the temple. The temple was full; it was a big temple with a high ceiling and painted window glass. But they wouldn’t let children in. So we had a nanya. Nanya means maid that takes care only for children. So she took us [to the synagogue]. I was crying. So nanya took us to church. She said: ‘It’s one god, it doesn’t matter where.’ So she went there with us and she bought us a cross, each one of us with a little ribbon. I was blond, so I had a blue ribbon … and we went to church and we saw she was kneeling, we were kneeling. And we came home with the crosses on our necks…. And when my mother saw that, and father, they immediately of course took it off and said ‘Here, why did you do that for?’ ‘Because in your temple, [the maid said], the woman chased us out and the children were crying, so I took them to church. That’s what happened’. Nanya was not punished by her masters. Although the interviewer insists in his attempts to elicit a description of the unpleasant consequences that such inappropriate behaviour would have on a Russian servant, even, possibly, being fired, Florence reassures him: “Well nothing [happened], she remained with us. [My parents] explained to her: ‘It’s against our religion’. She said, ‘There is only one God, what is the difference here or there?’ That was her conception, what can we do?”8 Such indications of a “new society,” existing side by side with the state’s arbitrary discrimination against the Jews, were evidence of a new actuality that was headed in the opposite direction from the extremism of nationalisms and violent incidents. Although there were no formal rules for harmonious ethnic coexistence in the multicultural city as Ilya V. Gerasimov posits, many traces of a new multi-ethnic order were imprinted on the social fabric as the society itself moved toward a more prevalent urban secularism.9 In this regard, special notice should be taken of the marriage personals’ listings in newspapers, a majority of which did not pose religion as a criterion: on the contrary, some

8 9

Interview with Florence Weinberg, 17. Gerasimov, “Urban Tales,” 294–97.

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specifically stated that religious affiliation was not an obstacle in the selection of a potential spouse. Even though this explicit statement was not the principal example in the personals, the irrelevance of religion is noteworthy. Gerasimov’s remark notwithstanding, an important regulation passed by the Duma in Odessa addressed labour relations between employers and servants. It abolished previous provisions of law requiring the employment of coreligionists as domestic staff, and freed the labour market of religious restrictions and, in consequence, granted the right to and respect for the religious beliefs of the staff independent of the religion of their employer.10 The 1897 census records Orthodox maids working in Jewish and Catholic homes and vice versa.11 2 Rivalry in the Middle Classes In contrast, competition and rival economic interests among the middle classes promoted confrontation and generated a favourable climate for conflict between members of ethnic groups who were competing for the same jobs or business. For example, competition between Greeks and Jews in the grain trade and commission trade was one of the main reasons for the pogrom of 1871. Every contemporary commentator, including even the foreign consuls, concludes that behind the nearly “ceremonial” quality of the religious confrontation between Christians and Jews in the city at Easter, there lurked a deeper conflict of a primarily economic nature. The American consul wrote, “Between the Jews and Greeks there are constant jealousies and animosities, originating, no doubt, mostly from difference of race and religion but also, perhaps, sometimes excited and encouraged from collisions of business interests.”12 The increasing racial hatred was connected with the changing demographic structure of the city. As the 1897 official census shows, Odessa was rapidly becoming a predominantly Jewish city, due to immigration, high fertility among Jewish women and low mortality among Jewish children.13 Jews increased from 19 percent of the total population in 1854 to 30.84 percent in 1897. Demographic pressure in Odessa led to an increasing demand for shelter and work. The city doubled in size through the incorporation of several suburbs within 10

See “Proekt obiazatel’nykh pravil o domashnei prisluge.” Izvestiia Odesskoi gorodskoi dumy 1 (September 1895). 11 daoo, fond 2, opis’ 8, delo 2160. As an example, see the Kogan dom in Petropavlovskii district, in which Abraham Derbinskii, a Jewish merchant, employed at his home the Russian Orthodox servant Maria Krasovoskaia. 12 nara, Dispatches from the us Consul in Odessa, Russia, April 22, 1871. 13 Herlihy, Odessa, 256.

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its limits. Although most of the Jews were middlemen and shopkeepers, professions also exercised by Greeks, they mainly populated the quarters on the outskirts of the city, while Greeks lived predominantly in the centre.14 Another reason was the economic recession of the 1870s that struck Odessa’s trade. Continuous crop failures brought trade to a near standstill and depressed every kind of transaction. Those among Odessa’s merchants who did not face bankruptcy were obliged to purchase their grain supplies in the Azov region. The changes in the grain trade in the second half of the nineteenth century favoured the Jews who developed a specialisation in the buying and selling of, and bargaining for grain. At the close of the nineteenth century, various statistical sources confirm the ascending economic activity of the Jews and the receding one of the Greeks. Among a list of 40 first- and second-guild cereal exporters at the end of the century only 3 Greek firms existed and, among 15 brokers in the grain trade, only 1 was registered as Greek.15 The city’s factories present a similar comparison: from a list of 513 factories and industries registered in 1898 in the municipality of Odessa and its suburbs, only 35 belonged to Greek entrepreneurs and 141 to Jews.16 As the animosities and social disturbances between the Greeks and Jews in 1871 were not the first but had been preceded by other violent episodes in 1821 and 1859, there were also historical reasons for the conflict between the two communities related to the different ways they had assimilated their recent history. For the Jews the Ottoman milieu provided security and peace after the repeated expulsions from the West and a guarantee of the requirements for subsistence including freedom of religion, settlement and professional o­ ccupation. For many it was synonymous with a Jewish Golden Age, as Salo W. Baron17 has argued, since for much of the Ottoman period Jews occupied the position of favoured minority within the Ottoman socio-­political ­order.18 In contrast, for the subjected Greeks, the Ottomans

14 15 16 17 18

Appendix, Table 5. Ethnic allocation of the population, by quarters, 1897. C. A. Blengini de Torricella, Livre d’adresses des négociants de la 1-re et 2-e Guilde d’Odessa (Odessa, 1890). Fabrichno-Zavodskaia Promyshlennost’ Odesskogo Gradonachal’stva Khersonskoi Gubernii i Nikolaevskogo Voennogo Gubernatorstva (Odessa, 1899). Salo Wittmayer Baron (1895–1989), American historian of Polish-Austrian origin, professor at Columbia University, author of Social and Religious History of the Jews. Levy, “Introduction,” in Levy, ed., Jews, Turks, Ottomans. A Shared History Fifteenth through the Ninetieth Century, xix.

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remained conquerors even in cases where the conquered had actually endorsed ­Helleno-Ottomanism.19 After 1871, the persecution of the Jews continued without further notable participation of the Greeks, who were replaced by Russians in the role of ­persecutors. The Jewish population was accused of the “exploitation of the Christian population” of Odessa. Thus, the pogroms were aimed directly at weakening the economic power of the Jews and at eliminating competition within given professions. A majority of positions, particularly in every kind of trading, was taken by Jews. As the 1897 census indicates, 532 Russians and 1,332 Jews were registered in the commission trade and 789 Russians and 1,362 Jews in general trade. Also, Russians and Jews were represented in other trading sectors as follows: animals, 34 Russians and 142 Jews; grain, 478 Russians and 2,121 Jews; other agricultural products and combustible fuel, 2,713 Russians and 5,344 Jews; construction materials, 206 Russians and 466 Jews; products for domestic use (cutlery etc.), 138 Russians and 368 Jews; metallic objects, machinery and guns, 100 Russians and 329 Jews; fabrics and clothing, 621 Russians and 1,923 Jews; leather and furs, 58 Russians and 153 Jews; luxury goods, scientific, artistic and religious objects, 212 Russians and 170 Jews; miscellaneous goods, 188 Russians and 317 Jews; outdoor trade and transported goods, 202 Russians and 807 Jews.20 After the liquor trade became a state monopoly in the 1890s, many Jews had to withdraw and in 1897, there were more Russians engaged in it (443) than Jews (250).21 Governmental restrictions just for Jews on their occupation, on rural settlement and rural trade after the 1880s created highly intensive competition in the trade sector and urban jobs.22 Nevertheless, it is worth noting that despite ethnic competition and conflicts, signs of acculturation were everywhere evident in the multi-ethnic and multi-lingual city of Odessa during the same period. A tendency towards

19

20 21 22

Helleno-Ottomanism was an ideology of the elite of the Rum millet in the Ottoman Empire devoted to Ottoman legitimacy that was in contrast with the Greek nationalists’ Megali Idea. Sia Anagnostopoulou, “The Nation of the Rum Sings of its Sultan: The Many Faces of Ottomanism,” in Economy and Society on Both Shores of the Aegean, ed. Lorans Tanatar Baruh and Vangelis Kechriotis (Athens: Alpha Bank Historical Archives, 2010), 82–87. Pervaia, v. 47, Odessa, table 22, 140–141. Pervaia, v. 47, Odessa, table 22, 140–141. Arcadius Kahan, “Notes on Jewish Entrepreneurship in Tsarist Russia,” in Entrepreneurship in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, ed. by Gregory Guroff and Fred V. Carstensen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 107.

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smooth ethnic coexistence marked everyday life. Residential patterns from the 1897 census reveal that changes in urban life and the quest for profit-­making opportunities met no ethno-religious obstacles in the room rental sector. Furnished rooms were useful to merchants and people of all ethnicities who came to the city for a brief stay and could not afford a hotel room. They were located near the centre in proximity to most of the city’s business.23 Their owners, most of whom were Jews,24 rented their property to individuals regardless of ethnicity. 3 Separation and Conflict in the Lower Strata In the lower echelons of society, Odessites at the workplace were united in some cases and, in others, divided along ethno-religious lines. In the late Imperial city, domestic servants of different ethno-religious affiliations intermingled without difficulty either for them or for their employers. Domestic servants constituted an integral part of the urban texture even though most were of peasant origin. Daily life under the same roof inevitably led to close personal relationships with the families of their employers. The memoir of a Greek merchant of the first guild relates that during the first Bolshevik occupation of Odessa, from January to March 1918, the family cook offered her house in the working class neighbourhood of Slobodka Romanovka for the family members to hide in out of fear of potential retaliations against the bourgeoisie: Nighttime raids by the Cheka on private homes, incited by informers, resulted in looting, arrests and, as a rule, executions. My parents, especially my mother, were terrified and decided to leave our house. In the evenings, our cook sheltered us in her small family home in a working class suburb of the city. Only my parents and the two young ones moved into the small house while the elder daughters remained at our house [on Sadovaia Street opposite the cathedral in the first district of the city]. I cannot understand how my parents agreed to leave the young women alone. Of course, all the servants also remained (chamber maids and the 23 24

daoo, fond 314, opis’ 2, delo 1, Report of the Police Office Assistant to the Head of the Police, April 6, 1912. daoo, fond 314, opis’ 2, delo 1. In 1912 according to a report from the Bureau of the Assistant of the Police Officer, addressed to the Head of the Police of Odessa and deemed as confidential, in the Bul’varnyi district 15 out of 21 owners were Jews, in Khersonskii 4 out of 9, in Aleksandrovskii 12 out of 16, in Petropavlovskii 1 out of 2, February 12, 1912.

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governess) but they were women and we could not be sure of their degree of devotion to our family. We lived in a simple room without, naturally, any comforts. The host family was of conservative moral values. The portraits of the imperial family hung on the walls. I can only imagine the consequences if the Bolsheviks became aware that we were hiding there and saw the images of the Tsar on the walls.25 In the period 1919–21, many servants fled Russia along with the bourgeois families they worked for, often leaving behind children and elderly parents although most supported, as could be expected, the revolutionary movement. Brothels were not ethnically segregated. This is evident in brothel registrations in the census’s sheet returns.26 A brothel in Petropavlovskii district kept by a 47-year-old Jew employed twenty-two young women, two of whom were of Greek citizenship and Orthodox religion. These two girls were nineteen- and eighteen-years old, born in the province of Bessarabia, Russian speakers and literate.27 It seems that prostitution was a potentially attractive option compared to other labour available to women and offered the possibility of escaping poverty: monthly salaries averaged from seven to fifteen roubles whereas the salary of a male dockworker was six roubles.28 The mix of ethnicities among the prostitutes indicates that either the workplace had to adapt to diverse preferences or it may also presuppose that for clients, the working-women’s ethno-religious affiliation was of little importance. Ethno-religious segregation at the workplace was the norm among industrial workers regardless of whether they worked in large or small industrial concerns. It did not allow for collective activities based on common class interests. On the contrary, it clustered workers into isolated worlds and spurred antagonism instead of bonds of solidarity. As a result, the workers followed different paths to self-emancipation and pursuit of rights based on ethno-religious and not class conformity. Workers of Russian and Ukrainian origin were employed in large establishments. Small enterprises, however, rarely hired an ethnically-mixed working force. Division of both the skilled and unskilled workforce had a strong ethno-religious basis. Most well-paid, organised and specialised workers in the railway industry and the big plants were of Russian origin and lived in Peresyp’ and Slobodka, while workers in the small shops of

25 26 27 28

Yiorgos Papadopoulos Family Archive, Memoir, B20. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 8, delo 810. 1897 Census Sheets. Sifneos, “Rentiers, Teachers and Workers.” Skinner, “City planning,” 242.

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the garment industry were Jews and lived in the Moldavanka, Mikhailovskii and Petropavlovskii districts. Unlike the upper and middle classes, workers of diverse ethnicity or religion did not intermingle in their neighbourhoods. The riots and looting that occurred during ethnic clashes in Odessa in 1871, 1881 and 1886, were basically carried out by the lowest strata of the population, the unemployed, the partly-employed and the unskilled. For the first time during these disturbances, street urchins, orphans, the underage and the generally marginalized played a leading role. They formed the core bands of the mob in the neighbourhoods and isolated streets where the disturbances, the destruction of residences and looting occurred.29 An investigation of the events yields some preliminary observations: a) Riots occurred during feast days or religious holidays, when there was no work, or when labour problems at the port caused stoppages and unemployment; b) The role of drunkenness was stressed by the newspapers as the cause of violence and destruction and this was borne out by the frequent looting of alcohol-selling points such as taverns and traktirs owned by both Jews and Russians30 which were primary targets of the mob’s attacks; c) The attacks initially were of a pronounced class-related nature and often exclusively so and not, as one might expect, an ethno-religious one. In its extensive coverage of the events of 1871, the newspaper Odesskii Vestnik reported that damage during the first days was concentrated on the Boul’varnyi and Aleksandrovskii neighbourhoods where wealthy and middleclass Odessites resided. The first residence to be seriously damaged was that of the well-known Jewish grain merchant David A. Raffalovich31 on the corner of Grecheskaia and Italianskaia Streets, followed by those of Messrs Villenz and Leibenherz at Rishel’evskaia Street, Mr Vurgaft32 at Malaia Arnautskaia, and also Messrs Krasnosel’skii and Serebrennyi in the same district. Also damaged was the School for Salesmen and Clerks that had operated for the previous ten years at the Weingart Building on Ekaterininskaia.33 During the first day of the 1881 pogrom, along with 45 Jewish properties in the Bul’varnyi and Aleksandrovskii quarters, the house and tobacco factory of the Greek merchants 29 30 31 32

33

Journal d’Odessa, no 67, April 3/15, 1871, “Les trois journées d’Odessa.” According to the 1897 census, 691 inns were owned by Russians and 468 by Jews. Pervaia v. 47, Odessa, table 22, 140–141. David A. Raffalovich (1824–1877): Odessa merchant, partner in the firm “David Raffalovich and Co.” Mordko Danilovich Vurgaft: Jewish merchant, member of the 2nd Guild (1857–1863) and of the 1rst Guild after 1863. In 1871 he was granted the title of Hereditary Honorary Citizen. Journal d’Odessa, no 67, April 3/15, 1871 and no 69, April 6/18, 1871.

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Kriona Papa Νikola,34 Synadino and Caruso were damaged.35 Dispersed by the police, the small groups of men and boys broke the windows of Jews and Christians indiscriminately as they ran away.36 As the disturbances continued, the targets became exclusively Jewish. Jews were perceived as monopolising the retail trade and middlemen professions in the city, from brokering rentals to headhunting jobs and even to matchmaking.37 Their success in times of crisis was particularly despised by the Gentiles, but so were the power and effectiveness of their networks of support and trust, and their capacity to work for minimal profit margins that others considered not worth the effort. The exploitation of the Jews as scapegoats functioned as a release valve for the frustrations of the unemployed and seasonal workers who stagnated in times of economic crisis. It should nonetheless be noted that a majority of the Jews were poor as well. Right before Easter 1905, in an appeal addressed to Russians of all classes living in the suburbs of Moldavanka, Peresyp’ and Slobodka Romanovka, the National Council of Jewish Autonomy stressed that the Jews were poor and should not be assaulted since the Russian poor could someday find themselves in the same social position.38 Anti-Jewish disturbances also occurred in instances where there was not even nominal “provocation” by or participation of Jews. Such was the case of the events of 1886 that began at Kulikovo Pole (near the railway station) where a traditional religious and civic feast was celebrated on the second day after Easter, the 14th of April (see Map 4). The report of the gradonachal’nik to the Provisional Governor-General gives a brief description of the events: The disturbances at Kulikovo Pole originated as a result of an incident unrelated to the Jews: during the celebration, one of the policemen who were maintaining order arrested a soldier, Aleksei Fedorov Petrenko, who was inebriated. One of the peasants, Mikhail Bubnov, who was nearby, started defending the soldier and incited the crowd to attack the policeman. Thanks to the intervention of the police force, the assault was 34

Nikolai Kriona Papa Nikola (1788–1867): from Nezhin, merchant and factory owner of Greek origin. In the 1830s he was a second guild merchant and from 1831–1836 he was registered in the first guild. In 1845 he received the title of hereditary Honorary Citizen. 35 Odesski Vestnik, no 98, May 5, 1881. 36 National Archives, F.O., 881/4672, Confidential, Correspondence respecting the outrages on Jews in Russia, 1881–1882. Odessa, May 28, 1881, Consul General G. E. Stanley to Earl Granville. 37 nara, Dispatches from the us Consul in Odessa, Russia, April 22, 1871. 38 Hausmann, Universität, 454.

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curtailed and the soldier and peasant were taken into custody. The head of the police, informed of the situation, headed to Kulikovo Pole immediately and witnessed the following scene: several hundred people were throwing tables over and assaulting Jewish passers-by verbally and physically. When the police and Cossacks attempted to calm them down, they resorted to throwing stones. The City-Perfect was subsequently informed of the situation, and arrived at the site and attempted successfully to convince the mob to desist. Despite this, at about 7 or 8 in the evening, the rioters split into bands and headed to various part of the city, breaking a great number of windows with stones along the way.39 The mass violence exercised by people at the edge of destitution against others who were managing only slightly better but nonetheless shared the same essential class and social interests is reminiscent of the New York Draft riots of 1863.40 Rivalry for jobs between freed “Negroes” and white longshoremen, predominantly Irish migrants, at the waterfront led to riots and organised violence against the former slaves. In some cases, the similarities with the riots in Odessa are quite astonishing. Disturbances broke out at a time of general economic depression, which had serious implications for the port’s daily workers: reduction of the number of jobs, unsteady employment where there were jobs, and the decrease of porters, stevedores and labourers’ purchase capacity. While unstable employment resulted in unpredictable earnings for breadwinners, steep inflation, an effect of the ongoing Civil War, resulted in higher prices for food, clothing and other necessities. Work stoppages for higher wages were countered by employers through the use of black and unskilled workers as either strike-breakers or replacements at lower wages. ­Violent mobs in Lower Manhattan were recruited mostly from Irish longshoremen and inebriation played a central role in both planning and executing acts of violence and looting. Unemployment led to alcohol abuse and the waterfront’s bars were the lieux par excellence for the recruitment of mob bands. For some days the city was in the power of the mob as an eyewitness, the botanist Dr. Torrey (1796–1873), vividly describes. At the beginning, Torrey hurried home to Upper Manhattan to protect his daughters and “his ­coloured servants”:

39 40

daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 1582, ll. 20–22, Report of the City-Perfect of Odessa to the Provisional Governor-General, April 19, 1886, no 5238. Albon P. Mann Jr., “Labor Competition and the New York Draft Riots of 1863,” The Journal of Negro History 36/4 (Oct. 1951): 375–405.

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Taking the 4th Avenue I found the streets full of people and when I reached the terminus I found the whole roadway and sidewalks filled with rough people (and some equally rough women), who were tearing up rails, cutting down telegraph poles and setting fire to buildings…. Towards evening the mob, furious as demons, went yelling over to the Colored-­Orphan Asylum in the 5th Avenue, a little below where we live – and rolling a barrel of kerosene in it, the whole structure was soon in a blaze and is now a smoking ruin. What has become of the 300 poor innocent orphans I could not learn. They must have had some warning of what the rioters intended; and I trust the children were removed in time to escape a cruel death.”41 The New York example shows that social unrest emanated also from severe competition and not exclusively from racial prejudice. The use of blacks and Jews as scapegoats emphasises the segregated, marginalised position and lower civil status, which made them vulnerable. Both were easily identifiable groups that could serve as targets for defusing the collective outrage of the masses. Yet these events reveal more about the rioters, who were basically the more fragile segments of the unskilled workforce and the first to be hit by the economic crisis. A similar fear of competition from the Jews obsessed Odessa’s unskilled workers whose precarious jobs in the city were threatened. Descriptions of social unrest and the looting of Jewish immovable property by the mob were reported in 1871. “Odessa’s days”, as the three days of the pogrom were called, were described as follows by a Greek eyewitness in 1871: The mob attacked the Jews furiously, shattering the windows of their houses from the basement up to the 3rd or 4th floor. At the same time, the Christians had to erect icons and crosses on all of their windows in such a way that their houses would be distinguished from the Jewish houses. The whole city was transformed into an iconostasis. In the evening, small oil lamps were put in front of each icon so there was a kind of illumination. Meanwhile, the police force wandered the streets unwilling or unable to repress the riots. As a result, the next day the destructive mob became bolder and also increased its numbers. It entered private

41

A. Hunter Dupree and Leslie H. Fishel Jr, “An Eyewitness Account of the New York Draft Riots, July 1863,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review 47/3 (Dec. 1960): 476.

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houses and smashed, scattered and looted whatever was in its way. One could see the pianofortes, the tables, the chairs, the silverware and even money thrown out of the windows and into the streets. Another mob waited there for these things, so precious to their owners, to “land” and took over smashing them into pieces.42 From police records regarding people taken into custody during recurring episodes it becomes clear that those responsible were transients and seasonal workers, individuals not registered as citizens in Odessa, and who had not been integrated into urban life. Out of the 24 arrested during anti-Jewish incidents between the 13th and the 17th of April 1859, during which the Jewish school was severely damaged, five were peasant/serfs, thirteen lower middle class, among whom only six were from Odessa, two women, one soldier and three without recorded statistics.43 The rioters were accused of breaking the windows of Jewish houses, destroying the shop that Abraham Kuperson rented in the residence of the Greek merchant Yanopoulo along with the selling counters of Jewish vendors, and of stealing money from, beating and verbally abusing Jews. Similarly, among the six provocateurs accused of inciting the pogrom of 1886 and tried by the justice of the peace, two were off-duty soldiers, three peasants registered in locales other than Odessa, and one, a petit bourgeois resident of the city.44 The three peasants did not have personal assets, worked at unskilled labour or drove carts. During the pogrom, the vandals had damaged thirteen houses in the Bul’varnyi neighbourhood, fifty-six in Aleksandrovskii, and six in Petropavlovskii, and also destroyed two Jewish open shops. Aside from prison sentences, the Governor-General decided to banish those who did not belong to the social classes of Odessa from the city.45

42 43 44

45

elia (The Hellenic Literary and Historical Archive), Athens, Gregorios Couppas’ Correspondence, letter of April 11, 1871. daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 539, “O buistvakh proiskhodivshikh mezhdu evreiami i khristianami vo vremia svetlykh prazdnikov.” 1859. daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 1582, “Ob ulichnykh besporiadkakh v g. Odesse 14 aprelia (Perepiska s Ministerstvom vnutrennikh del, kantseliariei Odesskogo gradonachal’nika i drugimi uchrezhdeniiami. Ob areste i vysylke lits vozbuzhdavshikh naselenie k evreiskim pogromam s tsel’iu grabezha i prinimavshim uchastie v khuliganstve v paskhal’nye prazdnestva.” April 15, 1886–June 5, 1886. daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 1582, “Ob ulichnykh besporiadkakh.”

