Place, Identity, and Urban Culture: Odesa and New Orleans

Home , Aleksandr Kuprin, Americanization, Isaac Babel, Leonid Yatsenko, Mikhail Polischuk, Ostap Bender

Edited by Samuel C. Ramer and Blair A. Ruble

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Edited by Samuel C. Ramer and Blair A. Ruble Washington, D.C.

Occasional Paper #301

Place, Identity, and Urban Culture: Odesa and New Orleans Edited by Samuel C. Ramer and Blair A. Ruble

Contents

Meditations on Urban Identity: 1 Odessa/Odesa and New Orleans Samuel C. Ramer

How Jewish was Odessa? 9 The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment as an Innovative Agent of an Alternative Jewish Politics Brian Horowitz

How Ukrainian is Odesa? 19 From Odessa to Odesa Patricia Herlihy

How American Is New Orleans? 27 What the Founding Era Has to Tell Us Emily Clark

New Orleans and Odesa: 35 The Spaces in Between as a Source of Urbane Diversity Blair A. Ruble The English language spelling of Odessa derives from transliterating the Russian spelling. The spelling of the name in Ukrainian is Odesa. Here and throughout the text effort has been made to use both spellings, as appropriate. For references to the city prior to 1991, the spelling “Odessa” is used. References after 1991 use the spelling “Odesa.” Meditations on Urban Identity: Odessa/Odesa and New Orleans

Samuel C. Ramer, Associate Professor of History, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA

I locations and the peculiar nature of their growth, The present collection of papers grew out both cities have populations that are unusually of a panel titled “New Orleans and Odesa: diverse in religious, ethnic, and national terms. Multicultural Centers That Care Never Quite Almost from the outset New Orleans included Forgot,” originally presented at the annual a mixture of French, Spanish, Africans (free meeting of the American Association for the people of color as well as slaves), and Native Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in Americans; the 19th century brought waves of November 2007.1 The immediate occasion for German, Irish, Italian, and Jewish immigrants.3 such a comparative panel was the fact that the Within Odessa one encountered Russians, conference was held in New Orleans, so re- Jews, Poles, Ukrainians, Bulgarians, Greeks, cently damaged by Hurricane Katrina. But the Italians, Turks, Armenians, and a host of other project of comparing the two cities has a longer nationalities. Such an extraordinary mixture of history. As early as 2003 the panel organizer, ethnic, religious, and national groups remains a Blair Ruble, initiated discussions among schol- defining feature of the identities of both cities. ars in the United States and Ukraine with the The composition, performance, and enjoy- goal of holding a scholarly conference compar- ment of music has occupied an unusually prom- ing the cultures and historical development of inent place in the cultural life of each city. Since the two cities. Plans for this broader conference the beginning of the 20th century, at least, jazz were put on hold following Katrina, but the has not simply dominated New Orleans but convening of the AAASS in New Orleans made become the city’s foremost cultural contribu- a comparative panel involving New Orleans tion to the world. Odesa is better known for seem only appropriate. training great classical music performers, but The reasons why comparing both the his- it has its own early jazz tradition (as well as a tories and the urban identities of Odesa and contemporary jazz festival), and associating the New Orleans might be interesting are readily city with music has become almost reflexive. apparent.2 Even the most cursory comparison Both cities have histories as important liter- of the two cities suggests remarkable parallels ary centers as well. In addition to nurturing in their identities and overall historical experi- impressive numbers of talented writers, Odesa ence. Both trace their modern foundation to the and New Orleans are cities that are central sites 18th century (New Orleans to 1718, Odessa to in a host of literary works as well as musical 1794). Both are located on the southern perim- compositions. eter of their respective countries. Both are ports New Orleans and Odesa also share the pos- that grew rapidly in the 19th century, becom- session of darker legacies. Both partook of the ing thriving commercial and cultural centers as cultures of slavery and serfdom. New Orleans well as the third- or fourth-largest city in their was at the center of the internal slave trade in respective countries. Finally, the central areas the United States, serving as the marketplace of the two cities display striking similarities in for slaves brought from the Chesapeake region their layout and general appearance. Both were to be sold for labor in Louisiana, Alabama, and initially laid out on a gridlike pattern, and the Mississippi.4 New Orleans and Odesa were both architecture that dominated their central spaces scenes of significant violence between races or impressed travelers as distinctly “European.” ethnic groups. Most notorious in this regard The parallels between the two cities can be are the riots and lynchings targeting African multiplied almost indefinitely. Because of their Americans as well as Italian immigrants that oc-

Meditations on Urban Identity: Odessa/Odesa and New Orleans 1 curred in New Orleans during the late 19th and paper explores the debates that occurred within early 20th centuries,5 on the one hand, and the the Jewish community of Odessa during the murderous anti-Jewish pogroms that took place late 19th century over what place Jews and their in Odessa in 1871, 1881, and 1905.6 Disease was community should assume in the larger urban a constant threat to human life in both cities culture and the empire as a whole. His immedi- during the 19th century. Yellow fever, cholera, ate subject is the Odessa branch of the Society and malaria flourished in New Orleans’ semi- for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the tropical climate, while Odessa experienced Jews of Russia. This organization embraced the repeated outbreaks of plague, cholera, typhus, secular vision of Jewish integration advanced and malaria. Both cities endured military oc- by the Haskalah (the “Jewish Enlightenment”). cupations at some point (New Orleans by the This conception placed particular emphasis on the importance of secular education and the ac- Union army during the Civil War, Odessa quisition of the Russian language in enabling by Rumanian and German troops during the Jews to assume significant secular roles in the Second World War). Both cities were rightly broader society. This secular, acculturated vi- renowned for their traditions of political cor- sion of Jewish identity was one that had enjoyed ruption. Finally, in recent times both cities broad support within the Odessa Jewish com- have endured upheavals that tested the fabric munity during much of second half of the 19th of their existence. In New Orleans, the disas- century. But the pogroms of 1871 and 1881 trous flooding following Hurricane Katrina and the rise of Jewish nationalism and Zionism brought the very survival of the city into ques- posed a serious internal challenge to this inte- tion. In Odesa, the economic depression and grationist vision. Professor Horowitz traces the political upheaval that followed the collapse persistent efforts toward secularization made of the Soviet Union posed an equivalent if less by the Odessa branch of the Society for the visibly destructive challenge to most residents Promotion of Enlightenment among the Jews throughout the 1990s. of Russia and argues that the Odessa members’ Cataloging comparable traits and develop- strategy of “small deeds” bore much greater ments in this fashion should not obscure the fruit than the existing historiography has gen- important differences in the larger political erally acknowledged. cultures of which the two cities have been a In her paper “How Ukrainian Is Odesa? part. Odessa, however unique as an urban cen- From Odessa to Odesa” Patricia Herlihy, the ter, nonetheless functioned within the highly doyenne of Western historians of Odessa, centralized political framework of the Russian examines the problem of that city’s over- Empire, and later the Soviet Union. New all identity from a quite different perspective. Orleans, however idiosyncratic, was part of the Historically, the culture, language, and general freer and more decentralized environment of self-identification of much of Odessa have been the French and Spanish empires, and later of the Russian. Following the collapse of the Soviet United States. While such differences in this Union in 1991, the city suddenly found itself broader political environment are not the focus one of the most important urban centers in the of the articles in the present collection, they are newly independent state of Ukraine. What im- an important reality that no comparison of the pact, Professor Herlihy asks, should Ukrainian two cities should overlook. independence have on the older, predominantly Russian cultural patterns in Odesa itself? II Should Ukrainian gradually displace Russian as With the exception of Blair Ruble’s concluding the official and everyday language of the city, remarks, the papers in the present collection are but only as the gradual result of the popula- not in themselves comparative. They are uni- tion’s free choices? Or should the government fied, however, by their central concern with the of Ukraine take measures to expedite the shift problem of identity, whether that of an entire to Ukrainian? As in so many other places, the city or that of individual constituent groups politics of language become central to the city’s within a city. The very title of Brian Horowitz’s overall perception of itself. paper—“How Jewish Was Odessa?”—is quite Looking beyond language, what impact will explicit in this respect. Professor Horowitz’s Ukrainian independence have on the domi-

2 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 nant historical narrative of Odesa’s past? As promote their own economic development, and Professor Herlihy’s paper illustrates, attempts in particularly the tourist trade. 2007 to erect a new statue honoring Catherine Professor Clark’s argument challenges the the Great, the city’s founder, elicited vigorous profound conviction many have that New protests from Cossacks and Ukrainians who re- Orleans itself is a city whose history and overall gard Catherine chiefly as a ruler who brought character are quite exceptional in the context of serfdom and suffering to their ancestors. Yet the United States. Some of the argument here no single vision commands universal support may lie in confusion over just what the term within an Odessa population whose various el- exceptional means. (Does it refer only to the ements nourish quite different notions of their dominant atmosphere of a city, or does it en- own cultural identity. Such a contested histori- compass its formative experience and essence?) cal memory, like the problem of language in a But at another level, Professor Clark reminds us community where several languages are in po- that even our most intuitive beliefs about the tential competition, is hardly unique to Odesa sources of our own reality need to be examined or Ukraine. Professor Herlihy’s paper provides in the light of an informed reading of the past: a fascinating account of the complexity of it is all too easy to project our current cultural this issue as it is actually being discussed and assumptions on earlier historical eras. mediated. Blair Ruble’s concluding essay is both a In her paper “How American Is New commentary on the other papers and an ex- Orleans? What The Founding Era Has to Tell tended meditation, on the evidence presented Us,” Emily Clark concedes that New Orleans by New Orleans and Odesa, of what it is that has entered the broader American conscious- distinguishes the concepts of “urban” and “ur- ness as a place that is “different,” “other,” and bane.” If one believes, as he does, that New in this regard not fully American. However, she Orleans and Odesa are not simply “urban” but argues, this vision of New Orleans as “excep- “urbane,” what are the dimensions of the two tional,” outside the mainstream of the country’s cities’ urban life that qualify them as such? The political and cultural development from its very immense diversity of their respective popula- origins, is one that cannot be justified by an in- tions has certainly contributed to this urbane formed reading of the historical record not only atmosphere. But “urbanity,” he insists, derives of New Orleans but of the rest of the United “from the interaction of place and diversity, States. Professor Clark thus advances a spirited rather than from diversity alone.” What, then, revisionist argument that the very traditions produces this urbanity? often cited as unique to New Orleans are in fact The urbane environment that Dr. Ruble part and parcel of the experience of most of the prizes demands that a city provide protected country, and thus quintessentially American. spaces in which diverse elements of its popula- If New Orleans’ actual historical experience tion can meet and interact with one another. is in fact closely aligned with that of most of In his words, it requires “societal interstices in the other American colonies and early states, which folks of many hues can live side by side why have assumptions about its exceptional without devouring one another.” In accounting character become almost axiomatic? Professor for the urbanity of New Orleans and Odesa, he Clark offers two answers to this question. First, places particular emphasis on the “moral skep- she argues that the various efforts to achieve a ticism and tolerance for the various ambigui- more unified sense of national identity during ties and peccadilloes of life” that he regards as the early 19th century emphasized the coun- characteristic of both cities. Such moral skepti- try’s British and northern European legacy as cism and tolerance, he argues, are attitudes that normative, thereby relegating Louisiana, like are indispensable to the peaceable workings of the Southwest, to the periphery of Americans’ a diverse society. In a new century in which national experience. Equally important, in her the urbanity and toleration that he cherishes view, has been the way in which generations of are under attack across the globe, Dr. Ruble New Orleans and Louisiana politicians and en- urges that the older, urbane traditions that he trepreneurs have embraced this “exceptionalist” perceives in New Orleans and Odesa should be definition of their communities in an effort to held up as models for a humane future.

Meditations on Urban Identity: Odessa/Odesa and New Orleans 3 III this kind of contact and exchange. If one adds In contemplating the essays in the present col- plentiful access to food and drink, the reasons lection, I have found myself puzzled, time and why both cities have a reputation for being again, by the following question: What is it “easy” are readily understandable.8 about cities such as New Orleans and Odesa But the beauty and pleasantness implied here that causes both residents and outsiders to regard only form the stage on which the life of the city them as “special”? The word “special” here is takes place. They enhance the quality of that not intended to describe some innate develop- life in the eyes of participants, but they are not mental quality, the kind of Sonderweg (“special the life in itself. To produce this life, cities rely path”) Emily Clark denies to New Orleans, but on different combinations of political institu- rather the peculiar affection these cities inspire tions and traditions, economic activity, cultural both within their residents and among visi- productions, and social festivities. Historically, tors and outsiders. What are the sources of this the economies of New Orleans and Odessa alike “special” status? relied heavily on their identity as ports. But the Perceptions of what is “special” or what is dynamism of their urban life relied as well on “ordinary” are of course highly subjective, and the many commercial activities, cultural offer- we need not expect unanimity in such judg- ings, and festivals that were part of the natural ments. But some cities enjoy a greater popular rhythm of life. Both cities partook in their own claim on such evaluations than others. Here I ways of a Mediterranean atmosphere that ob- take it as a given that throughout much of their servers have perceived as distinct from the pre- histories, both New Orleans and Odesa have dominant atmosphere in most of the other great inspired this perception of distinctiveness and, cities of their respective countries. more generally, of being enviable places to live. Almost all commentators remark upon the Given the host of negative factors that could be vital contribution that ethnic, national, and re- marshaled against such an evaluation, how can ligious diversity has made to the quality of life we account for it? in New Orleans and Odesa. Given the tensions Physical beauty, I would argue, is at least the and violence that so often accompany this di- beginning of an answer. Natives and visitors versity, we might ask just what the advantages alike base their judgments of any city in part of such diversity actually are. The first is the on the visual impression that the city makes. extent to which this diversity both allows for Such an impression derives in part from a city’s and compels an awareness of cultural “others.” natural setting: its topography, its climate, its Such awareness does not guarantee peaceful re- foliage, and its relationship to adjacent bodies of lations, as so many cases of ethnic conflict be- water (for New Orleans, the Mississippi River tween close neighbors illustrate, but it makes it and Lake Pontchartrain; for Odessa, the Black much more difficult to see these “others” as less Sea). Equally important are the design and than human beings. color palette of the city’s architecture, coupled Diversity by its very nature also tends to with the layout of the streets. All of these fac- make everyday life more varied, more colorful, tors in combination produce an impression of less predictable, and therefore more “interest- beauty, or fail to do so.7 ing.” But diversity carries other advantages as The very factors that contribute to beauty well. In a city with multiple ethnic groups and also condition our sense of the ease with which numerous foreigners (as is the case with New one can live in a given city. But such ease of liv- Orleans and Odesa), the minority status of ing also derives from our sense that a particular any single group may be less palpably felt by urban space is organized on a human scale that its members. To foreign nationals, the presence fosters movement and human contact. Both of varied cultures reduces the degree to which New Orleans and Odesa have historic centers such individuals may be excluded entirely from that invite residents and visitors alike to walk, the city’s life. As one French citizen living in to encounter others, to feel a part of the larger New Orleans said, “I like New Orleans because urban community. The lush green of their trees I never feel myself to be a foreigner here.” and parks, the brightness of their flowers, and But a distinctive appearance and way of the pastels of their buildings all tend to enhance life are not the only factors that make the two

