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KALEIDOSCOPIC ODESSA:
HISTORY AND PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE
Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ and its aftermath exposed some of the
deep political, social, and cultural rifts running through the former
Soviet republic. This book explores the intersection of these divisions in
Odessa, a Black Sea port in Ukraine that was once the Russian Empire’s
southern window to Europe. Odessans view their city as a cosmopoli
tan place with close ties to Russia and the world despite the state’s
attempt to generate feelings of national belonging. Odessans’ sense of
place is cultivated in various urban spaces through the narration of his
tories that are both intimate and official, imperial and local, traumatic
and nostalgic. In illuminating the interplay of history with competing
senses of place and nation in Odessa, this study shows how nation
building policies interact with the legacies and memories of the Russian
Empire and the Soviet Union.
Exploring the tensions between local and national identities in a
post Soviet setting from the point of view of everyday life, Tanya Rich
ardson argues that Odessans’ sense of their distinctiveness is character
istic of those living in borderland countries like Ukraine. At the same
time she explores the many ways in which local conceptions of cosmo
politanism shaped and preserved the city’s identity within a newly
formed state. Drawing on the existing literature and her own direct
observations and experiences in settings such as history classes, mar
kets, and walking groups, Richardson presents a unique work of urban
ethnography that is both analytically sophisticated and methodologi
cally innovative. A fascinating and richly detailed study, Kaleidoscopic
Odessa will be of interest to anthropologists, Slavicists, sociologists, his
torians, urban planners, and general readers alike.
(Anthropological Horizons)
tanya richardson is an assistant professor in the Department of
Anthropology at Wilfrid Laurier University.
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ANTHROPOLOGICAL HORIZONS
Editor: Michael Lambek, University of Toronto
This series, begun in 1991, focuses on theoretically informed ethno
graphic works addressing issues of mind and body, knowledge and
power, equality and inequality, the individual and the collective. Inter
disciplinary in its perspective, the series makes a unique contribution
in several other academic disciplines: women’s studies, history, philos
ophy, psychology, political science, and sociology.
For a list of the books published in this series see page 281.
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Kaleidoscopic Odessa:
History and Place in
Contemporary Ukraine
Tanya Richardson
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS
Toronto Buffalo London
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© University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada
ISBN 978 0 8020 9837 5 (cloth)
ISBN 978 0 8020 9563 3 (paper)
Printed on acid free paper
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Richardson, Tanya
Kaleidoscopic Odessa : history and place in contemporary Ukraine / Tanya
Richardson.
(Anthropological horizons)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978 0 8020 9837 5 (bound). ISBN 978 0 8020 9563 3 (pbk.)
1. Odesa (Ukraine) – History. 2. Odesa (Ukraine) – Social conditions.
3. Sociology, Urban – Ukraine – Odesa. I. Title. II. Series.
DK508.95.O33R43 2008 947.7(cid:99)2 C2008 902850 3
This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian
Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to
Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its
publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario
Arts Council.
University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its
publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book
Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Note on Transliteration and Translation xiii
1. Kaleidoscopic Odessa 3
On the Edges and Afterlives of Empires 6
A Cosmopolitan Place 15
Kaleidoscopic History 21
History in an Eastern European Borderland 24
From Textbooks to Talking Streets 33
2. Uncertain Subjects: Youth, History, and Nation 40
Lessons in History 43
Home Truths 53
On Knowing History: The Holocaust 61
Talking History, Talking Politics 66
3. Living History and the Afterlives of States 74
Remembered Lives, Remembered History 77
‘Everyone had their own war’: Remembering the Second World
War in Odessa 93
4. On Odessa’s Kolorit and the Place(s) of Moldovanka 106
History in Place 109
Moldovanka at the Margins and the Centre 111
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vi Contents
Courtyards and Markets as Places of Kolorit 119
Touring Moldovanka and the Performativity of Place 134
5. Walking Streets, Talking History: The Making of Odessa 139
The My Odessa Club 142
Walking the Streets of Old Odessa 143
Mapping History, Making Place 148
Disputing History 154
Odessa as Courtyard 157
Transforming Cityscape, Transforming Society 164
Walking the City, Making the Self 166
6. Between Cosmopolitan and Provincial: Spaces of History and the
Place of Odes(s)a 171
Spaces of History 173
The Odessa Literature Museum 176
A Jewish Capital in a Provincial Town 188
Ukrainian History in a ‘Non Ukrainian City’ 197
Epilogue 207
Notes 221
Bibliography 241
Index 263
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Illustrations
1 Map of Odessa, 1915 (Skinner 1986) xiv
2 The Odessa Opera Theatre 12
3 Primorskii Boulevard 13
4 Map of the expansion of the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth
century (Subtelny 1991) 26
5 Courtyard at the corner of Malaia Arnautskaia and Utesev
Streets 121
6 Courtyard on Balkovskaia Street near Dalnitskaia Street 122
7 Street vendors at the Old Horse Market on Petropavlovskaia
Street 130
8 Street vendors on Rizovskaia Street 131
9 Valery Netrebsky and the My Odessa club in a courtyard on Ste
povaia Street 145
10 Participants examine a pre revolutionary roof tile made in
Marseille 153
11 The original Balkovskaia Street 158
12 The courtyard at 133 Balkovskaia Street 159
13 The My Odessa club in a courtyard on Bogdanov Street 161
14 Members of the My Odessa club speak with a local resident on
Stepovaia Street 162
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viii Illustrations
15 Entrance hall in the Odessa Literature Museum (photo by Georgy
Isaev) 181
16 Room dedicated to the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the
nineteenth centuries in the Odessa Literature Museum (photo by
Georgy Isaev) 183
17 Display dedicated to the works of Isaac Babel and Konstantin
Paustovsky (photo by Georgy Isaev) 186
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Acknowledgments
It is a great pleasure to be able to acknowledge the contributions of
many people and institutions to the making of this book. My deepest
gratitude goes to the numerous Odessans who generously shared their
knowledge, stories, and sense of place with me with characteristic
warmth and wit. I thank Professor Emma Gansova for her friendship,
intellectual engagement, and tireless efforts to ensure the smooth
progress of my research. Anna Misiuk, Mark Naidorf, Taras Maksy
miuk, Valery Netrebsky, Tatiana Dontsova, and Albert Malinovsky all
spent many, many hours sharing not only their knowledge of Odessa’s
histories and contemporary transformations, but also, more impor
tantly, how to learn about them. I am profoundly grateful to Leonid
Kinoshever, Mikhail Kordonsky, Roman Kremen, Tatiana Rybnikova,
Vladimir Chaplin, Mikhail and Olga Kozorovitsky, Vladimir Mikhail
enko, and Nina Cherniavskaia for conversations and introductions that
opened up new paths of research. Special thanks must go to the direc
tor, teachers, and students of the school in Tairova that I attended year
long for their patience in dealing with the puzzling presence of an eth
nographer.
Support from a number of institutions enabled me to undertake and
write up the research for this book. I was awarded doctoral fellowships
from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada,
the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, and Lucy Cavendish College.
The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, the William Wyse
Fund, and Lucy Cavendish College provided additional fieldwork
funding. The Institute for Civic Education at Kyiv Mohyla Academy
and the Institute of Social Sciences at the Odessa National University
offered me institutional bases while I was in Ukraine. A postdoctoral
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