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4 Crisis Management and the Responsibilities of the Local Authorities Management of the disturbances in Odessa depended to a great degree on the preparedness and negotiating skills of local authorities and the effectiveness of the police and army’s response. In the pogroms prior to 1905, the police confined themselves to witnessing the conflicts between Greeks and Jews from the side lines. Usually, if they took any action at all, they intervened only after the situation was out of control rather than attempting to prevent it, frequently with the assistance of army units and Cossack cavalry. In regard to the pogroms of 1881, the Governor-General of Kherson observed: “The understaffing at police precincts and low salaries of the junior officers constitute a problem. Under such conditions the performance of the police force is inadequate, even when fully deployed.”46 The 1905 anti-Jewish riots occurred in Odessa the day following the proclamation of the October Manifesto. This time, politics was the decisive cause since most of the hostilities ensued from monarchist processions. Fervent ­followers of the tsar, who were not at ease with the liberalisation of the regime and the desecrations of the tsar’s portraits by their political opponents, viewed Jews as revolutionists.47 Beyond Odessa, anti-Jewish riots and massacres broke out simultaneously in 121 villages of the Kherson, Bessarabia and Podolia regions,48 a fact that leads to the obvious suspicion that there was an organised plan. For this, local authorities were likely accountable although it is uncertain to what extent the central government was involved in either the planning or the fomentation of the pogroms.49 In his illuminating article, Hans Rogger has compared the Russian pogroms with pogroms in Germany and violence against the Blacks in usa, while Heinz-Dietrich Löwe emphasised

46

daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 193, “Dokladnye zapiski vremennogo Odesskogo General Gubernatora i gubernatorov podvedomstvennykh upravleniiu gubernii i perepiska s Ministerstvom vnutrennikh del i drugimi uchrezhdeniiami o pogromakh i prichinakh ikh vozniknoveniia v Khersonskoi, Ekaterinoslavskoi i Bessarabskoi guberniiakh i po drugim voprosam.” May 24, 1881–December 20, 1881. Report of the Governor-General of Kherson district, June 27, 1881, 8 47 Andreas Kappeler, The Russian Empire: A Multi-ethnic History (Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2001), 336. 48 National Archives, F.O., 65/1588. According to the British Consular information anti-Jewish disturbances occurred in 121 towns and villages and 115 Jews were killed. Among them 38 in Kalarash, 19 in Nikolayev, 17 in Elizavetgrad and 8 in Ackerman. 49 Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 336.

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a confluence of factors that go beyond the stereotypes of an organised conspiracy against the Jewish population in Russia: demographic pressure, the upward social mobility of people of lower status, stress from changes in the urban environment, and economic misfortunes whose impact was felt individually or across whole regions.50 Mark Weinberg has justifiably posited that anti-Jewish disturbances stemmed from the spontaneous combustibility of a society undergoing the trauma of economic and political change rather than from government connivance.51 Even so, the high-level representatives of the administration, governors, directors and police, have been seen as autocratic in the extreme, inefficient and,  finally, incompetent in dealing with the crisis of 1905. The police and the army both failed to act in a timely manner. The British Consul, General Smith, who was an eyewitness of the 1905 events in Odessa, wrote confidentially to his superiors at the Foreign Office regarding the days of anti-Jewish disturbances: November 1, 1905…. Mob looting…. Town unpoliced.52 November 2, 1905…. Mob gutting Jewish shops and murdering many people…. Soldiers intervened once or twice but without apparent plan or efficiency. As evening advanced streets fell entirely in the hands of mob (with whom were some soldiers and, it is believed, ex-police (who for two days had not be seen).53 2 November 1905. No 4. Since early morning, there has been wholesale pillage of property and massacre of Jews. The police and military stand calmly by.54 17 November 1905. Street robberies and violence continue…. There have been discharges among the police but I do not know whether sufficient to change the character of the force, which was shown by late events to be thoroughly bad at the same time that the disorderly elements were enormously encouraged.55

50

51 52 53 54 55

Hans Rogger, “Conclusion and Overview,” in Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence in Modern Russian History, ed. by John Klier and Shlomo Lambroza (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 326–28, 351–56; Heinz-Dietrich Löwe, “Pogroms in Russia: Explanations, Comparisons, Suggestions,” Jewish Social Studies 11/1 (Fall 2004): 17–19. Robert Weinberg, “Visualizing Pogroms in Russian History,” Jewish History 12/2 (Fall 1998): 71–72. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Decode Mr. Smith, Odessa. November 1, 1905, no 89. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Decypher Smith, Odessa. November 2, 1905, no 90. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Decypher Smith, Odessa. November 2, 1905, no 4. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Consul General Smith to the Marquise of Lansdowne, Odessa, November 17, 1905, Confidential, no 113.

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Even prior to the declaration of the constitutional freedoms of October 1905, protests against the autocratic administration of the city and its response to the demonstrators, students and labourers, were focused on the personage of the prefect, Dmitrii Neidgardt. As the judicial officer Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko wrote in his memoirs, “The military circles of Petrograd considered Odessa to be a restless city, of revolutionary character, and only such a strict gradonachal’nik could control the population of this multi-ethnic (international) city.”56 Neidgardt’s brutal response to demonstrators who were demanding economic and political rights, led the City Duma to request his dismissal on October 15, 1905.57 In addition, an official inquiry into his actions later harshly criticised his decision, that day, to withdraw the police from the streets back to the precinct stations; the intentional absence of police encouraged the mob to run rampant.58 It should also be noted here that the unresponsiveness of the police was partially the result of having to adapt to a new political climate after the October Manifesto in which liberal measures had to be applied, including protecting those who for months it had persecuted and treated as hooligans: strikers, students, workers, and everyone who demonstrated and mobilised in the name of politics, union rights and economic entitlement in the turbulent period from June to October 1905. The incapacity of the police to protect citizens had already been recognised by the Duma, which, by a decision of the Committee of Public Safety on October 29, 1905, gave notice that the existing police would not be needed after the first of January 1906 and would be replaced by town militia who would be hired for this purpose.59 The mobilisation of civil society to calm down the mob, the relief aid campaign for pogrom victims, as well as the role of organised workers in maintaining order and tranquillity in the city have been underreported. Odessa’s citizens often protected Jewish lives and property during the dreadful events of late October. Still more remarkably, a pogrom was entirely avoided in 1906 when organised workers, not the police or political authorities, took on the defence of the city. In late November, the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, an 56 57 58

59

Bakhmettef Archive, Columbia University, Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko Memoirs, “Tri vstrechi (byl’),” 5. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Decypher Smith, Odessa, November 3, 1905. Gerald Surh, “The Role of Civil and Military Commanders during the 1905 Pogroms in Odessa and Kiev,” Jewish Social Studies: History, Culture, Society, new series, 15/3 (Spring/ Summer 2009): 46–48. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Report of the British Consul Smith on the 31 October 1905.

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institution that together with the trade unions was founded in the aftermath of the Revolution of 1905, successfully mobilised the city’s workforce in order to prevent the outburst of new anti-Jewish attacks.60 By forming armed self-­ defence groups, they patrolled and protected parts of the city and especially the harbour, which had suffered from destruction during the days of unrest in June 1905. In particular, skilled workers of the Peresyp’ iron works plants were at the head of the mobilisation and demonstrated class solidarity towards the victims of the pogroms by collecting funds, denouncing and isolating pogromists and even by taking punitive measures such as organising campaigns for their dismissal from the factories.61 It is undeniable that the response to the situation by local authorities, City-Prefect Neidgardt, and General Kaul’bars, who was under his command, was far from the only possible solution. Representatives of the local Duma and the university had repeatedly proposed alternative methods for resolving the crisis and met with the authorities twice during the confrontations of October 16 to 18.62 5 Stereotypes Andreas Kappeler has emphasised the use of certain stereotypes in the anti-Jewish campaign, which emanated both from the ignorance of the masses, especially the peasants, and from Russian policy.63 Jews were seen primarily as exploiters of the Slav lower classes in both the cities and the countryside. The local Russian authorities shared these views as the report of the Provisional Governor-General of Odessa, Count Aleksandr Mikhailovich Dondukov-­ Korsakov indicates in his letter to the Minister of Interior. In the aftermath of the 1881 pogrom, Donbukov-Korsakov attempted to explain the pogrom as caused by the deep-rooted resentment towards the Jews among Odessa’s population as follows: The exploitation of local populations by the Jews, who control all sectors of trade in the cities and villages, including their commercial practices, provokes serious antipathy among the agricultural population and the lower classes of the city. The special commercial attitude that the Jews

60 Robert Weinberg, “Worker Organizations and Politics,” 346–48. 61 Weinberg, “Worker Organizations and Politics,” 300–306. 62 Surh, “The Role of Civil and Military Commanders,” 46–47. 63 Kappeler, The Russian Empire, 268–269.

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“import” to all sectors of business, even spiritual occupations, turns public opinion against them. Even the notaries and authors, their exemplary representatives who are above all prejudices and are not a part of the system of exploitation, do not inspire fondness for the Jews. In the educational institutions, which are packed with Jewish students, the Christian parents express strong misgivings, which are confirmed every day by the ethical dissipation of the children of the Jews. This leads me to request special attention from the Minister of the Interior. The Jewish question is very severe, it is the line in the sand not only in economic but also in social and educational life. The Jewish question preoccupies all sectors of work and, due to mistakes and negligence, results in extreme manifestations and actions. 64 As a result of restrictions imposed by imperial laws, Jewish economic life in the countryside was limited to moneylending and tavern-keeping; this contributed significantly to popular antipathy towards Jews. In another report in 1881, the provisional governor-general criticised the behaviour of Jews towards the peasant population in the following way: I received information regarding cases where settlements were reached between village Jews on whom damages were inflicted during the previous disturbances and peasant communities [krest’ianskie obshchestva]. In these agreements, the Jews convinced them that the police were preparing to impose the payment of compensation on them in amounts, which the Jews themselves had determined. The communities agree to pay a part of the compensation and the Jews promise to make no further claims for their destroyed property. Based on this I have requested that the governors take the necessary measures to prevent any further such occurrences, to explain to the farmers that no official compensation from the communities has been determined for the damages suffered by the Jews and that payment for damages can only be imposed on a case-bycase basis following a court decision.65 The report continues by emphasising the Jews’ supposed practice of swindling the peasant communities by implying that if they paid the compensation to 64 65

daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 193, The Provisional Governor-General of Odessa to the Ministry of Interior, April 29, 1881, no 698. daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 193, The Provisional Governor-General of Odessa to the Ministry of Interior, June 20, 1881, no 349.

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Jewish families damaged by the riots it would be substantially less than that imposed on the peasants individually. The financial viability and available cash of the communities motivated the Jews, again according to the report, to target the communities for financial restitution and not to wait for court proceedings, offering a “discount” in the process. Τhe governor’s report condemned the Jews’ tactics in respect to the peasants but he was only seeing what he chose to see. Below it was a system based on ethnic discrimination, which prevented the Jews from freely practicing professions of their choice and restricted Jewish entrepreneurial resourcefulness to a few limiting forms of business and employment. Αnti-Semitic prejudice depicted Jews as unproductive, emphasising their role as middlemen in both the city and the countryside. As the Jewish intellectual Ilya Orshanskii argued, hatred was a product of the anomalous legal and economic position of Russian Jewry.66 In comparison to the peasants’ hard work, Jews were thought of as averse to the labour involved in agriculture and exclusively devoted to profit-making as intermediaries on its back. The Jews’ success in cereal cultivation in Palestine and the United States67 has a posteriori erased such deep-rooted beliefs and laid the blame on the regulations that allocated and distributed labour among the different ethnicities of the empire. Among the measures that the authorities proposed to appease the masses, was barring the liquor trade to Jews as a first step to the emancipation of the population from the economic yoke of the Jews.68 The governor-general of Odessa shared his fears with the upper echelons of the administration; they too were biased against the Jews and prone to Russian nationalism: Even in the event of a ban on the sale of alcohol by Jews, their continued presence in the villages, either as small-scale “manufacturers” and merchants or as farmers or owners of land, will always have deleterious effects on the economic, social and moral lives of the villages…. On the other hand, by buying or renting land of the Gentiles, they replace them and become undesirable neighbours for the villagers…. Furthermore, I cannot ignore the issue of education. Due to their higher economic 66 Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 262. 67 See “Agricultural Colonies in Palestine,” http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/907-agricultural-colonies-in-palestine; and “Agricultural Colonies in the United States,” http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/909-agricultural-colonies-in-theunited%20states (accessed 2 December 2014). 68 daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 193, Report of the Provisional Governor-General of Odessa to Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignat’ev, November 21, 1881, no 1167.

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standing compared to the villagers, the Jews “partake” to a greater extent in middle and higher education even in those educational institutions run by Gentiles. This impedes the spread of education among the Christian population. This fact could lead in the immediate future to the Jews manifestly dominating in this region and, combined with their undisputed economic pre-eminence, constitutes a serious threat…. With education, the Jews acquire more “sophisticated” methods of exploitation and, as a cosmopolitan people organized from within in a caste system with exclusionary tribal interests, are a serious threat not only to the economic fate of the region but also to urban and political development not to mention to the moral views of the dominant tribe [i.e. the Russians].69 The British consul in Odessa had a different take on the Jews’ contributions to the Russian economy: he acknowledged that they filled in the gaps in the system. He claimed that, on the one hand, in the villages, they were indeed high-interest moneylenders but, on the other, the peasants could not get financing from anyone else at all.70 He believed that the risk of non-repayment was very high, “the Russian being as anxious to defraud the Jew creditor as the latter is to get a high interest.” The consul affirmed that the only shops in the villages were owned by Jews and, were they to be prevented from keeping them, the Russian peasant would be deprived of many necessities or have to pay a much higher price for them. The British consul’s more balanced view drew attention to the positive aspects of the Jewish presence and he concluded that: “Were the Jews to leave South Russia its trade would entirely collapse.”71 As mentioned previously, a significantly detrimental prejudice that weighed heavily on the Jews after 1881 was the impression that they were revolutionaries. In particular, the participation of the female terrorist, Vera Figner, in the successful conspiracy to assassinate Tsar Alexander ii in 1881 spread the belief that Jews were implacable enemies of the monarchy, prepared to disturb public order and overthrow the tsarist regime. Figner, who was a Member of the Executive Committee of the terrorist organisation Narodnaia Volia (The Peoples’ Will), organised revolutionary activity in 1880 in Odessa.72 She had studied 69 70

71 72

daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 193, November 21, 1881, no 1167. National Archives, F.O., 881/4672, Confidential, Correspondence respecting the outrages on Jews in Russia, 1881–1882. Odessa, May 18, 1881, Consul General G. E. Stanley to Earl Granville. National Archives, F.O., 881/4672, Odessa, May 18, 1881. Norma Corigliano Noonan and Carol Nechemias eds., Encyclopedia of Russian Women’s Movements (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2001), 20–22.

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medicine with other Russian women at the University of Zurich and had come in contact with radical and socialist ideas. When she returned to Russia in 1873, she worked as a paramedic and organised volunteer work for the peasants in the provinces of Samara and Saratov.73 In Odessa, she held meetings in houses and gave speeches on the need to organise the people against the tsarist autocracy. The aim was to work principally with a circle of sympathetic military officers, mostly from the navy. When the executive committee of the militant organisation decided to assassinate the tsar, Odessa was selected as one of the four possible places where the required preparations could take place, since it was on his journey to the summer palace of Livadiia in Crimea. His expected route through the city, from the railway station to the steamboat wharf, passed in front of a shop the organisation rented on Italianskaia Street. From there they began digging a tunnel with the aim of laying a dynamite mine. After the completion of the work, the rumours of the tsar’s trip ceased and the organisation was instructed to stop operations.74 In Odessa, the Jewish doctor Semen Shor was one of the people who hosted Figner’s meetings; he was later found guilty of supporting revolutionaries, was exiled to Tver’ and barred from exercising his profession.75 Further testimony from the troubled 1880s is provided by the daughter of a Jewish tavern keeper, Evgeniia Semenovna Khmel’nitskaia, who attests to the spread of illegal revolutionary activity in Odessa: One morning in March 1881, I went into our tavern. I noticed something unusual. A small album was lying on the counter from which father took out photos hastily and mother carried them to the pig iron stove burning in the corner and throwing them into the fire…. A few days later on my way to school, I stopped near a precinct. There was a notification from the government about a reward of several thousand roubles for information about several persons who took part in the assassination in St. Peters­burg of the Tsar Alexander ii. As a child, I did not make any connections between the ravaged album and the murdering of the Tsar … until many years later when I was probably 13 and learned in Russian history about his tragic death…. I had often noticed that some customer would leave a book or a bundle asking father to keep it for a day or two when he will come to pick it up. Sometimes he never came to claim the package he 73

Vera Figner, Memoirs of a Revolutionist (DeKalb Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1991), 52–76. 74 Figner, Memoirs, 83–85. 75 daoo, fond 5, opis’ 1, delo 1459, From the Head of the Police Department to the Office of the Governor-General, February 24, 1885, deemed as confidential.

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left. It must have been the case with the little album, I presume contained photos of all noted members of the revolutionary terrorist party Land and Liberty. As soon as the Secret Police started mass searching and arrests of all suspicious persons those who had in their possession the little album and who as revolutionaries knew that they are in danger left it in our tavern to get rid of it….76 Revolutionary ideas in the 1880s were also spread by university students. The Secret Police intensified its attempts to follow and investigate citizens it suspected of subversive acts. Many young citizens, among them the Greek citizen Stephan C. Theohari in 1879, the twenty-three-year old meshchanka of Jewish origin Malvina Mrost in 1899, and the twenty-one-year old student Samuel Fel’dman in 1882 were under surveillance by the police, accused of criminal acts against the imperial regime, exiled, or jailed and barred from the university.77 As Richard Pipes has argued, the enforcement of the police state in Russia in the late Imperial period weighed heavily on public life and demonstrated signs of totalitarianism.78 The publishing of books, theatrical plays, the contents of street posters, and charity initiatives had to wait for the regime’s (local authorities, city police or even the tsar’s) approval and permission. Minor civic initiatives, like a “family evening” organised by the Swiss Society at Bristol Hotel in 1901, required the consent of the Governor-General of Odessa in order to proceed (see Map 5). In 1902, the circular of the Central Department of the Press of the Ministry of the Interior ordered that each play that would be put on in Odessa’s theatres had to be checked by the police regardless of whether it had been approved by the censorship board or not.79 Autocracy and police surveillance affected the school-age population as well; it had demonstrated solidarity both during the “October Coalition” and with the liberal protesters after 1905. Judicial officer Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko remembered that, during his school years in the late tsarist period, pupils were provided with identity 76 77 78

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Columbia University, Bakhmettef Archive, Memoirs of Evgeniia Semenovna Khmel’nitskaia, Autobiography, 5–6. daoo, fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 16; fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 54; and fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 55. Kantseliariia Odesskogo Politsmeistera [Secretariat of the Head of the Police]. Richard Pipes, “Towards the Police State,” in Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia, ed. by James Cracraft (Lexington, Ma, and Toronto: D.C. Heath and Company, 1994), 362–69. gaoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 2807, Petition of the Swiss Consulate to the City-Prefect of Odessa, January 12, 1901, no 917 and circular of the Ministry of Interior to the Governor-General, October 17, 1902, no 9166.

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cards that the police withheld whenever they “obstructed public tranquillity.” Special instructions were given to them on how to behave out of school and particularly how and to whom they should bow starting with the emperor, various grandees and so on down to the helpers of the administrators of the high school.80 A circular from Major-General Konstantin Adamovich Karangozov addressed to pupils of middle-class educational establishments in January of 1906 threatened them with police surveillance and expulsion from the town together with their families in case of the least obstruction of classes by violence or threats. It especially mentioned the responsibility of parents for the unruly behaviour of their children.81 It was followed by an order (1908) imposing a fine of 500 roubles on parents whose school-age children were detected smoking in public by the police.82 The determination of an autocratic regime to control all aspects of private and public life of the citizens through the oppressive medium of the police did not confine itself to the implementation of measures against the liberal behaviour of pupils. In January 1906, further press restrictions were announced by Karangozov and several satirical periodicals, most of them Jewish, were forbidden for “being detrimental to public tranquillity”.83 The principal responsibility of the police, however, was the monitoring of workers. A circular published in 1908 and bearing the signatures of the CityPrefect and Governor-General Tolmachev, listed nine directives to the policemen who had been assigned to observe the factories. The policeman assigned to a given factory had to be familiar with its entrances and exits, the workers’ and other employees’ addresses, not to mention what they read and discussed, and had to open their correspondence from relatives and friends. Additionally, he had to impede the accumulation of funds by workers and to approach them “with courtesy and tact” in order to become friends with them; this was especially the case with those workers who had leading roles in assemblies and demonstrations.84 80

Bakhmettef Archive, Columbia University, Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko Memoirs, notebook 13, “Tri vstrechi (byl’)” (Paris 1944), 1–16. 81 National Archives, F.O., 371/120, 4 January 1906, Circular of the Major-General Karangozov. 82 National Archives, F.O., 371/513, Summary of events in Russia during the fortnight ending March 11, 1908. 83 nara, Russia, Odessa, Dispatches of the American Consul to the General Secretary of the State in Washington, 9/22 January 1906 and 18/31 January 1906. 84 daoo, fond 314, opis’ 2, delo 145, l. 16, List of the policemen appointed to factories and workshops, Odessa 1908.

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As a result of the terrorist activities involved in the assassination of Alexander ii, the Ministry of the Interior had propounded the May Laws of 1882, a new code of restrictive regulations against the Jews. It was decreed that the Jews were once again forbidden to settle in villages outside of towns and boroughs excepting Jewish agricultural settlements. Mortgages, rentals and other deeds issued to Jews for real estate in areas outside of towns and boroughs were temporarily forbidden. Jews were not allowed to do business on Sunday and on certain Christian holidays, and were obliged to follow opening hours that pertained to Christian businesses. The intent of the laws was to eliminate the dependency of the rural population on Jews and to bring their economic behaviour into conformity with Christian norms. In 1882, the Minister of the Interior Count Ignat’ev issued a decree, via circular, by which Odessa’s Austrian and Turkish Jews were allowed to undertake trade only as members of the first guild, not of the second as before, and in the vicinity of custom posts only for one year.85 More measures restricted Jewish access to universities and schools and underlined the inequality of civil rights among the ethnicities of the Empire. 6 Impact of the Pogroms and Civic Drawbacks Human and material losses in Odessa were substantial during the pogroms of 1871, 1881 and 1905. In the events of 1871, six Jews were killed, twenty one were wounded, 863 houses and 552 businesses were destroyed. Damages were estimated at 1,500,000 roubles.86 In 1881, the consequences of the Odessa disturbances were unclear, as reported by the British Consul in an answer to the article of The Times.87 Reports of assassinations of many Jews and violations of Jewish women in the city were contested. Meanwhile, serious pogroms took place in Kiev, Elizavetgrad and in smaller towns and villages. In Odessa, more than 1,000 people were arrested and confined on barges. The timely intervention of the infantry and Cossacks proved a satisfactory measure in calming down previous disturbances that lasted four to five hours. Officially, the amount of direct damage did not exceed 100,000 silver roubles.88 During the disturbances of 1905, 700 Jews were massacred and 2,000 families were

85 86 87

daoo, fond 2, opis’ 1, delo 1306, Circular (No 1277) to the governors from the Ministry of Interior, Department of State police, May 19, 1882. Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 244. National Archives, F.O., 881/4672, January 25, 1882, Confidential no 27, Sir E. Thornton to Earl Granville.

