Odessa – The Russian Portal to the in the pre-revolutionary period

Aldo Ferrari and Giulia Lami

The studies concerning published in the last years, above all Patricia Herlihy’s book Odessa. A History 1794-1914, offer an image of the city and the port focusing on many of its peculiarities,

Starting from the interest cultivated by Aldo Ferrari for the Black Sea area from the antiquity to the present day and from the attention I dedicated in the last ten years to Ukrainian history in the context of interaction between the Polish-Ukrainian space and the Russian one, we agreed that Odessa, its origin, its meaning within a developing , its physiognomy so peculiar if compared with that of other Russian cities was an important subject of research. One can ask whether Odessa is a Russian city in the real meaning of the word or an intermediary between and the larger world, making of it a privileged portal and a reality per se in the general map.

Hence, Ferrari and I, decided to focus our attention on the question of the multicultural and multi-ethnic character of the city and the port of Odessa, starting from its foundation and from the role played in its earlier development by Italians.

Odessa: an Italian colony?

The premise is well known. The Russian conquest of the territories of contemporary southern took place in the second half of the Seventeen hundreds, at the end of long lasting wars with the Turkish Empire and its vassals, the Khans of Crimea. The Khanship of Crimea was annexed in 17831, while at the end of the 1787-1791 war with the Turkish Empire Russia obtained control over the entire northern coast of the Black Sea. Since 1764, these territories were administratively organised in the government of New Russia. In this manner, the process of nearing the sea, which had seen the consolidation of Russia’s position on the Baltic Sea, with the founding in 1703 of Saint Petersburg, was now coming to completion. New Russia, which relatively speaking was not densely inhabited at the time of the conquest, was rapidly colonised thanks to a privilege-based policy specifically created to attract immigrants belonging to many different populations such as Serbians, Germans, Russians, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Greeks, Armenians, Romanians, and even Italians as we will see. Each of these immigrant populations actively contributed in their own way to the development of New Russia. As a result, this area represented a noteworthy example of the multi- cultural and multi-ethnic structure of the Russian Empire, which has so far been underestimated and which represents one of the most interesting research topics of current historiography2. In the following decades New Russia became increasingly important due to its fertile soil and its coastal position. The position on the Black Sea was of fundamental importance for the Empire’s economy, especially as far as grain export towards Europe was concerned. A decisive role was played by the city of Odessa, founded in 1794. Its founding was strictly related to the Empire’s southward expansion planned by Catherine II. Similarly to Saint Petersburg, also Odessa was meant to be a “window on Europe”, and indeed it was, becoming one of the most active, lively and cosmopolitan cities in the Russian Empire.

