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Odessa, a Black Sea port founded by Catherine the Great in 1794, shortly after the territory was wrested from the Ottoman Empire, became a boomtown on the southern fringe of the Russian Empire. Catherine and the early administrators of the city, such as the Duke de Richelieu, promoted settlement by Europeans in addition to the Greek, Italians, and Jews who came on their own initiative to take advantage of economic opportunities in the robust grain trade with Europe. More ethnically diverse by far than St. Petersburg, Odessa became a remarkable independent-minded, large cosmopolitan city, attracting and producing noted writers, artists, musicians and scholars.
Imperial Russian tsars and Soviet leaders maintained an ambivalent attitude towards the maverick city, appreciating the fame and fortune it generated, but also leery of the activities of secret foreign national societies, pogromists, revolutionaries and simply the perceived lack of patriotism in the singular city so far away from the heart of Russia. With the withering of the lucrative grain trade by the time of the Soviet Union, Odessa became a neglected city, drained of its foreign flavor. With the independence of Ukraine in 1991, there were hopes raised that the architectural beauty and economic prospects of the city would be revived. Given the current hostilities in Eastern Ukraine with the potential of the Odessa area becoming a possible land bridge to the Crimean Peninsula, the fate of the former Pearl of the Black Sea hangs in suspension.
The present book brings together—indeed, re-collects—some of the most valuable and thought-provoking research on Odessa and its culture, community, and economy published by Patricia Herlihy over several decades of her work. Scholars of Ukraine, Russia, and the former Soviet Union will find in this book a helpful resource for their research and teaching.
— Ivan Kozachenko, Journal of European Studies
“Odessa Recollected, as the title implies, is a collection of articles—thirteen pieces that were previously published between 1973 and 2014. They are the result of more than fifty years of research into government reports, contemporary newspapers, travel and imaginative literature, official and unofficial histories of Odesa, census reports, almanacs, university records, city directories, consular letters and reports, life histories, and genealogical tables. These well-written articles depict a city replete with opportunities, as well as a small world with many contrasts—from its enterprising and prosperous industrialists, bankers, merchants, and real estate and insurance agents to individuals who too often turned to violence, as happened during the pogroms of 1871, 1881, and 1905. … [The book’s] format lays the underpinnings for what is a brilliant outline of the many peculiarities of this energetic, vibrant, and cosmopolitan oasis of beauty and freedom.”
—J.-Guy Lalande, St. Francis Xavier University, East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies
“It is no exaggeration to call Patricia Herlihy the pioneer of Odesa studies in the US and Western Europe. Her groundbreaking publications encouraged dozens of scholars to dig deeper into the city’s history. Her book Odessa Recollected, a collection of articles and book chapters published from the early 1970s up until the 2000s, is a monument to her life-long occupation with Odesa. … Divided into three sections – culture, community, and commerce – the reader encounters a variety of different approaches to Odesa’s history, among them reflections on the usages of the past in present-day Odesa, statistical and ethnographic works, particularly focusing on the Greek and Jewish populations living in and shaping the city, as well as several economic analyses of Odessa’s regional and global commerce. This collection of essays is as diverse as it is insightful. … Reading Patricia Herlihy’s texts reminds us of her impressive scholarly legacy. Her rich and multifaceted essays are matched by the numerous illustrations of postcards, posters, and pictures printed in the book. They add a vital visual experience of both city and port.”
— Boris Belge, Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part 1: Culture
The Persuasive Power of the Odessa Myth
Odessa Memories
How Ukrainian Is Odesa? From Odessa to Odesa
Jewish Writers of Odessa
Part 2: Community
Death in Odessa: A Study of Population Movements in a Nineteenth-Century City
The Ethnic Composition of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century
Greek Merchants in Odessa in the Nineteenth Century
The Greek Community in Odessa, 1861–1917
Part 3: Commerce
Odessa: Staple Trade and Urbanization in New Russia
Commerce and Architecture in Odessa in Late Imperial Russia
Port Jews of Odessa and Trieste: A Tale of Two Cities
Russian Wheat and the Port of Livorno, 1794–1865
The South Ukraine as an Economic Region in the Nineteenth Century