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made destitute.89 The deep psychological trauma of this last blood-drenched upheaval seared itself in the Jewish population’s memory. The number of Jewish immigrants from Russia to the us increased by 26 percent the next year.90 The lack of direct communication between Odessa and New York obliged most immigrants to follow the continental route via Brody to the Atlantic ports in order to emigrate to North America.91 The impact of the pogroms on Jews who supported secularisation and integration fermented the deepest divisions in Odessan society. An entire generation of Jewish intellectuals, inspired by the optimism generated by the Great Reforms of Alexander ii, had previously strived for a synthesis of Jewish and Russian cultures; after 1871, it found itself unsupported by the gentile intelligentsia and optimism was replaced by hopelessness. The enlightened Russian Jewish newspaper, Den’, which had campaigned against anti-Semitism, ceased publication. The Odessa branch of the Organisation for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia, founded in 1867, was dissolved in 1872;92 its Jewish intellectual leaders had lost their faith in its usefulness. Moreover, the recurrence of pogroms in 1881 confirmed the belief among the intelligentsia that anti-Semitism was hereditary and incurable in Russia. The second crisis in Gentile-Jewish relations provoked by the 1881 pogroms resulted in the cessation of all efforts in favour of assimilation by Jewish intellectuals. The journalist and lawyer Mikhail Kulisher wrote that Judeophobia was a psychic attitude, which reflected century after century of hatred towards the Jews.93 Counter-violence arose and armed self-defence groups were formed as a response to the lack of protection from local authorities. Nationalistic attitudes dominated. Jewish intellectuals abandoned reform efforts and opted for migration hoping it would guarantee a secure existence. After 1881,

88 89 90 91

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National Archives, F.O.,881/4672, St. Petersburg, June 14, 1881, Vice Consul E. F. G. Law to Consul Michell. National Archives, F.O., 65/1713, Decode Mr Smith, November 8, 1905, confidential. Joseph Samuel, Jewish Immigration to the United States from 1881 to 1910 (New York 1914), Table 12, 164. New data has been presented by Per Kristian Sebak, in his paper “Immigration from Odessa to New York, 1892–1924” (Paper presented at the Third Conference of the Black Sea Project: The Economic and Social Development of the Port–Cities of the Southern Black Sea Coast, Late 18th – Beginning of the 20th century, organized by the Ionian University, The Institute for Mediterranean Studies/forth and Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, 23–26 October, 2014). Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 268–70. Zipperstein, “The Jewish Community of Odessa,” 270.

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emigration to Palestine and the us increased dramatically. In May 1882, four hundred people, mostly families, left Odessa for New York via the city of Brody. They founded the Am Olam (Eternal People) New Odessa Group with the goal of forming communitarian agricultural colonies in the us and spread from New Jersey to Oregon.94 Despite the moderate stance of St. Petersburg’s Jewish elite,95 the representatives of the South abandoned any hope for civil emancipation within the Russian realm and opted for new ideological trends such as Zionism and Socialism. The Jewish middle classes were inspired by Zionism’s objective of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine while the Jewish proletariat was attracted by the socialist ideas of the Bund.96 The vicious circle of hatred and intolerance, outbreaks of violence on the part of Russians and armed self-defence and retaliation by the Jews that was set in motion as a result of the 1881 pogroms came to an end with the events of 1905. After that, no further pogroms were recorded in Odessa until the Civil War of 1919–1921. After 1905, the new political climate, which allowed party membership and freedom of speech and assembly, and the trade union movement offered viable and legal paths for defusing popular outrage; social and political claims could be constructively channelled by the leadership of the workers’ unions. Political parties, however, increased nationalistic trends and chauvinism in all ethnic groups, Russians, Jews, Poles and Greeks, while efforts towards integration diminished leading to the further fragmentation of Odessa’s society. The outbreak of the First World War offered a new opportunity to create national cohesion in the face of a common enemy.

94

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Stepmother Russia, Foster Mother America: Identity Transitions in the New Odessa Jewish Commune, Odessa, Oregon, New York, 1881–1891/Theodore H. Friedgut. Recollections of a communist/Israel Mandelkern, edited and with an introduction and annotation by ­Theodore H. Friedgut and Israel Mandelkern, Recollections of a communist, ed. by Theodore H. Friedgut (Boston: Academic Studies Press, 2014), 6–21; Ellen Eisenberg, Jewish Agricultural Colonies in New Jersey, 1882–1920 (Syracuse, ny: Syracuse University Press, 1995). Alexander Orbach, “The Russian-Jewish Leadership and the Pogroms of 1881–1882: The Response from St. Petersburg,” The Carl Beck Papers in Russian and East European Studies, paper 308, University of Pittsburg, 1982. J. Goldstein, “The Attitude of the Jewish and Russian Intelligentsia to Zionism in the ­Initial Period (1897–1904),” The Slavonic and East European Review 64/4 (Oct. 1986): 546–56.

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7 Non-ethnic Violence Inquiries into public violence in the social, criminal and political spheres have not been pursued with the same frequency as those relating to the anti-Jewish attacks in Odessa. Confrontations similar in character to those of the pogroms but based on class rather than ethnicity resulted from the social discrimination and disenfranchisement generated by intense urban growth and the ­conspicuous wealth amassed in the city’s centre. Often it was difficult to distinguish the motivations for the mob violence provoked as it was at times either by class or religious tensions or frequently by both. In a police report in 1882, for instance, regarding the episodes following the throngs who showed up to buy tickets for an appearance of the famous French actress Sarah Bernard on November 15, it was noted that teams of 15 to 20 people peeled off the crowd gathered by the Russian theatre and, dispersing throughout the city, broke windows in 42 houses and robbed 24 open stalls and shops. The disturbances in various parts of the city continued for the following days (from November 16 to 18) but to a lesser degree. The arrested peasants confessed that gatherings were taking place at the traktirs on Bol’shaia Arnautskaia, where teams were being prepared to attack shops in order to rob them. Some fifty people were arrested, 8 referred to the district court, 4 were residents of other cities and were sent there, and the majority were set free due to lack of evidence. This and other episodes described previously indicate that the population of the city was familiar with social and ethnic disturbances, the darker face of modernity. Many blamed the autocratic regime, and the state’s repressive measures to keep society hostage and the public sphere under surveillance. Despite the positive climate generated by the liberal measures after 1905, violence continued to hinder the possibility of a peaceful life for Odessites. A new watershed of violence was reached at the beginning of 1906, when more than thirty incidents per month were registered in the criminal records. Armed gangs, often ethnically mixed, threatened, robbed, looted and blackmailed both Jewish and Gentile upper-middle and upper class residences. Most of these groups identified themselves as anarchists, anarchist-communists or fighters for the anarchist cause. The anarchist groups emerged spontaneously, were founded by very young people who were driven to political radicalism, and had far more members than the political parties.97 Ilya Gerasimov, who studies criminality in Odessa, confirms that contrary to what is commonly believed Jewish participation in criminal activities was negligible in comparison 97

Gerasimov, “Urban tales,” 288–89.

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to other ethnicities.98 Jews resorted to violence against other minorities exclusively for political reasons or self-defence. Gerasimov’s study of a group active in Odessa in July of 1906 notices that the gang was composed of young men who were not Odessites, belonging to the meshchane estate from other cities, who, following the experience of the pogrom against the Jews of Belostok (Białystok) in Poland, had been introduced into Odessa as a secret armed detachment to protect its Jewish population.99 Their mission was the armed struggle against the administrative and political “hooligans” who sowed the seeds of the violent attacks against the Jews. They solicited donations, purchased handguns, owned a printing press for producing proclamations, and fired at barracks of the Cossacks. Following their arrests, their confiscatory tactics, conducting “compulsory” fundraising from wealthy citizens under the threat of violence, were brought to light; these were the same tactics used by gangs of all sorts in Odessa who liked to label themselves anarchists or communists. Under the cover of revolutionary verbiage, the criminal violence of soit-disant political groups or gangs that were clearly apolitical was exculpated in the name of social justice. Gangs also justified their criminal violence in the name of social justice. The British Consul gave detailed reports on crime (including cases of political violence) among which are some indicative instances: From January 15th 1906 offices in town have been visited by groups who demand money in the name of anarchists or revolutionaries threatening “punishment” if they were followed or molested. Bombs were thrown into shops and an infernal machine exploded in the Central Administration of the Gendarmerie without any victims…. On the 22 of January three anarchists demanded 500 rubles from the Bank of Barbash.100 In October the police tried to arrest three men and a woman in their lodging, who resisted for five hours with revolvers and by throwing bombs. They were only overcome with the help of soldiers who shot them, one,

98 Gerasimov, “My ubivaem,” 211. 99 Gerasimov, “My ubivaem,” 232–36. 100 See National Archives, F.O., 371/120, January 26, 1906, General Smith to Sir Edward Grey, confidential. Samuil Matveevich Barbash was an Odessite merchant who owned a private bank. He was president and member of the board in many Jewish societies. He owned a house at 60, Richelievskaia str., five properties in Moldavanka and two at the Customs Square. See National Archives, F.O., 371/120, January 26, 1906, General Smith to Sir Edward Grey, confidential.

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it is believed, to be the Black Crow, a criminal leader who had attained notoriety in Odessa.101 Referring to the same incident, the American consul corrected the initial report that the group consisted exclusively of Jews. It was a mixed group of one Jew and two Russians.102 Another incident, this time with no victims, reported by the American consul, was the explosion of a bomb in an office rented by the Gendarmerie on the 4th floor in the house of Barianskii on Rishel’evskaia Street. The bomb was hidden in the stove of the unoccupied apartment of the 3rd floor.103 While the police scrutinised politically motivated crimes and arrested members of the Executive Committee of the Workers’ Deputies and of the revolutionary parties, ordinary crimes such as theft increased throughout April of 1906. Lawlessness flourished in all regions of the empire, from the Caucasus to Finland and from Poland to Siberia. Terrorist acts were a daily occurrence in 1907 and 1908 in most urban centres with St. Petersburg and Moscow in the lead. The increase of criminal incidents such as armed robberies (on trains in particular), assaults, and murders, had a serious impact on the psychological stability of the urban population. In August 1907, the British Consul in St. Petersburg, Neville Henderson, had come to the conclusion that the Russian people, tired of the ceaseless internal troubles of the past 2 to 3 years, welcomed the new stable and consistent government of Petr Stolypin (Prime Minister of Russia, 1906–1911).104 Stolypin deemed a controversial politician by contemporary historiography on the one hand, took restrictive measures against the constitutional process and, on the other, implemented a resolution to the “agrarian question” that enabled 24 percent of the peasant population to establish their own farms.105 In July 1906, the tsar dissolved the elected First Duma while on the 3rd of June 1907 a planned revision of the electoral law allowed conservative and moderate delegates to dominate in the Third Duma. Stolypin’s agrarian measures were aimed at abolishing peasant communes and 101 National Archives, F.O., 371/120, March 9, 1906, General Smith to Sir Edward Grey, confidential. 102 nara, Russia, Odessa February 27, 1906 and March 2, 1906. Dispatch of the American Consul to the Secretary of the State in Washington. 103 nara, Russia, Odessa March 22, 1906. Dispatch of the American Consul to the Secretary of the State in Washington. 104 National Archives, F.O., 371/318, Summary of events in Russia during the fortnight August 1–15, 1907, 105 Evtuhov and Stites, A History of Russia, 245.

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addressed the issue of land ownership for peasants through a program of colonising unpopulated lands in Eastern Russia rather than through the expropriation of the landed gentry.106 The autocracy strengthened its measures against political crime, by sentencing more than 100 people a month to death all over Russia; the number of people exiled in 1907 by the criminal and military courts increased by 35 percent in relation to the previous year.107 In Odessa, imprisonment for political reasons increased. Between the first of January 1906 and 10th of February 1906 twenty-nine people were imprisoned, fifty percent of whom were under the age of 21 and 19 Jews. Common criminality in Odessa fell under three general categories: armed robberies, murders of police officers on duty, and assaults by the Union of the Russian People. The last was severely criticised by the British consul. The repeated attacks by members of the Black Hundreds on citizens,108 based on either ethnicity or political rivalry, took place under the apathetic gaze of the police and the “protection” of the Military Governor, General Kaul’bars, known to be sympathetic to the Black Hundreds.109 In January 1908, the new temporary Governor, General Boufal, called upon the Union of the Russian People to publicly condemn street attacks ascribed to its members so as to clear the party from the suspicion of a planned “pogrom”.110 The secret police surveillance of the adversaries of the regime, especially those suspected of armed struggle, was strengthened and produced daily results. The uncovering 106 Leonard Shapiro, “Stolypin,” in Major Problems in the History of Imperial Russia, ed. Cracraft, 614–18. 107 National Archives, F.O., 371/513, St. Petersburg, 22 April 1908, Statistics on crime for the year 1907; 371/318, 1 August 1907, report by the St. Petersburg British Consul Neville Henderson. 108 During the elections of February 1907 the police allowed the Union of the Russian People to demonstrate for election purposes, which resulted in sanguinary encounters. National Archives, F.O., 371/318, Report on the events in Russia for the fortnight ended February 13, 1907. At the end of summer 1907 an attempt at a pogrom organized by the Black Hundreds in Odessa sent to the Jewish hospital forty seriously injured citizens. National Archives, F.O., 371/318, Report on the events in Russia for the fortnight 1–13 September 1907, St. Petersburg, 14 September 1907, report by the Consul Neville Henderson. On January 1908, new street attacks were reported, attributed to members of the Black Hundreds. National Archives, F.O., 371/513, Summary of events in Russia during the fortnight ending January 1, 1908. 109 National Archives, F.O., 371/318, Summary of events in Russia during the fortnight 14–28 August 1907. On January 1908, new street attacks were reported ascribed to members of the Black Hundreds. 110 National Archives, F.O., 371/513, Affairs of Russia, Confidential, Summary of events in Russia during the fortnight ending January 1, 1908.

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of stocks of revolvers and explosives, confiscation of literature, discovery of secret printing offices, and subsequent arrests, were on the daily criminal agenda in 1907, and the first half of 1908. The political arrests and their punishment by imprisonment, banishment, penal servitude, or death reduced the active membership of the terrorist groups. Odessa was a subversive city but others, like St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Lodz were much greater “headaches” for the Imperial government as was the unrest in Poland and Finland. Βy 1909 the British consul confirmed that the revolution could not reoccur at the same intensity as 1905: “The revolutionaries were lacking in funds, their organisations had been largely broken up, and many of their leaders had been removed in some way or another”.111 New reactionary policies and nationalist trends were discernible in the composition and resolutions of the Odessa city council after 1907. Monarchist politicians reasserted themselves in Odessa and dominated the local Duma; working with the newly installed City-Prefect and Provisional Governor-General, Ivan Nikolaevich Tolmachev, they used violent military means to persecute their opponents and the Jewish minority.112 Ruling between 1907–1911, Tolmachev possessed extraordinary powers due to the city’s state of siege and was effective in restraining ordinary crime but was much criticised for his favouritism towards the Union of the Russian People. Under his influence, many of the city’s government posts were filled by members of the urp whose political resumes were much more significant than their professional skills.113 Political influence in Odessa could be gauged by the results of the elections for both the local and State Dumas. Right-wing candidates prevailed in the municipal elections of 1909 and 1912 but not without revising electoral law, rigging the electoral process, and tampering with the results. Typically, Mikhail Vasil’evich Braikevich’s progressive party won the elections of 1913 but was excluded from the municipal council following the rescission of that result by those who ultimately won the elections that followed.114 The results of the elections for the State Duma had a different result. In these elections, on the 22nd of April 1906, the Constitutional Democrats garnered 20,138 votes compared to 4,794 for the Adherents of Lawful Order, 2,863 for

111 National Archives, F.O., 371/731, Political, A. Nicolson to E. Gray, St. Petersburg, May 23, 1909. 112 Hausmann, Universität, 479. 113 Odesskii Listok, April 4/24, 1906. 114 In relation to the elections for the municipal and State Dumas, see Hausmann, Universität, 463–80.

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the ultra- conservative Union of Russian People and 865 for the Union of the 17th of October.115 Represented by members of the academic intelligentsia from the Party of Constitutional Democrats of Odessa, the “progressives” were successfully elected to the First (1906) and Second (February 20, 1907–June 3, 1907) State Duma (Evgenii Nikolaevich Shchepkin, Osip Iakovlevich Pergament and A. I. Nikol’skii). The elections for the Third (1907–1912) and Fourth State Duma (1912–1914) were, however, won by the conservative monarchists Mikhail Aleksandrovich Reno and S. V. Levashov along with Bishop Anatolii, an avid nationalist. This turn to the right reflected the makeup of the electorate, which, as a result of changes to voting laws, was to a significant degree composed of aristocrats and owners of substantial property in the city. Furthermore, the counter-reforms of 1892 also led to the exclusion of representatives from ethnic groups such as the Jews that formed a third of the city’s population. The chasm between a society actively engaged in public life through societies and clubs, the literate population and the intelligentsia who closely followed the press on the one hand, and the bureaucracy of the old regime on the other, gaped ever wider. The city’s societal problems, its worn infrastructure and the hoped-for resurgence from the economic decline of the first decade of the twentieth century, all issues of immediate concern, were written off by the local authorities. Instead, as everywhere else in the empire, workers’ strikes mushroomed again in Odessa in 1912. The first political strike in solidarity with the murdered workers of the Lena goldfield began in April of 1912, and included the 600 workers of the Belgian cork producing company, 1074 from ROPiT’s naval yards, 150 from the Levin workshop and was followed by the employees of the newspapers and 15 printing presses of the city.116 There were no political disturbances before May Day in 1913. In its regular reports to the city-prefect regarding the population’s mood, the police reported no new demonstrations. In summation, the turbulent years after the 1905 revolution were marked by an outbreak of social and political violence. In Odessa in particular, armed actions led by anarchist groups and less by organised political parties were prevalent. The responses of the repressive apparatus of political, police, military

115 Odesski Listok, April 4/24, 1906. 116 daoo, fond 314, opis’ 1, delo 336, “Perepiska s Odesskim gradonachal’nikom i pristavami politseiskikh uchastkov o predmaiskikh zabastovkakh rabochikh i sluzhashchikh g. Odessy, o rasprostranenii proklamatsii revoliutsionnogo soderzhaniia,” April 1, 1912–August 19, 1912.

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and judicial authorities were bolstered by the right-wing nationalist party. Simultaneously, the citizenry attempted to exploit every opportunity for free congregation through the founding of independent clubs and societies that expressed the attitudes of groups of citizens on political, economic and spiritual issues. This need for liberalisation found itself, ever more often, opposed by a tsarist regime whose goal was to restrict, outlaw and suppress it. The wartime footing which the country found itself on following a brief phase of economic recovery (1909–1914) suspended all civic progress and focused the nation on the economic and military requirements of the war machine. This chapter reviewed how the various social classes of Odessa perceived ethnic coexistence and surveyed the last four pogroms in the city. Their consequence was the inhibition of acculturation into the social norms of Russian society on the part of the Jewish community. The chapter also described the emergence of nationalistic and socialist movements as well as the political violence that was unrelated to ethnic differences. The next chapter will address events in Odessa during wwi, which put an end to the cosmopolitan phase of the city’s history and concluded with the Russian Revolution.

chapter 6

The End of a Cosmopolitan Port-City World War I severely restricted Odessa’s accessibility. The elimination of the Black Sea as an outlet for commerce that had also previously occurred during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–78, the Italo-Turkish war of 1911 and the Balkan wars of 1912–1913, caused substantial losses to maritime trade. For Russian trade in the south the cost of this obstruction only during the closure of the Straits in April/May of 1912 was estimated at a hundred million roubles by the Russian Ministry of Finance.1 During the conflict between Greece and Turkey (1912–1913), ships bearing the Greek flag were stopped from passing through the Dardanelles on their way back to the Mediterranean and their grain cargoes were often confiscated.2 This was a decisive blow to grain transport from the southern Russian provinces, since an important portion of this trade towards Greek and mainly European ports was carried from Odessa by Greek-owned vessels. Loaded Greek steamships blocked in Black Sea ports demanded compensation for the delays from the Turkish government. Their owners attempted to change the ships flags or sell them to Russian citizens. In the Odessa market, serious interest was expressed by Russian citizens of Greek descent in the purchase of such ships.3 During wwι the strategic alliances of Turkey with the Central Powers, and of Russia with the Entente, resulted again in the closure of the Straits. The sea lanes that connected Odessa with the Mediterranean remained idle and maritime traffic was halted. Many shipowners of Greek origin, who had registered their ships in the Russian ports of the Black and Azov Seas, were obliged to send their vessels out to the Mediterranean before the Black Sea turned once again in its history into a closed lake. Communication by sea with the Mediterranean, the Atlantic and the Far East ended. The effort to improvise new trade routes across Romania and Bulgaria proved unsatisfactory because of high duties and expensive railway rates.4 The postal service had to go through 1 Harvey, “The Development of Russian Commerce”, 317. 2 Harlaftis, History of Greek-owned Shipping, 180–195. 3 Diplomatiko kai Historiko Archeio Hypourgeiou Exoterikon, 1912, 114. 2. 1, Greek Consulate of Constantinople, April 19, 1912, April 21, 1912 and May 25, 1912; 1912, 114. 3, September 24, 1912, Greek Consulate in Odessa, September 26, 1912 and October 13, 1913. 4 nara, Russia, Odessa, Annual report of the American Consul John A. Rey for the year 1914, February 8, 1915. © Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004351622_008

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St. Petersburg in order to reach Europe. The gradual loss of the port of Odessa’s international character affected its principal economic activity, the export of grain. It was forbidden for military reasons and the grain supplies of the South were diverted to provision the army. Yet, as had happened during the RussoJapanese war, the railway system was overloaded and inadequate for the needs of the country. A report by the American consul had already highlighted the surprising drop in the goods’ traffic to Odessa during the prolonged depression of the years 1904–1906.5 The import trade through the Mediterranean was also affected. The stoppage of exports and the diversion of numbers of men from productive occupations lowered the purchasing power of the population and increased the price of all manufactured goods.6 The outbreak of war followed an economically and socially turbulent decade. Between 1915 and 1918, only coastal ships entered Odessa’s port. In the year previous to the war, 847 foreign ships had docked there. They decreased to 540 in 1914, 5 in 1915, 1 in 1916, 6 in 1917, and 472 in 1918.7 Along with the closing of the port, thousands of longshoremen at the piers, stevedores, grain trade middlemen and exporters found themselves out of work. The complete interruption of foreign trade in 1915 obliged the city to restructure its economic activity by developing industries to service the army. Industries that supplied raw materials from abroad were adversely affected by the war. Raw materials now had to be brought in from Archangel and Vladivostok. On the other hand, businesses that were founded or converted to supply military materiel thrived.8 Among these were the Anatra warplane factory and 50 other businesses established for the purpose in 1915. The lack of imported products weakened trade and farmers brought fewer agricultural products to Odessa; the result was a shortage of foodstuffs in the city available at skyrocketing prices.9 Many basic alimentary goods doubled in cost, although some increased eightfold. Profiteers who kept their merchandise off the markets until they could secure much higher prices appeared in Odessa’s markets. Only the trade in caviar persisted at its usual high price, which was shipped in via the northern route. The number of women exceeded that of men for 5

nara, Russia, Odessa, Dispatch of Robert Bacon to the General Secretary of the State in Washington, March 10, 1906. 6 nara, Russia, Odessa, Annual report of the American Consul John A. Rey for the year 1914, February 8, 1915. 7 Penter, Odessa 1917, p. 68: Table 12. 8 Penter, Odessa 1917, 67–72. 9 nara, Russia, Odessa, Annual Report on Commerce and Industries, 1915. Section I, John A. Rey, Consul, January 19, 1916.