1 Cfr. A. W. Fisher, The Russian Annexation of the Crimea, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1970. 2 For more, see my introduction to the Italian edition to Kappeler’s study La Russia. Storia di un impero multietnico, tr. it. Edizioni Lavoro, Roma 2006, pp. IX-XXI. By considering its establishment, one may wonder whether Odessa was an “Italian” colony. Certainly, the role of Italians is an interesting page in Odessa’s history and is in a way unknown3 in the relations between our country and Russia. The founding itself was very likely suggested by the Genoese Stefano de Rivarola, who carried out an important diplomatic mission between 1783 and 1785, generating Catherine II’s interest. Catherine thus appointed him to visit New Russia and report back detailed information about the place4. Moreover, the founder of the city, José/Giuseppe de Ribas, can be considered at least partially Italian, as he was born in Naples in 1749 and was the son of a noble Spanish man at the service of the House of Bourbon.5 All of his four sons, Giuseppe, Emanuele, Andrea, and Felice joined the Russian army. Giuseppe fought several times against the Ottomans, advancing considerably in his career and finally becoming first governor of Odessa. Moreover, the city had been founded in an area suggested by Giuseppe himself.6 He was in charge until 1797 and during this time he created Odessa’s foundations and a fleet; he managed commerce and immigrants making Odessa an important port not just on the Black Sea, but on the entire Mediterranean. Also due to his origin, De Ribas called over a great deal of Italian engineers, architects, merchants, and artisans who constituted an important group in Odessa. One of the city’s roads started being called Itali’janskaja, that is “the Italians’ street”, renamed Pushkin Street in 18807. Overall Giuseppe De Ribas was very important in the city’s history, as was his younger brother Felice. Felice was born in Naples around 1770. Like his brother he had a brilliant career in the Russian army and then settled in Tuzla, near Odessa, where he actively participated in the city’s commercial and industrial life. He was active especially during the government of the Duke of Richelieu, 1803-1814. The De Ribas dynasty continued with Michele (1808-1882), son of Felice. Michele had an important role in the city’s cultural life, and was among other things editor in chief of the Journal d’Odessa, published in Russian and French (and some articles in Italian). No wonder then, if the city’s main street still carries the family’s name (Deribasovskaja). The three De Ribas generations, can thus be considered as a symbol of Odessa’s multi-ethnic character and an example of the Italian-Russian relations, which characterised this first phase of the city’s life. As many of Odessa’s monuments demonstrate, the role of Italians8 was relevant in building the city, once again similar to Saint Petersburg. Indeed in this period, Italy’s architectural, musical and artistic contributions to Russia and Europe were conspicuous. This overall European look that characterises Odessa, which attracted the young Pushkin, owes much to the work of Italian artists such as Francesco Frapolli, Francesco Boffo, Giovanni Quarenghi, Giovanni Torricelli, Giovanni Dell’Acqua, Alessandro Digby, Alessandro Bernadazzi and the younger Frapolli brothers, especially Pietro, who became the city’s main architect in 1827. Not only is Odessa more European and Mediterranean than other Russian cities, but also more secular. In fact, its theatres, markets, and its port are much more prominent than its churches. Almost as relevant as the Italian stamp on architecture was the Italian stamp on painting. Painting, however, was less linked to governmental commissioning and more to private

3 In this respect a scholar has spoken about “A peculiar case of historical amnesia: the forgotten Italians”: A. Makolkin, A History of Odessa. The Last Italian Black Sea Colony, Edvin Mellen Press, Ontario 2004, p. 5. 4 Cfr. R. Sinigaglia, Genova e Russia. La missione Rivarola a Pietroburgo (1783-1785), Graphos, Genova 1994 e A. Makolkin, A History of Odessa. The Last Italian Black Sea Colony, cit., pp. 34-41. 5 On the origin of the De Ribas family: Michele De Ribas: Saggio sulla città di Odessa e altri documenti dell’Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Cassa di Risparmio di Genova, Genova 1988 and the recent article by Mi. Marzano, I de Ribas, una famiglia napoletana ad Odessa, in L. Mascilli Migliorini, M. Mafrici (edited by), Mediterraneo e/è Mar Nero: due mari tra età moderna e contemporanea, ESI, Napoli 2012, pp. 139-162. In the same volume (pp. 31- 54 and 203-233) the following articles can be found: M. Mafrici, La diplomazia in azione: rapporti commerciali tra la Russia e il regno di Napoli e M Sirago, Il consolato napoletano nel Mar Nero e lo sviluppo di Odessa tra la fine del Settecento e la prima metà dell’Ottocento. 6 Cfr. A. Makolkin, A History of Odessa. The Last Italian Black Sea Colony, cit., p. 5. 7 Ibidem, pp. 65-66. 8 About 3000 Italians lived in Odessa around 1850. commissioning. Some of the painters migrated to Odessa through Constantinople, and all of them were of high technical level. Among others worth remembering are Paolo Riccardi (1826-1873), Cesare Boldrini (1785-1849), Francesco Morandi (Cremona 1811 – 1894, Rome, but buried in Odessa) and most importantly Carlo Bossoli (born in Soragno, Switzerland in 1815, died in Turin 1884). Another characterising feature of the Italian-Russian relations is music, at the time an expansive area of Italian culture. Specifically, Giovanni Mantovani and Giuseppe Zamboni had a fundamental role in the making of Odessa’s Opera. Musical liveliness in the city was strictly linked to its Italian component throughout the entire nineteenth century, having a great deal of Italian musicians, singers and producers active in this period.9 The role of Italians was relevant also in the development of Odessa’s drama as the presence of troupes coming from our country was frequent. These relations ensured Italian as a lingua franca in Odessa, a principal vehicle of the city’s economic activity, especially maritime. Signposts, for instance, were not only written in Russian but also in Italian. Moreover, Italian was used for passports, grain price lists, and reports on shows and theatrical matter. For many travellers Odessa with its climate, architecture, food, and culture felt just like an Italian city. The American Henry Wikoff, who visited Odessa in 1835, wrote: “I was almost tempted to believe that, by some hocus-pocus, we had tumbled on an Italian town… There were little or nothing Russian about it. Its inhabitants were chiefly Italians or Greeks, with a sparkling of French, German and English”10 After the Italian unification an Italian consulate11 was set in Odessa. However, in the second half of the eighteen hundreds, the influence of the colony in the city gradually started decreasing. The reasons for this decrease are various and not too clear. The main scholar of the Italian community speaks about a growing discriminating feeling towards Italians on the part of the Slavic majority. And this is certainly a period of growing nationalism12, nevertheless, this explanation does not seem too convincing, we should consider other possibilities. First and foremost, assimilation, but it could also be the strong sense of competition between the different ethnic communities. The Jewish community, for instance, gradually achieved a more prominent position among others in the city13. The point is that the Italian community strongly decreased and in 1897 there were only 286 active men in Odessa14. This decline was bound to continue in the following decades, though the Italian stamp on architecture and culture did not disappear completely. The Italian presence in the history of Odessa and especially its role in “bringing Russia into the Mediterranean”15 does indeed deserve more recognition than what it currently has. This is an interesting page as far as the historical and cultural relations between Italy and Russia are concerned, and for the now indispensable multi-ethnic and multi-cultural interpretation of the Russian Empire.