4 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 cities seem “special” to residents and visitors. et malgré tout, it is exceedingly, exceedingly Cities also possess a general ambience that de- interesting.11 rives not simply from their external appearance or even from their everyday life, but also In the same fashion, Sergei Eisenstein’s film from their residents’ consciousness of a shared of the Potemkin mutiny immortalized Odessa’s historical space. Except for times of acute and “Potemkin steps,” and forever transformed the violent confrontation, the conflicts between way that residents as well as outsiders see the diverse groups within a city do not prevent steps (and by extension, their history and their them from nourishing a common, mytholo- city). Tennessee Williams saw a real streetcar gized perception of the city’s overall identity. headed toward a real neighborhood with the This mythology, which is distinct from yet name “Desire.” In writing A Streetcar Named bound to a combination of the actual exist- Desire, he inadvertently altered forever the image ing features of urban life, is indispensable in that residents and outsiders alike have not simply sustaining a city’s sense of its identity as a place of the streetcar, but of New Orleans itself. not simply different from others but, in vital Let us turn, then, to these papers that Brian ways, preferable to them. Horowitz, Patricia Herlihy, Emily Clark, and Such a distinctive sense of urban identity, Blair Ruble have crafted with such care. Given where it exists, tends to enhance its residents’ the complexity of the problems these authors sense of their own personal identity. The logic address and the richness of their insights, one here is simple: “My life may be difficult in other can only imagine what a full-blown conference ways, but I live in this special place that is envi- on Odesa and New Orleans might yield! able in the eyes of others. Yes, this place may have endured tragedy in the past, but it was not Endnotes a wilderness: important dramas with major re- 1. The original panel included a paper by percussions in our own time took place here. Marline Otte of Tulane University on the This city, in short, is significant, and by exten- unprecedented role volunteers have played sion, I am also significant.” In this fashion, a in rebuilding New Orleans since Hurricane mythologized sense of history confers an at- Katrina. Professor Otte preferred not to tractive layer of personal identity upon all who include her paper in the present collection happen to live within the city’s bounds. on the grounds that it did not fit well into Such a belief in a given city’s distinctiveness the collection’s predominantly comparative is codified and given its most forceful expres- framework. Emily Clark, a specialist on sion in a variety of literary, artistic, and mu- 17th- and 18th-century Louisiana, also of sical works. Such productions reinforce exist- Tulane University, graciously agreed to ing myths of distinctiveness while at the same write an article on New Orleans that would time giving them new shape and vitality. Blair parallel the contributions on Odessa made Ruble’s review of the role that literature and by Patricia Herlihy and Brian Horowitz. the arts have played in defining and nourish- 2. In writing the present introduction, I ing a sense of urban identity in New Orleans have relied heavily on the following and Odesa speaks directly to this.9 Isaac Babel works: Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History, writes his various stories about Odessa and 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Odessa life. These stories—including their very University Press, 1986); essays by Patricia titles—create an Odessa that is a unique, special Herlihy (“Odessa Memories”) and Oleg place.10 Babel is quite explicit about Odessa’s Gubar and Alexander Rozenboim (“Daily special character, the very “aroma of Odessa”: Life in Odessa”) in Nicolas V. Iljine, ed., Odessa Memories (Seattle: University So I am biased, I admit it. Maybe I’m even of Washington Press, 2003); Steven J. extremely biased, but parole d’honneur, there Zipperstein, The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural is something to this place! And this some- History, 1794–1881 (Stanford, CA: Stanford thing can be sensed by a person with mettle University Press, 1985); Frederick W. who agrees that life is sad, monotonous— Skinner, “Trends in Planning Practices: this is all very true—but still, quand même The Building of Odessa, 1794–1917,”

Meditations on Urban Identity: Odessa/Odesa and New Orleans 5 in Michael F. Hamm, ed., The City in 30, 1866 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Russian History (Lexington: University of University Press, 2001); and William Ivy Kentucky Press, 1976), 139–159; Frederick Hair, Carnival of Fury: Robert Charles and W. Skinner, “Odessa and the Problem the New Orleans Race Riot of 1900 (Baton of Urban Modernization,” in Michael F. Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, Hamm, ed., The City in Late Imperial Russia 1976). (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 6. On pogroms, both in Odessa and more 1986), 209–248; Daniel R. Brower, The broadly, see John D. Klier and Shlomo Russian City between Tradition and Modernity, Lambroza, eds., Pogroms: Anti-Jewish Violence 1850–1900 (Berkeley: University of in Modern Russian History (Cambridge, California Press, 1990); Alexander Dallin, England: Cambridge University Press, Odessa, 1941–1944: A Case Study of Soviet 1992), particularly Robert Weinberg, “The Territory under Foreign Rule (Iaşi, Romania; Pogrom of 1905 in Odessa: A Case Study,” Oxford, England; Portland, OR: Center 248–289; Stephen M. Berk, Year of Crisis, for Romanian Studies, 1998); Roshanna Year of Hope: Russian Jewry and the Pogroms P. Sylvester, Tales of Old Odessa: Crime of 1881–1882 (Westport, CT: Greenwood and Civility in a City of Thieves (DeKalb: Press, 1985); and Irwin Michael Aronson, Northern Illinois University Press, 2005); Troubled Waters: The Origins of the 1881 Anti- Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 Jewish Pogroms in Russia (Pittsburgh, PA: in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1991). Indiana University Press, 1993); and 7. For Odessa, see in particular Patricia Maurice Friedberg, How Things Were Herlihy, “Commerce and Architecture in Done in Odessa: Cultural and Intellectual Odessa in Late Imperial Russia,” in William Pursuits in a Soviet City (Boulder, CO: Craft Brumfield, Boris V. Anan’ich, and Westview Press, 1991). My impressions Yuri A. Petrov, eds., Commerce in Russian of Odesa, which I have never visited, Urban Culture, 1861–1914 (Washington, also derive from conversations I have DC, and Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson had with the many natives of Odesa who Center and Johns Hopkins University have been close friends in New Orleans Presses, 2001), 180–194. The literature for three decades. I am grateful to Todd on New Orleans architecture is too Michney for his many substantive as well extensive to cite in the present article. For as bibliographical suggestions concerning a fascinating analysis of one area of the city, the history of New Orleans. My thoughts see S. Frederick Starr, Southern Comfort: on life in New Orleans obviously owe The Garden District of New Orleans, rev. ed. something to the almost four decades that I (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Architectural have lived in the city. Press, 1998). 3. On the complex issue of African and Creole 8. Ari Kelman, A River and Its City: The Nature identity in New Orleans, see the various of Landscape in New Orleans (Berkeley: essays in Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph University of California Press, 2003); Peirce Logsdon, Creole New Orleans: Race and F. Lewis, New Orleans: The Making of an Americanization (Baton Rouge: Louisiana Urban Landscape, 2nd ed. (Charlottesville: State University Press, 1992). University Press of Virginia, 2003); Craig E. 4. See Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life inside Colton, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New the Antebellum Slave Market (Cambridge, Orleans from Nature (Baton Rouge: Louisiana MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). State University Press, 2004); and Richard 5. On civic violence in New Orleans, see Campanella, Geographies of New Orleans: James K. Hogue, Uncivil War: Five New Urban Fabrics before the Storm (Lafayette: Orleans Street Battles and the Rise and Fall Center for Louisiana Studies, 2006). of Radical Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: 9. For recent works in this vein about New Louisiana State University Press, 2006); Orleans, see Barbara Eckstein, Sustaining James G. Hollandsworth, An Absolute New Orleans: Literature, Local Memory, and the Massacre: The New Orleans Race Riot of July Fate of a City (London: Routledge, 2005);

6 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 Richard S. Kennedy, ed., Literary New Orleans, Mon Amour: Twenty Years of Writings Orleans in the Modern World (Baton Rouge: from the City (Algonquin, 2006). Louisiana State University Press, 1998); 10. See, for example, “Odessa,” “The Aroma Richard S. Kennedy, Literary New Orleans: of Odessa,” and “How Things Were Essays and Meditations (Baton Rouge: Done In Odessa,” in The Collected Stories Louisiana State University Press, 1998); of Isaac Babel, Nathalie Babel, ed., Peter S. Frederick Starr, New Orleans Unmasked: Constantine, trans., Cynthia Ozick, intro. Being a Wagwit’s Sketches of a Singular (New York: W. W. Norton, 2002), 71–75, American City (New Orleans: Editions 76–78, 146–154. Dedeaux, 1985); and Andrei Codrescu, New 11. Ibid., 73.

Meditations on Urban Identity: Odessa/Odesa and New Orleans 7 8 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 How Jewish was Odessa? The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment as an Innovative Agent of an Alternative Jewish Politics.

Brian Horowitz, Director of German and Slavic Studies, Professor of Russian and Chair of Jewish Studies, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA1

In the reform period during the reign of convincingly arguing in favor of a compromise Alexander II, Jewish institutional life in Odessa between integration and Jewish identity. pivoted around the local branch of the Society By looking at the Odessa branch of the for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment Jews of Russia.2 The incumbent view of the from 1867–1903, one can gain new perspec- branch is that it was unsuccessful because it met tives on the centrality of Odessa as an engine resistance from Orthodox Jewry and the govern- of change in Jewish life during and after the ment. Initiatives in education, cultural activities, 1880s. The branch’s activity in organizing and philanthropy in the 1860s and 70s rested members and resources for improving the lives on hopes that there was support for change in of the city’s Jews can ultimately be construed as Jewish, but of equal importance, Russian soci- an alternative politics. The branch’s members ety. These hopes were not realized. did not contact the government as an inteces- However, the situation changed in the 1880s sor (shtadlan), who by the 1880s was perceived and in the following two decades. Although as ineffectual and even collaborationist, or seek scholarship on turn-of-the-century Odessa separatism either in Zionism or another nation- during this period has concentrated on the rise alist ideology, which was viewed as hopelessly of nationalism, in particular Zionism, in fact unrealistic for a small minority in a huge em- the philanthropic and educational activity in pire. Furthermore, the branch’s bourgeois lead- the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment ers rejected Bundist socialism and radicalism of should hold our attention.3 The Odessa branch all kinds. Instead, by fostering pragmatic action was quick to respond to change and capable in- the branch was able to offer leadership that pro- creasing resources to aid a community in need. vided at one and the same time a path to inte- Efforts in philanthropy and educational reform gration (as much as that was possible) and some centered upon new ideas of civic participation of the benefits of the new nationalist political that, while not uncommon in late tsarist Russia, orientation, such as reliance on independent brought effective results. Jewish effort alone. A study of the Odessa branch of the Society shows that by seeking gradual improvement * * * in real lives, the branch members provided a model for Jewish philanthropists in St. The Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment Petersburg and other centers.4 In the 1890s, was established in St. Petersburg in 1863 by the the St. Petersburg center of the Society for country’s wealthiest Jews, who devoted them- the Promotion of Enlightenment followed selves to philanthropy, giving direct aid to indi- Odessa’s lead, increasing expenditures on viduals, especially Jewish university students.6 education.5 Furthermore, the success of the Located far from the Pale of Settlement and Odessa leadership was confirmed when in the the heart of Jewish life, the Petersburg gran- first decade of the twentieth century the older dees wanted to gain a foothold in the south. members of the society were able to repel an Therefore, in 1867 the leadership granted the attack from young Zionists and nationalists by request of a group of Odessa intellectuals to