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the first time in the 1915 census due to the war (504,615 excluding the army, 226,852 men and 277,753 women).10 An influx of refugees resulted from the war and many families found themselves on the verge of destitution. Sixteen major strikes occurred in Odessa in 1916. The refugees and increased military presence resulting from the Romanian front further deteriorated the quality of the residents’ lives during the war.11 War dictated structural changes in Odessa’s economy and reinforced the linkages with the national economy through the development of the war industry. Industrialists were for the first time organised and mobilised through the War Industry Committees and became involved in politics by formulating their own agenda as a pressure group.12 Yet, the initial patriotic zeal waned as a result of military defeats, the incompetence of Russia’s military apparatus vis-à-vis the Germans and the inefficiency of many of its leaders. The war’s impact on the population, continuation of the political crisis and economic strain generated social upheaval and an upsurge in revolutionary activity. Even the tsar’s officials feared a social revolution as a by-product of an eventual defeat by the Germans.13 Yet, the tsar himself believed that the war would raise national sentiment and strengthen his power. In reality, the contrary happened. Recent historiography on the origins of the Russian Revolution documents how the war did in fact contribute to the rise of the revolutionary movement that led to 1917.14 Dominic Lieven argues that the fall of the monarchy, which led to a further disintegration of the army as an effective fighting force, the failure of the Russian offensive in April 1917 and the pacifist propaganda of the Bolsheviks contributed largely to the outbreak of the October Revolution.15 As Leopold Haimson argued, in the absence of war, the crisis, which stemmed from the growing clash between the reactionary attitudes of government circles and the liberal expectations of society, would have been resolved without

10 nara, Russia, Odessa, January 19, 1916. 11 Penter, Odessa 1917, 75. 12 Sarah Badcock, “Autocracy in Crisis. Nicholas the Last”, in The Twentieth-Century Russia Reader, ed. by Alastair Kocho-Williams (London and New York: Routledge, 2011), 41. 13 P. N. Durnovo, a tsarist official, in a memorandum to Nicholas ii on February 11, 1914 wrote: “In the event of [Russia’s military] defeat, the possibility of which in a struggle with a foe like Germany cannot be overlooked, social revolution in its most extreme form is inevitable”. Quoted from Evtuhov and Stites, A History of Russia, 256. 14 L. Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905–1917,” in The Twentieth-Century Russia Reader, ed. by Kocho-Williams, 9–28. 15 Dominic Lieven, “Russia, Europe and World War I,” in The Twentieth-Century Russia Reader, ed. by Kocho-Williams, 45–51.

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the deep convulsions it provoked.16 Moreover, war impeded the process of political maturation of Russian society and the period of transition from a despotic regime to constitutional politics lasted only too briefly.17 The war generated a state of economic and political emergency and suppressed the civic and institutional functions of the national Duma. During the war, all political opposition was forbidden. The experiment in constitutional monarchy from 1907 to 1914 was a period of intense debate among local candidates who, for the first time, addressed the central issues of the nation and took public positions in the Duma based on personal views or party line. As described in the Leninist axiom, democratisation evolved by taking one step forward and two back. Despite the dissolution of the First Duma (April 1906)18 and the Second (June 1907),19 which had challenged the tsarist political program, and the election of a majority of conservative representatives to the Third (1907-June 1912)20 and Fourth Dumas (1912–1917),21 their sessions addressed, among other issues, the peasant problem, religious freedom for the Old Believers, factory legislation, cantonal administration, the Duma’s rights in the shaping of foreign policy and the army reform. The dissolution of the First and Second Dumas is indicative of the autocratic nature of the imperial regime, which resisted accepting the political opposition of the elected representatives. The very brief lifespan of Russian political life between 1907 and 1914 was not able to produce the hoped-for results. The “constitutional experiment,” as G. Hosking calls it, obstructed by the war and the rapid worsening of economic and social conditions, created an explosive mechanism that led through destruction and defeat to revolution and the drastic changes that followed. The influence of the newly founded political parties was felt in Odessa in the period between 1905 and 1914 through the candidates they put up for election to the State Duma. The Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), a liberal bourgeois democratic party, which advocated a constitutional assembly, full citizenship for all Russia’s minorities, and appealed to bourgeois professionals and intellectuals, had the greatest impact. Supported by minorities, the party dominated all the elections except for the last, for the Fourth National Duma, especially in the central Bul’varnyi district of the city. In the first elections in 16 17 18 19 20 21

Haimson, “The Problem of Social Stability in Urban Russia, 1905–1917,” 11. Geoffrey A. Hosking, The Russian Constitutional Experiment. Government and Duma 1907–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 215. The First Duma lasted from April to July 1906. The Second Duma was elected in March 1907 and dissolved in June 1907. The Third Duma lasted from 1907 to 1912. The Fourth Duma lasted from 1912 to 1917.

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March of 1906, the Kadets garnered 2,980 votes in this district in contrast to the 523 of the right-wing Lawful Order, 303 of the Union of Russian People, and 160 of the coalition of the Octobrists22 with the Trade and Industry Party.23 In the Khersonskii quarter, the elections gave 3,180 votes to the Kadets, 923 to Lawful Order, 626 to the Union of Russian People and 411 to the Octobrist coalition.24 The victor of the first election was Professor Ε.Ν. Shchepkin of the Imperial University of Novorossiia in Odessa who had positioned himself openly against the pogroms. In the second election for the Duma of 1907, despite the increase of votes in favour of right wing parties, the Kadets’ candidate, the lawyer O. Ia. Pergament was elected to the National Duma. He, along with the veterinarian Α. Ι. Νikol’skii, also of the Kadet Party, represented Odessa in the Third Duma. Upon Pergament’s death in 1910, he was replaced by Baron Reno who had received the second highest number of votes, and held the position until 1912. Despite changes in the electoral body and attempts to restrict voting rights to Russians, owners of estates and urban real estate, the Kadets still prevailed. In the fourth and last election, the progressive block was fractured; as a result, it was not possible to put forth a common candidate to represent the minorities as well (Jews, Ukrainians, and Poles).25 This, along with the newly restrictive voting rights, resulted in the election of right wing representatives, Bishop Anatolii and Professor S. V. Levashev, to the Fourth Duma. However, the dominance of monarchists in the local Duma, aided by the City-Prefect and Provisional Governor-General I. Tolmachev (who openly intervened to support the Union of Russian People party) and facilitated by the curtailment of the Jewish community’s participation in the election,26 generated an atmosphere of conflict and disharmony in society. In the following local election held on April 28, 1913, the progressive party, Novodumtsy, won 62 of the 72 seats on the municipal council. The military governor Sosnovskii cancelled

22

The Union of October 17 was a moderate constitutionalist party. It was established in 1905 and, starting in 1906, its leader was the industrialist Alexander Guchkov. It was to the right of the Kadets and supported Sergei Witte’s government in 1905–1906 and P. Stolypin’s reforms in 1906–1911. 23 Hausmann, Universität, 496–97. 24 Hausmann, Universität, 496. 25 Jews and Ukrainians fielded separate candidates for the Third State Duma, V.E. Zabotinskii and Ο.Ο. Βohomolech respectively. In the 1912 elections Jews were represented by multiple candidates. Hausmann, Universität, 497–98. 26 Moiseev as Odessa’s City-Prefect was an advocate of the idea to deprive Jews of their voting rights for the State Duma. See Hausmann, Universität, 482.

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the results and, ultimately, the ultra-right candidate of the “Union of Archangel Mikhail”, Β. Α. Pelikan was seated.27 Odessa was torn between democratic representation at the national level and a monarchist anti-Semitic local Duma. Despite the evolution in the political arena after the October Manifesto (1905), the formation of a bourgeois society prior to wwi could not be realised without a socio-political order that could overcome absolutism and privileges of birth, and grant its citizens full equality by resolving the Jewish question. Western European experience concerning the formation of middle-classes, despite their regional differences, illustrates the necessity of a constitutional state and civil law that could limit state power.28 The deepening of social differences that began in the 1880s, the emergence of new social formations such as the working class and the lower middle class strata, cut across other social deprivations such as unequal civil rights that encompassed different religion groups, Jews and Old Believers for instance, regardless of class. Long-active and emerging nationalisms created segregation according to ethnicity as in the case of the Poles and Ukrainians. The aspiration for a peaceful political order for Odessa’s citizens could not be established without liberal reforms and a new legal framework for the co-existence of multi-ethnic populations, a policy that the Revolutionary Government of 1917 made official. 1 Αftermath: The Four Stories After almost four years of war came the February and October Revolutions, and the German occupation of the city. Political and military control changed hands continuously. During these turbulent years, people had to choose which side they were on. The dilemmas of politicisation and revolution led down different paths mostly determined by class, social position, ethnicity and political ideology. Many supported social justice and the abolition of exploitation regardless of their own class interests. Nonetheless, the bourgeoisie of the city, while hailing the end of tsarist autocracy, remained opposed to the Bolsheviks and welcomed the forces of the White Russians and the allied forces of the Entente in 1919. Odessa was subjected to eight consecutive changes of authority between 1917 and 1920. It did not however follow the revolutionary example of St. Petersburg. The monarchy was replaced by the Provisional Government in

27 Hausmann, Universität, 483. 28 Kocka, “The European Pattern”, 9.

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February of 1917. On the third of March 1917, a telegram from the Provisional Government was received in Odessa. Crowds spilled out onto the streets impatiently awaiting the special editions of the newspapers. Committees in support of the new government were formed by all the social, political and labour organisations and the parties. The representatives of the monarchists, Pelikan and Mechnikov, resigned their public posts, and M.V. Braikevich, candidate of the “pacifist reform” party in 1913, became City Head. In May of 1917, Kerensky visited and spoke to the Odessites from the balcony of the city theatre. He was very popular and was received with great enthusiasm. From May 1917, the centre of decision-making in the city was the Soviet of Workers’ Deputies, which was supported by Rumcherod (Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Romanian Front, Black Sea Fleet and Odessa region), the Soviet of the city’s garrison, and the Red Guards militia.29 The Soviets in Odessa however were supervised by the Socialist Revolutionaries (SR s)30 and Mensheviks.31 So-called “soviet power” in the case of Odessa was in reality an alliance of the socialist parties. Another difference with the capital was that the above-mentioned centres of revolutionary authority were independent of each other and were not subject to a defined hierarchy. Until October of 1917, the Bolsheviks had little power in Odessa. Following the October 1917 takeover of national power by the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg, the influence of the local party and the Workers’ Soviet increased in Odessa where their representatives acquired 28 of the 68 seats.32 Typical of the period was the City Duma’s petition to the Provisional Government for more independence for the province. Odessa’s traditional status as a free port once again became the subject of contention in the context of the increased economic and political autonomy pursued by local authorities. On June 10 1917, the Central Rada (Central Council of the Ukrainian People’s Republic) in Kiev proclaimed the independence of Ukraine. However, there was very little contact between the Central Rada and the administrative representatives of Odessa. At the end of 1917, the Bolsheviks initiated peace negotiations with the Germans at Βrest-Litovsk. The representatives of the Central Rada came to the negotiations and concluded a separate treaty with the Central Powers, 29 Penter, Odessa 1917, 75, 418. 30 The Socialist Revolutionary Party viewed the peasantry as the revolutionary class and promoted agrarian socialism. Its ranks included Alexander Kerensky. 31 Faction of the Russian Social Democratic Worker’s Party, and later a separate party, as distinct from the Bolsheviks. 32 Penter, Odessa 1917, 115.

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recognising the independence of Ukraine in exchange for supplying grain for their troops.33 At the request of the Rada, Austro-German troops marched into the Ukraine on February 1918 and obliged the Bolsheviks to retreat from Kiev, which they had captured in late January 1918. Shortly thereafter, the front collapsed and the Germans returned to the negotiating table. In ­January/March 1918, the first Bolshevik administration established itself in Odessa. Exploiting the collapse at the front and the Rumcherod, a “military revolutionary committee” composed of workers and soldiers and headed by two Bolsheviks commissars sent from St. Petersburg took over the administration of the city through a committee of eleven members that was supported by the Left SR s and the anarchists.34 In the brief time the members, primarily representatives of military materiel factory workers and sailors of the commercial fleet, were in power they were unable to win over the society of Odessa. They also failed to align themselves completely with the revolutionary centre in St. Petersburg. Differences arose regarding the Ukraine, how to deal with private banks, and the operation of the revolutionary court which was autonomous and did not bow to pressure from the Soviets, since the court’s decisions reflected the mood of the masses who followed its sessions.35 Another of Odessa’s political idiosyncrasies, as mentioned above, was that instead of a single centre of power there were three poles, possibly more, that competed and were not subjected to one hierarchy. The first was the Soviet of People’s Commissars; the second the Soviet of the Unemployed “the Pied-Piper of anarchism”36 which had a strong appeal in a city like Odessa; and the third was the Military Revolutionary Committee (Voenno-revoliutsionnyi komitet) which, in 1918, organised in the municipality the transfer of power to the Bolsheviks. The Red Guards were another source of influence as was organised crime, which, in conformity with the times, adopted revolutionary slogans and practices.37 The chasm between the Soviet of People’s Commissars and the centralised revolutionary authority in St. Petersburg deepened even further, when, in February of 1918, Μikhail Artemovich Murav’ev, the commander of the Romanian front, was sent to Odessa to impose his “rule”.38 Upon his arrival, he proclaimed that 33

Xenia Joukoff Eudin, “The German Occupation of the Ukraine in 1918,” The Russian Review 1/1 (Nov. 1941): 90–91. 34 Penter, Odessa 1917, 392–94. 35 Penter, Odessa 1917, 397–408. 36 Penter, Odessa 1917, 228. 37 Penter, Odessa 1917, 402–06. 38 Penter, Odessa 1917, 408–12.

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he was assuming supreme power and imposed a reign of terror on the city. His military units disarmed the military police and the Red Guards. The workers refused Murav’ev’s order recruiting them into the Red Army in order to send them to the Romanian front. In Murav’ev’s opinion, the surrender of the city to the German and Austrian armies later in 1918 was the result of the workers’ insurgency against Soviet (his) authority.39 This brief Bolshevik phase was followed by the Austro-German occupation of the city (March to November 1918) and by that of the allied forces of the Entente, French and Greek troops, from (December 1918 to March 1919). Before the allied forces entered the city a brief interval of occupation by the forces of the Cossack Ataman Petliura, took place. The allied army followed and after its retirement, the city was occupied by the Whites. Before being definitively acquired by the Bolsheviks again in January of 1920, the city was under the control of the White Russian Volunteer Army for less than a year. The narratives that follow were selected to tell the stories of four very different Odessites during the events of these years. They illustrate the experiences that determined which side the individuals took during the various conflicts. Despite some similarities in these narratives and keeping in mind the subjective and idiosyncratic nature of these kinds of biographical memoirs as historical sources, it should be noted that they are not presented here as an evidentiary scheme. They are presented more as witnesses to the end of an era, perhaps of the period of Odessa’s history which began in 1794 and ended with the first revolutionary authority in 1917, an end that had been preordained at the onset of wwi. 2 Politicization during the School Years Evgeniia Semenovna Khmel’nnitskaia was born in Odessa in the 1880s, and she came from the Jewish lower middle class milieu. She related in her autobiography the early encounter of pupils with politics and the dilemmas of membership in one or the other group.40 She became a teacher and worked in public schools in Odessa. She emigrated to the U.S. in the late 1920s and worked as a librarian.

39 Penter, Odessa 1917, 411. 40 Columbia University, Bakhmeteff Archive, Evgeniia Semenovna Khmel’nitskaia Papers, ca. 1928–1956, autobiography. The text has been transcribed directly as written by the author.

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2.1 Gymnasia Militancy Until entering the Gymnasia, I never thought of social inequalities. We were not poor thanks to the untiring work of father and mother…. Here first time in my life I came in contact with the aristocratic and well-to-do world. Even the Jewish girls came from very rich families: daughters of bankers. I approached the age of 14–15. More than ever, I needed guidance. Not finding it at home, I started to go out more often with other girls and boys of my acquaintance. As it is well known, students of the University always took a prominent part in all revolutionary movements in Russia. But at the period, which I describe now, 1890–1900, there was no revolutionary movement of any kind. On the contrary, after the assassination of the Tzar Alexander ii and the complete destruction of the terrorist party “Land and Freedom” the reactionary forces had been in full swing. Yet, it was the preparatory time for the development of the political parties which appeared at the beginning of the 20th century…. Father often pronounced long speeches about the bad management of our country…. They left in me a vague feeling of discontent and the desire to escape sometimes to a better country, somewhere abroad. This feeling was prevailing among a great part of the youth of my time, as I discovered when I came in contact with many boys and girls. Everything was rosy and progressive abroad; everything was stupid and bad in Russia. The outstanding trait of this period in my life was that I made acquaintances with many boys and girls of my age or few years older who later became prominent revolutionaries…. We all wanted to be “useful” to the masses. This was the general motto of the period. Moreover, the differences arose by what means and in what capacity we could be of use to the people. Numerous little circles among the pupils of the secondary school had been functioning for the study of politics usually under an older member of some political party who worked as a propagandist under an assumed name…. 2.2 Acquaintances I met a boy, Sima Hefter; he belonged to a well-to-do family. His father was a financial broker and speculated on the stock exchange. We became very friendly and Sima used to come often to our humble dwelling on the Youznaia Street, although he and his family occupied a large private residence in a very seclusive and aristocratic street of the city. He was a very lovable good natured chap, who toyed with revolutionary ideas, which for him could have no real meaning. But I did not know it at that time and took everything at its face value. Sima tried in our first serious conversation to persuade me how bad was the lot of the working man in Russia. As a skeptic by nature, I hated any dogmatic statements. I doubt whether Sima ever came in contact with a real factory worker or peasant…. But I lived close enough to surrounding poverty and degradation. Besides I had seen

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so much drunkenness that I retorted right away. “The Russian worker is a drunkard. If he would not drink so much he would not be so poor”. I remember that my answer made Sima laugh, so unusual was for anybody to contradict widespread liberal ideas. However, Sima had not lost his hope for me as a budding revolutionary. He soon invited me to meet some “friends”. It was a long travel; somewhere in the suburb called Peresyp’ we met a young lady, who, as I understood later, was recruiting new cadres of revolutionaries among the pupils of the secondary schools. We met the same young lady again. This time our meeting took place in one of the public palisades on the so called Alexandrovskii Avenue. The young lady whose name I never learned made a direct proposition to me to join their cadres … by taking upon myself some duty to perform, such as delivery and distribution of pamphlets…. “Sure”, I said, “I’m in sympathy with the revolutionary movement and would like to help in whatever capacity I can. However, I may be soon arrested. I know myself very well. I am a weak character…. If the police or gendarmes would start to question me, I am afraid I will not be able to stand the strain and I may unwillingly involve other persons and betray them…. I can’t be a revolutionary.”…. Strange and unusual was my first collision with the future Bolsheviks. I met a boy, Michael W. and others who behaved so strange among us. They offended everybody. They took upon themselves to dictate to others their principles, their standards of contact and tried to influence all our future. Good natured and moral boys coming from the well-to-do merchant families known in the city for their probity, these young proselytes acted in the true nihilist manner…. They did not recognize the established authorities, they claimed, and however, in their green youth and adolescent arrogance they tried to impose their beliefs on others. Michael W. who was sincere and honest became a Social-democrat from that time and his career for him was straight “from the cradle to the grave” a martyrdom of a Russian revolutionary: arrested at the age of 17 and sent to Siberia, he later became one of the pillars of the Bolshevik party. Michael W. tried to persuade me almost at once that the gymnasia is a useless institution, that it does not give proper knowledge, which you can obtain yourself out of school simply by reading and studying good books. The idea was so novel to me. It struck me so strongly that for a long time I was thinking seriously should I leave school or not. By this time, my zeal in learning cooled off considerably. Like so many youngsters at this age, I was in real danger to ruin my life. The influence of companions is so much felt during the adolescent period of life, when the ties with the family, at least temporarily, are loosening. To leave the gymnasia on my account as my “radical” acquaintance, Michael W., suggested? I questioned over and over during the day and even half asleep…. What will I gain by taking this

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step? Was it easy for me to enter the gymnasia? Michael W., I reasoned, had it so far very easy. His parents put him through gymnasia, as a matter of course as the proper thing for them to do. They had means, connections, influence. Where do I come in this picture? What would I achieve by leaving school? Would it not mean to cut off at once drastically and irrevocably the only way out to a brighter future? 2.3 The Illegal Literature I read avidly everything that I could lay my hands on. And, of course, the young propagandists supplied me with every kind of the so-called “illegal literature” consisting of pamphlets and small books of famous revolutionaries, or socialist and communist writers. There was no freedom of press in Russia. For the possession of one of these pamphlets, if the police or the gendarmes could have found it, one could be thrown out of school, arrested, kept in prison for a long time, and sometimes even be exiled to Siberia. Spies and undercover agents could be seen on the streets pocking their noses at everyone who seemed to attract their suspicion. And, yet, this traffic of the suspicious and forbidden literature among the pupils of the gymnasia and other secondary schools went on undetected by the authorities for a long time… Among the first socialistic literature I read when I was 15 years old was the “Communist Manifesto” by Karl Marx and the wonderful works of Ferdinand Lassale…. As I remember correctly, my first impression from reading the “Communist Manifesto” was that by establishing the power of the workers, there would be no other class in the society, which could be exploited…. But the reading that really enchanted me and left its lasting and enduring influence for all my life was the reading of Ferdinand Lassale’s articles and especially the one: “Knowledge and the Workers”…. It enlarged my mental horizons. It strengthened in me the desire to learn as much as possible and as much as I could absorb, and carry all that accumulated knowledge to those who did not have the opportunity and the privilege to get to the sources of learning… 3 Between Judicial Responsibility, Passion for Music and Revolution Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko studied law and became a judge in pre-revolutionary Russia. He began his career in Nikolayev in 1906, and was later assigned to Kherson and Odessa. Yet, his passion was music, which he pursued parallel to his professional career. In 1920, he was evacuated to Istanbul, stayed on the island of Khalki until 1923 and together with other Russian emigrés ended up in Paris, France, as a worker in a bonnet factory. Twenty years later, as a refugee

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in Paris, he wrote 19 notebooks of reminiscences41 of pre-revolutionary Russia and the France he emigrated to. 3.1 1918 – Law Service, Music and German Occupation42 I was secretary to the district attorney of the municipal court [of Odessa]. Despite the responsibilities of my position I did not neglect my music lessons and, now, twenty years later, looking at the music scores I’ve stored in a suitcase since, memories are returning to me of how and when I played the pieces, because sheet music is not only an organ. I recalled how often I’d denied myself promotion to justice of the peace or prosecutor in some other ouezd (administrative district) because I wanted to practice in the city where there the music conservatory and school were; that’s how much I wanted to play in the symphony orchestra. My first post was in Nikolaiev and then in Kherson where there were music schools and where other musicians could be found among the legal personnel. So began my legal career in my homeland, a career constantly intertwined with the love of music. At the end of January of 1918 notifications in the local papers and on posters all over the city announced the pending arrival the following Sunday of the German army’s occupation forces. Despite the fact that the Germans were our enemies, they were entering the city temporarily to buy wheat for their country. They requested that the residents express neither particular joy nor hostility and that on that Sunday they desist from throwing flowers to the troops. The end result of such an announcement was that nearly all the residents swarmed into all the streets in order to have a look at what only recently were their former enemies. Some among them were amicably disposed and others maintained a hostile stance. On Sunday morning, in six trucks, the Austrian troops with the officers in the lead arrived. The soldiers were on their guard, standing in the trucks with rifles in hand which they aimed at the populace lining both sides of the street. Two of the trucks headed for the Municipal Duma where they were welcomed by the city’s representatives while the rest went towards the edge of the city, to the square where the military forstadt ( fort) was located. The post office, telegraph and power station were taken over by a few soldiers each. It was carried off peacefully and calmly and by nightfall, everyone returned to their homes.