Odessa as a multi-ethnic and multi-cultural centre

The multi-ethnic and multi-cultural nature of Odessa became in a certain way a common place in any account related to it, but it is undoubtedly the key to understand the popularity of this city all around the world. Odessa entered in the literary and cultural texts about the so-called “lost cities” i.e. cities very vivid in the memory of emigration, which took place, for various reasons, above all after revolutions and wars.

9 Ibidem, pp. 177-197. 10 H. Wikoff, The Reminescences of a Idler, Fords, Howard, & Hulbert, New York 1880, p. 231. 11 Cfr. G. Vignoli (edited by), Gli Italiani di Crimea. Nuovi documenti e testimonianze sulla deportazione e lo sterminio, Edizioni Settimo Sigillo, Rome 2012, p. 26. 12 Cfr. Makolkin, A History of Odessa. The Last Italian Black Sea Colony, cit., pp. 220-225. 13 Cfr. Ch. King, Odessa. Splendore e tragedia di una città di sogno, Einaudi, Torino 2013, pp. 88-89. 14 Cfr. P. Herlihy, The Ethnic Composition of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century, in “Harvard Ukrainian Studies”, I/ 1 (1977), p. 74. 15 A. Makolkin, Italians Bringing Russia into Mediterannean: Odessa the Last Italian Colony, in L. Somigli, D. Pietropaolo, D. Brancato (eds.), Modernism and Modernity, Legas, Brooklin, NY; Ottawa 2006, pp. 249-261.