How Je wish was Odessa? 9 become part of the society. The St. Petersburg claimed contributed to the separation of Jews leaders even offered the branch one-eighth of from their neighbors. In Germany, after all, the society’s total budget for their use. Although linguistic assimilation had spurred religious re- established by members of the elite, principally form and encouraged Jews to modify their own Abraham Brodsky and Odessa’s rabbi, Shimon rites and even imitate some Christian practices.9 Aryeh Shwabacher, the branch soon came under In fact, the Odessa Jewish community had al- the control of young intellectuals, who were ready installed a “reform” synagogue, and had imbued with the spirit of the Haskalah (Jewish hired a German-educated rabbi to lead the Enlightenment) and had more spare time than congregation.10 the wealthy Shtadlonim (Jewish intercessors Arranging for the sale of an existing transla- with the government) to spend on concrete tion or gaining permission for a new transla- civic initiatives. tion was no simple matter. Lev Mandel’shtam, Ideologically the Haskalah still dominated the head of the imperial government’s Jewish the Jewish landscape in Russia in the 1860s, with school program, had published a Russian trans- its program of the full integration of Jews into lation of the Tanach in Germany in 1862, but Russian society, the dissemination of secular government religious censors had banned its knowledge in modern schools, and Jewish po- importation and sale.11 The Holy Synod argued litical emancipation. Although traditional Jews that until a Russian Orthodox translation ap- viewed the Haskalah as dangerous to the unity peared, it could not allow the publication of a of the Jewish people, the maskilim (advocates of “Jewish” translation, suspecting that the Jews the Haskalah) believed that only by reforming might use it to convert Russians to Judaism.12 the Jewish community’s structure and changing Apparently, fear of Judaizers, however remote in its goals could Jews improve their lot in Russia. reality, was real and alive among the state’s reli- Thus, the maskilim criticized the irrationality and gious authorities.13 injustice of religious authorities, but these mod- Although Mandel’shtam’s translation was ernizers were still proud of the achievements of published in Russia in 1872, the Society for the Jewish people and wanted to contribute to the Promotion of Enlightenment could not the health of the community in the present.7 recoup its outlay with sales.14 This financial The intellectuals in control of the Society failure did not necessarily reflect a lack of in- in Odessa adopted the radical position of ad- terest in learning the Russian language, since vocating full-scale Russification. Lev Pinsker, the use of Russian among Jews was on the rise. Emanuel Soloveichik, I. Tarnovsky, and Reuven However, it seemed to show that Russian Jews Kulisher, for example, supported the publication made a distinction between religious and secu- of a Russian translation of the Hebrew Bible lar texts. When the younger generation studied (the Tanach), explaining, “As long as we do not Russian, it apparently preferred texts devoted use Russian to teach our children religion, as to economics, politics, mathematics, and natu- long as Jews are forced to turn to foreign lan- ral history. guages to study everything that concerns their The members of the Odessa branch also de- religion and customs—as is the case now—the sired to do something about the lack of oppor- Russification of the Jews will be merely a pretty tunities for young people to gain a secular edu- phrase without any fundamental content.” (em- cation. The branch’s members faced a situation phasis in the otriginal)8 The intellectuals’ desire in which there were only two options, the tra- to disseminate a Russian version of the Hebrew ditional heder, which was unacceptable to the Bible among Russia’s Jews was motivated by maskilim, and the secular government schools the view that such translations had contributed for Jews created in the early 1840s, which were to the political success of Western European unpopular and even considered by some to have Jews who were able to speak the language of the goal of converting Jews to Christianity. the country in which they lived. Borrowing ideas from progressive Russian The intellectuals undoubtedly believed educators, the branch’s members tried to pro- that the translation would promote more than mote an alternative, taking up vocational and Russification—perhaps also a relaxation in the literacy schools for both children and adults.15 practice of the religious rituals, which they However, because the branch’s leaders could

10 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 not get government permission to create per- ment of the branch itself as its greatest success. manent schools, they decided to open courses Odessa’s intelligentsia fashioned an institution “wherever and whenever they were needed.”16 to help the Jewish community to modernize. In time, however, the government discovered But this capacity was only of potential benefit, this evasion of the law and demanded compli- rather than of use in the present.21 The great ance; the courses were closed.17 In 1870, branch hopes to transform Jewry though education members suggested reforming heders (tradi- had led nowhere. Certainly it did not help that tional religious schools) to make them places the branch had an inadequate budget (less than where students could acquire both religious and 1,500 rubles annually). Nonetheless, one should secular knowledge. Soon enough, however, the not view it as a marginal institution.22 In fact, leaders discovered that the heder could not eas- the branch enlisted the help of the Brodsky ily be transformed. Parents who sent their sons and Poliakov families, the wealthiest Jews of to a heder did not, in most cases, want to send the city, who helped cover the chronic budget them to a school. This fact contradicted one of deficits. Moreover, in its ideology and activi- the cardinal beliefs of the intellectuals that once ties, the branch was probably representative of parents understood what a school could offer, popular attitudes. In the 1860s, Jews in the city they would turn their backs on the heder.18 understood the need for change, education, and On May 27, 1871, a major pogrom took place even Russification, but they were guarded, un- in Odessa. Steven Zipperstein summarized the sure of the government’s intentions and fearful result: “Within four days, 6 people were killed of mass assimilation. and 21 wounded, and 863 houses and 552 busi- nesses were damaged or destroyed. Not a single * * * street or square in the Jewish neighborhoods was left untouched, according to a report in the In 1878, Menashe Morgulis, an intellectual and Jewish Chronicle, and thousands were rendered civic leader, proposed reopening the branch, homeless. The damages came to 1.5 million explaining that in Odessa one could find many rubles, twice as much as would be caused by poor students who needed help paying for tu- Odessa’s 1881 pogrom.”19 ition, books, clothes, and food. Describing how As a result of the pogrom, the Odessa branch he had started a fund to aid these students and decided to close. In a letter of May 7, 1872, had collected money from 120 individuals, to the St. Petersburg board, Soloveichik asked Morgulis announced his intention to revitalize permission to liquidate the branch and trans- the branch on the basis of this core group of fer the remaining funds to the local chapter of donors. While the St. Petersburg board agreed the Society for the Promotion of Crafts and to renew the branch’s membership in the soci- Practical Knowledge in Odessa, an organiza- ety, it no longer felt obligated to share resources tion devoted to training Jews in handicrafts that because the branch was “occupying itself with was known in Russian as Trud. philanthropy” rather than engaging in activities Invited to St. Petersburg for an “emergency that “would aid all of Russia’s Jews.”23 meeting,” Emanuel Soloveichik informed the St. Morgulis had become convinced of the ef- Petersburg board that the Odessa branch would fectiveness of “small deeds” that improved agree to continue its work, but only on the con- the lives of concrete individuals. In the mid- dition that they be allowed to “strive for the 1870s, he became the director of Trud. With improvement of elementary education received Morgulis’s help, Trud revitalized a defunct by the poor.” “But for this,” he argued, “[the trade school in Odessa, where Jewish boys and branch] would have to be better funded and made girls also received instruction in general sub- less dependent on the fluctuations in the annual jects.24 Around 300 students were enrolled. It contributions [provided] by the small number of seems paradoxical that Morgulis, previously a members in Odessa.”20 Since Petersburg was un- vocal critic of philanthropy, now became its willing to make such a financial commitment, advocate, and the St. Petersburg board, previ- the Odessa branch temporarily closed. ously in favor of philanthropy, now became a Although the members had not achieved critic. However, in the decade since the Odessa a great deal, one may consider the establish- branch had closed, many things had changed.

How Je wish was Odessa? 11 As a result of the “May Laws,” streams of im- and provided additional instruction in wood- migrants had begun to arrive from those areas work and agriculture. Since one of the goals was where decrees had forced Jewish families out of to create fluent speakers of Russian, instruction the countryside.25 Odessa’s famed economic op- in the language included singing, which was portunities attracted the newcomers, who soon supposed to help students perfect their pronun- overwhelmed the city’s ability to provide social ciation. Several hours a week were devoted to services for them. One journalist, for example, physical education, an entirely new phenome- described a situation in which the number of non. The price of running the school was high, students who sought entrance to schools far ex- 9,974 rubles per year, but costs were offset by ceeded capacity. The result was that “hundreds a generous donation from G. E. Veinshtein, a of children walk the streets without any pos- rich engineer-industrialist.31 sibility of becoming literate.”26 Menashe Morgulis’s singular role as the The branch acted quickly to meet the in- Odessa branch’s inspiration can be understood as creased need for basic services. In the early reflecting changes that had brought intellectuals 1880s, when the St. Petersburg center fell into to dominate institutional life in the city. As a re- stagnation, the branch leaders began to facili- sult of the abrogation of the kahals (community tate elementary education and provide finan- self-government) in 1844, the government had cial aid directly to students and their families.27 become dependent on local Jewish representa- Odessa’s leaders reacted better to the situation tives for advice regarding the collection and dis- in the 1880s than their counterparts in St. tribution of taxes and the organization of com- Petersburg because psychologically the po- munal institutions.32 Although the government groms of 1881–82 had a less debilitating effect turned to the wealthy notables, their numbers on them; they had already recovered from pa- were limited, and they were often too busy to ralysis after 1871. serve. Therefore, the Jewish intelligentsia was In 1884, the branch’s expenditures on edu- enlisted. Mikhail Polishchuk, the author of a fine cation more than quadrupled, to 21 percent book on Jewish institutions in Odessa, describes of the budget. They grew another 10 percent the intelligentsia’s growing political influence in in the following year before topping off at the second half of the 19th century: 51 percent in 1889. This permitted subsidies for five schools in 1887, and seven in 1888. In Odessa the maskilim already shared power Unfortunately, the budget did not completely in the communal organizations and par- meet the ever-expanding needs of Odessa’s ticipated in the city administration with the Jewish poor; the branch’s budget for 1890 was Russian elite. Their field of activity con- only 10,000 rubles. Nevertheless, the shift in stantly grew: in 1860, they composed fully priorities is revealing.28 half of one committee that served as a me- The members of the branch also decided diator between the [Jewish] communal and to help provide vocational training for adults, local [Russian] administration. In 1870, B. thereby remedying their lack of employment Bertenson was elected to the position of of- skills. By 1893, Odessa’s Jewish civic elite had ficial for Jewish affairs in the City Duma. In organized four schools devoted to training 1873, E. Soloveichk was elected as a mem- craft workers of both genders and paid the sal- ber of the City Administration (gorodskaia ary of a seamstress who taught a class at all the uprava), where Jewish questions were ad- schools.29 dressed. In 1874, ten maskilim, among them The branch’s leaders took particular pride in seven doctors…, two inspectors and a single the elementary school in Peresyp, the poorest scholar were elected to the council of rep- section of the city. In 1889 there were 125 stu- resentatives of the Jewish community, i.e., dents attending this school, 90 percent of them “the Council of One Hundred.” In 1879, enrolled free of charge. The school offered a three maskilim [Jewish autodidacts] and three-year course of study, the equivalent of the eight members of the [Jewish] intelligentsia two-year curriculum at a Russian gymnasium, were invited to a meeting on the question with courses in French, German, arithmetic, of the so-called Jewish taxes, and served in and history.30 In addition, it had a craft studio,

12 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 the advisory councils of the orphanage and opportunistic reasons, little thought was given Talmud Torah school.33 to the dangers of integration, to the idea that a weakened Jewish identity might contribute Since Jewish intellectuals already had expe- to a breakdown in the Jewish collective and rience in running the city’s Jewish institutions, ultimately lead to mass assimilation. The pri- they could effectively expand their reach in mary difference with the 1860s, however, was the 1880s. Moreover, in contrast to the 1860s, in the attitude toward the government. Now, when the maskilim took pains to draw the at- in the 1890s, the branch did not expect help tention of the public to their activities in order from that quarter, conceiving instead ways to to gain legitimacy as community leaders, by bypass it in order to achieve the goal of aid- the end of the 1870s the intellectuals already ing the city’s and, indeed, the region’s Jewish enjoyed considerable authority. Moreover, in population. contrast to earlier times, when they pursued projects that appeared marginal, they were now * * * entirely mainstream, easily taking leadership positions and devoting themselves to building The vitality of the Odessa branch can be seen in institutions quietly and effectively. its strong activity in the late 1890s and the early What was especially unique in Odessa was years of the 20th century. In 1902, there were the branch’s positive relationship with the city’s 1,241 paid members. The budget was 31,258 ru- heders. Instead of the usual antagonism, there bles, and the work was divided among five com- was cooperation. When there were calls to close mittees: the Historical-Literary Committee, the heders in Odessa as a health measure in the Adult Education Committee, the Committee mid-1880s, the branch agreed to regulate them, to Help Poor Students at the University of thus defusing the government’s demands.34 New Russia, the Finance Committee, and the Furthermore, in 1886 OPE leaders approached School Pedagogical Committee.38 The branch local officials with a petition for a “softening of provided subsidies to 36 different schools and to measures against melameds,” the heder teachers.35 705 students.39 In fact, the branch engaged two of its members Although the branch was more successful to collect information about the city’s 80 heders that it had ever been in terms of schools subsi- and their 3,000 students. Finally, when the gov- dized, teachers who had received pedagogical ernment closed the heders in the early 1890s, training, and students served, in the late 1890s the branch’s leaders opened two schools to meet the pro-integrationist ideology came under at- the needs of the displaced students.36 tack by the younger generation. In 1900, try- According to Morgulis, the branch was sup- ing to stave off a civil war within the branch, plying more than just the needs of the city, but Morgulis and another leader, Jacob Saker, those of the whole southwestern region as well, agreed to a series of meetings to air differ- since many of the students came from nearby ences.40 Although the two groups met for more areas. He maintained that these schools “serve than a year, by 1902 open struggle was breaking the interests of all Russian Jewry,” because edu- out at the branch meetings over the curriculum cators from all across Russia came to Odessa to of modern Jewish schools.41 get acquainted with the latest methods in voca- Challenging the ideology of integration, the tional education.37 “nationalists” (as they described themselves), The population’s need for modern educa- whose leaders included Ahad Ha’am (Asher tion continued to hold the branch’s attention. Ginzburg), Ben Ami (Mordechai Rabinovich), In particular, vocational training was viewed Meir Dizengoff, Yehoshua Ravnitzky, and as an essential service, given the socio-eco- Simon Dubnov, launched an attack on the nomic profile of the immigrants. Nonetheless, branch’s leadership ostensibly on account of the the goal was still to integrate Jews by modi- number of hours of Jewish and secular subjects fying their behavior, educating them in mod- taught in schools subsidized by the branch. The ern schools, and inculcating a secular way of nationalists wanted a school that inspired na- life. Despite a spate of conversions to Russian tional values, one with more hours of Hebrew Orthodoxy during the 1880s, primarily for and fewer of Russian; anything less would

