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Odessa: Much more than a postcard

The Jerusalem Post

April 30, 2004, Friday

Pg. 37

Meir Ronnen

Odessa Memories. Edited and prefaced by Nicolas Iljine. Texts by Bel Kaufman, Patricia Herlihy, Oleg Gubar & Alexander Rosenboim, The University of Washington Press. 144pp. pounds 29.95

As Nicolas Iljine points out in his Odessa Memories, Odessa was "pearl of the south to snowbound Muscovites; and city of hope - and eventually port of exit - to numberless legions of Jews." It was the home town of Zionists whose names adorn the streets of Tel Aviv: Jabotinsky, Bialik, Dizengoff, Dubnow, Pinsker, Lilienblum. The Black Sea port, created in the last years of the reign of Katherine the Great following the southern victories of Potemkin, was one of the few cities, according to Odessa-born Vladimir Jabotinsky, "which created their own type of people."

In her essay in this book, which is built around Iljine's collection of pre-revolutionary postcards of the city and some of its posters and periodicals, Prof. Patricia Herlihy recalls the Yiddish saying "To live like a god in Odessa."

The city was also a mixed mecca for fugitives and criminals, entrepreneurs and musicians and painters. Iljine points out that Kandinsky, Exter, Leonid Pasternak, the marine painter Aizovsky, and avant-gardists like Tyshler and Larionov loved working there. One of the illustrations in this book is an early fauvist Larionov of women bathing on the seashore.

Odessa had a large and mixed Jewish population that left its stamp on the city. In a moving memoir, nonagenarian Bel Kaufman, granddaughter of Shalom Aleichem, recalls her Odessa childhood filled with poets and sailors, merchants and musicians, Jewish intellectuals and Chinese women tottering on bound feet. Her idyll came to an end in 1917 when revolutionaries looted her parents' home. When out wheeling her baby brother, the pram was taken from her by two women shouting, "We have babies, too!"

Odessa had been built up by Italians, Greeks, and Jews but was ruled by Russians. In the 19th century, its biggest ethnic group was Jews. In hard times, the rich Jews were regarded as exploiters, the poor Jews as a drain on the city. They poured into the town after every pogrom, many on their way to America, South Africa, and western Australia.

The Jews gave the town most of its music and cultural life, and also some of its noted gangsters. Odessa produced the great violinist Mischa Elman and pianist Svyatoslav Richter. Composer-conductors Tchaikovsky, Rubinstein, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Glazunov all performed in Odessa; so did Franz Liszt. Self-taught violin virtuosos were chiefly Jews, gypsies, and Ukrainians. One of Odessa's most noted authors was Isaac Babel. Its biggest cigarette factories and bathhouses were owned by Jews. They also ran many of the stationery shops.

Odessa was easily the most cosmopolitan town in Russia. In 1892, some 24% of its inhabitants hailed from Turkey, 20% from Greece, 18% from Austro-Hungary, 13% from Germany, and the rest, in descending order, from Romania, Italy, France, Britain, the Balkans, Switzerland, Persia, Belgium, Scandinavia, Spain, Denmark, the US, and the Netherlands. A number of these were shipwrights and engineers. And, of course, there was a flow of tourists, refugees, and sailors. Richelieu, noting that so little Russian was spoken in the city, founded a high school to teach the language.

The Jews of Odessa, most of them secular, did not socialize with the other communities; they were simply not invited. But then that is the case in many places today.

The port suffered from increasing international competition. After 1870, unemployment was rife and the Ukrainian and Jewish poor were radicalized. The Jews formed a labor Bund, but a good number became Zionists. The writing was on the wall. There was a series of pogroms in the town itself, and new laws defined Jews as second-class citizens. Finally, in 1905, a pogrom left more than 300 Jews dead, including 55 from the Jewish self-defense force. Thousands of Jews left the city. And in a few years, more than a million Jews had left Eastern Europe for the New World.