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Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko’s Memoirs, were written between ca. 1930–1955. He describes his professional life as a judge in Southern Russia (before 1917), his exile to Istanbul and the island of Khalki (1919) and the difficult life for the Russian emigrés in Paris (after 1920). Columbia University, Bakhmeteff Archive, Dmitrii Kondrat’evich Ovdenko Memoirs, ca. 1930–1955, notebook no 8, “ Violonchelʼ”.

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The following day, my [music] professor from another city came to visit for a week. We decided to devote the week to music and I invited other musicians. As always, we began with the classics and then moved on to the “lighter” music. Someone suggested we play one of Beethoven’s quartets, the annotated one I rediscovered twenty years later when I was already living abroad. It was ten at night, the street lamps had been extinguished since there had been no disturbances following the withdrawal of the occupying troops. Everyone was calm. Then, suddenly, we heard the sound of a fist pounding on the street entrance door. We stopped playing in an attempt to determine what the sound was. Our first thought was that some street urchin was responsible and decided to move to the dining room, lowering the lights in the living room, which seeped out through the closed shutters. After a half hour, we started playing once again. Not ten minutes passed before we heard pounding at two of the windows and the door. We were so worried by this second incident that we interrupted our playing, doused the candles and attempted to listen once again. “Something strange is happening,” I told them. I had let the servants leave that day and so decided to go to the front door myself to see what was transpiring in the street. Although the exterior door had a chain, I nonetheless held my foot against it as I opened in stages fearful that someone would hit me on the head. I listened with great care attempting to determine if someone was on the other side. Concluding that no one was standing near the door, I had a look out on the street. Everything about was quiet…. There were no pedestrians, only three figures at the corner with rifles in their hands. I thought to myself that something strange was occurring in the city since all the public services were in the Germans’ hands. Turning around to close the door, I noticed a paper stuck to it. I took it, closed the door and re-entered the living room where my friends were awaiting me impatiently. In the corners of the piece of paper were drawn skulls with crossed hands over them and in the center a number was written circled with red ink and some letters. “Gentlemen, this is not good,” said the aged professor. “This is a warning either from some individual or organization and I recommend we do not continue our playing. Let us postpone our quartet to tomorrow if things are calmer in the city.” This sounded right to everyone. The lamps and candles were off. We sat on the soft armchairs and sofa saying not a word; we were trying to hear even the slightest rustle from outside. “How will we return to our homes,” asked one of the guests, “it will be quite frightening to walk in the streets.” “The threat is not to you but to me as the owner of the apartment. So anyone who is in a hurry can leave even though it is not even eleven yet. And the professor who will be here for a week will stay with me,” I told them. The guests hurriedly said their goodbyes and returned to their homes.

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The following day we learned that the Austrians, relying on the friendly reception, had not taken the security measures typical for a foreign city. During the night, they were suddenly attacked by unknown groups, whether rightists or leftists, no one knew. Several people were killed and the tires of the trucks destroyed. The few troops had to leave in the morning fearful of remaining in hostile city. Once the Austrians were gone, the “terrorist” events in the city began; the first victim was the coroner, B., and his wife. Anyone in an official position feared being captured even though all the government services were functioning normally and life seemed to go on as normal. As a result, we never managed to finish the Beethoven quartet. Music was a pleasure of a peaceful life and not for the life we began to live during the war, which had not ended; the note I made on the score of Beethoven’s quartet never lost its meaning for me even to this day. 3.2 1919 – Farewell to the Violoncello A year later, I played the violoncello for the last time. As a result of the order to evacuate all state functionaries from the city I had to leave the city, my entire fortune and my musical instruments, those dear friends. The last ship was departing from Odessa on the 23rd of December and on the 24th the unmarried or otherwise solitary set forth to the Crimea by foot. That morning I entered the living room where I like to pass time playing one of my instruments for a few hours after work for the last time. I placed the instruments in a row: on a soft sofa, I placed the mandolas and on the armchairs, the Tsinagio brand mandolins. Next to the piano, I rested the wooden music stands of a matte black color; there were harps carved on the support for the music sheets; I had had it ordered based on my own design. I placed the violoncello, leaning on the corner of the table, without placing it in its case. How many happy days had I spent playing the violoncello solo or in the company of other instruments? I had last played Grieg’s Elegies on the mandola; its velvet tones sometimes reminded me of the violoncello. Through sound, I bid farewell to the loveliness of life. I was playing the mandola for the last time in my life. I played “Santa Lucia”, which I love so much and remains in my repertory, on one of the mandolins. On the other mandolin, I played Glinka’s “Doubt”. I closed the shutters and lit the candles by the piano and music stand, creating in this manner the warm atmosphere that prevailed in the room during my small musical soirees. And for the last time I gazed upon the photographs of Glinka, Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky that hung on the wall of the room. I played Tchaikovsky’s “Chanson Triste” on the piano. That was the last piece I played in my homeland. I never played it again either there or abroad. Could I play now, I wondered to myself glancing at my hands. Of course not, I answered. At home, I had “musical hands.” Exile has transformed them into the hands of a worker.

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4 Between War and Revolution Yiorgos Papadopoulos was the son of a first-guild merchant of Greek descent. His mother was Italian who had received a Russian education and partook of Italian culture. Upon her marriage, she converted from Roman Catholicism to Greek Orthodoxy. They lived in a big apartment at the intersection of two of the city’s principal streets, Preobrazhenskaia and Sadovaia. The children attended Russian private schools; they visited Switzerland on summer holidays while the parents frequented curative baths in Austria. In order to avoid the revolutionary climate of Odessa, their eldest son was sent to study at the Zurich Polytechnic. The children knew no Greek. In the context of the rise of nationalism in Russia, the Greek community of Odessa became involved in the politics of Greece and was divided between the royalists (supporters of the King of Greece) and Venizelists (supporters of the Greek statesman Eleftherios Venizelos) who were in dispute. Greece’s ethnic “imaginary” entered the family’s life after the victorious Balkan Wars (1912–1913) and the incorporation of new northern lands into the Greek State, a military achievement masterminded by Venizelos. They were a well-to-do, assimilated family of Greek origin. His memoirs, written at the age of sixty for family use, reveal the dilemmas, conflicts, impasses and forced decisions of a bourgeois family during the Russian Revolution. 4.1 The February Revolution43 The fall of the monarchy elicited general enthusiasm. The population celebrated with cries of triumph and shouts of joy. In various places on the square in front of the Cathedral, small spontaneous rallies formed where self-appointed speakers explained the importance of the events and primarily the evils of tsarism and the benefits of the new democratic order. The first priority among the slogans addressed the issue of the Paix sans annexions et contributions…. With the elimination of tsarism, the official institutions responsible for law and order collapsed and were replaced with militias whose representative, students and workers, wore civilian clothes with a red armband…. Censorship was also abolished and the newspapers were full of descriptions of the overthrow of the tsar and the political events that followed…. A few days after the change of the ruling order, I asked my mother for her opinion on the new situation. Mother looked carefully about her and said the following word for word: “Don’t tell anyone but I’m basically for

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Papadopoulos Family Collection, Memoirs of Yiorgos Papadopoulos. Special thanks to Cate Papadopoulos for acquainting me with the family archive.

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the change because I come from the people and, despite all our wealth, I’m fundamentally sympathetic to the lower classes which I well know were at a serious disadvantage under tsarism”. However, those against the new regime were not few. I recall the harsh criticism and scorn of [the recently installed government] expressed by [my older] brother’s fiancée, Tonia, during her first visit of introduction to our house at the beginning of April 1917. Naturally, the revolution was not at all to the taste or in the interest of the established aristocratic class that the Orbinskii family belonged to. I remember Liolia describing with fury various instances of peasants taking over the property of landlords that occurred from the very first weeks following the fall of tsarism…. Little change was evident at school. Discipline was the same and the old rules unaltered. The portraits and emblems of the tsarist family disappeared and at morning prayers, we no longer invoked the tsar’s victory but rather that of the forces of Christianity. In April, large popular demonstrations took place in Odessa whose slogans were for the independence of Ukraine, the end of the war and the resignation of the two ministers [of the army and of foreign affairs] who supported the war. Under pressure from this activism, the ministers were obligated to resign and Kerensky took over the War Ministry and, though a leftist, supported an honourable peace coordinated with the Entente. Kerensky’s prestige was constantly on the rise; he became very popular and was an extraordinary orator. When he visited Odessa as Minister of War in April, the population welcomed him with high enthusiasm. I was among the crowd that had assembled in front of the opera house to hear him when he finished a conference inside. The crowd was packed so tightly around me that for a moment I feared I would suffocate and with difficulty managed to extract myself and as a result only saw Kerensky from a distance addressing the populace from the theatre’s portico. He wore a simple khaki tunic without special emblems. Shortly afterwards he became prime minister as well. However, he had to fight on two fronts, the left of the Bolsheviks and the right of the monarchists who were supported by the armed forces…. During all this time, our family life continued normally as before the revolutions. In the summer of 1917, I passed my classes with honours and my brother, Pava, received his civil engineering degree from the Zurich Polythechnic. We stayed at the seaside resort at Lustdorf, twenty miles from Odessa, that summer. It was the first time we did not go to the dacha. The tram connected the village with the city and so my father could join us in the afternoons. The hotel had 150 to 200 guests. There were many children to play with. A twelve-year old Jewish musician named Tolia who later became the world renowned master musician Anatol Fistoulari was among them. Another of the guests was a colonel, part of the group of friends who played cards with my mother in the evening. Although on

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active duty and instead of being at the front, he was vacationing with us. He often held forth on politics and had the harshest words for Lenin and the Bolsheviks…. At the end of August, we returned to the city. 4.2 Τhe October Revolution Around the end of October, we read in the newspapers about the overthrow of the Kerensky government by the Bolsheviks in Petrograd. Lenin’s new government demolished the entire structure of Tsarist Russia in a blink of an eye by simple decree. The first Marxist state in world history proceeded within a few weeks to the nationalization without compensation of industrial and banking capital, large scale landholdings, and, generally, all private liquid assets. The state separated from the church with the confiscation of the gargantuan fortune of the latter. All power from the central government to the local authorities now rested in the hands of the worker soviets (and, later, of the farmers). Simultaneously steps were taken to conclude a separate peace with the Central Powers. The Ukraine did not immediately join the Soviet Revolution. The military head of Odessa neutralized Soviet activity in Odessa right from the start. As a result, life continued as before in Odessa with the exception, that inflation was rampant and shortages of some types of food were noticeable. One day in October an officer from garrison headquarters visited to inform us that due to the housing crisis the army was requisitioning rooms for officers. He proposed that instead of waiting for the formal requisition we should accept a colonel of mature years who would be unlikely to generate problems. My parents agreed and our new boarder settled into Father’s office. The Bolsheviks first organized takeover occurred in November in Odessa. Schools remained closed because of disturbances by armed workers. We all stayed indoors the whole day because we heard that street-to-street fighting had started in the suburbs. The following morning we learned that the Bolshevik attempt had failed and that we could resume our lives as before. From the moment that the local Bolsheviks took over authority, the security situation in the city deteriorated. Clashes between criminals and the civic guard were especially frequent in the suburbs. Incidents of armed robbery occurred on the streets and in homes. We installed iron bars on our front door to deter the criminal element. I recall that the metal worker who came to do the job engaged my mother in a political discussion during which he praised the Bolshevik program and the woes that awaited the middle class. Our general consul, Kapsambelis, supplied the well-off Greeks with leaflets with the Greek flag as a headline banner in full colour, which we affixed to the exterior door of the apartment. The leaflet announced that the residence was occupied by a Greek family and that house searches were forbidden without the presence of the consul.

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4.3 The Bolsheviks in Odessa ( January–March 1918) [….] This time the local Bolsheviks had the support of the Black Sea Fleet. The battleship Rostislav and the destroyer Almaz sailed into the port. When the signal was given, the city turned into a battle ground between the local Bolsheviks and the established authorities. The only notable military force at hand for the anti-Bolshevik side were several hundred cadets who, after two days of street-to-street fighting, were restricted to the train station. Shut in at home on the second day we suddenly heard the sound of bombardments from the big guns of the fleet. At first, we retreated to the basement of the apartment building out of fear. We did not remain there for long since we learned that the bombardment was aimed exclusively at the train station and stopped soon enough when the cadets surrendered that same evening. That is how authority was handed over to the local workers and soldiers’ soviets. One of the Soviets’ first measures was the imposition of a substantial financial levy on the wealthy to support the needs of the revolution. The chamber of commerce allocated the amount demanded proportionately among its member merchants. Father belonged to the first guild and was charged 100,000 roubles. Such a large sum could not be accessed immediately so 10,000 rouble instalment payments on a predetermined schedule were instituted…. He only managed to pay three of these before the Bolsheviks were ousted and the German army entered the city…. The danger to our safety was increasing, especially to Father̕s. The persecution of the bourgeoisie continued. Nighttime raids by the Cheka (the state security service against the counter-revolution) on private homes, provoked by informers, resulted in looting, arrests and, as a rule, executions. My parents, especially my mother, were terrified by the ever-worsening daily situation. So we decided to leave the house in the evenings and take shelter at our cook’s house in some workers’ suburb of the city. Two or three weeks passed this way. In the meantime, we learned of the signing of the Brest-Litovsk separate peace treaty. Under its terms, Ukraine seceded from Russia and became an independent nation, in essence a German protectorate. 4.4 Odessa under Austro-German Occupation (March–November 1918) With the withdrawal of the Ukraine from the soviet state and the arrival of the German military in the new protectorate, there was some relief because the Bolshevik regime came to an end in Odessa. The burning issue however was in just what manner the Bolsheviks would actually abandon the city. The local authorities threatened a massacre like Saint Bartholomew’s Eve aimed at the middle class population prior to their departure. And then, suddenly, came the happy news that spread like wild fire. Unexpected German troops originating in Romania had crossed the Dniestr River (some sixty kilometres west of Odessa) and were headed unopposed to take over the city.

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The following morning we learned that the German army had started entering Odessa. This was at the end of March or at most the beginning of April. Schools were closed so I went out to the streets to watch. On Deribasovskaia, the infantry paraded in full active duty gear and helmets; it was as we learned later an Austrian regiment. The crowd on the sidewalks followed the parade expressing its warm sentiments. These warm greetings to the, until quite recently, enemy of the homeland were somewhat justified. National feeling and national pride were always a characteristic of Russian patriotism. Given Bolshevik oppression, however, German occupation was a liberation of sorts for much of the population. People kissed in the streets as if it was Easter and many wept from relief at having survived the terror. The Germans imposed very strict order on the city right from the start. Looting stopped and the night-time shootings were curtailed. Shops were open and life in general returned to normal…. The occupying army’s behaviour toward the population was good. The German army of the period bore no resemblance to that of the Nazis in the Second World War. At our house, the room previously occupied by the Russian colonel now acquired a new tenant sent by German headquarters. From time to time, we would read in the newspapers about acts of sabotage against German installations and of executions of saboteurs. One day a secular funeral procession for three railroad workers shot on the spot during an attempted sabotage passed below our windows. The open caskets were followed by a multitude from the working class carrying red wreaths. The Germans simply watched the funeral/demonstration from a distance and made no attempt to disband it (at least not in the centre of the city) […] Many officers had fled the Bolshevik-held part of the country to the South and particularly to the Don valley. It was there in early 1918 that the organized resistance against Soviet control first began to be shaped by the so-called “white guards”, in other words tsarist officers who formed the original core of the Volunteer Army. The Don region was ideal for the resistance because the Cossack population was monarchist by tradition. Gradually, and with the support of the Entente, guerrilla warfare became outright civil war commanded by the top tsarist generals Alekseev and Kornilov. My parents decided that we would spend the summer of 1918 in the Crimea because of my health (in May I had been ill with diphtheria). They chose Evpatoriia, a well-known resort for our stay. Father stayed in Odessa. We brought along the French teacher so we could practice the language. The Crimea at that time was a kind of autonomous zone controlled by the Germans. It was there that we first experienced eastern cuisine. There was a tennis court near our dacha where I played my beloved sport with a friend from Odessa. One day we heard of the murder of the tsar and, perhaps, the entire royal family. Many did not believe this

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story, which was soon confirmed. In August, we learned that all of Odessa had been rocked by enormous explosions of German ordinance. It was the result of Bolshevik sabotage. Glass display cases shattered in shops miles away from the points of origin of the blasts. It was said that there had been many victims among the occupying forces. In August, we returned to Odessa. The pace of the war had picked up dramatically. After the failed German attempt to capture Paris and the final victory of the allies with the participation of the Americans, the Germans surrendered in November of 1918. With the opening of the Straights, the French and British fleets entered the Black Sea and one day, unexpectedly, a squadron of the allied fleet sailed into the port of Odessa. That evening I went to the Opera with Mother. The theatre was packed as always with German and Austrian officers. Suddenly, in the course of the performance, English and French officers appeared in the royal box. During intermission, before the lights dimmed for the next act, the orchestra began playing the national anthems of England and France. The entire audience stood at attention. Any Germans still present in the stands disappeared as if by magic […] The Germans departed from the city all at once toward the end of November leaving a void in the administration of the region. The ataman of the Cossacks, Petliura, and his followers attempted to exploit this void. They were free of ideology or political positions (with the possible exception of the ataman himself ) and their goal was looting accompanied by murder and calamity. It was fear and terror for the general population. During the first days of December, his gangs began to slip into the defenceless city. Simultaneously however, the British and the French hastened to convoy an expeditionary force from the all-volunteer White Army with transports from the Don with the purpose of establishing a kind of bridgehead against the Red Army, which had begun its descent to the south following the departure of the Germans […]. The port was under the control of the Allies. On December 5, my sisters and I went to school. Suddenly the assistant-principal entered our classroom and announced that disturbances had broken out in the city and that we had to return to our homes as fast as possible. I gathered my books and set off for home, which, fortunately, was nearby. The headquarters of the central post office on Sadovaia Street was located on the way from the high school to Cathedral Square where our house was. Petliura’s soldiers had barricaded themselves there and set up machine guns. The odd thing was that, despite the embattled situation, the phones in the city still worked. Hostilities ended with the victory of the White Russians. The funeral of those killed occurred a few days later. The caskets were carried to the Cathedral and the following day, after the funeral service, a sizeable procession headed for the burials in the Field of Mars. Over a hundred coffins passed below our window.

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4.5 Τhe Allied Intervention (French and Greeks in Odessa)– December 1918 – March 1919 A new chapter in the city’s history opened after the 6th of January. One day in January, we were informed of the arrival in Odessa of the Greek military force sent to fight the Bolsheviks. The Greek colony, the biggest and wealthiest in Russia, celebrated and was filled with pride at this event. It welcomed the Greek army with open arms. Greek officers were invited to the homes of compatriot families. We too had a reception one afternoon for two high-ranking officers. Later we invited two French officers my French teacher had met in the street. Our spirits were very high during this period. We were all under the impression that the defeat of the Red Army and, hence, the collapse of Soviet power was very near. Moscow at the time was tackling three fronts: that of the Volga, of the Don and of Odessa with its Franco-Greek reinforcements. In early March, the Greek community organised a performance at the opera in honour of the Greek army. My mother was on the organising committee and hurried about distributing tickets. This was the last happy event before the storm broke. Although at first the allied force was successful, things quickly changed with the counter-­ attack of the Red Army. In Kherson, there was carnage as Bolshevik sharpshooters mowed down the retreating Greeks. The French generally did not have the stomach for war. The World War ended and the soldiers from other fronts were returning home while here they were fighting on for something they did not understand. Anti-war activities were noted among the ranks of the French expeditionary force, especially in the navy, and were fanned by Bolshevik propaganda. Local setbacks led to a general retreat with the immediate danger of the collapse of the bridgehead front and the evacuation of Odessa. I must also note, here, the incidents of lack of cooperation between the French and Greek military authorities. In the meantime, the armed robberies and theft in homes multiplied dangerously. In addition, there were instances of kidnapping for ransom not only during the night hours but also in daylight. In March, such a thing occurred to a family we were acquainted with. The cataclysm was approaching with the Red Army. On Tuesday, March 19, our father did not eat with us. He phoned to tell us not to wait for him because the consul had requested his presence regarding an urgent matter. He came home around 3PM and immediately shut himself in his bedroom with Mother. The consul had gathered the Greek notables to inform them that the front had collapsed and that the evacuation of the city by the allied forces was imminent. Since the Greek involvement in the civil war against the Bolsheviks could have negative consequences for wealthy Greeks, the consul recommended that they abandon the city. A Greek ship would smuggle the refugees the following Saturday.

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4.6 The Departure In the three days that intervened until Saturday, we were in a state of great anxiety. […] My parents had not made the final decision to depart. They were in constant contact on the phone with friends and relatives to see if they intended to leave or stay. Finally, the die was cast. […] My parents had many arguments about what to take with us. Father disagreed vocally with Mother and shouted that we would return in 15 days and find everything in order. We went to bed early since we had to leave the next morning. It was said that the city would fall on Saturday. The atmosphere in the city was very tense; people feared looting by the irregulars who usually preceded the regular army. We were ready for departure in the morning. An endless phalanx of trucks of the French army full of soldiers was leaving the city. As soon as we left the house, we were stopped by a patrol of irregulars on Deribasovskaia. They asked us where we were going. Mother replied that we were foreigners and leaving for abroad. They allowed us to pass. When we arrived at the port, at Platonovskii Mole, we were astonished to learn that our ship had departed the previous day and that there was no way for us to leave. […] In the meantime, more refugees, Belgians I think, joined us. A Greek officer who happened to be there informed us that a power boat-barge from a ship anchored at large from the port was expected shortly to pick up the last of the refugees, but not Greeks. He told us to get in as soon as it tied to, before passports were checked. Just then, a large barge arrived. About thirty of us refugees literally threw our baggage into the boat and then jumped in ourselves. After everyone had settled themselves in a French officer requested our passports. When he came to ours, he ordered us off since the ship was not designated for Greeks. At that point, Mother stood up and shouted, “Throw us into the sea. We aren’t getting off”. Suddenly the sound of intense firing was heard nearby. Someone from the quay shouted for the barge to leave immediately as the irregulars were approaching. We tied to a large Russian transport ship that the French had commandeered because its Russian crew had abandoned it when they went to the Bolsheviks. It was packed with refugees of all nationalities. […] Reviewing these events in retrospect, the question of whether the decision to leave Odessa was the correct one remains unanswered. Had we stayed, we could have possibly saved many possessions that were lost due to our absence, the apartment we lived in foremost among them. However, there was the possibility that father would have lost his life as a wealthy bourgeois. Uncle Lefteris’ life was spared and he not only salvaged his belongings but also benefitted from the favourable conditions for commerce generated by the reconquest of Odessa by the Whites in August of 1919. He made a lot of money using Father’s office in the period of August to October 1919 while we were in Greece.