How Je wish was Odessa? 13 amount to yielding to assimilation. Their peti- to survival of the individual Jew lay through tion read: economic well-being facilitated by having a secular education and vocational skills. Prosperity, It is even more unnatural to recognize a it was felt, inoculated Jews against conversion to school that teaches its pupils in the spirit of Christianity.46 Weighing the risks of losing Jews another nationality. Alienated from their na- to assimilation caused by a lack of knowledge tive group and artificially assimilated to the about Jewish culture or losing them because of foreign environment that has dominated economic deprivation, the branch leaders be- their education, pupils of such schools suf- lieved that poverty was the greater danger. fer a moral dichotomy. Later they make up The actual vote in Odessa went against the that morally undefined element in society, nationalists.47 The result showed that the major- which everywhere turns out deracinated and ity of members of the Society for the Promotion unstable.42 of Enlightenment in Odessa in 1902 favored integration. But the vote was not the last word. According to the nationalists, the proper The battled raged on in the city for more than school should propagate a strong Jewish iden- a decade.48 tity. The school must not be occupied with vocational training or instruction in Russian, * * * but should teach courses in Hebrew, Torah, and Jewish history, since these subjects instill It is worth drawing attention to the absence national feeling. In addition, the school could of a specific Jewish content in the kind of phi- do this best when these subjects were presented lanthropy that was practiced and which became not merely as bare facts, but integrated into life, vilified in Zionist historiography as “assimi- “linking the Jewish present with its past.”43 The lationist,” and its representatives as “assimila- nationalists were adamant that at least 12 of 30 tors.” It is easy to see how the branch’s attempts hours in the week should be devoted to Jewish to improve people’s lives paralleled activities subjects and that Hebrew should serve as the pursued by Russian social activists of the pe- primary focus of the curriculum, so as to spur riod generally: the creation and expansion of an interest in the “customs, way of life, and lit- elementary schooling, job training for adults, erary creativity of the Jewish people.”44 and the establishment of institutions to help al- Responding to the nationalists, the branch’s leviate poverty. At the same time, I maintain leadership justified the decision to limit Jewish that this philanthropy actually provided the ex- courses by claiming a responsibility to ensure perience for and the ideological basis of Jewish that Jewish children could make a living in diffi- self-administration that flowered in Odessa and cult times. Specifically, Morgulis explained that was later adopted, paradoxically, by Zionists in the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment Eretz Israel. About Morgulis’s activities in the provided funds to three professional schools for 1880s, Eli Lederhandler has written: girls, which offered two or three hours of Jewish studies, and five boys’ schools with five hours of The answer Morgulis offered was not auto- Jewish content weekly. Vocational training took emancipation in the Zionist sense of the term up the vast majority of class time. Justifying the which [Leon] Pinsker was to use four years allocation of time, Morgulis claimed that “from later. But his solution was something closely a pragmatic point of view the board maintains akin to auto-emancipation, which he identi- that a Jewish elementary school must give its fied as a restoration of coordinated leadership pupils instruments for the difficult struggle of on a national level, a rebuilding of political survival, and from this viewpoint, we do not community. Only this—not temporary local find it possible to diminish the teaching of such philanthropy nor even civic equality—had subjects as Russian grammar, writing, math- any hope of actually changing the circum- ematics, and so on.”45 stances of Russian-Jewish life.49 This pro-integrationist program was meant address the difficulties of Jewish life in post-1882 I agree with Lederhandler, who correctly Russia. The leaders were convinced that the road noted that positive expectations were awakened

14 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 by social activism that started in the 1860s and Rapoport-Albert and Steven J. Zipperstein flourished in the 1880s. This activism verged (London: Peter Halban, 1988), 87-110; John on, but did not fully become, pressure politics. Klier, “The Jewish Den’ and the Literary Nonetheless, it helped foster civil society, de- Mice, 1869-71,” Russian History 1 (1983): velop a new Jewish leadership, and, most of all, 31-49 and “Krug gintsburgov i politika allow Jews to dream of controlling their own shtadlanuta v imperatorskoi Rossii,” Vestnik fate rather than merely responding to new cri- Evreiskogo Universiteta v Moskve 3(10) (1995): ses. In this sense, the Odessa branch’s activity 38-56. had a strong Jewish dimension, helping to en- 3. I. Levitats, The Jewish Community in Russia, ergize the Jewish community and providing a 1844-1917, Jerusalem: Posner and Sons, plan for its social recovery. 1981, 69. D. Vital, The Origins of Zionism, Although leaders such as Menashe Morgulis Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, 123, may have been cold to political Zionism and 135-126; A. Orbach, New Voices of Russian Jewish nationalism, in their activities they Jewry: A Study of the Russian-Jewish Press concretely improved the lives of many Jews, of Odessa in the Era of the Great Reforms, dealing with them not merely as the under- 1860-1871, Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980, 99-100. privileged, but as Jews with specific problems 4. See my book, Jewish Philanthropy and attributable to their Jewish status. It is easy Community and Late-Tsarist Russia (Seattle & to see that this social activism and institu- London: University of Washington Press, tion building actually paved the way for post- 2008). enlightenment Jewish politics. In its activity 5. “The Society for the Promotion of the branch may not fit the paradigm of Jewish Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia, Odessa, since it was neither Zionist nor “as- and the Evolution of the St. Petersburg similationist,” not purely cosmopolitan, and Russian-Jewish Intelligentsia, 1893-1905” certainly not hostile to Jewish identity. The Jews and the State: Dangerous Alliances and branch’s politics of the possible through self- the Perils of Privilege, Studies in Contemporary reliance and creative solutions was viewed, as Jewry 19, ed. Ezra Mendelsohn (2004): I mentioned, as a model for an effective alter- 195-205. native to religious piety, political radicalism, 6. E. Cherikover, Istoriia Obshchestva dlia Shtadlanut-style intercession, and the unreal- rasprostraneniia prosveshcheniia mezdhu evreiami istic promises of Jewish nationalism. For these v Rossii (History of the Society for the reasons, the local branch of the Society for the Promotion of Enlightenment among the Promotion of Enlightenment made Odessa a Jews of Russia), St. Petersburg, 1913, 41; see dynamic center of Jewish institutional life in also my monograph, Jewish Philanthropy and the Russian Empire.50 Enlightenment in Late-Tsarist Russia (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008). Endnotes 7. Mordechai Zalkin, A New Dawn: The 1. I want to thank Steven Zipperstein for his Jewish Enlightenment in the Russian Empire, suggestions and advice and Blair Ruble and Social Aspects [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Hebrew Sam Ramer for inviting me to participate in University Magnes Press, 2000). this group of essays. 8. Cherikover, Istoriia Obshchestva (History of 2. In his book, The Jews of Odessa (1985) and the Society), 67. in several articles, Steven Zipperstein and 9. See Michael Meyer, Response to Modernity: John Klier have studied the significance A History of the Reform Movement in Judaism of Odessa’s Jewish institutional life in its (Oxford, England, and New York: Oxford early period, during the 1860s and 70s; University Press, 1988). Steven Zipperstein Steven J. Zipperstein, Jews of Odessa: A notes that the leaders in St. Petersburg Cultural History, 1794–1881 (Stanford, tried to discourage the Odessa group from CA: Stanford University Press, 1985) and publishing religious works in Russian “Transforming the Heder: Masklic Politics translation. S. Zipperstein, “Transforming in Imperial Russia,” Jewish History: Essays the Heder,” 96. in Honour of Chimen Abramsky, ed. Ada 10. Zipperstein, Jews of Odessa, 38.

How Je wish was Odessa? 15 11. Leon Mandel’shtam, Zakon ili Piatiknizhie 17. Zipperstein shows that the government’s Moiseevo. Bukval’nyi perevod L. I. repression of the Sunday School movement Mandel’shtama, kandidata peterburgskogo influenced its attitude toward the Society universiteta. V pol’zu russkikh evreev for the Promotion of Enlightenment’s (The Law or the Five Books of Moses. A school reform and also frightened Literal Translation by L. I. Mandel’shtam, the notables in St. Petersburg. See Graduate of Petersburg University), “Transforming the Heder,” 103. Berlin 5622 (1862 g.). The second edition 18. In May 1870, the branch created a special appeared in Russia in 1872. For more about committee headed by the editors of the Lev Mandel’shtam, see S. M. Ginzburg, “Iz Odessa Jewish newspaper Den’, Ilya zapisok pervogo evreia-studenta v Rossii” Orshansky and Menashe Morgulis, to (Among the Notes of the First Jewish study the heder question. Orshansky and Student in Russia), Perezhitoe: sbornik Morgulis solicited information from all posviashchennyi obshchestvennoi i kul’turnoi the heders in the city, and the results were istorii evreev v Rossii (Experience: A Volume published in Den’ (Day). See issues 41–42 Dedicated to the Social and Cultural (1870): 664–666, 679–680. History of the Jews in Russia) ( 4 vols. St. 19. Zipperstein, Jews of Odessa, 114. Petersburg, 1908-1913), 1: 1-50. 20. July 1872: list 24, Russian State Historical 12. See I. Chastovich, Istoriia perevoda Biblii Archives (RGIA) St. Petersburg, na russkom iazyke (The History of Bible 1532-1-11: “These provisions could be Translations in Russian), (St. Petersburg, attained in part through the fulfillment 1873), 5–15. Ilya Trotskii argues that of the third resolution of the charter of Orthodox rabbis raised a “sharp protest” the Odessa branch, in which the society against the project, “seeing in the translation provided for the branch’s use no less of the Bible a blasphemous infringement on than one-eighth of the Society for the the holy Jewish Torah.” “Samodeiatel’nosti’ Promotion of Enlightenment’s entire i samopomoshch’” (Autonomy and Self- funds, reaching at present 6,000 rubles, Help) in Kniga o russkom evreistve ot 1860-kh which include the dues of the members of godov do revoliutsii 1917 g. (The Book the Odessa branch.” About Russian Jewry from 1860 to the 21. Zipperstein, “Transforming the Heder,” Revolutions of 1917) (New York: Soiuz 103. Zipperstein notes that in their efforts russkikh evreev, 1960), 473. to provide Jews a secular education, 13. Iulii Gessen, Istoriia evreiskogo naroda (The the Society for the Promotion of History of the Jewish People), 2 vols. Enlightenment was stopped not only by (Leningrad: Author, 1925–26), 2:77. pressures from Orthodox Jewry, but also by 14. “Protokoly OPE,” 19 May 1874, list 89, a suspicious government, that kept a close Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) watch for anything that “seemed vaguely St. Petersburg, 1532-1-11. The society contentious, let alone seditious.” also wanted to publish an advertisement 22. Protocols of the Society for the Promotion offering a subscription to its Bible of Enlightenment for 1869-1871, list 38, translation, but was still denied permission Russian State Historical Archives (RGIA) by a censor who considered such an St. Petersburg, 1532-1-10. advertisement “religious propaganda.” 23. Protocols of the Society for the Promotion 15. Zipperstein, “Transforming the Heder,” of Enlightenment, 1876–1878, list 91, 102-03. Russian State Historical Archive (RGIA) 16. Protocol 6 July 1869: list 21, Russian State St. Petersburg, 1532-1-12. Historical Archives (RGIA) St. Petersburg, 24. Menashe Morgulis, “O professional’nom 1532-1-10. Steven Zipperstein has written obrazovanii evreev v Odesse” (On the very perceptively about the educational Professional Education of Jews in Odessa), in initiatves of the OPE in the 1860s and early Sbornik v pol’zu nahal’nykh evreiskhikh shkol (A 1870s. See “Transforming the Heder,” Volume to Aid Jewish Elementary Schools) 98-106. (St. Petersburg, Russia, 1896), 389–390.

16 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 25. The Temporary Laws of the Third of May Russia: The Social and Political History 1882 were essentially an edict that imposed of the Jews of Odessa and the Other Cities severe restrictions on the kinds of jobs of New Russia, 1881-1904) (Jerusalem: Jews could hold and pursue and where Gesharim, 2002), 21.The Council of the they could live. These regulations were Hundred was a kind of local assembly that temporary, never having been deliberated existed in Odessa during the 1870s. The by the tsar’s own senate. distinction between maskilim and members 26. “Koresspondentsiia, Odessa” (A News of the Russian-Jewish intelligentsia Report, Odessa), Nedel’naia Khronika pivoted on whether an individual had Voskhoda (The Weekly Chronicle of an education in modern schools or had Voskhod) 48 (1887): 1289. studied exclusively in Jewish traditional 27. “St. Petersburg,” Nedel’naia khronika institutions: heders, betei midrash, and Voskhoda (The Weekly Chronicle of yeshivot. Voskhod) 3 (1887): 58. 34. “St. Petersburg,” Voskhod 7 (1893): 21–23. 28. D-v. (pseudonym unknown), “Iubilei 35. Ibid., 22. ‘Prosveshcheniia’: O dvadtsadiletnei 36. Ibid. deiatel’nosti Odesskogo otdeleniia 37. Morgulis, “O professional’nom obrazovanii obshchestva rasprostraneniia evreev v Odesse” (About the Professional prosveshcheniia mezhdu evreiami v Education of the Jews of Odessa), 400. Rossii (1867–1892)” (Enlightenment’s 38. Otchet o deiatel’nosti komiteta odesskogo Anniversary: On the Twentieth Year of the otdeleniia Obshchestva dlia rasprastraneniia Work of the Odessa Branch of the Society prosveshcheniia mezhdu evreiami v Rossii za for the Promotion of Enlightenment 1901 g. (Report on the Activity of the among the Jews of Russia), Voskhod 7 Board of the Odessa Branch of the Society (1893): 22. for the Promotion of Enlightenment among 29. Morgulis, “O professional’nom obrazovanii the Jews of Russia for 1901) (Odessa, evreev v Odesse” (About the Professional Russia: Obshchestvo dlia rasprostraneniia Education of the Jews in Odessa), 397–399. prosveshcheniia, 1902), 1–5. 30. Surprisingly, the pedagogical experts 39. Ibid., 12. believed that knowledge of European 40. Simon Dubnov, Kniga zhizni, materialy languages would be indispensable to the dlia istorii moego vremeni: vospominaniia i future artisans and workers of Odessa. razmyshleniia (The Book of Life: Materials See Spravochnaia kniga po voprosam for a History of My Time, Memoirs and obrazovaniia evreev: posobie dlia uchitelei i Ruminations), 3 vols. (Vilna, Lithuania, uchitel’nits evreiskhikh shkol i deiatelei po 1930–37); reprint in a single volume, narodnomu obrazovaniiu (The Handbook of Jerusalem & Moscow: Gesharim, 2004), Questions concerning Jewish Education: A 234. Resource for Teachersa of Jewish Schools 41. Ibid., 252–253. and Activists in Folk Education) (St. 42. “O natsional’nom vospitanii (zapiska, Petersburg, 1901), 27-46. predstavlennaia v komitet odesskogo 31. Peter Shaw, The Odessa Jewish Community, otdeleniia obshchestva rasprostraneniia 1855–1900: An Institutional History prosveshcheniia mezhdu evreiami” (On [Unpublished doctoral dissertation] National Education [A Report Presented (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1988), 219. to the Odessa Branch of the Society for 32. See Michael Stanislawski, Tsar Nicholas I the Promotion of Enlightenment among and the Jews: The Transformation of Jewish the Jews), Ezhenedel’naia khronika Voskhoda Society in Russia, 1825–1855 (Philadelphia: (The Weekly Chronicle of Voskhod)1 Jewish Publication Society, 1983), 132. (January 6, 1902): 12. 33. Mikhail Polishchuk, Evrei Odessy i 43. Ibid., 15. Novorossi: Sotsial’no-politicheskaia istoriia 44. Ibid. evreev Odessy i drugikh gorodov Novorossii, 45. “Mnenie komiteta odesskogo 1881–1904 (The Jews of Odessa and New otdeleniia Obshchestva rasprostraneniia