Cities of the old empires, such as , Lviv, and Odessa are at the centre of many literary accounts where nostalgia and mythicizism prevail. But we have not to be induced in error, because a very important point in a study of Odessa is to understand why the multicultural and multi-ethnic model it represented was put in a critical position by the growing nationalism of the end of the century, here as in other towns of Central-Eastern Europe. The principal ethnic community was that of Russians, filling the highest and the lowest social orders, but quite absent in the middle class ranks. Ukrainians constituted a relatively large group among the Slavic population of Odessa, but the percentage on the whole of the city population at large was low (9.39 according to Herlihy). Ukrainian urban population was very scarce everywhere in Ukraine: Ukrainians were not inhabitants of cities, but rather of the countryside. In the case of Odessa the Russian government tended to encourage more the Russians or the foreigners to settle in the area, rather than the Ukrainians. Ukrainians in Odessa had a low socio-economic status, being mainly soldiers, labourers, and miners. The social status of Poles was similar to that of Russians, with a sharp polarisation between rich and poor. We have to take into account the presence among Slavs of Byelorussians, Bulgarians, and Czechs. As it is well known, after the Slavs Jews formed the major group in Odessa since the foundation of the city. Here they enjoyed a freedom unknown in other parts of the Empire. The difference is striking if we compare their status and possibility of social ascension with the limited opportunities offered them by the Pale of Settlement in which they mostly lived during the 19th century. Nevertheless, the Ignat’ev laws of 1882 diminished the status of Jews even in Odessa: the Golden Age ended and Jews became second-class citizens, blocked in their development more than any other group. Of course the increasing number of Jews, overshadowed the Italian and Greek presence so imposing in the first half of the 19th century. Why didn’t this cohabitation of different ethnic groups survive until the 20th century? Here arises the problem of the political and social conflicts gaining momentum despite state repression. Analysing in detail the period between 1905-1917 we can see that, despite all the charm of the Mediterranean surface of Odessa, criminality, political unrest, ethnic clashes well symbolised by pogroms with all their consequences, destroyed little by little the previous apparently peaceful way of life. Odessa entered very quickly into modernity and paid a high price for it: at the end of the century it “appeared to be the most cosmopolitan and progressive” city in the entire Russian Empire (281H), but the tensions accompanying urbanisation and industrialisation everywhere mounted here too. As P. Herlihy underlines the authorities perceived Odessa as foreign, unsubordinated city, and deserving punishment. The official policy didn’t soften the disease created by the growth of the city; on the contrary the imperial government denied “the city favourable tariff rates, better railroad connections and an improved harbour”. Odessa simply could not adequately face the task requested by the new century and the worsening of economy strained social relations among Odessa’s classes and Odessa’s ethnic communities. All this fuelled the radicalism of political movements already present in Odessa: the Social Revolutionaries, the Social Democrats, the Jewish Bund, the Polish socialists, the anarchists and so on. From this point of view the revolution of 1905 in Odessa deserves attention and deeper study. 1905 was a year of general crisis in Odessa, because of the influence that the Russo Japanese war had on Odessa’s industrial and port life. The worst moment in my opinion remains the pogrom of 1905, due to its unprecedented violence. In the riots taking place in October the social and economic disease affecting the city is particularly clear. The conflict arose mainly between poor Jewish and Christian people. As usual in the midst of reciprocal accusations it is difficult to find a logic: here as elsewhere Jews were seen as responsible for unemployment, they were accused of being antipatriotic, disloyal, and subversive at once. Surely the authorities shared a series of negative assumptions about Jews and didn’t intervene to prevent or stop the pogrom. The 17th of October, the day of the Constitution, the pogrom started: it can be seen as the poisoned fruit of the general revolutionary agitation, where the Jew became the target of any dissatisfaction, independently from any rationality. The fact that the Jews reacted with organised self-defence forces confused the situation even more, giving room to future accusations and further aliment for anti-Semitism. It is not by chance that here the Zionist movement aroused in one of its more radical interpretations: Zhabotinsky drew his conclusion about the militant character of the Jew movement mainly in this moment. Economy always influenced the relations between ethnic groups. Anti-Jew riots occurred in 1821, 1849, 1859, 1871 and 1881 and 1859, but in a minor scale. 1821 and 1859 saw a large participation of Greek residents defending their own role in the grain commerce: the traditional religious anti-Judaism and the modern laic anti-Semitism gave a “cultural” justification to a hostile attitude toward the Jews, were they rich or poor. Surely, in periods of economic disease these phenomena acquired a greater dimension and had an irrational sinister development. Odessa knew various moments of crisis, depending as it was from the port and the commerce. If after the turmoil of 1905 Odessa knew a period of relative calm, from 1911 to WWI the war between Italy and and then the Balkans wars once again had a negative effect on maritime commerce, darkening the economic and social life of Odessa16. The paradox is this double aspect of Odessa as a cosmopolitan and a Russian city at once, with all the pros and cons that this combination creates. As a cosmopolitan reality, the authorities trying to discipline, to control, to subordinate its potential independence, never appreciated it; as a Russian reality, it was coerced to follow the general pattern of development, where the economic and social growth was not accompanied by an enlightened policy able to dilute the effects of a rapid modernisation.