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The Papadopoulos family together with many others left Odessa in March 1919 at the prompting of the Greek consul. Greeks, as an ethnic minority, were not an initial target of the revolutionary regime, but this changed after their country’s participation in the allied intervention.44 The Greek middle classes and their community leaders paid the price for overtly expressing their anti-Bolshevik position and their support for the Greek troops that participated in the Allied intervention in Ukraine (January–Summer 1919) with the goal of overthrowing communism.45 The parents and the schoolgirls returned to Odessa in autumn 1919 and continued to live and go to school there until 1931 when they came back to Greece again. Under the Bolshevik regime, the family’s house was requisitioned and they moved to a one-room apartment. As the father could not conduct trade any more after having been labelled a bourgeois, their mother became the family breadwinner. She changed jobs often and through her work managed to secure the coupons that allowed them to get some basic food items for free or at low cost. Mother’s monthly salary could only support them for 15 days. The family supplemented this income by selling her jewellery, borrowing from relatives and friends and from funds sent by the elder sons who worked in Greece. 5 At the Gen Factory in Peresyp’ Khoma Fedorovych Skur’skyĭ worked in Gen’s machine shop during the First World War.46 He first joined the Leftist SR s (es-ers)47 and afterwards the ­Bolsheviks. In the summer of 1917, in an atmosphere of intense political and personal conflict, the Bolsheviks won control of the workers’ committee, established the eight-hour workday, and the conversion from wartime to peacetime production. 44

45

46

47

An emphatic declaration of the Bolshevik government of Kharkov warned the representatives of the allied forces that no protection of foreign citizens would be assured by the revolutionaries, if the troops of the Entente continued their attacks against the Bolshevik forces in the South of Russia. amae [Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères, France], Europe 1918–1929, Russie, file 229, April 1, 1919. Elephtherios Pavlides, Ho Hellenismos tes Rosias kai ta trianta tria chronia tou en Athenais somateiou ton ek Rosias Hellenon (Athens: Somateio ton ek Rosias Hellenon, 1953), 72. See also Sifneos, “Indifference and/or Egocentrism?” 296–97. Excerpts in shortened form the reminiscences of Khoma Fedorovych Skur’skyĭ, translated from “U borot’bi z kapitalistamy” in: Nezabutni dni. Zbirka spohadiv uchasnykiv borot’by za vstanovlennia Radians’koï vlady na Odeshchyni (berezen’ 1917–sichen’ 1918), ed. by P.K. Voloshaniuk et al. (Odessa: Odes’ke oblasne vydavnytstvo, 1957), 53–65. Left SR s supported the Bolsheviks in 1917–1918.

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5.1 Ideology and Workers’ Demands in 1917 Iogann Gen, owner of the factory in Peresyp’, did everything he could to preserve calm in the workplace. The upper and middle echelons of worker and white-collar employees were members of the Black Hundreds.48 Management and technical staff and others favoured by Gen could purchase stocks in the company. Stockholders were beholden to and supported Gen. Gen disposed of employees he considered unreliable even during the first days of the war in 1914 by not issuing employment certifications with the result that they were sent to the front, as were all the unemployed in Russia. At the factory, business was very good. There were ample orders for armaments: train cars for missile transportation, hatchets, specialized shears for cutting metal, etc. [...] At the end of the spring of 1917, the Bolsheviks Starostin, Gryshkevych (Samburs’kyĭ) and others returned from prison and exile. A revolutionary core was established in Peresyp’ that included Aleksandrovych, Zhurin, Bykanov, Smagin-Kal’sov and others. In our factory, the best-known Bolsheviks were Volodin, Korotych, Chornobrov, Beloborodov. The es-ers’ demagogic propaganda first persuaded me to join the leftist esers but I soon came to understand how mistaken their views were. The Bolsheviks Starostin, Trofymov, Gryshkevych helped me in this. They introduced me to the practical revolutionary struggle at the Gen factory. I will never forget my teacher Petr Ivanovych Starostin. He not only gave me my missions but also taught me how to execute them. 5.2 The Battle for the Eight-Hour Workday Even though several months had passed since the February Revolution, conditions at the Gen factory remained the same as before. In fact, we worked almost 12 hours a day less one hour for a food break. Starostin, Trofymov, and Gryshkevych assigned me, as a deputy of the factory committee, the task of giving Gen our petition demanding the eight-hour work day. The factory committee entered the management of the factory’s office as a body. [...] We gave them a three-day deadline and warned them that, in case they did not do so, we would implement the eight-hour workday ourselves without approval. So began a struggle not only with Gen and his associates but also with the Mensheviks and the es-ers who had not only acquired positions in the municipal administration but also in the War Industry Committee. The day after we submitted our petition, a general assembly of workers had been called at which Kholodovs’kyĭ arrived accompanied by the supporters of 48

Anti-Semitic and fanatically monarchist group, often inciting pogroms.

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the Mensheviks and es-ers. These “guests” suggested that representatives of the workers be selected for a conference with management. In other words, whatever the conference decided would be binding for us and for management. The workers authorised the Factory Committee to select their representatives from among the membership. [...] Following the assembly, Trofymov and Starostin appeared before the Committee. Starostin said, “It is a good start and we must be strong and not succumb to any treachery. The metal workers’ committee has decided to support you.” [...] This announcement gave us courage. We were preparing for a fight in the forthcoming negotiations since we were aware that Gen’s workers were a detachment in the overall army of revolutionary workers. At the conference, the head engineer of the factory informed us that the management of the factory agreed to establish eight-hour work days but not for the next two or three months. The engineer justified this by explaining that the technology had to be revamped and adjusted and so forth. “And until then,” the engineer added jovially, “let us all work together for the benefit of the revolution and the final victory over the enemy!” But we insisted on our demand regarding the three-day deadline. We also added two further demands: the abolishment of overtime and equal pay for women. The capitalist … started to threaten us: as long as there was not decision from the Soviet, we did not have the right to do something without having to answer to revolutionary and military law. We responded that 12,000 workers of Peresyp’ demanded elections for a new Soviet since it had gotten behind the times. Concluding that the negotiations would not bear results, we left the conference. The factory’s management did nothing to prepare the factory to work in three shifts. When the deadline of our ultimatum passed, the [workers’] committee of the factory rang the bell at 5 in the afternoon and the factory began, peremptorily and without permission, to work on an eight-hour basis. What supported our decisiveness? How were we able break the capitalist obstinacy at a factory, which had been considered “reliable” during the years before and during the war? [We were aided] by the forceful leadership [of the factory workers] and the help from the committee of the Bolsheviks of Peresyp’ and the Metalworkers’ Union. The workers could see that the area’s Bolsheviks were with them, knew that they would support us in other actions as well. After a few days, the factories of Peresyp’ and the Port followed our example and began to work eight- hour shifts. 5.3 Bombshells into Ploughshares The Bolsheviks slogans “Down with the war!”, “Hurray for peace!” were warmly received by the workers of Odessa. Slowly, in my mind, as a veteran who was well aware how much men suffered in the trenches, the idea of transforming the

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wartime-oriented production of the factory to peacetime manufacturing took root, to make plows. I shared this notion with Starostin and Trofymov. They approved my proposal but warned me to prepare the workers well, to find out what they were thinking. So we organised a conference with the head of the [Workers’] Committee and its members to discuss the issue. The workers fully supported our proposition. The response from Gen and tens of other “directors” of the Soviet, both high and low, was quite different. They were absolutely opposed to changing to the production of plows. We were not cowed however; we were supported by the local and regional Soviets and the Metalworkers’ Union. [...] We did not, of course, get the permission to manufacture plows. A hard struggle for the implementation of the workers’ demand began. [...] Soon the factory’s equipment started to malfunction more and more frequently, production of bombshell parts fell sharply, as did the production of hatchets, picks, diggers, and shears for cutting barbwire. [...] I have to admit that at the time we were very inexperienced. Despite the fact that there was a production inspection board at the factory, it did not notice Gen’s deftly disguised sabotage. Gradually, raw materials and fuel were relocated from the factory. In fact, these were supposedly being moved to a smaller factory in Moldavanka. Ultimately, they planned on presenting us with the lack of raw materials and fuel and, as a consequence, to close down the factory. We understood their tactics too late when the reserves of coal and iron at the factory were down to only a month’s worth. An inspection revealed that the reserves had not been transported to another factory. To provoke a strike, management continuously delayed the payment of salaries. [...] One August day I was at my place of work in front of the machine when someone called to join him in the smelting area. [...] When we entered, we were confronted with the following sight. Brandt, the engineer, was standing among the workers. One of them, Chornobov, asked him, “When will you pay us our salaries?” The engineer responded, “There’s no money, the revolution wasted all of it.” “You are telling us that there is no money for salaries. How are we supposed to eat?” Chornobrov continued. The engineer pointed to the sand heap nearby and answered, “Eat sand!” In a flash, one of the workers put a bucket of graphite on the engineer’s head and Korotich, a worker, quickly brought a cart. Brandt found himself suddenly in the cart with the bucket on his head. The irritated and angry workers rolled the engineer out of the factory and threw him in the drainage ditch. For the rest of the day they returned to their positions. [...] Apprised of these events, the management escaped from the factory and spread the rumour that it feared further violence. The hornet’s nest was stirred up. In one voice, the Mensheviks and the es-ers demanded the exemplary punishment of the organisers of the “removal by cart.”

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The workers held fast and self-assured. The workers decided to continue working calmly and maintain discipline, to work as they would if the company was their own. Unanimously, in all departments of the factory, decisions were taken to seize the factory from Gen. [...] Despite sabotage by managers, the workers decided to continue working. The factory committee decided not to invite the foremen, spoiled by the benefits given to them by Gen, to continue working [because they believed the foremen would take the employer’s side]. A few days later, several foremen came to the committee and declared that they would remain with the workers. [...] I remember Pidlubnyi, one of the foremen saying, “I am to blame before the workers because I signed up to the union of the Black Hundreds. The workers know I have done ill to no one. Despite this, I believe that I am ethically at fault towards them and I am ready to atone for my mistake in any way possible. I will work with all my might in whatever circumstances in order to be useful to the factory.” [...] By now, it was crystal clear that it was the capitalists’ plan to close down the factory due to the lack of raw material and fuel. Once again, we were aided by the Bolsheviks, Starostin, Gryshkevych and Aleksandrovych, who got in touch with the workers of the port and railroad. Through them, we found several train car loads of cast iron, iron and three cars of coal that were originally destined for Romania. At the same time, Starostin, in the name of the local committee and the Metalworkers’ Union, gave us letters soliciting the organizations of Donbas to supply us with iron and coal. We sent our representative, a worker named Sarkisiants, to Donbas. Several days later, we received a letter from him informing us that twelve railcars were being loaded with charcoal for the factory and that more would be forthcoming. 5.4 At Odessa’s Companies The support from the Bolsheviks of Donbas gave us courage but our problem was the payment of salaries; the workers had not been paid in three months. As a result, a number of workers left the factory, mostly the sons of well-off peasants who were working in order to avoid the draft. Despite this, the factory remained the centre of the workers’ lives for whom it became their home. We received payment from the sale of parts for agricultural machines but this was very little. The so-called champions of the workers, the Mensheviks and es-ers, did not resign. In Odessa’s companies and factories, they were very busy against the workers of the Gen factory, accusing them of every possible sin. Workers from other factories began sending representatives who ultimately were convinced that all of this was mere slander. [...] The Factory Committee delegated several workers to visit the factories of the city and explain how things were in reality. I spoke at the ­Bellino-Fenderikh factory. [...]

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Gen initiated his attack. He announced his intention to shut the factory down for renovation. The Factory Committee demanded that the renovation be undertaken under its own supervision. Gen refused absolutely. On September 17, 1917, Starostin spoke at the meeting of the Executive Committee of the Soviet Deputies. He informed them of Gen’s refusal, adding that Gen’s intention was obvious. The Metalworkers’ Union decided not to provide the personnel required for the renovation and further announced that everyone would boycott the positions slotted for the renovations. As a result, all the workers declared that they would join the boycott and would not work at the factory. [...] It was difficult, the workers were hungry despite receiving money occasionally from workers at other factories for support, but they did not retreat. 5.5 The “Sale” of the Factory One day, the War Industry Committee invited the representatives of the Factory Committee. As soon as Krasnyĭ and I entered the War Industry Committee, they congratulated us on our victory. Gen had sold his factory to the All-Russian Union. Salaries were paid. [...] Work at the factory continued throughout November, but, once again, there was a two-month delay in the payment of salaries. At the meeting of the Factory Committee, it was decided to send a delegation of representatives of our factory, Miasniaev, Liul’chenko and Skur’skyĭ and two people from the local [Bolshevik] party, to St. Petersburg to request money from Lenin. Their mission was a success and, in December of 1917, the factory began manufacturing, instead of armaments, agricultural machines at Lenin’s suggestion, and in order to strengthen the Union of Workers and Peasants. 6

Peoples and Identities

Two types of identities emerge in Odessa of the late imperial period: ­composite/ complementary and unambiguous/exclusionary. The composite/complementary identity expresses multiple loyalties that do not exclude each other. They complement and enrich the main identity. An indicative example is the imperial identity. The imperial identity established itself following the reforms of the 1860s, which encouraged a greater degree of equality before the law and the expansion of rights. The new connective infrastructures of the multi-ethnic empire and markets contributed decisively. Linguistic assimilation through the use of Russian in education was the foundation of this policy. The imperial identity was a passport, which permitted citizens to become part of a whole and to improve their position in respect to the state and its institutions. It did not

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exclude other expressions of affiliation including ancestry, religion, occupation and social class. The urban upper middle classes adapted best to the imperial identity regardless of ethnic origin.49 As the All-Russian census of 1897 showed, however, the Russian language had been adopted as the mother tongue by a majority of second and third generation immigrants. Unambiguous/exclusionary identities are the nationalistic and political identities. Intrinsic and extrinsic factors lie at the root of the shift towards nationalism. Among the intrinsic were the imperial policies regarding ethnic minorities while the extrinsic included the emerging political discourse that ultimately led to the collapse of empires and the establishment of European and Balkan nation-states. Since the 1840s, the Pan-Slavic movement50 had already contributed substantively to the formation and development of a Russian national identity. The ethno-religious groups coalesced around identities and political parties that excluded other expressions and affiliations.51 In this spirit, the parties for instance of the Union of Russian People and Union of Archangel Michael, to which Russian nationalists rallied, opposed Ukrainian self-determination and, in particular, the “cult” of the popular Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. Anti-Semitism was inherent in the urp, which was one of the primary instigators (through meetings, gatherings, lectures, and demonstrations) of and active participants in the pogroms against the Jews. By contrast, Jews were attracted by Zionist and socialist parties. Zionism as a movement supported the re-establishment of Jews in Palestine and was opposed to the Jewish policy of assimilation. Opposed to Zionism was the Jewish socialist movement. The Bund (Jewish Labour Movement), for example, an organisation that aspired to unite all Jewish workers into a socialist party, was opposed to the emigration project of Zionism. It promoted the use of Yiddish and joined Poale Zion (Workers of Zion), another Jewish socialist organisation, to form self-defence groups for the protection of Jews against pogroms. It worked within the soviets and recognised the February Revolution but it did not support the October Revolution. The Bund split after the October Revolution. Poale Zion was a moderate socialist party among Jews that also split after the October Revolution. Similar divisions existed among the political parties of the Ukrainians and the Poles. The minorities came into conflict with the dominant ethnicity’s

49 50 51

See chapter 5. An ideology that theoretically promoted political unity across the Slavic peoples of Europe. The October 1905 Manifesto permitted the formation of political parties.

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hegemonic political and cultural ambitions (for example, Russians-Jews, ­Russians-Poles, Russians-Ukrainians). In many cases, the authorities, attempting to enforce national identity, banned ethnic clubs, community-oriented publications and political movements. The revolutionary identity was a consequence and evolution of the nationalist political identity. It was a hybrid identity, unifying and coherent, which overcame the disadvantages and the fragmentation caused by identification based on ethnic origins (Jewish Zionist organisations, Russian nationalist parties, etc.) that the previous coalitions were defined by; the revolutionary identity brought the population together around an all-Russian program centered on political reform (abolition of absolutism) and revolution. It was ecumenical, much like the imperial identity itself, in its first phase and had as its goal to assimilate ethnic differences into one all-Russian identity. In the course of implementing its political program, however, it could not prevent the birth of new conflicts: tsarism versus constitutional democracy and revolution versus counter-revolution. 7 Epilogue The loss of Odessa’s international connectedness and its pattern of economic survival during wartime left aside international trade, and prioritised the southern industrial complex of the Donetsk region and war industry initiatives. Under these circumstances, the quest for regional identities appeared sectarian in comparison to the project of forging Russia’s unification. Its survival as a nation fighting foreign invaders became a priority that eclipsed ethnic, cultural, social and class distinctions. This new reality had drastic consequences on individual and collective identities, encouraged a sort of “Russian-self-centredness”, and resulted in the desire to expel those who resisted cultural Russification. Odessa’s experiment as an urban phenomenon connected to its port and hinterland, with a bourgeois outlook, educated middle class and unprivileged masses was brought to an end. Yet it remained an unrealised project that, despite its infamous occurrences of interethnic animosity, displayed in the practices of everyday life a wealth of co-operation, tolerance, and interethnic coexistence. Ethnic integration and social mobility flourished in the period of the city’s growth and as a result of the wealth generated by the grain trade. The benefits of shared urban experiences and spaces were reaped by the population and, in turn, by the city itself. During times of economic recession and crisis, however, the social body did not hold together and fractured class and ethnic lines.

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During the Soviet and post-Soviet era, although the city lost many of its unique characteristics it maintained a flavour of diversity that transcends its recent history and the ethnic homogeneity of its people. Odessa remained a port, albeit with restricted connections to the West, and still operated as a gate of entry and contact with “others”, the capitalist world. Foreign tourists and seamen from other countries were in evidence, imported products not manufactured in the Soviet Union were easy to find and contraband was always easily available. Its inhabitants, under the Soviet regime, despite the changing of their names (an especially prevalent occurrence among the Jewish population and ethnic minorities), the deportations of the 1930s, preserved their habits, way of life, and speaking. The courtyards in the private buildings represented privileged loci of the city where intermingling, communication and conviviality still existed. Odessa was transformed. Its previous character was lost but citizens did not lose their remarkable humour and openness. Although this is an academic book, the original inspiration for writing it was more personal and subjective than professional. Perched on its bluff overlooking the sea, Odessa is, subjectively speaking but undeniably, a beautiful city, with consistently fine architecture lining the broad streets, public squares and markets, all shaded by enormous old trees planted in an era when the imagined future included time enough for them to grow. Now, a bit tattered and worse for the wear, Odessa is a reminder that the past offers examples of splendid collaboration and vitality, which, for a historian, is reward enough. Perhaps its distance from the centres of power once again rebounded to Odessa’s benefit by sparing it, or at least its urban fabric, buildings and spaces, from the homogenisations of the Soviet Era. It can only be hoped that efforts will be made to preserve the city’s heritage without completely erasing the wrinkles of a life fully lived. Regardless of how one might judge the present state of affairs, however, walking through the city, peripatetically and for the love of it, to experience the “pedestrian unfolding of the stories accumulated in a place” in Michel de Certeau’s words, there is no doubt that it was once a shining cosmopolis: a place that profited (literally and metaphorically) in full, for a time, from the spirit, skills, experience and energy of its restless, fractious and heterogeneous, ethnically polymorphous, religiously diverse, linguistically multifarious and culturally heteroclitic peoples.

Appendix Table 1

Population of Odessa, 1851–1900

Year

Men

1851 1857 1873 1881 1897 1900

Women

Total

Source

52,329

44,117

113,698

83,010

96,446 102,632 196,708 212,084

daoo, 2.1.301, 9th Census daoo, 2.1.498, Police Report daoo, 2.1.1053 daoo, 2.1.1364, Police Report All-Russian Census daoo, 2.1.2815

263,420

186,253

403,815 449,673

source: daoo (derzhavnyi arkhiv odes’koi oblasti) [odessa region state archive], ­odessa-ukraine

Table 2

Ethnic composition of Odessa, by mother tongue, 1897

Languages

M  +  W

Men

Women

% of total

Russian Yiddish Polish German Greek Tatar Armenian French Italian Czech Bulgarian Romanian Lithuanian Latvian Turkish Ukrainian

198,233 124,511 17,395 10,248 5,086 1,437 1,401 1,137 717 616 600 488 396 394 319 37,925

106,743 61,547 11,388 5,412 3,206 978 931 431 364 372 437 294 314 327 245 21,649

91,490 62,964 6,007 4,836 1,880 459 470 706 353 244 163 194 82 67 74 16,276

49.09 30.84 4.31 2.54 1.26 0.36 0.35 0.28 0.18 0.15 0.15 0.12 0.10 0.10 0.08 9.39

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2018 | doi 10.1163/9789004351622_009

%M

%W

49.24 28.39 5.25 2.50 1.48 0.45 0.43 0.20 0.17 0.17 0.20 0.14 0.14 0.15 0.11 9.98

48.92 33.68 3.21 2.59 1.01 0.25 0.25 0.38 0.19 0.13 0.09 0.10 0.04 0.04 0.04 8.70

240 appendix Languages

M  +  W

Men

Women

% of total

%M

%W

Belorussian Other total

1,267 1,598 403,768

927 1,202 216,767

340 396 186,983

0.30 0.40 100.00

0.45 0.55 100.00

0.18 0.21 100.00

source: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-­russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), table 13, 36–37.

M  +  W

92,471 54,247 4,939 4,627 1,991 186 506 687 421 181 280 235 23 30 112 1,147 162,083

Women

57.69 31.14 4.09 2.69 1.55 0.21 0.38 0.33 0.25 0.13 0.24 0.15 0.07 0.04 0.11 0.94 100.00

% of total

58.27 29.02 5.03 2.54 1.84 0.29 0.44 0.25 0.24 0.14 0.31 0.15 0.12 0.06 0.14 1.16 100.00

%M

64.15 31.95 5.54 2.80 2.03 0.32 0.49 0.28 0.26 0.15 0.34 0.17 0.13 0.07 0.16 1.27 100.00

%W

Men

Women

237,425 129,319 108,106 124,511 61,547 62,946 17,395 11,388 6,007 10,248 5,412 4,836 5,086 3,206 1,880 1,437 978 459 1,401 931 470 1,137 431 706 717 364 353 616 372 244 600 437 163 488 294 194 396 314 82 394 327 67 319 245 74 1,598 1,202 396 403,768 216,767 186,983

M  +  W

58.50 30.84 4.31 2.54 1.26 0.36 0.35 0.28 0.18 0.15 0.15 0.12 0.10 0.10 0.08 0.40 100.00

% of total

%M

59.66 28.39 5.25 2.50 1.48 0.45 0.43 0.20 0.17 0.17 0.20 0.14 0.14 0.15 0.11 0.55 100.00

declared mother tongue in 1897

57.82 33.68 3.21 2.59 1.01 0.25 0.25 0.38 0.19 0.13 0.09 0.10 0.04 0.04 0.04 0.21 100.00

%W

source: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), vi. in this table russian includes russian, ukrainian and belorussian.