How Je wish was Odessa? 17 prosveshcheniia o evreiskoi narodnoi and the Society for the Promotion of shkole” (The Viewpoint of the Board Enlightenment among the Jews of Russia,” of the Odessa Branch of the Society for in Ezra Mendelsohn and Stefani Hoffman, the Promotion of Enlightenment about eds., The Revolution of 1905 and Russia’s the Jewish Folk School), Ezhenedel’naia Jews: A Turning Point? (Philadelphia: khronika Voskhoda (The Weekly Chronicle University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), of Voskhod) 16 (April 19, 1902): 6. 117–141. 46. Ibid., 5–6. 49. Eli Lederhandler, The Road to Modern Jewish 47. “Po povodu vybora v obshchstve Politics (New York: Oxford University prosveshcheniia” (On the Question of Press, 1989), 153. Elections in the Enlightenment Society), 50. Steven Zipperstein makes this same Budushchnost (The Future) 2 (January 11, point in his book, Imagining Russian 1902): 22. Jewry: Memory, History, Identity (Seattle & 48. See Brian Horowitz, “Partial Victory Washington: University of Washington from Defeat: 1905, Jewish Liberals, Press, 1999), 48-57.

18 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 How Ukrainian Is Odesa? From Odessa to Odesa

Patricia Herlihy, Professor Emeritus, Department of History, Brown University, Providence, RI; Louise Doherty Wyant Professor, Emmanuel College, Boston, MA

There’s Something about Catherine Sich and turned the Ukrainian peasants into In 1900, the city authorities of Odessa erected serfs.”4 Professor Yurii Shapoval deplored “the an impressive monument to Catherine II, who unveiling of a monument to a German woman was surrounded on the base by her four principal in Odesa, who hated Ukraine, regarding it as a administrators. When the Bolsheviks took over source of freethinking and a threat to her cher- the city, they pulled down the monument with ished alles ist in Ordnung system in the Russian the help of a tractor and in 1920 put in its place a empire.”5 Some Ukrainian groups petitioned monument to Karl Marx. In 1977 Marx gave way the Security Services of Ukraine not to unveil to a Soviet realist rendition of the 1905 Battleship the monument, which, in their opinion, “is Potemkin mutineers. In the summer of 2007, the planned to be a permanent trigger of intereth- Potemkin monument was removed to another site nic hostility to provoke chaos and anarchy in in the city. On August 29, 2007, a new 35-foot the country and first of all in Odesa.”6 monument to Catherine II and her servitors was The Russian point of view on Catherine placed on the spot where the original statue had was expressed by Vladimir Yelenin, who stood more than a hundred years earlier.1 asked, “Why did ridiculous yet malevo- This latest occasion of substitution stirred up lent Cossacks who descended on the seaport quite a bit of fuss. In July 2007, a month be- of Odessa in the fall of 2007 protest against fore the installation, protestors knocked down a the restoration of a monument to Catherine fence at the site and erected an Orthodox cross. II? If it were not for the empress of Russia, Authorities removed the cross, but hundreds of they would have come not to Odessa but the Cossacks from various parts of Ukraine gath- Turkish town of Khadzhibei. There is a strong ered days later, only to clash with the police. doubt that the Turks would have allowed them When the new statue of Catherine was to enter.”7 This remark not too subtly asserts erected, the terrible heat wave reportedly kept that Cossacks did not conquer the area from people off the streets, although one Cossack the Turks, but Russian generals did. vowed that a half-million Cossacks would see After two months of postponements, the to it that the empress came down. The city unveiling, on October 27, revealed a statue no vowed in turn that it would post a 24-hour longer named for Catherine II but titled The guard at the site while the statue awaited un- Monument to the Founders of the City. Fashioned veiling.2 Those inclined to favor their connec- in Kyiv, it again depicts Catherine standing in tion to the Russian, but not Soviet, past claim the midst of the same foursome of conqueror/ that they wish to honor Catherine, the founder administrators. Shouting and scuffles ensued of their city.3 They also argue that they are at- after the unveiling.8 While the Odesa Cossacks tempting to restore the historic center of Odesa approved of the statue, Ukrainian Cossacks in order to get support from UNESCO. and members of the nationalist organizations Some Ukrainian patriots find it reprehen- Svoboda, the Ukrainian People’s Party, and Our sible to celebrate the empress, who was, as one Ukraine shouted “Shame!” One Ukrainian Ukrainian wrote, “Russia’s ruling bloodthirsty Cossack likened the erecting of this statue in she-wolf (in the words of Taras Shevchenko) Odesa to placing one of Hitler in Babyi Yar.9 who ordered the destruction of the Zaporozhian This tug of war is an example of the sensitivity

How Ukrainian Is Odesa? From Odessa to Odesa 19 engendered when claims are made on the sym- that “16 years after shrugging off Moscow’s bols and meanings of Odesa’s past, all of which rule, Ukraine is reclaiming a language that— are intended to shape the memory of Odessits. like scores of other local languages across the former USSR—the Soviet leadership The Resonant Voice of the once disdained as inferior to Russian. Today Politics of Language Ukrainian has emerged from second-class sta- Even more contested, in some respects, are the tus, slipping quietly into the chambers of gov- demands made on Odessits to shape the city’s ernmental and popular culture. This marks future identity, which involve not only mem- more than a cultural change: it could doom ory but also language. Mute metal and stone any hopes Russia may have of restoring its tra- can speak volumes, to be sure, but the politics ditional political influence over this country of of language, it can be argued, have an even 47 million.”13 Another reporter noted, “Little louder resonance. by little, the Ukrainian language is being used Only two years ago, the region of Odesa by the majority of the population as a first lan- and others in eastern and southern Ukraine guage. This is particularly true of the young talked of secession out of fear of dominance by generation, for whom it has become fashion- Ukrainian-speakers from the west. The debate able to use Ukrainian.”14 over language was one of the most heated during Pop culture, especially music (including the 2004 Orange Revolution. Official Russian hip-hop and rap) with Ukrainian lyrics, has reaction to a Ukrainian state resolution in 2000 given the language a hip reputation. One indi- titled “On Additional Measures to Expand the cation of the appeal of Ukrainian to the young Use of Ukrainian as the State Language” was is the fact that the latest Harry Potter book was to protest. Russia’s foreign minister denounced published in Ukrainian before it came out in the “de-Russification of Ukraine” and predicted Russian. A survey of 808 Ukrainians aged 14 that such policies “directed against the preser- to 49 in the Ukrainian regions of Lviv, Kyiv, vation and development of the Russian lan- Odesa, and Kharkiv showed that only 11 per- guage and culture” went against the Ukrainian cent were opposed to dubbing more movies Constitution’s guarantee of the “free devel- in Ukrainian. It is significant that the people opment, use, and protection of the Russian polled were relatively young and that Sony and language.”10 Disney produced the movies under discussion, Ukrainian language policies and those of which included Pirates of the Caribbean III and other states in the Near Abroad contributed to Ratatouille.15 On the other hand, Ukrainian then-President Vladimir Putin’s declaration of legislation has prohibited the distribution of 2007 as “The Year of the Russian Language.” films dubbed into Russian, even if they have Russia organized a conference on that topic in Ukrainian-language subtitles. Only films made Moscow in May 2007, and others were held in originally in a foreign language that have re- the Commonwealth of Independent States and ceived subtitles in Ukrainian will be accepted. the Baltic states. That Sergei Lavrov, Russian Film exhibitors claim that such legislation will foreign minister, gave the keynote speech, and reduce the number of foreign films shown in Vice Premier Dmitry Medvedev was chair- Ukrainian theatres from 200, the number im- man of the organizing committee, indicates the ported in 2007, to only 30 in 2008.16 weight Putin gave the issue.11 Fashionable or not, it is practical to speak Putin called for the creation of a “National Ukrainian. More than 80 percent of the schools Russian Language Institute,” explaining in his in Ukraine have changed the language of in- 2007 State of the Nation address that “looking struction from Russian to Ukrainian.17 Because after the Russian language and expanding the more universities are now also using Ukrainian influence of Russian culture are crucial social as the language of instruction, parents are eager and political issues.”12 At the Moscow confer- to have their children study it in school.18 ence, it was reported that more than 30 percent In 2005, Hennadii Udovenko, a mem- of Ukraine is Russian-speaking. On the other ber of the Ukrainian parliament who chaired hand, a reporter proclaimed that the “Russian its Committee on Human Rights, National language is in retreat in Ukraine,” continuing Minorities, and International Relations made

20 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 a speech at the fourteenth “Ukraine Yesterday, constituted 49 percent of the city’s population, Today, and Tomorrow in Ukraine and in the but by 2001, a decade after independence, the World” conference assessing the state of the figure had risen to 62 percent. Russians, who Ukrainian language and the need for its adop- were 39 percent of the population in 1989, have tion by the citizens of Ukraine. Udovenko ob- been reduced to 29 percent.22 To Russians in served, “For 300 years the Ukrainian language Odesa, it seems anomalous to be considered a was methodically and cruelly debased by impe- protected “ethnic minority,” a designation that rial and communist dictates and regulations.… has the effect of increasing their discontent with Having gained an independent Ukraine, we the language laws. have acquired the historical right to have a rebirth of a native language, and bestow it to The Confounding Effect of an equal, deserving nation, one which gave to “Language of Convenience” the world such geniuses as Taras Shevchenko, The increase in the number of Ukrainians is Lesia Ukrainka, and Ivan Franko.” Indeed, probably due to the fact that many Ukrainian Udovenko argued that the state would not sur- Russophones declare Ukrainian to be their vive without the establishment of the Ukrainian maternal tongue (ridna mova) “in the sense that language: “Without language there is no na- it is the language of their indigenous cultural tion, and without a nation there is no state or and ethnic heritage, which is essentially non- government. These are the ABCs. Language Russian.” 23 In other words, they appear to be has a central unifying role in the process of the using the Soviet practice of allowing people formation of an ethnicity, nation, and state.”19 to declare Ukrainian their “mother tongue” Udovenko is not historically correct in whether they are fluent in the language or not. his depiction of Soviet language policy. Both Mother tongue was understood as the language Lenin and Stalin favored minorities being of their nationality and not as the language taught in their native language in school, with of use. For example, “the last Soviet census, Russian to be taught as a second language.20 conducted in 1989, [showed that] Ukrainians Between 1936 and 1937 in Ukraine, 83 per- comprised 72 percent of the population of the cent of pupils in general schools were studying Ukrainian Soviet Republic, with 12 percent in the Ukrainian language, a proportion that of those claiming Russian as a mother tongue. was similar to the proportion of Ukrainians in Had the Soviet Union used the category of the population. In the 1950s and ’60s, how- ‘language of use’ instead…and presumed that ever, one-sided bilingualism was introduced: language was a proxy of nationality…then the Ukrainians had to learn Russian, but Russians proportion of Ukrainians would have dropped in Ukraine did not have to learn Ukrainian.21 to half of the population. Several surveys con- Ultimately, however, it is true that the Soviets ducted in the 1990s have shown that Russian is expected Ukrainian (considered to be an infe- used as the main home language by about half rior language) to fade away. of Ukrainian citizens.”24 According to Anna Fournier, Russians Taras Kuzio agrees: “Based on ‘lan- in Ukraine (including Odesa) are resisting guage of convenience’ [that is, everyday use] Ukrainian language laws, despite the fact that, as Ukrainianophones and Russophones were seen ethnic Russians, they are guaranteed the right to as roughly equal.”25 And Odesa would prob- be educated in Russian (but in private schools). ably be counted among the cities where the use They are resisting because they have been put of Russian is more prevalent than the national into an ethnic category, Fournier argues, in a average.26 Two Odesa scholars, using four fac- country with common intermarriage between tors—economic, geographic, linguistic, and Ukrainians and Russians. Russians prefer to religious—to determine language use in three be classified with Ukrainian Russophones. In regions of Ukraine, concluded that historically that way, they will not be considered an eth- these factors have resulted in Odesa’s popula- nic minority. According to a Russian source, tion’s favoring the use of Russian.27 Russians are only the second-largest cohort of If ethnic Ukrainians who use Russian as the population in Odesa. Meanwhile, the num- their everyday language and ethnic Russians ber of Ukrainians is increasing. In 1989 they were lumped together into one Russophone