The color postcards show that Odessa had few monumental buildings; it was built to a human scale but with wide avenues, tree-lined walks, and several beautiful parks. Business was conducted in cafes out of doors. Its famous Primorsky steps were immortalized in Sergei Eisenstein's film The Battleship Potemkin. But in many ways it resembled the modest coastal towns in which Jews lived around the globe. Today, the scions of Odessa's Jewish families occupy parts of Melbourne's St. Kilda and New York's Brighton Beach.

Yet Odessa grew out of the plans of a long line of famous 18th- and 19th-century Italian, Russian, and French architects. The biggest structure was the Opera House; and the City Theater, the Post Office, and the Stock Exchange building looked pretty massive too, as such buildings should. All were built with the aid of public subscriptions.

This book is largely about Jewish life in Odessa and filled with a myriad of details and stories, as well as an account by Odessa residents Oleg Gubar and Alexander Rosenboim of how Jewish life and learning survived there until 1917. Altogether, a real treat.

GRAPHIC: 4 photos: Monument to Catherine the Great, Odessa postcard. Street in Odessa a century ago, postcard. The baths belonging to Isaac Isakovich, Odessa, late 19th century Advertisement for the Abramov tobacco firm, Odessa

Odessa Memories

Library Journal Reviews

March 15, 2004 Monday

BOOK REVIEWS; Social Sciences; Pg. 89

Olga B. Wise

Samuel and Althea Stroum Bk: Univ. of Washington. Apr. 2004. 200p. ed. by Nicolas Iljine. tr. from Russian by Antonia Bouis. illus. ISBN 0-295-98345-0. $40. HIST

For this extraordinary compilation, editor Iljine, a European representative for the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation, collected rare photographs, posters, postcards, and illustrations from pre-1917 Odessa. A series of essays by prominent Russian historians Patricia Herlihy (Brown Univ.) and Oleg Gubar and Alexander Rozenboim (Odessa Univ.) give us an overview of the history and culture of this once-flourishing port city on the Black Sea. Founded by Catherine the Great after capture from the Turks in the late 18th century, Odessa flowered during the 19th century, becoming one of the most open and cosmopolitan cities in Russia, attracting settlers, businessmen, and traders from across the country and throughout Europe. It also became a center of Jewish culture, nurturing some of the earliest Zionists (e.g., Ze'ev Jabotinsky) and Yiddish writers (e.g., Sholem Aleichem). But the most overwhelming documentation comes from the rich variety of illustrations, some never before published, that rightly restore Odessa's place in Russian and European history. From the moment of opening this beautiful and informative book, this reviewer was unable to put it down until she'd reached the end. Strongly recommended for travel, Slavic history, and Jewish study collections in both public and academic libraries. - Olga B. Wise, Austin, TX

Odessa Memories; Brief Article; Book Review

Booklist

January 1, 2004

Pg. 815(1) Vol. 100 No. 9-10 ISSN: 0006-7385

Cohen, George

Ed. by Nicolas V. Iljine. Jan. 2004. 143p. illus. index. Univ. of Washington, $40 (0-295-98345-0). 947.7.

Odessa was founded by Catherine the Great in 1794 and soon became an important center of Jewish culture.

This book started out as a collection of postcards of this Russian city on the Black Sea and later came to include illustrations, Jewish periodicals, advertisements, photographs, and circus posters from museums and libraries. There's an essay by Patricia Herlihy and contributions by Bel Kaufman (the granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, who came from Odessa), Oleg Gubar, and Alexander Rozenboim. Iljine writes that he intended the book's title to remind readers of the vibrant life of the city between the mid-1800s and the Russian Revolution of 1917, since these times were also documented in photographs. Herlihy gives a history of Odessa's nightlife, resorts, theaters, schools, criminal underworld, synagogues, philanthropic societies, phenomenal growth, the colorful mix of ethnic groups, and organizations that provided a defense against pogroms. This opulent book, with 215 illustrations--166 in color--and an informativetext, goes a long way in preserving the history of this renowned city.