103,972 51,783 8,972 4,536 3,292 514 787 448 423 246 549 275 215 112 254 2,065 178,443

Men

declared mother tongue in 1892

Ethnic composition in the city in 1892 and 1897

Russian 196,443 Yiddish 106,030 Polish 13,911 German 9,163 Greek 5,283 Tatar 700 Armenian 1,293 French 1,135 Italian 844 Czech 427 Bulgarian 829 Romanian 510 Lithuanian 238 Latvian 142 Turkish 366 Other 3,212 total 340,526

Languages

Table 3

appendix

241

242 appendix Table 4 Distribution of Odessa’s population in the city quarters* in 1892 and 1897 City quarters

Bul’varnyi Aleksandrovskii Khersonskii Petropavlovskii Mikhailovskii Peresyp’ Port Territory Total

1892

% per city quarter

1897

% per city quarter

% percent of growth

44,380 68,149 59,981 70,835 57,304 16,834 2,745 320,228

13.86 21.28 18.73 22.12 17.89 5.26 0.86 100.00

47,858 78,865 71,496 84,035 74,471 20,303 3,513 380,541

12.58 20.72 18.79 22.08 19.57 5.34 0.92 100.00

7.8 15.7 19.2 18.6 29.9 20.6 27.9 18.8

*Dalnitsky is excluded source: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), iv.

F

M

F

%

53

691

250 49

4

30 159

366

104,192 89,081 100 61,156 62,530 100 13,224 8,302 100 5,253 2,571 2,409 391 434 8,425 7,974 159

46

0

3

919

927

F

%

324

2,145

1,815

183

3

795 17

919 16

3,280 1,955 31 63

1,552 1162 16 1,915 811 16

M

Poles F

%

351 176 11

295 174 10

359 214 11

601 379 20 68

980 574 31 548 328 17

M

Greeks

214

143

40

33

0 143 39 1 32 2 3 37 32 41 11,174 5,864 100 3,166 1847 100

6

16

16

25 59

19 15

%

4,680 100 156

2 156

277

717

743

1,267

972 702

F

Germans

source: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), table 13, 36–37.

Peripheral part of the city Total Dal̕nitskii

2

2,048

1,117 1,026 10

5

2,080

1

456

6

1647

871 868

M

3,403 1,952 25 1,272 51

Port

7 47

3,143 1,607 22

4,179

%

16 15,486 15,836 25

4,461

F

1,286 848 10 1,985 1353 16

M

Ukrainians

1,599 1,266 13

24 54

14 5,419 5,280 9 16 18,446 19,240 31

%

Jews

23 15,259 15,954 25

14,162 12,351 16,406 14526

M

Russians

Ethnic allocation of the population, by city quarters, 1897

Khersonskii 23,305 23,048 Central part of the city Petropavlo- 24,700 19079 vskii Mikhail17752 14021 ovskii Peresypskii 6200 5600

Bul̕varnyi Aleksandr­ ovskii

Quarters

Table 5

appendix

243

244 appendix Table 6

Literacy rates by ethnic groups, 1897

Ethnic groups

Russians Ukrainians Jews Germans Poles Greeks French Italians

Men

106,743 21,649 61,547 5,412 11,388 3,206 431 364

Women

Literate men

91,490 62,908 16,276 10,357 62,964 36,975 4,836 4,140 6,007 6,990 1,880 2,458 706 386 353 322

Literate women

% men

38,100 2,947 22,002 3,763 3,954 1,105 662 296

58.9 47.8 60.0 76.5 61.4 76.6 89.6 88.4

% women Total %

41.6 18.1 34.9 77.8 65.8 58.8 93.8 83.8

51.0 35.1 47.4 77.1 62.9 70.0 92.2 86.2

source: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-­russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), table 14, 38–41.

19%

15,238 106,480

6,271 3,759 822 11% 691 443 30,986 12,413 4,303 5,826 70% 5,770

5,031 14,795

Russians

2,988 14,778

258 12 1,067

664 286 53 154 73 4,837

212 4,245

62%

8%

30%

Ukrainians

197 5,535

433 352 822 139 23 1,101 1,017 221 85 91

374 894

49%

18%

23%

Germans

1,182 12,157

356 491 91 199 54 2,628 954 513 154 404

630 4,497

48%

10%

42%

Poles

347 2,749

638 63 33 187 60 312 509 122 23 116

242 101

52%

36%

12%

Greeks

2,350 49,024

15,202 1,511 123 467 250 7,069 7,684 7,754 948 1,158

1,514 1,832

Jews

55%

36%

7%

source: elaborated data from pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g [first national all-russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), table 22, 140–143.

Rentiers Administration Bureaucracy Church Military Trade Professions Post, Banks Inns restaurants Liquor trade Servants Industry Garment Industry Building Industry Workers in transport ­services, carts Other Total economically ­active population

Income

Table 7 Social stratification of Russians, Ukrainians, Germans, Poles, Greeks, and Jews by source of income of the economically active ­population, 1897

appendix

245

246 appendix Table 8

Distribution of the population by social estates, 1900

Social estates

1900

1. Nobility

Hereditary Personal Priests Monks Personal Hereditary First guild Second guild

2. Clergy 3. Honorary citizens 4. Merchants 5. Meshchane (city-dwellers) 6. Artisans 7. Peasants 8. Military

9. Foreigners 10. Not belonging to social estates 11. Residents belonging to other ­provinces 12. Troops total

Peasants Colons In temporary service Retired Wives, widows and children

% percent

4,225 4,978 492 166 3,705 3,256 1,169 7,851 177,190

2.05 0.15 1.55 2.01 39.41

9,742 86,777 4,684 24,364 7,511 13,047

2.17 20.34

14,200 1,228 62,688

3.16 0.27 13.94

22,300 449,573

4.96 100.00

9.99

source: daoo, fond 2, opis 1, delo 2815, report of the head of the police department to the city-prefect for the year 1900.

247

appendix Table 9

Estate composition of Odessa, 1897

Social estates

Number

% percent

Nobility Clergy Honorary Citizens Merchants Meshchane Peasants Foreigners Other total

21,964 1,723 4,451 4,899 213,856 106,440 19,012 8,196 380,541

5.8 0.5 1.2 1.3 56.2 27.9 5.0 2.1 100.00

source: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-­russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), table 8, 14–15.

Table 10 Number of carts carrying grain in Odessa, 1830 Months

January February March April May June July August September October November December

Number of carts

2,616 4,013 1,445 2,807 13,911 60,601 98,988 30,981 18,844 18,638 6,852 67

Number of carts/day

84,3 134 48 94 449 2,020 3,193 999 628 601 228 2

Chetverts of grain*

13,141 22,895 5,965 13,324 133,414 287,215 107,922 178,475 87,205 101,059 28,079 280

source: feuille de commerce de la nouvelle-russie, no 11, 15–27 march 1831. [*1 Chetvertʼ euals 209.91 litres or 5.772 bushels]

248 appendix Table 11 Religious map of Odessa, 1900 Churches

Orthodox Catholic Lutheran Synaguogues Mosques

Number

Believers

Parishers/Church

56 2 2 10 -

225,869 24,261 8,777 139,984 1,210

4,033 12,130 4,388 13,998

1,365 Old Believers and 1,049 Karaim sources: pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia rossiiskoi imperii, 1897 g. [first national all-russian census of the russian empire, 1897], v. 47, odessa (st. petersburg: ­tipografiia e. l. porokhovshchikovoi, 1904), table 12, 34–35; daoo, 2.1. 2815. report of the head of the police department to the city-prefect of odessa for the year 1900.

Table 12 Top Odessa merchants, 1859 Merchant (as he appears in the newspaper)

Горни Карл Ефруccи Иоахим Ралли Иван Зарифи Александр Масс Эрнест Симони Антоний Рафалович Абрам Родоканаки Федор

Merchant

Gorni Karl Efrussi Joachim Ralli Ivan (John) Zarifi Aleksandr Mahs Ernst Simoni Antonii Raffalovich Abraham Rodocanachi Feodor (Theodore) Скараманга Андрей Scaramanga Andrei Папудов Константин Papudov Constantin Тошкович Николай Toshkovich Nikolai Рокко Карл Rocco Karl Далорсо Цезарь Август Dalorso Cezar Avgust Росси Луиджи Rossi Luigi Тработти Илья Trabotti Il̕ ia Триттен Отон Tritten Oton Гари Яков Gari Jacob

Imports (roubles)

Exports (roubles)

Total (imports and exports in roubles)

255,225 267,711 517,849 82,831 211,728 124,944 635,407 496,394

2,690,089 2,661,295 1,682,616 1,812,149 1,629,566 1,664,621 1,109,475 1,189,402

2,945,314 2,929,006 2,200,465 1,894,980 1,841,294 1,789,565 1,744,882 1,685,796

8,585 174,597 328,627 55,811 48,684 3,245 7,484 50,488 88,302

1,506,043 1,286,622 1,125,043 1,279,594 1,134,027 1,147,010 1,115,500 980,822 914,919

1,514,628 1,461,219 1,453,670 1,335,405 1,182,711 1,150,255 1,122,984 1,031,310 1,003,221

249

appendix Table 12 Top Odessa merchants, 1859 (cont.) Merchant (as he appears in the newspaper)

Merchant

Кельнер Георгий Ираклиди Павел Власопуло Эпаминонд Вучетич Степан Тубино Доменик Севастопуло Марк Русское обшество пароходства и торговли Хава Рафаэль Бернштейн Лейб Коган Бродский Абрам Порро Яков Стифель Карл Вучина Георгий Фендерих Христина Киярелло Франческо Деаазарт Карл Лабарер Вильям

Kelner Georgii Iraklidi Pavel Vlasopulo Epaminond Vučetić Stepan Tubino Domenik Sevastopulo Mark Russian Steamship and Trading Company

223,557 242,480 273,866 3,813 93,339 91,894 615,566

684,173 620,770 588,331 829,935 688,899 592,800 2,975

907,730 863,250 862,197 833,748 782,238 684,694 618,541

Hava Raphael Bernshtein Leib Kogan Brodskii Abraham Porro Jacob Stiefel Karl Vucina Georgii Fenderich Christina Chiarello Francesco Deaazart Karl Labarer Vil ̕iam (William) Kriona (Papa Nikola) Nikolai Tsetlin Chaim Gurovich Simon Liul ̕ka Gerts Barmas Solomon and Co. Shelemet Egiz Ralli Konstantin Mavros Ivan Kambani Pavel Strats Sebastian Ralli Aleksandr Davidov Leibish

270,130 97,878

337,274 428,059

607,404 525,937

507,390 41,285 511,838 134,964 501,932 35,051 51,739 336,745

7,340 471,215 530 374,023 180 458,269 417,376 79,868

514,730 512,500 512,388 508,987 502,112 493,320 469,115 416,613

332,714

67,431

400,145

362,550 336,372 317,131

150 0 0

362,700 336,372 317,131

311,030 0 118,312 260,868 256,128 0 195,019

0 305,029 166,614 23,268 160 251,203 35,058

311,030 305,029 281,926 284,136 256,288 251,203 230,077

Криона Николай Цетлин Хаим Гурович Симон Люлька Герц Бармас Соломон и К. Шелемет Эгиз Ралли Константин Мавро Иван Камбани Павел Страц Себастьян Ралли Александр Давидов Лейбиш

Imports (roubles)

Exports (roubles)

Total (imports and exports in roubles)

250 appendix Merchant (as he appears in the newspaper)

Цициния Павел

Merchant

Tsitsinia (Zizinia) Pavel Сетич Август Setits Avgust Гельдер Извель Gel̕der Izvel Фолети Иван Foleti (Fileti?) Ivan Милованов Milovanov Константин Konstantin Фрлигц-Снисерг Frligts-Sniserg Viliam Вильям (William) Склаво Иван Sklavos Ivan Горни Рудольф Gorni Rudolf Акуриди Филипп Akuridi Philipp Мангуби Берих Mangubi Berich Серебренный Serebrennyi Александр Aleksandr Склири Лука Skliri Luca Вагнер Вильям Vagner Viliam (­Wagner William) Герфельд Герман Gerfeld German Катротзо Katrotzo Вайнберг Мозель Weinberg Mozel Сеха Иван Sekha Ivan Ващенко Иван Bashenko Ivan Спандони Басманджи Spandoni Basman­ Афанасий dzhi Afanasii Мими Дмитрий Mimi Dmitrii Дульгеров Феофил Dulgerov Feofil Тошкович Степан Toshkovich Stepan Дьямандиди Алкивиад Diamandidi Alkibiad Сиумова Алидели Sioumova Alideli Арсений Arsenii Волохов Гавриил Volokhov Gabriil Яхненко Симеон Iakhnenko Simeon Гереско Афанасий Geresko Afanasii Ринтеев Василий Rinteev Vasilii Мака Константин Maka Konstantin Посохов Андрей Posokhov Andrei

Imports (roubles)

Exports (roubles)

Total (imports and exports in roubles)

40,693

158,573

199,266

134,656 157,536 158,330 151,793

33,125 2,100 0 150

167,781 159,636 158,330 151,943

4,010

143,816

147,826

147,034 144,167 122,066 119,983 104,803

0 0 5,360 1,393 0

147,034 144,167 127,446 121,376 104,803

90,204 89,726

3,000 0

93,204 89,726

72,990 9,780 73,384 78,055 70,687 51,755

7,690 70,813 5,942 0 1,460 19,380

80,680 80,593 79,326 78,055 72,147 71,135

69,616 66,962 7,000 51,094 61,572

0 0 58,570 12,760 0

69,616 66,962 65,570 63,854 61,572

60,461 16,475 55,450 7,755 52,317 49,680

0 40,792 0 45,809 0 0

60,461 57,267 55,450 53,564 52,317 49,680

251

appendix Table 12 Top Odessa merchants, 1859 (cont.) Merchant (as he appears in the newspaper)

Merchant

Imports (roubles)

Липшиц Бернард Верницкий Ромуальд Вургафт Мордко Авчинников Василий Склаво Панаги Тронно Сотири

Lipshits Bernard Vernitskii Romual̕d Vurgaft Mordko Avchinnikov Vasilii Sklavos Panagi Tronno (Troiano?) Sotiri Келлер Александр Keller Aleksandr Свиро Райзо Sviro Raizo Бостанжогло Михаил Bostandzhoglo Mikhail Гааз Карл Haas Karl Феодориди Филипп Feodoridi (Theodoridi) Philipp Гейцельман Джозефина Geitsel̕man Josefina

Exports (roubles)

Total (imports and exports in roubles)

49,507 49,427 0 11,000 45,730 39,326

159 0 48,707 36,156 0 6,060

49,666 49,427 48,707 47,156 45,730 45,386

0 32,835 31,323

40,000 0 0

40,000 32,835 31,323

31,300 30,214

0 0

31,300 30,244

30,069

0

30,069

source: odeskii vestnik, 1859 1800000 1600000 1400000 1200000

Odessa

1000000

St. Petersburg

800000

Moscow

600000 400000 200000 0

figure 1

1811

1825 1840 1856 1870 1885 1897

1910

Population of Odessa, St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1811–1910 source: thomas stanley fedor, patterns of urban growth in the russian empire ­during the nineteenth century, (chicago: the university of chicago, 1975), 202, 214–215.

252 appendix 160000

in 000 French Francs

140000 120000 100000 80000

Imports

60000 40000 20000

1831 1836 1841 1846 1851 1856 1861 1866 1871 1876 1881 1886 1891 1896 1901 1906 1911

0

Figure 2

Imports of Odessa, 1830–1913 source: socrates petmezas, alexandra papadopoulou et al., black sea historical statistics, 1812–1914, research project “the black sea and its port-cities, 1774–1914. development, convergence and linkages with the global economy”, 2012–2015, www.blacksea.gr

300000

in 000 French Francs

250000 200000 150000 100000 50000

1831 1835 1839 1843 1847 1851 1855 1859 1863 1867 1871 1875 1879 1883 1887 1891 1895 1899 1903 1907 1911

0

Figure 3

Exports of Odessa, 1830–1913 source: socrates petmezas, alexandra papadopoulou et al., black sea historical statistics, 1812–1914, research project “the black sea and its port-cities, 1774–1914. development, convergence and linkages with the global economy”, 2012–2015, www.blacksea.gr

253

appendix 400000 350000 300000 250000 200000 150000 100000 50000

1831 1835 1839 1843 1847 1851 1855 1859 1863 1867 1871 1875 1879 1883 1887 1891 1895 1899 1903 1907 1911

0

Figure 4

Total commerce of Odessa, 1830–1913 (in 000 French Francs) source: socrates petmezas, alexandra papadopoulou et al., black sea historical statistics, 1812–1914, research project “the black sea and its port-cities, 1774–1914. development, c­ onvergence and linkages with the global economy”, 2012–2015, www.blacksea.gr Note: As Figure 4 shows, Odessa’s total commerce was only → affected by war ↓ (Crimean 1854, Russo-Turkish 1877) and not so much by the end of its free-port status (1856). A small decrease in Odessa’s trade took place between 1862–1865.

3,50,000 3,00,000 2,50,000 2,00,000 1,50,000 1,00,000 50,000

Odessa

Nikolayev

Novorossiysk

Batum

12 19 13

19

19 11

10

19

08 19 09

19

07

06

19

19

19 05

03 19 04

02

19

01

19

19

19

00

0

Rostov & Taganrog

Figure 5

Total commerce of the South Russian ports 1900–1913 (imports and exports in 000 French Francs) source: socrates petmezas, alexandra papadopoulou et al., black sea historical statistics, 1812–1914, research project “the black sea and its port-cities, 1774–1914. development, convergence and linkages with the global economy”, 2012–2015, www.blacksea.gr

Bibliography Archival Sources Derzhavniĭ arkhiv Odes’koï Oblasti (daoo) [State Archive of the Odessa Region, Odessa, Ukraine] Fond 1, Upravlenie Novorossiiskogo i Bessarabskogo General-Gubernatora Fond 2, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Gradonachal’nika Fond 4, Odesskaia Gorodskaia Duma Fond 5, Upravlenie Vremennogo Odesskogo General-Gubernatora Fond 16, Odesskaia Gorodskaia Uprava Fond 18, Odesskii Kommercheskii Sud Fond 59, Odesskii Stroitel’nyi Komitet Fond 188, Semeinyi Fond Rodokanaki-Iur’evichei Fond 268, Dmitrii Spiridonovich Inglezi Fond 274, Odesskii Statisticheskii Komitet Fond 314, Kantseliariia Odesskogo Politsmeistera Fond 765, Odesskoe Grecheskoe Blagotvoritel’noe Obshchestvo National Archives, Foreign Office, United Kingdom F.O. 65/118 F.O. 65/1520 F.O. 65/1588 F.O. 65/1713 F.O. 359/1 F.O. 371/120 F.O. 371/318 F.O. 371/512 F.O. 371/513 F.O. 371/731 F.O. 371/1745 F.O. 881/4672 Archives du Ministère des Affaires Étrangères (amae) [Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Paris, France] Correspondance Consulaire Commerciale, Russia, Odessa National Archives and Records Administration (nara), Washington, dc, usa Dispatches of the American Consul in Odessa, 1831–1906 Dispatches of the American Consul in St. Petersburg

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Index of Names Alexander I (Tsar) 80, 83, 89 Amvrosios, Ioannis A. 12, 85, 96, 116 Anatra, Bartolomeo 128 see also Anatra Flour Mill  Anatra, Artur Antonovich 128, 136 see also Anatra Aircraft Works  Anatra, Giuseppe 128 Anatra, Giuseppe, Antonio, Angelo, Bartolomeo (brothers) 128 see also Anatra Trade and Shipping Company  Anatra, Αngelo Α. 126 Ansel’m, Vassilii Ivanovich 168 Aprilov, Vasil 86, 87 Artinos, Constantin 69 Ashkenazy, M. 116, 124 Avierino, Georgii 112 Babel, Isaac 54, 103, 107, 108 Benjamin, Walter 3, 20, 49 Bernardazzi, Aleksandr 65, 126 Boffo, Francesco 30, 107, 30n33  Brodskii, Abraham Markovich  7, 155, 171 Buba, Anastasi 112 Burbank, Jane 108, 140 Carruthers, Thomas 112 Catherine II (Empress) 21–23, 161 Cherepennikov, Iakov 123 Cortazzi, brothers (James and Friedrich) 69, 73, 112, 123  Couppas, Gregorios 118, 120 Dall’Aqua, Ivan 30, 30n33 De Ribas, Joseph 21, 30 De Volan, Franz 21, 30, 63 Destounis, Ivan 116 Dialegmeno, Georgii 112 Dialegmeno, Panaioti 112 Drashkovich, Mark 142 Dreyfus, Nathan, Constantin and Ruben L’vovich 141 Duc de Richelieu 22, 26, 30–32, 66, 116, 131 Dumas, Dimitrios 69, 95 Dzhuranovich, Nikolai 113

Efrussi, Joachim 113, 116 see also Efrussi and Co.  Fingert, A. 120 Gen, Ivan Ivanovich 168 see also Gen factory  Gerasimov, Ilya 15, 175, 176, 199, 200 Ginzbourg, D. 116 Gvaer, Samuel 142 Gulev, Aleksandr Andreevich 168 Hausmann, Guido 15, 108, 127, 137, 168 Inglesis, Dimitrios (Dmitrii Inglezi)  85, 86, 90, 95, 96 Inglezi, Nikolai 112 Iraklidi, Pavel 112 Isai, Walter 112 Kapodistrias, Ioannis (Count) 8, 80, 84, 85, 90, 94 Khais, Osip S. 116, 126 Kocka, Jürgen 117 Kozhevnikov, M. M. 126 Kramarev, M. A. 116 Kriona Papa Nikola, Nikolai 70, 96, 112, 139, 182 Kumbaris, Alexander 69, 85, 94, 112, 123 Kumbaris, Stamatis 93, 94 Langeron, Alexander (Count) 30, 31, 37, 83, 85, 88–92, 96, 149 Lucich, Philip 70, 113 Mahs, Arist Aristovich 73, 126 Mahs, Ernst 73, 113, 124, 125 see also Ernst Mahs & Co., Stieglitz and Mahs banking and commercial house Mahs, Thomas von 126 Manesis, Ilias 85, 96, 116 Marazli, family 62, 137 Marazli, Grigorii Gr. 97, 123, 136, 142, 148, 162, 171 Marazli, Grigorii I., (Grigorios I. Marazlis) 57, 69, 85, 94–97, 112, 123