How Ukrainian Is Odesa? From Odessa to Odesa 21 group, and if all of them continued to retain Another native Odessit, a journalist, ob- Russian as their spoken language, then the served to me, “The language problem is rather Russian language would remain the dominant the subject of political manipulations than in- language and might, in time, cause the use of terpersonal relationships. One thing is clear, the Ukrainian to die out, at least in Odesa. In short, more they force the so-called State language in the thinking of some Ukrainian builders of on us, the more it is going to be mocked and national identity, either one must Ukrainianize humiliated. I think it a nasty tendency, espe- ethnic Ukrainians or they will be Russified cially in the city that boasts its tolerance. Let as they were under the tsarist and Soviet re- the languages coexist, forget about revenge or gimes. The question is, however, Are ethnic getting even, and the attitude of Odessits to- Ukrainians resisting being singled out by eth- ward Ukrainian will become less harsh. Let’s nicity and forced to be educated in Ukrainian not confuse the artificially cultivated enmity only, even though they speak Russian at home with the real neighborly relations.” and perhaps even publicly? Another friend, an ethnic Russian who is a In March 2007, a weeklong campaign for the translator living in Odesa, noted that various use of Russian was mounted in Odesa. There kiosks were distributing bumper stickers with were motor rallies, meetings, and the collection the message “I Speak Russian,” and that there of 170,500 signatures in support of the Russian were heated discussions on Internet forums.32 language.28 As one indignant Russophone de- She continued, “I have always spoken Russian as clared at the time, “I am against children study- my native tongue and never experienced any op- ing Pushkin as a foreign writer and poet; I am pression concerning my way of self-expression. against the Russian language being doled out As for the Ukrainian language, there is definitely on television; and I am against movies in the a historic injustice done to the language and the theaters being translated into Ukrainian.”29 people. All of a sudden, people got divided by Odesa, however, did not go as far as other cit- an issue, which in reality has little to do with ies, such as Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Kryvyi their everyday life. I still claim that the Russian Rih, Luhansk, Mykolayiv, Sevastopol, Kharkiv, language dominates in everyday use in Odessa Kherson, and Yalta, which legalized Russian as and nobody is trying to violently change this. a state language.30 Odesa’s municipal regula- Any efforts to promote Ukrainian are met as a tions merely state that the working languages of personal insult by many and there seems to be the city council are Ukrainian and Russian.31 a strong opposition and bitter feelings.” She A professor friend of nearly 30 years who went on to say that her sympathies were with teaches at Odesa State University wrote to me, Ukrainian-speakers, but her democratic instincts “A country should have one State language. I allied her with Russian-speakers as a minority, am an ethnic Ukrainian; I had Ukrainian lan- even though in Odesa they are not a minority. guage and Ukrainian literature every single day She concluded, “I do not know how to feel—for of my school. I love the language. I am per- Ukrainian-speakers or for us Russian-speakers. manently reading contemporary Ukrainian au- See what confusion? All of this is to say the situ- thors; I don’t resist its implementation. I simply ation is really a mess.” believe that the language policy is desperately This dual self-identification or sympathy is wrong, which is connected with an inferiority expressed by Natasha Yermakova, a specialist complex, the complex of the younger brother, in the history of the Ukrainian theater and a who pesters our present elite. As to me, know- teacher who was born in Kyiv of Russian par- ing the language, I, like all of the East, South ents, who asserts, “I received Russian culture by and much of the Center, have never spoken it. blood, and I inevitably chose Ukrainian culture And so naturally, I feel much more comfortable while growing up.”33 It seems that Ukrainians speaking, reporting at various meetings and and non-Ukrainians are willing to speak or conferences in Russian. I think that it would learn Ukrainian. But they feel that they should have been much wiser to give time for adjust- be able to make the choice and not have it legis- ment, not to push. You know that pushing al- lated, an approach they consider divisive. ways causes problems and this particular case in One direct method for spreading the use of no exception.” Ukrainian is to expose Ukrainian citizens to

22 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 the language via the media. In 2006, President Historically the most diverse, apolitical, and Yushchenko signed a law stipulating that 75 per- tolerant of Russian imperial cities, Odesa should cent of radio and television broadcasts had to be be the first to embrace such a model.40 My local in Ukrainian. The Eastern Party of the Regions Odesa respondents, whether Jewish, Ukrainian, responded immediately by threatening to con- or Russian, are willing to read both languages, duct a referendum on making Russian a second and most of them speak both. Perhaps such flex- state language on a par with Ukrainian.34 ibility might be possible as long as provocative Hennadii Udovenko expressed the Ukrainian gestures were avoided, at least nothing beyond viewpoint in 2005 on television programs. the traditional teasing and joking that are so He lamented the “unending flow of Russian- much part of the city’s tradition, culminating language serials with the standard content, each April 1 in the Iumorina festival. made with Ukrainian subtitles. But Ukrainians Instead of classifying Odessits as ethnic are not deaf! It is annoying and unpleasant how Russians or Ukrainians, the state could facil- the Russian-speaking environment continues itate—but not mandate—Russophones’ and to plant itself.”35 Ukrainophones’ acquisition of each other’s Other measures to foster the Ukrainian lan- mother tongue, if only as a second language. guage in Ukraine’s youth include Ukrainian- It appears that Odessits do not base their language versions of Windows Vista and Office friendships on language affinity. While geog- System 2007 that Microsoft has introduced at raphy and language use have a strong correla- the same price as the Russian versions.36 tion with Ukrainian political positions, they Teaching young children Ukrainian in are not exclusive markers of Ukrainian iden- school, along with popularizing the language tity, any more than ethnicity. As one Odessit through music, film, TV, and computer soft- put it, “I am Ukrainian; I speak Russian, but I ware, will help ensure that Ukrainians of the am Ukrainian.”41 Opinion surveys reveal that future know Ukrainian. These measures are less matters such as NATO membership and the likely to arouse ire and irk elderly Russophones strengthening or weakening of the status of the who find that it is too late to learn to speak Russian language are not among the top 20 is- Ukrainian fluently and correctly even though sues of importance to Ukrainians.42 they can easily read and understand the lan- On the matter of politics, Odessits should guage. As the scholar Yaroslav Hrytsak affirms, speak for themselves in whichever language integration of eastern and western Ukraine is they choose, and not have their language de- possible if leaders capitalize on similarities rather fine how others perceive their views or gauge than on differences, and if they avoid hot topics their loyalty as Ukrainian citizens. Odesa has such as the status of the Russian language.37 always had a strong sense of its unique cosmopolitan history, priding itself on loose but real Conclusion ties with the center. Rulers have often regarded Most experts on language politics in Ukraine, it as an enfant terrible among cities, but nations, such as Laada Bilaniuk, agree that more than like families, should always have room for one 90 percent of the population understands slightly eccentric member.43 both Ukrainian and Russian, but “speaking one or the other at any given time can at- Endnotes tach social and political meanings to the act 1. The four administrators, all associated with of speech.”38 Instead of choosing one of the the establishment of Odesa, were Grigorii languages to suit a given occasion or the other Potemkin, Prince Platon Zubov, Jose De person, Bilaniuk suggest that “each speaker Ribas, and Franz De Voland. The original [use] whatever language she or he prefers statue disappeared until after World War (Ukrainian or Russian) regardless of the lan- II, when parts of Catherine and the four guage the others are speaking, or if they wish, gentlemen were found; they are now they can switch back and forth.”39 Certainly, displayed in the sculpture garden outside this would be the ideal situation. It would Odesa’s literary museum. show acceptance of ethnic and linguistic hy- 2. Ron Popeski, “Catherine the Great Sparks bridity, thus defusing tensions. Cossack Ire,” Reuters Press, August 29,

How Ukrainian Is Odesa? From Odessa to Odesa 23 2007, http://www.reuters.com/article/ for years to come as the experience of other inDepthNews/. Cossacks suggested a countries tell us.” compromise: abandon the Catherine 9. “Scuffles Reported in South Ukraine monument and complete a church in honor over Controversial Monument,” BBC of Saint Catherine on the site. Oleg Gubar, Monitoring, report by Ukrainian channel a well-known Odesa journalist, said, UT1 on October 27, 2007, http://www. “Cossacks swore allegiance to Catherine industrywatch.com/pages/iw2/print/; the Great, Polish kings, and Turkish sultans. Unian, “Monument to Russian Empress This was simply the nature of their work. Yekaterina II to Be Unveiled in Odessa,” Today these people are being manipulated. September 9, 2007, http://www.unian.net/ It is, quite frankly, no more than a tragic, news/print/ uncivilized joke.” 10. Anna Fournier, “Mapping Identities: 3. The mayor of Odesa, Eduard Gurvits, is in Russian Resistance to Linguistic favor of the monument because it recalls Ukrainization in Central and Eastern the pre-Soviet past. He noted that he had Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 54, no. 3 removed 148 Soviet monuments, 104 of 2002: 422. which were of Lenin, and had changed the 11. ITAR-TASS, Moscow, May 28, 2007, Soviet names of 179 streets. Piotr Smolar, “Russian Language Important for “Homo Ukrainus: An Emerging Species,” Enrichment of People World Over Says Le Monde, September 28, 2007. http://iedg. Foreign Ministry.” http://ru-entranslator. blogspot.com/2007/09/lhomo-ukrainus- livejournal.com/58823.html . espce-en-voie.html . 12. Mara D. Bellaby, “Russian Language in 4. The Day Weekly Digest (Kyiv, Ukraine), Retreat in Ukraine,” Associated Press, October 30, 2007, http://www.day.kiev. May 1, 2007. http://www.washingtonpost. ua/190492/. com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/01/ 5. Ibid. It was stated in the same article that AR2007050101036.html 600 Cossacks were among the first 1,000 13. Ibid. settlers of Odesa, so they too can be 14. Smolar, “Homo Ukrainus.” considered founders of the city. 15. Unian, “Only 11% of Ukrainians Opposed 6. Ukrayinska Pravda, October 28, 2007, to More Films Dubbed in Ukrainian,” “Catherine II Sees Fights in Odessa,” http:// February 5, 2008, http://www.unian.net. pda.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/. 16. Tom Birchenough, “Ukraine on Language 7. Vladimir Yelenin, “Catherine the Great Is Lockdown: Country Demands That Films More Valuable to Ukraine than Zaporizhian Have Ukrainian Dub,” Variety, February Cossacks,” The Ukrainian Times, February 5, 22, 2008, http://www.variety.com/index. 2008. asp?layout=print_story&articleid=VR11 8. A translator in Odesa sent me this report by 17981323&categoryid=2523,22. Variety e-mail on November 5, 2007: “As for the reported that Anton Pugach, an exhibitor opening the monument to Catherine II, I with Multiplex Holding, was trying to was there in that crowd and can tell how gather 100,000 signatures against the it was: jolly, noisy, quarrelsome, altogether legislation to present to President Viktor quite normal for such an event. Some Yushchenko. Exhibitors claimed, however, women managed to start a fight in a corner that such a stringent law would only of the square, others laughed, the music encourage the sale of pirated Russian- was very loud and rhythmic, some danced, language DVDs. lots of pictures were taken, it was quite a 17. During the 1935–36 academic year, 83 show. After all that, there were fireworks percent of students in Ukraine were and the Philharmonic orchestra played studying in Ukrainian. See Harold R. under the open sky for an hour. In terms Weinstein, “Language and Education of legal actions there were no steps taken. in Soviet Ukraine,” Slavonic Year-Book, The tension is still there and will be there American Series, 1 (1941): 142. But in 1933, as many as 88.5 percent of Ukrainian