Odessa as the main hub from Eurasia towards the greater world

Odessa was undoubtedly the main portal of the Slavic world in the Russian empire: here all the elements could find a place open towards the greater world and receive its influx. This fact is very well testified by the ethnic composition of the city, by the volume of affairs finding their way to Odessa, and by the figures of the in and out movement of population, resources, goods. All the space between Galicia and the Black sea gravitated towards Odessa: the Jewish element well represents this link between the countryside and the coast as Charles King well illustrated in his recent book of Odessa. In general, the foreign element in Odessa itself constituted a bridge between Russia and other countries, European and extra European. The panorama of opinions, insights, and descriptions is impressively international and the topic of Odessa is widespread in the travelogues of the four corners of the world. Odessa is also the subject of many great novels, memories, and biographies: we all think of Isaac Babel, but you can find powerful descriptions in the Yiddish prose of Isaac Bashevic Singer or Israel Joshua Singer as in the Russian one of Konstantin Paustovsky, just to recall some well known writers among the many that left us literary witnessing of their contact with the city as Mark Twain17. I could spend many words about Odessa and Nostalgia. In this congress there is the section “Nostalgia in historical consciousness and culture”: Odessa could well be inserted in this context where the discourse on the objects of Nostalgia has been treated from various points of view. But speaking as we are about Portals of Globalisation to the Slavic World I will focus on another aspect of Odessa’s physiognomy that is scarcely present in historical literature, because of the prevailing image of Odessa as a cosmopolitan city.

16 P. Herlihy, Commerce and Architecture in Odessa in the last Imperial Russia, in W. Craft Brumfield, B. Anan’ich and B. A, Petrov, (eds.), Commerce in Russian urban culture: 1861-1914, Woodrow Wilson Center Press, Washington, DC 2001, pp. 180-194. 17 A. Cross, In the Land of the Romanovs: An Annotated Bibliography of First-hand English accounts of the Russian Empire, 1613-1917, OpenBook Publishers, Cambridge, Uk 2014. Odessa was the main gathering point for pilgrims directed from all the Russian Empire to the Holy Land18: the reception of these people, the organisation of their embarkment, the means of the shipping, the features of their long journey should be studied in detail. This can illustrate the importance of Odessa as a point of reference for a journey that has many economic, social, cultural, religious and political implications19. We have a gallery of personalities who have passed through Odessa in order to arrive to the Holy land with their patrimony of expectations, from the poor peasant helped by the Russian Government to the rich merchant or nobleman attracted by the idea of praying on the Holy Sepulchre to the foreigner uniting tourism and pilgrimage20. It is even less known that Odessa was the starting point for the Muslims’ pilgrimage to the Mecca and that the Russian authorities had a multifaceted approach to this question. As the studies of Eileen Kane demonstrate Odessa can be defined as a “Hajj Hub”21: Kane connects this phenomenon with the modernisation carried out by the Russian Empire during the second half of the 19th century, determining new possibilities of movement in the Eurasian space. As a result, “by the early 1900s thousands every year were turning away from ancient overland routes through Persia and India to take Russian trains and steamships to get to Mecca”. Kane underlines that Odessa, known as “Adis” among Turkic-speakers,“by the early twentieth century was the centre of the Black Sea hajj traffic leaving Russia. State-led efforts to organize hajj transport helped bring as many as 25,000 Muslim pilgrims through Odessa every year”. Kane remarks that “even in a city of half a million people, crowds this big must have been hard to miss” and “yet they show up nowhere in the historiography”. I share Kane’s explanation of this curious omission: it has partly to do with “the way Odessa’s history is often framed – as a Jewish city, a site of labour unrest, a cultural centre, a frontier town, etc. – the result being a series of narrowly focused studies that collectively reinforce a sense of Odessa’s uniqueness, with less attention paid to its increasing connectedness to other parts of the empire and role as a mass transit hub in the era of modernization. Also at work here is the general problem of neglect of Islam: the missing hajj story from Odessa’s past is another example of how Muslims are often left out of the larger narrative of Russian history, particularly when it comes to parts of the empire where they did not historically predominate”. It is also true, from a methodological point of view, that many traditional sources on Odessa – Russian-language newspapers, guidebooks, and European, travel memoirs – are largely silent on the hajj traffic. Kane’s forthcoming book on Empire and the Pilgrimage to Mecca by Cornell University Press will surely give new insights on this important theme, which emerges, with different accents, in other books about the Islamic World and Russian Empire22. In the context of the journey to the Near East and to Palestine we can’t forget another kind of pilgrimage: the Jewish one, which is testified by accounts and memories of various kinds. Worthy of

