What do we all know about Odessa today? For one thing, we know it’s in Ukraine, and it is one of the cities that has been hit by, but not destroyed by, the war. We also know that we have been told to drop an ‘s” and spell it “Odesa”, something which I find quite difficult to do (and which my computer’s spell check finds just as hard).

Anything more? Some of us have seen the film “Potemkin”, Sergei Eisenstein’s silent film about the lead up to the Russian Revolution of 1917. The steps leading from the docks to the commercial area of the city, and the baby carriage with the screaming baby careening down. Some of us (not me) know it as a city where our ancestors lived before finding their way to this country. And some of us (not me) have visited. We may also know that a large group of authors (Pushkin, Babel, et al) and musicians (especially violinists) have come from Odessa.

Charles King, professor of governmental affairs (or some such thing) at Georgetown, published a book on the history of Odessa in 2011. He called the book “Odessa”. I have just finished the book (it doesn’t take that long), and find it enlightening. The story of Odessa is not a pretty story, but (as one reviewer of the film “Banshees of Inisherin” said of the film), it is a terrific feel-bad book.

Odessa, on the Black Sea, is a younger city than Washington DC. It was designed, as was Washington, on a basic grid pattern, with variations. It was created to be a commercial Russian port on the Black Sea, connected by ship to Europe and the Ottoman Empire more easily than by land to Moscow or St. Petersburg. For a city in tsarist Russia, it was given a lot of independence. It was considered by many more European than Russian. Even its population was minority Russian. There were Russians and Ukranians to be sure, but there were also Greeks and Italians and Jews. At its high point in the mid-19th century, more than 1/3 of its residents were Jewish. Odessa was a cultural as well as a commercial center – opera house, theaters, libraries, university.

It was a great commercial city, sending grain from Ukraine across the world. But as competition increased, as railroads began to pick up the deliveries that before had been primarily maritime, the city hit on some rough years as the century came to a close. The general turmoil in Russia did not help. Ethnic group turned against ethnic group. Pogroms hit Odessa, as it hit so many other places within the Pale of Settlement. The government became more and more concerned about revolutionary thinking and striking out at suspicious individuals and groups. Then came the revolution and Odessa was clearly a fish out of water. It’s great commercial days were behind it – it was unprepared for what was to come.

Eventually what was to come was World War II. During World War II, virtually all of Odessa’s Jewish community was wiped out. Some had emigrated, to be sure, but others were worked to death, sent to camps, or scattered to the unfriendly countryside. For three years, Odessa and surroundings were occupied – not by the Germans, however, but by the Romanians, a story little known and told well by King. The Romanians, as you will see if you read the book, were merciless. You didn’t need ghettos and you didn’t need death camps. The Romanian occupiers did not need any of those things.

Prior to the current war and now in the independent country of Ukraine, Odessa grew back to an image of its prior self, proud of its history, a tourist destination. Now, of course, that too is in the past, at least for now.

If you are at all interested in the history of this unique city, Charles King’s
“Odessa” is the book for you.