24 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 children were enrolled in Ukrainian 26. The 1989 Soviet census showed that 12 schools. See Laada Bilaniuk, Contested percent of the population of the Ukrainian Tongues: Language, Politics, and Cultural Soviet Republic claimed to be Russian, Contestation in Ukraine (Ithaca and London: whereas the same census showed 39 percent Cornell University Press, 2005), 82. of the population of Odessa to be Russian. 18. Belaby, “Russian Language.” 27. Oleg Zoteev and Rostislav Zoteev, 19. Hennadii Udovenko, “Movna Polïtika “Osobennosti funktsionirovaniia russkogo Ukraïni na Suchasnomu Etazh” [The iazyka v polietnicheskikh regionakh Language Policy of Ukraine at Its Current Ukrainy,” [The Peculiarities of the Use State], Ukraïnoznavsto 4 (2005) : 24–30. of the Russian Language in Multiethnic 20. See Weinstein, “Language and Education,” Regions of Ukraine], January 9, 124–148. See also Yuri Slezkine, “The 2008, http://www.edrus.org/content/ USSR as a Communal Apartment, or view/7121/69/. How a Socialist State Promoted Ethnic 28. “Odessa vsegda govorila po russki,” Particularism,” Slavic Review vol. 53, no. [Odessa has always spoken Russian] April 2 (1994): 414–452; Maxim Waldstein, 4, 2007, http://forum.odessitka.net/index. “Russifying Estonia? Iurii Lotman and the php?showtopic=636. Politics of Language and Culture in Soviet 29. Ibid. Estonia,” Kritka: Explorations in Russian and 30. ITAR-TASS, “Action to Protect Russian Eurasian History 8, no. 3 (2007): 561–596; Language Launched in Ukraine Odessa,” George Liber, Soviet Nationality Policy, March 3, 2007, http://www.itar-tass.com/ Urban Growth, and Identity Change in the eng/level2.html?NewsID. Ukrainian SSR, 1923–1934 (Cambridge, 31. “Reglament Odesskogo gorodskogo soveta England: Cambridge University Press, v sozyva.” [Rules for the Odessa City 1992); and Bilaniuk, Contested Tongues, Council] Rasdel I. Stat’ia 2, no. 2 (June 80–81. Contested Tongues is the most useful 27, 2006), http://www.odessa.ua/acts/ book on the subject of language politics in council/5712/. contemporary Ukraine. 32. For examples of such discussions, see http:// 21. Waldstein, “Russifying Estonia?” 578. forum.pravda.com.ua/en. Purportedly, the 22. ITAR-TASS, July 4, 2007. I do not “I Speak Russian” campaign is led by Valery know if the classifications are based on Kaurov, head of the Odesa-based Union of self-identification, but they must refer to the Orthodox Citizens of Ukraine. This ethnicity, since the majority of Odessits are organization pitched tents around Odesa Russophone. “Many Ukrainian citizens where its members could collect signatures (as many as 56.1 percent of the adult in support of giving Russian a protected population of Ukraine, according to the status as a regional language. According to Kyiv International Institute of Sociology) Kaurov, “With all the linguistic, religious, are thought to prefer interacting in cultural differences, parts of the country can Russian in the public sphere, regardless only coexist within a federally regulated of their ethnicity and whether or not polity.” Paul Abelsky, “Building Its Own they are bilingual” (Fournier, “Mapping Destiny: Ukraine Seeks a Place between Identities,” 422). Russia and Europe,” Russia Profile, May 30, 23. Fournier, “Mapping Identities,” 422. 2007, http://www.russiaprofile.org). 24. David I. Kertzer and Dominique Arel 33. Smolar, “Homo Ukrainus.” (eds.), Census and Identity: The Politics of 34. Smolar, “Homo Ukrainus.” Just before Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National the September 2007 elections, the Censuses (Cambridge, England: Cambridge Party of Regions (PRU), led by Viktor University Press, 2002), 104-105. Yanukovych, announced a campaign to 25. Taras Kuzio, “Census: Ukraine, More organize a referendum asking Ukrainians Ukrainian,” Russia and Eurasia Revue 2, no. whether Russian should be a second 3 (2003). official language. But even some members of the PRU feel that the language issue

How Ukrainian Is Odesa? From Odessa to Odesa 25 is “too divisive.” Pavel Korduban, “Party summary], Kennan Institute, April 16, of Regions Challenges President with 2007, www.wilsoncenter.org/index.cfm? Referendum Plan,” Eurasia Daily Monitor, 39. Ibid. September 12, 2007, http://eurasiandaily. 40. Founded by a German empress of Russia, org/article. designed by a Netherlander and a Spanish- 35. Udovenko, “Language Policy.” “By Irish Neapolitan, governed successively by 1937 when Stalin decided that some of two French administrators, suffused with Ukraine was over-Ukrainianized, he Italian opera, Odesa was a city of foreign said more attention should be given to settlers, especially Greeks, in its early years, Russian popular literature, music, radio and eventually hosted a large population and cinema.” Weinstein, “Language and of Jews. The current conductor of its Education,” 145. philharmonic orchestra is Hobart Earle, an 36. “Microsoft Puts on Sale Ukrainian- American. Language Windows Vista and Office 41. Abel Polese, Where Marx Meets Ekaterina System 2007,” Ukrainian News Agency, (the Great): The Dichotomy between Kyiv, Ukraine, May 22, 2007. http:// National and Plural Identities in Odessa, www.lucorg.com/luc/news.php?id=2478 . paper presented at the convention of the 37. Abelsky, “Building Its Own Destiny.” An Association for the Study of Nationalities, article by Elena Yatsenko, “The Russian New York, April 2007. Language as the Geopolitical Potential of 42. Mykola Riabchuk, “Ukraine the Russian World,” June 19, 2007, www. Torn between Russia, the West: A Eurasianhome.org, is an example of a Commentary,” Edmonton Journal, August provocative exhortation for Russophones 8, 2007. in the Near Abroad to retain Russian 43. As a Red Sox fan, I am tempted to say so that they can leave their “diasporas,” that in some respects Odesa is like Manny return to Russia, and become more quickly Ramirez, the talented but individualistic reintegrated into Russia. outfielder whose antics are explained by a 38. Laada Bilaniuk, “Language Politics in shrug and the phrase, “Manny is just being Ukrainian Popular Culture” [Event Manny.” Odesa is just being Odessa.

26 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 How American Is New Orleans? What the Founding Era Has to Tell Us

Emily Clark, Associate Professor, Department of History, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA

In the first few days after Hurricane Katrina, a dying in the fetid aftermath of nature’s floodwa- woman at the New Orleans Convention Center, ters and human neglect. Those post-storm essays desperate for food, water, and rescue, cried out, shared a focus on the city in the here and now, “We are American!” Reflecting on this scene, ringing (or blaming?) the changes on its poverty, Michael Ignatieff commented, “Having been its racial makeup, its scandal-ridden politics, its abandoned, the people in the convention center pleasure-seeking ambiance, and its redemptive were reduced to reminding their fellow citi- cultural richness. The post-Katrina eulogies zens, through the medium of television, that tapped into pre-Katrina conceptions of a lovable they were not refugees in a foreign country.”1 but tragically flawed city that had written itself I would submit that at the heart of the na- out of the American mainstream by clinging to tional response to Katrina was a belief that the a constellation of habits born of a colorful his- people of New Orleans do occupy a foreign tory not shared by the rest of the country. New country. Brian Williams of NBC, the only Orleans is different now because it was different national news anchor in the city during and in some hazily conceived “then.”3 immediately after Katrina, recently recalled New Orleanians themselves, aided and abet- his first visit to the city, some years ago. As ted by the tourism industry, have been complicit his plane rolled to a stop on the runway, the in creating the impression that their city derives pilot came over the PA system “and welcomed its distinctive character from a distinctive past. his passengers to New Orleans by noting that And historians, seduced by the siren call of they’d just left the United States.”2 American exceptionalism, evoke New Orleans That people from airline pilots to Secretary as the domestic other against which a national of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff can so community of otherwise diverse origins shares easily manage to place New Orleans beyond the a sense of itself as the unique expression of a pale of American national consciousness is proof revolutionary Anglo-Protestant experiment in of an enduring, historically constructed defi- liberty and equality.4 This conception of the nition of New Orleans as “other,” an island of outlier status of New Orleans in the American exotic, erotic Creole something-or-other that is historical narrative rests, I propose, on flawed essentially foreign to what is “American.” The foundations. In key particulars, New Orleans response to Katrina, I suggest, is at least partly shares the past that shaped America, especially rooted in an opposition of New Orleans and the formative colonial and early national years American identities and histories—an opposition regarded as the point of origin for national that is not only false, but that arguably proved character and consciousness. In the late 1760s, fatal to more than a thousand citizens whose a colonial council opened its proceedings with voter registration cards made poor lifeboats. these words: Katrina sparked an immediate outpouring of meditations on the place of New Orleans in Gentlemen: the first and most interesting the national imagination. Cultural critics, politi- point to be examined, is the step taken by cians, and not a few historians rushed into print all the planters and merchants in concert, to decry the tragedy, limn its causes, and deliver who being threatened with slavery, and la- jeremiads exhorting Americans to rush to the boring under grievances which have been rescue of the quirky, culturally rich city that lay enumerated...5

How American Is New Orleans? What the Founding Era Has to Tell Us 27 Such rhetoric is exactly what we would ex- the United States, negotiated the tension be- pect on the eve of the American Revolution, tween European imperium and their own so- when the Sons of Liberty evoked the metaphor cial and economic interests in a language of of slavery to condemn the reassertion of impe- rights indebted equally to the political thought rial interests in the wake of the Seven Years’ of Europe and the pervasive reality of slavery War. We would expect, as well, the ringing that endowed that ideology with the potent rhetoric of natural rights with its hot-button charge that gave it life. In 1768, elite white terms—liberty, virtue, despotism. And this co- New Orleanians, Virginians, and Bostonians lonial assembly fell right in line: all chafed under what they perceived to be the yoke of imperial tyranny and protested their Without population there can be no com- figurative enslavement in a shared rhetoric, if merce, and without commerce no popula- not a shared tongue. tion. In proportion to the extent of both, is This episode of protest makes ideologi- the solidity of thrones; both are fed by lib- cal brothers of colonial New Orleanians and erty and competition, which are the nurs- Anglo-American revolutionaries. If Americans ing mothers of the State, of which the spirit claim resistance to the Stamp Act in the 1760s as of monopoly is the tyrant and step-mother. a defining moment in the birth of a nation and a Without liberty, there are but few virtues. central element of its identity, it is for the general Despotism breeds pusillanimity and deepens principles advanced, not the specific target of the abyss of vices.... Where is the liberty of resistance. That the protest was directed against our planters, our merchants and our other Britain does not define the moment. Rather, inhabitants? Protection and benevolence the nature of the conflict between colony and have given way to despotism.6 empire and the ideology deployed in the crisis do. New Orleans protested a different impe- Students of American history should find rial master, but it launched a spasm of colonial nothing special about this tirade. Such decla- resistance embedded in the language of rights mations poured out of the 13 British colonies in just as the 13 British colonies did. The different the 1760s and early 1770s, charting the growing national sovereignties of Louisiana and the 13 self-consciousness of a colonial interest at odds colonies have been allowed to obscure shared with its imperial parent, all couched in a rheto- elements of their histories that lie at the heart of ric of republicanism distinguished by its oppo- American identity. This habit of thought, para- sition of slavery to liberty and its indictment of doxically, has the effect of imaginatively undo- despotism and tyranny, and buttressed by the ing the Declaration of Independence, yoking enumeration of grievances dictated by John America eternally to Britain rather than to the Locke’s definition of justifiable revolution.7 history of its own hemisphere. These passages of colonial protest rhetoric Superficial readings of the cultural differ- are obviously a setup, given the subject of the ences between New Orleans and the former present essay. They are not to be found in the British colonies have long lain at the center archives of any of the British mainland colo- of the historical blindness that obscures epi- nies. Indeed, they were not originally set down sodes such as the Louisiana Rebellion of 1768. in English. They are drawn from a 1768 pe- A visiting Philadelphian, John Watson, was tition composed in New Orleans by French- shocked to find in 1805 that “Sabboths are speaking members of the Louisiana Superior not observed—all stores are open in the fore- Council. The signatories were protesting the noon, and at night there are balls and some- newly instituted Spanish administration in the times plays, &c.”8 As if profaning the Sabboth colony—specifically, the imposition of a set of in this way were not enough, the elements of trade regulations and the prospect of Spain’s ef- worship Watson witnessed during Holy Week ficient enforcement of its policies following a at St. Louis Cathedral underlined the dif- long period of—dare I borrow the term from ferences between the sober Protestantism of British colonial historians?—Salutary Neglect Philadelphia and the theatricality and clamor of by the late French regime. They, like the cre- New Orleans Catholicism. “On Thursday, all ole elites of the 13 British colonies that became the Catholics visit the several churches to kiss

28 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 the feet of Jesus.... Mothers bring their infants; character of America; that they shared a vital at- some cry and occasion other disturbances, some tachment to religion at the same formative mo- are seen counting their beads with much atten- ment in the nation’s history does. tion and remain long on their knees, some are There is yet another way that religion re- running over their ave marias.”9 veals a link between New Orleans and the rest Watson, like many subsequent visitors to of America. The Bishop Controversy erupted New Orleans, was quick to identify religion in the 1760s when mainland British colo- as a point of divergence between New Orleans nists broke out in a lather at the very thought and the rest of the United States, fixing espe- of a bishop being imposed on the American cially on Catholicism’s role in forming the city’s Anglican church. Elite vestries in Virginia and festive culture. Mardi Gras, the day of carni- elsewhere had no intention of relinquishing val abandon that precedes Ash Wednesday and their de facto authority to appoint the pastors Lent’s season of austerity, is only the most ob- of their churches and otherwise oversee local vious example offered of the way the Catholic church affairs. In 1805, the Catholic equivalent community that has dominated New Orleans’s of the vestry in New Orleans was infuriated religious landscape since the 18th century has when Bishop John Carroll of the United States shaped the city’s culture. Catholicism’s laissez- attempted to impose a pastor on them. They faire attitude toward alcohol, gambling, and called the populace to St. Louis Cathedral to dancing is credited—or blamed—for the city’s consider the proper response. “All the Catholics year-round pleasure culture. of this parish arose as one and in a body, as- It would be foolish to claim that the differ- serting that as things had come to such a pass ences between Protestantism and Catholicism are they would make use of the privilege that the more imaginary than real. Nineteenth-century freedom of the American government permits Protestantism, which supported temperance and them and would appoint a pastor of their own Sabbatarianism and condemned gaming and choice.” If anything, the New Orleans coup frivolous amusements, did impose a different d’église took American notions of democratic code of behavior on its adherents than that of expression and authority in the religious realm Catholicism. The Latin Mass, with the mystery to new heights.10 of Eucharistic transubstantiation at its center, Are the similarities I have rehearsed here bore little resemblance to the Protestant order of enough to condemn the exceptionalism of service dominated by Scripture and sermon. But New Orleans to the dust heap of history? What to focus on behavioral codes and liturgical prac- about other ethnic and cultural differences tices is to miss some important commonalities between New Orleanians and “Americans”? among the Catholics of New Orleans and the Especially in connection with the signal influ- Protestants of the former British colonies. ence of African Americans on the culture of Most obviously, religion was socially and New Orleans, surely we can draw a line that culturally central to both groups. When John sets the Crescent City apart? I do not think we Watson entered St. Louis Cathedral during can. The distinction rests on the presumption of Holy Week, he found it teeming with worship- a fixed and hegemonic English culture for the pers. The landscape of early-19th-century New 13 British mainland colonies, presumably up- Orleans was sacralized, with a cathedral domi- held and promulgated by an ethnically English nating its principal public space and a sprawling majority. But in the first 75 years of the 18th convent occupying a prominent position on the century, this is how the 585,800 immigrants to banks of the Mississippi River. At the turn of the the mainland colonies could be classified, by 19th century, Protestant America was marked by ethnic origin:11 the renewed religious vigor of the Second Great Awakening, while New Orleans was energized 278,400 Africans 48% by the missionary impulse of a popular Catholic 84,500 Germans 14% revival that culminated in the spectacular de- 66,100 Northern Irish 11% votional movement at Lourdes in France. That 44,100 English 8% 19th-century Protestants and Catholics regarded 42,500 Southern Irish 7% one another as godless does not illuminate the