18 In general see on the Russian pilgrimage: S. Merlo, Travels of Russians to the Holy Land in the 19th Century, “Questioni di storia ebraica contemporanea”, 6 December 2013. http://www.quest- cdecjournal.it/focus.php?id=339. 19 N. N. Lisovoj, Russkoe duchovnie i političeskoe prisutstvie v sviatoj zemle i na bližnem vostoke v XIX-načale XX v., Moskva 2006; Nikolaos Chrissidis, The Athonization of Pious Travel: Shielded Shrines, Shady Deals and Pilgrimage Logistics in Late Nineteenth-Century Odessa, “Modern Greek Studies Yearbook”, v. 28/29 (2012- 2013), pp. 169-191; 20 E. Cohen, Pilgrimage and Tourism: Convergence and Divergence, in A. Morinis (ed.), Sacred Journeys: The Anthropology of Pilgrimage, Greenwood, Westport , Conn. 1992, pp. 47-61. See also the famous: Mark Twain, The Holy land excursion, “Daily Alta California”, Volume XIX, number 6441, November 3, 1867, which is the basis of Idem, Innocents Abroad, or The New Pilgrim's Progress, Being Some Account of the Steamship Quaker City's Pleasure Excursion to Europe and the Holy Land, 2 vols, Harper & Brothers, New York 1911; Sarah Furnas Wells, Ten years around the world, Morning Star, West Milton, Ohio 1885, pp. 97-101. In my opinion, it is interesting that both mention their visit to the Black Sea Tsar Residence: a unique possibility to meet a crowned head they both appreciated. 21 E. Kane, Odessa as a Hajj Hub: 1880s 1910s, NCEER working paper, March 10, 2011. 22 M. Tuma, Imperial Russia's Muslims. Islam, Empire and European Modernity, 1788–1914, Cambridge University press, Cambridge, UK 2015; D. Brower, Turkestan and the Fate of the Russian Empire, Routledge, New York 2012; Robert D. Crews, For Prophet and Tsar: Islam and Empire in Russia and Central Asia, Harvard University Press, Harvard, Mass. 2006. mention, is the pilgrimage accomplished by Reb Natan Sternhartz of Breslev, a Chassid, and disciple of Reb Nachman, to the Holy Land in 1822 in order to help the Jews who resided there. From the banks of Buh, together with its disciple, Reb Yehuda Eliezer, he arrived to Odessa where he boarded a ship to Istanbul, the first stage of his long journey – ten months – to Eretz Israel23. Generally, the return to Jerusalem is for the Jewish religious culture more an eschatological than a practical issue. Nevertheless, a movement toward Jerusalem existed in the 19th century and increased at the end of the century. In this period, its character is inspired by the Zionism at large and can be seen as an exploration of the future possibility of settlement in the old Jewish land: this is the case, for instance, of Asher Hirsch Ginsberg, known as Ahad ha-Am (1856-1927), born in Kyiv, but living in Odessa, who accomplished this meaningful journey to Eretz Israel in 1891. Israel Joshua Singer, with his powerful prose, describes this wish, cherished by many deceived young Jewish men in the turmoil of the Russian Revolution and Civil war: to go to Odessa, to board a ship, leaving Russia and Europe toward Palestine: this is the case of Pinhas Pradkin arriving in the deserted port of Odessa and waiting hopelessly an opportunity of embarkment24. How many people left Odessa after the WWI? How did they spread the reminiscence of their previous life in this city all around the world? How did they transmit to their heirs the sense of their human and historical experience? How did they contribute to create the myth of Odessa with its controversial character? I think that this topic is worth of further investigation.

23 See Reb Natan’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land 1822 by Debbie Shapiro, in www.breslev.co.ilpu 24 See the French edition of some of his stories: I. J. Singer, Au bord de la mer Noire et d’autres histoires, Paris, Denoël, 2012. Pinhas Pradkin is the hero of Au bord de la mer Noire, pp. 10-90.