277

index of names Mavros, Alexander 69, 85, 94, 96, 112 Mavros, Ivan 112 Mavrocordatos, Mattheos 112 Miliotti, Mihail 112 Milovanov 63, 139 Mintsaki, Konstantin Matveevich 155 Moore, John 71, 76 Neimann, Iosif Moiseievich 139 Nesselrode, Karl 80, 96 Nikolaou, Paraskevas 112 Ol’denburgskaia, Evgeniia Maksimilianovna (Princess) 165, 167 Palauzov, Brothers 86, 123, 139 Paleologos, Dimitris 62, 112 Paleologos, Lemonis 84, 95 Paleologos, Vayanos 96 Papadimopoulo, Nikolai 112 Papudov, Constantin F. 69, 96, 112, 123 Paul (Emperor) 22 Penter, Tanja 15, 130 Persich, Franz 113 Petalas, Ivan 116 Petrokokkino, Brothers 78, 79 Petrokokkino, M. N. 96 Piatigorskii, G. M. 96 Pisarzhevskii, K. I. 142 Poliakov, Iakov 142 Poliakov, Samuel 142 Ponchio, Bartholomei 113 Porro, Jacob 113 Posokhov 63, 139 Raffalovich, Abraham 113, 120 see also Raffalovich and Co.  Raffalovich, David A. 181 Raffalovich, F. O. 142 Raffalovich, German 116 Rainaud, Ivan 116 Ralli, John (Ivan Stepanovich) 5, 60, 112, 115, 138 Ralli, Stepan (Stephen) Ivanovich 4, 122, 138 Ralli, Thomas 138 Rieber, Alfred 129, 151 Rodocanachi, Feodor P., (Theodore P.)  96, 112, 116, 123–126, 142

see also “Theodore P. Rodocanachi”  Rodocanachi, Pericles Feodor 136, 137, 140, 142 Rosenthal, Leon 142 Rossi, Vicenso 113 Rossolimo, Grigorii 70, 112 Sakellariou, Sakellarios 94, 97 Scaramanga, Efstratios 138 Scaramanga, Ivan (Ioannis, John) 96, 112, 138, 142 Scaramanga, Pandia 138 Sekeris, Athanasios 84, 94, 95 Serafinos, Theodore 94, 96, 116 Sevastopulo, Efstratios 112, 135 Sevastopulo, Mark 112 Shults, Eugen I. 126 Sicard, Charles 30, 31, 73, 116 see also Sicard and Co.  Skoufas, Nikolaos 84 Stamerov, K. S. 142 Steward, A. F. 142 Stieglitz, Ludwig, (Baron) 6, 73, 124, 125 see also Stieglitz and Mahs banking and commercial house  Synadino, G. 136, 182 Tolmachev, I., (Provisional GovernorGeneral) 56, 101, 195, 203, 210 Tolstoy, Michael M., (Count) 148 Torricelli, Giorgio 63, 30n Trabotti, A. N. 116, 126 Trabotti, Il’ia 71, 113 Triarchi, Stelian Panaiotovich 140 Trotsky, Leon 146, 159 Tsakalov, Athanasios 84 Tzigarchich, Abraham 113 Vagliano, Mari (Mark Valliano) 142 Vagner, William (William Wagner)  113, 123 Valsamakis, Loukas 86 Varvaki, Mark 142 Velara, Khristofor 112 Villenz, Nathan 123, 181 Vlangali, Thoma 112 Vlasopulo, Epaminond 112 Vorontsov Michael, (Count) 4, 23, 30, 32, 33, 73, 112, 125, 148

278  Vorontsov, Simon, (Count) 32 Vucina, Georgii 112, 141 Vurgaft, Mordko 123, 181 Weinberg, Florence 173 Weinberg, Mark 187 Weinberg, Robert 14, 106 Witte, Sergei 165 Xanthos, Emmanuel 84, 85, 93, 94, 95 Xidias, Sergios 116

index of names Yeames, Henry Savage 72 see also Yeames and Co.  Yeames, James 66, 72 Yeames, Savage 72 Yeames, William 72 Yietlinger, Iosif 113 Ypsilantis, Alexandros 82, 83, 85–87, 89–96 Yurovich, Solomon 113 Zaks, Rosalia 113 Zarifi, Aleksandr 112, 139 Zusman, Solomon G. 116, 126

Index of Places Aegean Sea 30, 34, 62, 69, 95, 125 Black Sea 4, 22, 26, 39, 40, 60, 69, 74, 86, 112, 206, 212, 224, 226 Braila 40, 50 Brody 26, 49, 125, 197, 198 Cardiff 39 Central Europe 26, 35 Chios 34, 69, 70, 125, 138, 139 Crimea 41, 89, 193, 220, 225 Danubian Principalities 82–84, 86, 92, 96 Dardanelles 25, 206 Ekaterinoslav 89 Europe 4, 25, 26, 39, 81, 90, 91, 97, 207 Far East 39, 40–42, 206 Galatz 38–40, 70 Genoa 39, 69, 70 Great Britain 32 Habsburg Empire 28, 70 Hamburg 25, 39, 68 Hankow 40 Ionian islands 62, 74, 84 Istanbul (Constantinople) 9, 23, 32, 36, 39, 40, 42, 45, 50, 52, 69–71, 74, 82– 85, 91, 92, 94, 96, 114, 135, 138, 139 Jerusalem 41

Kherson 21, 25, 38, 44, 46, 89, 116, 130, 142, 186, 217, 218, 227 Kiev 7, 56, 81, 82, 88, 125, 196, 212, 213 Kishinev 82, 83, 92, 93 Liverpool 71 Livorno 69, 70 London 38, 40, 59, 69–71, 115, 138 Marseilles 23, 25, 30, 38, 39, 70, 71, 113, 125 Mediterranean 1, 2, 4, 12, 18, 22, 23, 25, 27, 28, 29, 35, 39, 40, 60, 67, 68, 70, 93, 95, 110, 113, 114, 115, 125, 206, 207 Moscow 42, 43, 53, 67, 77, 78, 81, 82, 84, 85, 88, 95, 108, 109, 131, 141, 166, 167, 201, 203, 227 Naples 39, 49 Newcastle 71 Nezhin 86, 124 Nikolayev 27, 39, 125, 217 Novorossiysk 27, 39 Sevastopol 37, 70, 125 Siberia 40, 126, 201, 216, 217 St. Petersburg 39, 131 Syros 69, 70, 125 Taganrog 17, 38, 72, 131, 142 Tauride 130 Theodosia 39, 131 Venice 70

Index of Subjects “Gr. Gr. Marazli” Municipal Reading Room 148 see also libraries  “October Coalition” 194 “peripatetic” approach 1–3, 9 “Ralli Cousins” 138, 139 see also Ralli, Ivan Stepanovich  “Russification” 159 Adherents of Lawful Order (political party) 203, 210 Aid Society for Converted Jews 164 Aid Society for the Poor Jews of Moldavanka and Nearby Neighborhoods 170 alcohol 165, 166, 181 as state monopoly 165 abuse of 183 sale 118, 165, 191 alcoholism 165, 166 Aleksandrovskaia (sugar producing ­factory) 168 Aleksandrovskii district 25, 46, 49, 105, 149, 181, 185 Am Olam (Eternal People) New Odessa Group 198 Anatra Aircraft Works 128 see also Anatra, Artur Antonovich  Anatra Bros 99, 124 Anatra family firms 128, 207 Anatra Trade and Shipping Company 128 see also Anatra, Giuseppe, Antonio, ­Angelo, Bartolomeo, (brothers)  Armenian community 36, 46–48, 108 Association for Aid to Jewish Middlemen and Merchants 157 Association for Granting Assistance to Jews in the Form of Combustibles and Matza 169 Association for the Care of the Poor and Assistance for the Needy 155 Association for the Care of the Poor/Beggars of Odessa 155 Association for the Promotion of ­Esperanto 164, 171, 172

Association for the Protection of ­Minors 154 Association of Factory Owners and ­Industrialists 168, 169 Association of Industrialists of Southern Russia 130 Association of Russian Physicians 170 Association of Southern Coal and Steel ­Producers 130 Association of the Birzha 126 Associations for consumer protection 167 Asylum for Children 161 Atwood, J. H. and Co. 71 Azov-Don Commercial bank 116, 142 bakeries 72, 75, 77, 105 Bank of Barbash 200 banking merchant 115, 116, 142 institutions 116, 142 inter-ethnic collaborations in 142 bankruptcies 132, 135–137 Belgian Tramway Co. 101, 102 Berdichev Merchant Bank 116 Bessarabian-Tauride Bank 128 Black Hundreds 202, 230, 233 Black Sea-Danube Steamship Company  40 Board of Health of Peresyp’, 103  Bol’shoi Fontan (suburb) 101, 149 Bolsheviks 180 role in the October Revolution 208 in rule of Odessa 212–214, 223, 224 French and Greeks against 227, 228 Brodskii Synagogue 17, 49 brothels 11, 166, 167, 180 see also prostitution  Buba Frères 70 Bul’varnyi district 8, 25, 34, 46 , 49, 121, 148, 181, 185, 209 Bund (Jewish Labour Movement) 157, 158, 198, 235 Camera Imperiale delle Assicurazioni 116 censorship 13, 45, 127, 194, 221

281

index of subjects Census of 1897, All-Russian 11, 34, 43–46, 50, 106, 129, 176–180, 235 Census of 1915, All-Russian 208 Central Rada (Central Council of the ­Ukrainian People’s Republic) 212, 213 chumak (itinerant merchant) 52, 53 cinemas 100, 148, 149 City Duma (municipal council) 11, 212 monitoring of markets 60 participation of entrepreneurs  7, 126–128, 164 monarchists in 203, 210, 211  clubs 145, 148, 150, 167, 169, 204, 205, 236 Coalition of Octobrists with Trade and ­Industry Party 210 Commercial Bank of Nikolayev 125 Commercial Court 130–137 Committee of War Industries 130 Consortium Gaz d’Odessa 101 Constitutional Democrats (Kadets) 129, 203, 204, 209, 210 constitutional monarchy 80, 208, 209, 211 cosmopolitanism 27–29, 33, 54, 109, 149, 171–174 Council of Conferences of Representatives of Industry and Commerce of South Russia 168 Crimean War 25, 36, 37, 72, 74–75, 113, 118, 121, 138 crisis economic 36, 125, 132, 149 industrial 102, 236 political 187, 189, 197, 208, 223 management of 186 competition as result of 2 Dall’ Orso Bros 120 Delegation for the Adoption of an ­International Auxiliary Language 172 Dreyfus Bros and Co. 124, 141 Duma (State Duma) 13, 127, 129, 204 elections in 203, 210 suppression of 209 educational organizations 165 of ethnic minorities 157, 159, 160 discrimination against Jews in 158, 196 Efrussi and Co. 120

see also Efrussi, Joachim  Enni and Co., F. 168 Ernst Mahs & Co. 6–7, 73, 113, 124, 125 see also Mahs, Ernst  ethno-religious communities 27, 29, 46 settlement 47, 49 associations of 13, 108, 118, 153, 158, 169, 170–172 discrimination, imperial policies on 56, 158–160, 171, 235 persecution of/pogroms against 173, 178, 181, 184, 202 management of 186–189 impact of 196–200 segregation 157, 170 at the workplace 107, 180, 211 economic competition between 35, 113, 176, 184 collaborations  in industry and trade 139, 140 in financial sector 142 Evangelical-Lutheran Hospital 126 Executive Committee of the Soviet ­Deputies 234 Factory Inspectorate 105 Fine Arts Museum 148 flags of convenience 74, 113 foreign direct investment 142, 143 free-port status 22, 25, 26, 28, 66 Gems and Rey 116 Gen factory 229, 230, 233 German community settlement of 30 in population 46 literacy 47 in finance 116 in real estate 123 associations of 159, 160, 169 Gof-makler (General Head Broker) 127, 177, 215 see also makler  Gorky Library 146 see also libraries  Governor-General of Novorossiia 32–33, 88–89, 182 Greco-Russian Insurance Company 116

282  Greek Benevolent Association of Odessa 140, 153, 157, 161–163 Greek Commercial Gymnasium 87 Greek Commercial School for Boys  157, 160 see also Greek Commercial Gymnasium  Greek Commercial Society of Friends of the Muses and People 95 Greek community 34 in Odessa population 45–47, 140 schools 160 commercial charity 161–163 competition with Jews 176–178, 221 against the Bolsheviks 227–229 Greek Language Hostel 84 Greek Orthodox Church of the Holy ­Trinity 49, 118, 162 Greek Society of Friends (Philiki Etaireia) 57 meetings place of 63 history of 82–87 merchants’ participation in 92–98  Haggia Frères et Co. 71 Hebrew Esperanto Association 172 Hellenic Foundation for Culture 19, 57 Holy Alliance 80, 83, 89, 91, 97 Home for the Aged 148 see also homes for the elderly  homes for the elderly 159, 167 Hôtel de la Nouvelle Russie 23 see also hotels  Hôtel du Nord 59 see also hotels  hotels 65, 78, 148 House of Industry 42 hygiene 103, 104 see also Board of Health of Peresyp’  Ido-International Language Society 172 Imperial Agricultural Society 154 Imperial Bank 58 Imperial Historical and Archeological Society of Odessa 146, 168 Imperial Mole 36 Imperial University of Novorossiia 15, 137, 164, 168, 210 Industrial Exposition of Odessa 99

index of subjects industry suburb 46 in Kiev 56 in Odessa 102–109, 142 war 208 organizations of 127, 130 inland grain transportation carts 38, 47, 54, 62, 63 river 75 warehouses 38, 118 insurance 25, 128 companies 116, 130 International Commercial Bank of St. ­Petersburg 116 Jewish community in Odessa ­population 43, 46 residence of 47 occupations of 48 in grain trade 118 societies of 169, 170 in sectors of trade 178 anti-Semitism 197, 211, 235 newspapers of 170, 197 Jewish Palestine Committee (Society for Aid to Jewish Farmers and Artisans in Syria and Palestine 169 Journal d’Odessa (Odessa) 58 see also Odesskii Vestnik  Khadzhibeiskii estuary 100 Kherson Merchant Bank 116 Khersonskaia square 64, 77 Khersonskii district 25, 46, 64, 121, 149, 210 Kishinev Merchant Bank 116 Krantsfel’d, Iakov Iosifovich 168 Krestovnikov Bros 135 Krone, Friedrich and Co. 141 Kuial’nitskii estuary 149, 150 labor  movement 157 strikes 15, 36, 183, 204, 208 unions 106, 127, 152, 156, 189, 198 Land Bank of Bessarabia and Kherson 142 Lander and Yeames 71 Leftist SRs (ES-ERs) 229–233 libraries 78, 145, 146, 148 literacy 46–48

283

index of subjects maklers (professional brokers) 12, 65, 126 see also Gof-makler  maritime transport 38–40 Greeks in 74, 75 blockade of 206, 207 markets 57 Old Bazaar (Old Market) 60, 62, 63, 77 Posokhovskaia Market 77  Greek Market 60, 62, 71, 76 New Bazaar (New Market) 64, 77 at Ol’gievskaia Street 77 Medical Association of Novorossiia ­University 170 Ménage Mahs 6 Mensheviks 157, 212, 230–233 Merchant Bank of Odessa 116 merchant guilds 30 foreign merchants in 67 Greeks in 96 Jews in 120, 121, 196 members in Birzha 126 in the second half of the 19th ­century 177 merchants/merchant houses  foreign 67, 68, 112 market entry, types of 72, 73 Russian 62, 67 German 99, 113 Greek 69, 74, 75, 99, 112–114, 116, 177 French 68, 71, 113 Italian 70, 113 Jewish 56, 99, 113, 118, 177 British 66, 67, 71, 99, 112, 113 retail 76 Serbian 70 Slav 113 middlemen 117–120, 177 Merchant Treasury of Odessa (Torgovaia kassa Odessy) 116 Metalworkers’ Union 231–134 Mikhailovskii district 26, 46, 107, 149, 166, 181 Military Revolutionary Committee (Voennorevoliutsionnyi komitet) 213 Moberly and Co., E. 71 Moberly and Simpson 112 Municipal Bakery at Slobodka 72 see also bakeries 

Municipal Microbiology Laboratory 148 Municipal Shelter 148 see also shelters  Municipal Theatre 145, 148 see also theatres  Mutual Aid Associations for artists 167–168 Mutual Aid Society of the Κ. Leonard ­Company 156 National Council of Jewish Autonomy 182 network, commercial 28, 58, 67, 68, 114, 115 New Stock Exchange (Birzha) 65, 126, 127, 133–135 October Revolution.  see Revolution of 1917  Odessa Air Club 128, 164 Odessa Archeological Museum 148 Odessa Automobile Club 164 Odessa City Guardianship of Children’s Asylums 161 Odessa Discount Bank 128 see also Anatra, Bartolomeo  Odessa Flour-Milling School 128 Odessa Relief Committee 85, 86 Odessa Society of Fine Arts 148 Odessa Staircase (Odessa Steps) 22, 23, 79 Odessa Temperance Society 165 Odessa’s Mutual Aid Society of Jewish Salesclerks 156 Odessan Jewish Committee for ­Colonization 169 Odesskii Vestnik (Odessa) 6, 112, 181 see also Journal d’Odessa  Old Believers 109, 209, 211 orphanages 154, 167 Orthodoxy 110, 115, 160, 221 Palais Brodskii 7 Pale of Settlement 35, 119, 159 Paleologos trading firm 94 Passage (retail arcade) 78 Pericles Theodore Rodocanachi firm 125 dissolution of 136 see also Rodocanachi, Pericles Feodor  Petropavlovskii district 26, 38, 46, 121, 149, 166, 180, 181, 185

284  Philibert and Co. 71 Poale Zion (Workers of Zion) 235 see also Zionism  Polish community in population 46 literacy of 47 in Kiev 56 associations of 164, 169 Polish Cooperative of Consumers 164 Polish Philanthropic Society 164 political liberalism 12, 57, 79, 97 political parties 209–211 port-city 1, 11, 12, 21, 25, 26 infrastructure of 22, 23 Posokhovskaia square 76 prisons 154, 155, 217 Professional Association of ­Lithographers 170 prostitution 9, 166, 167, 180 quarantine 22, 23 see also port-city  Raffalovich and Co. 138 see also Raffalovich, Abraham  Raffalovich Bros 120 railroads. See railways  railways impact on grain trade 26, 117, 118 inadequacy of 206, 207 construction of 32, 42, 122 Ralli and Scaramanga firm 138, 139 Rauchberger, G. and Μ. 100 Raynaud, F.J., A. Colin, and B. Langlois 71 real estate 121–123 Red Army see Red Guards  Red Guards 212–214 residential patterns 46, 47 restaurants 75, 145 Revilliod et Co., Rey 71 Rocca Frères 113 Rodocanacheion Greek School for girls  126, 157 Rodocanachi Sons and Co. 69 , 125 Rodocanachi’s Jute and Rope factory 102 Rumcherod (Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Romanian Front, Black Sea Fleet and Odessa region) 212, 213 Russian Bank of Foreign Trade 116

index of subjects Russian Society for the Protection of Women 167 Russian Steamship and Trading Company (ROPiT) 36, 38–40, 154 Russian Technical Society 99 Russian Volunteer Army 214, 225 Sarato and Verani 70 Sartorio and Son, Pietro 70 School for Salesmen and Clerks 181 secret police 194, 202 serfdom reform of 81 abolition of 42, 80 Sevastopulo Bros 118 shelters 87, 155, 167, 176 Sicard and Co. 71, 113 see also Sicard, Charles  social classes 1, 2 and consumerism 98 judicial system of 131 forming the public space 150, 151 after 1905 163  violence 199 upper class  residents of 8, 47, 49, 59 merchants as 99, 143 lower class  city dwellers as 64 residence of 108 middle class  promotion of 14 as consumers 78 merchant as 117, 128, 143 fragmentation of 129 in associations 154 rivalry in 176–179 in the pogroms 180–183, 185 formation of 152, 211 Jewish 214 Greek 48, 162, 229 adaptation to imperial identity 235 working class 15, 36, 211 in Communist Manifesto 217 in Odessa 106 professions 108 stance on cosmopolitanism 109 public spaces for 148, 149 segregation of 107, 108

285

index of subjects merchant and industrial elites 28, 117  origin of 108–109 and the birzha 126, 127 and the formation of bourgeoisie  128–130 charity of the 161, 162 social estate structure (soslovie/­ estate) 43, 99, 143, 163 nobility  in secret societies 89 town dwellers (meshchane) 48, 51,  64, 108, 154, 200 honorary citizens  entrepreneurs as 108, 117, 128, 129, 139 in real estate 122, 123 merchants as 32, 109, 126 meshchane as 48, 132, 200 middle class as 152 in charity 161 Socialist Revolutionaries (SRs) 212 socialist movement ideas 163, 193, 198 parties 212, 235 Société d’Électricité d’Odessa 101 Société des Téléphones d’Odessa 101 Société pour la fabrication de ciment à Odessa 101 societies and volunteer associations  philanthropic, educational and ­cultural 154, 155, 160–164 professional 156 workers’ 80, 161, 167, 169  ethnic minorities’ 158–163  entrepreneurial 130, 168, 169 secret societies 89–92 see also Greek Society of Friends  Society for Aid to Jewish Farmers and Artisans 169 Society for Assistance to the Poor Choristers of Odessa’s Synagogues 169 Society for Equal Rights of Polish Women 164 Society for Hydrotherapy and Swimming of Odessa 150 Society for Surveying Steam Boilers (Obshchestvo dlia nadzora za parovymi kotlami) 168 Society for the Care of Poor and Homeless Jewish Children 169

Society for the Dissemination of Accurate Information about the Jewish Community 164 Society for the Dissemination of Enlightenment 170 Society for the Promotion of Crafts and Practical Knowledge (Trud) 170 Society for the Promotion of Homeopathy 164 Society for the Protection of Animals 5, 164 Society for the Protection of Odessa Workers against Accidents at the Workplace 167 Society for Waste Management of the City and Railways 164 Society of Greek Insurers 95, 116 Southern Society 81, 92 Soviets 188, 212, 213, 223, 224 spas 48, 150 see also tourism  Stieglitz and Mahs banking and commercial house 73 see also Stieglitz, Ludwig, and Mahs, Ernst synagogues 33, 43, 72, 169, 175 syphilis 11, 166 see also prostitution, brothels  tea-houses 75, 148 theatres 145, 146, 148, 194 Theodore P. Rodocanachi 125 see also Rodocanachi, Feodor P. (Theodore P.)  tourism 40, 101 therapeutic 169 pilgrimage as sector of 41, 42 Trade and Industry party 210 trade fairs 65, 77, 81, 117 trade grain 115 recession of 65 duties on 26, 66, 112  railroad and 118 markets of 65, 126, 133 crisis of 132, 139 competition in 35, 176  Jews in 48, 119, 120, 177 loss of Odessa’s position in 207 import products of 69 merchant groups in 69–71 Greeks in 112, 113

286  export 27, 99, 102, 105 merchant groups in 113 retail 64, 76–78 trading firms joint stock 140, 141 limited liability 141, 142 tram and tramways 100–102 Tramways d’Odessa 101 Trans-Siberian railway 40 Tvidi, Georghi and Co. 140, 141 Ukrainian Association Prosvita 171 Ukrainian Club 171 Ukrainian community  in population 46 literacy 47 in working class 106, 180 associations of 171 Ukrainian Social-Democrat party 171 Ukrajinska Hata (Ukrainian House) see Ukrainian Club  Union for Salvation 80 Union of Industrialists of Odessa 130 Union of October 17, 210 

index of subjects Union of Promotion and Development of Nutrition Industries 168 Union of the Russian People 202, 203 see also Black Hundreds Union of Welfare 79, 81, 82 Union of Workers and Peasants 234 Val’tukh, D. 168 Valler Bros 124 Vegetarian Society 164 Veinshtein and Sons, G. E. 99 Volunteer Fleet (Dobrovol’nyi Flot) 39, 40 Vsia Odessa 148, 164, 170 Walther and Co. 71 War Industry Committee(s) 208, 230, 234 White Russian Volunteer Army 214 Yeames and Co. 72 see also Yeames, Henry Savage  Zaria Aviatsii (Odessa) 128 Zemstvos 160, 161 Zionism 198, 235