How American Is New Orleans? What the Founding Era Has to Tell Us 29 35,300 Scots 6% without prominence as cultural and political 29,000 Welsh 5% agents. Free black Richard Allen established 5,900 Other 1% the African Methodist Episcopal denomina- tion in Philadelphia in 1816.16 Inventor and Even if all the immigrants from the British abolitionist James Forten, the free descendant Isles are grouped together, they remain out- of an enslaved African, anticipated Louisiana’s numbered by Africans. In the plantation colo- postbellum radicals when he reminded his fel- nies, enslaved people constituted a large ma- low Philadelphians in 1813 that among the jority of the population: 60 percent in South city’s free men of color were people “of repu- Carolina, for example. Some 2,600 enslaved tation and property, as good citizens as men people in New York City (14 percent of the can be.”17 population) and 1,500 in Philadelphia (7 per- New Orleans historical exceptionalists’ last cent) ensured a significant African contribu- line of defense is the French and Spanish an- tion to the vibrant urban milieu of the colo- cestry of its colonial population. Historians nial Northeast.12 On the eve of the American have been fairly unanimous in rendering the Revolution, one-fifth of the inhabitants of judgment that “Americans” and Francophone the British mainland colonies were enslaved New Orleanians were engaged in chronic people of African descent. The cultural lega- culture wars before the Civil War, laying the cies of Africa were arguably as pervasive and foundation for the alienation of the Crescent influential in Revolutionary America as those City today. of the English, Scots, and Irish. And if one Language, law, sexuality, and fashion, among takes population as an indication of influence, other cultural markers, are supposed to have di- African Americans were no more significant in vided Anglo-Americans from New Orleanians Louisiana, where enslaved people constituted long after the Louisiana Purchase made them roughly half of the inhabitants, than they were official compatriots in 1803. But Americans in the British plantation colonies.13 of clear English descent living in the former Those more familiar with the details of 13 colonies were not always reliable standard- New Orleans’s racial past often make a case bearers for English identity and culture in post- that the number of people of African descent Revolutionary America. In post-Revolution- in the city is not what distinguished it histori- ary Pennsylvania, people “broke suddenly loose cally, but rather the free status of so many of from the simplicity of quaker manners, dress them. According to this line of thinking, the and fashion, affecting the vanity, and nonsense large community of free people of color in ... of french parade,” according to a visiting New Orleans created a space for cultural, in- Virginia congressman in 1783.18 tellectual, and political creativity that was un- At least one Philadelphian betrayed his matched elsewhere in North America. For ex- English roots by moving beyond the superfi- ample, free woman of color Henriette Delille cial transformation effected by Paris fashion. founded an order of nuns for women of African Born to an established Quaker family, Jacob descent in antebellum New Orleans.14 And the Cowperthwait shed just about every recog- radicalism of Louisiana’s 1868 state constitu- nizable marker of the culture of his forefa- tion, which insisted that “all citizens of the thers after moving to New Orleans in 1785. state should enjoy ‘the same civil, political and Cowperthwait arrived just as the restrictive public rights and privileges,’ ” has been attrib- policies and attitudes that had governed Spanish uted to the political legacy of the large and vi- colonial trade with Anglo-Americans were be- brant free black community that flourished in ginning to loosen, and he made his fortune on New Orleans before the Civil War.15 Statistics building commissions for the Spanish Crown. and individual historical actors alike vitiate And, ignoring a 1776 Quaker ban, he became a this argument. Free blacks made up 19 percent slave trader. In 1787, the Quaker slave trader ap- of the population of New Orleans in 1805, but peared before the ecclesiastical tribunal in New Philadelphia, where they constituted 16 per- Orleans to petition for permission to marry cent of the population, was not far behind. a young Anglophone Catholic woman from Nor were Philadelphia’s free people of color Spanish West Florida. Cowperthwait swore be-

30 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 fore the church notary that he was a Catholic, of American political and social stability.20 New baptized in the parish of Philadelphia. When Orleans could never be a real American city be- he became mortally ill in 1793, he dictated his cause it did not share Anglo-America’s Puritan last will and testament—in French—describing legacy of sexual continence. The guidebooks to his Quaker origins in Philadelphia in one para- New Orleans make an unabashed link between graph and stipulating that he be buried accord- the temptresses of the Quadroon Balls and the ing to the rites of the Catholic Church in New contemporary lasciviousness of Bourbon Street. Orleans in another.19 Cowperthwait’s birthright The message: New Orleans has always been the was his Anglo-American identity, and he never place where Americans come to be naughty, a rejected that. But he was also a Francophone, place to escape the normative sexual puritan- Catholic New Orleanian. ism of the rest of the country, the frontier safety Cowperthwait and many others like him valve for Americans bound by a different his- hardly constituted the leading edge of an tory of sexuality. Anglo-American cultural invasion of the The difficulty with blaming New Orleans Mississippi Valley. Instead, they reveal the po- decadence on the city’s quadroon temptresses rous nature of both the real and the imagined is that there are virtually no traces of these boundaries of national identity in the post- women’s existence outside the pages of travel Revolutionary era and give us some idea of how narratives, novels, and plays. When quadroon elastic the imagined community of the young women make an appearance in the archives of American republic was. The careful ideologi- New Orleans, they usually do so as brides of cal and legal circumscription of American na- free men of color, standing before the altar at tionality that began with the three-fifths clause St. Louis Cathedral surrounded by crowds of of the Constitution and the Alien and Sedition celebratory family and friends. They reappear Acts of 1798 was in its infancy, and there was at the baptisms of their children, and eventually still room for pluralisms of various kinds. Men as mothers of brides and grooms in subsequent such as Jacob Cowperthwait may not have been generations. The quadroons of New Orleans aware of the Louisiana Rebellion of 1768 or the typically inhabited a world of marriage and coup d’église of 1805, but they shared with New motherhood, not some Gulf Coast version of Orleanians the experience of having been colo- the Seraglio.21 nists in North America shaped by the diverse Thanks to historians of early American sex- cultural milieu and political dynamic of the uality, we now know that even if New Orleans Atlantic world. During the very decades when was not a unique, no-holds-barred sexual play- American identity was forged and our national ground, there were plenty of other places where origin myth fabricated, this common ground colonial and early national Americans could be united Americans across fissures that only later “naughty”—even if one defines naughtiness as were enlisted to construct mutual exclusivity engaging in interracial sex outside marriage. between New Orleanian and American. Clare Lyons’s new book, Sex among the Rabble, I know—because I have advanced this argu- for example, reveals 18th-century Philadelphia ment less formally many times since Katrina— to have been a seething cauldron of nonmari- that many will be unconvinced by the evi- tal sexual activity. “Members of all classes and dence I have offered. It does not address, head both races,” she writes, “frequented taverns, on, the most obvious difference between New bawdyhouses, and ‘negro’ houses for sexual Orleans and the rest of America: the Crescent adventure.”22 City’s naughtiness. But even here, history be- trays the trope. * * * Travelers to antebellum New Orleans commented frequently on the city’s moral decadence, If New Orleans was really more like the rest of and many seem to have located its epicenter America than different from it when the United among the city’s free women of color. Elegant States was young, why do the Crescent City’s and beautiful, they supposedly seduced Euro- exceptionalism and difference have such trac- American men away from the virtuous repub- tion in the national narrative and the national lican marriages that were deemed the bedrock consciousness now?

How American Is New Orleans? What the Founding Era Has to Tell Us 31 My answer is twofold. First, casting New the rest of America has managed to forget that Orleans as “other” served a crucial purpose in the this rich legacy, and New Orleans, are not be- process of American nation making in the 19th yond the boundaries of American identity, but century. The United States faced a unique hurdle at its heart. in that process. Polyglot and culturally diverse in the colonial, Revolutionary, and post-Revolu- Endnotes tionary eras, it remained so in the early national 1. Michael Ignatieff, “The Broken and antebellum eras, when first the Louisiana Contract,” The New York Times Magazine, Purchase and then the Irish and German immi- September 25, 2005. http://www.nytimes. gration of the 1840s and ’50s further weakened com/2005/09/25/magazine/25wwln. the nation’s cultural and political coherence. Yet html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=the%20broken%20 this kind of instability is precisely what theorist contract&st=cse&oref=slogin. Accessed Fredrik Barth suggests results in the definition of January 18, 2008. ethnic—and, by extension, national—identities. 2. Dave Walker, “Blood Brother,” New Orleans “Categorical ethnic distinctions,” Barth writes, Times-Picayune, September 6, 2006. “do not depend on an absence of mobility, con- 3. See, for example, Tom Piazza, Why tact and information, but do entail social pro- New Orleans Matters, 1st ed. (New York: cesses of exclusion and incorporation whereby ReganBooks, 2005). discrete categories are maintained despite chang- 4. Arnold R. Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon, ing participation and membership in the course Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization of individual life histories.”23 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University New Orleans was not significantly different Press, 1992); Caryn Cossâe Bell, from other American cities in its history, its sex Revolution, Romanticism, and the Afro-Creole culture, or its cosmopolitan, polyglot, multira- Protest Tradition in Louisiana, 1718–1868 cial population. But Americans elsewhere could (Baton Rouge; London: Louisiana State take comfort by projecting exceptionalism onto University Press, 1997); Gwendolyn Midlo the Crescent City, in effect suppressing the cen- Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana: The trifugal force of all the contradictory crosscur- Development of Afro-Creole Culture in the rents of American identity by containing them Eighteenth Century (Baton Rouge: Louisiana in one place. And they could get away with it State University Press, 1992); Peter J. because an accident of imperial control erected Kastor, The Nation’s Crucible: The Louisiana an imaginary boundary between the experi- Purchase and the Creation of America (New ence and histories of New Orleanians and, say, Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). Philadelphians. 5. Charles Gayarré, History of Louisiana, vol. 3 New Orleans and New Orleanians were as- (New Orleans: James A. Gresham, 1879), signed exceptionality, but they could have re- 196–197. jected it. Instead, for different reasons at dif- 6. Ibid. ferent times, the city has accepted its role as 7. John Locke’s prescription appears in The the internal “other.” In the recent past, the city Second Treatise of Civil Government (1690), has not only accepted that role, it has culti- Chapter XIX: Of the Dissolution of vated it and built its economy around it. The Government, Sec. 225.: “Great mistakes rich musical tradition created by Americans of in the ruling part, many wrong and African descent, a distinctive regional cuisine, a inconvenient laws, and all the slips of semitropical landscape, 18th-century architec- human frailty, will be born by the people ture—none of these things are unique to New without mutiny or murmur. But if a long Orleans, even if the way they come together in train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, the city is. We New Orleanians are complicit all tending the same way, make the design in our own vulnerability, allowing the rest of visible to the people, and they cannot but America to cut itself off from its vibrant, mul- feel what they lie under, and see whither ticultural roots so that we can make an undis- they are going; it is not to be wondered, puted claim to what is really a shared American that they should then rouze themselves, and legacy. And we have done such a good job that endeavor to put the rule into such hands

32 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 which may secure to them the ends for 17. Julie Winch, “The Making and Meaning which government was at first erected . . .” of James Forten’s Letters from a Man of 8. John Watson, “Notitia of Incidents at New Color,” William and Mary Quarterly 64, no. 1 Orleans, 1804–5,” The American Pioneer 2, (2007): 136. no. 5 (May 1843): 232. 18. Arthur Lee to James Warren, March 9. Ibid., 230. 12, 1783, in Paul H. Smith, ed., Letters 10. On the Bishop Controversy, see Frederick of Delegates to Congress, 1774–1789 V. Mills Sr., Bishops by Ballot: An (Washington, DC, 1993), 20:12, quoted in Eighteenth-Century Ecclesiastical Revolution Kate Haulman, “Fashions and the Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, Wars of Revolutionary Philadelphia,” 1978); and “Casa Calvo to Caballero, William and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser. 62, no. March 30, 1805” in Stanley Faye, ed., 4 (2005): 625. “The Schism of 1805 in New Orleans,” 19. Jacob Cowperthwait, Last Will and Louisiana Historical Quarterly 22, no. 1 Testament, Acts of Pedro Pedesclaux 17, (January 1939):105. 503–504, June 17, 1793. New Orleans 11. Aaron Spencer Fogleman, Hopeful Journeys: Notarial Archives, New Orleans, German Immigration, Settlement, and Political Louisiana. Culture in Colonial America, 1717–1775 20. See, for example, Karl Bernard, Travels (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania through North America, During the Years Press, 1996), 2. The United Kingdom 1825 and 1826 (Philadelphia: Carey, Lea became a political reality with the Act of & Carey, sold in New York by G. & C. Union of 1707, which joined the kingdoms Carvill, 1828), 62; Harriet Martineau, of Scotland and England. The Act of Society in America: In Two Volumes, 2nd Union of 1800 brought Northern and ed., 2 vols. (New York: Saunders & Otley, Southern Ireland officially under the aegis 1837), 116; Frederick Law Olmsted and of the United Kingdom of Great Britain Arthur Meier Schlesinger, The Cotton and Ireland. Kingdom: A Traveller’s Observations on Cotton 12. The population of New York City in and Slavery in the American Slave States: 1760 stood at 18,000; see Selma Berrol, Based Upon Three Former Volumes of Journeys The Empire City: New York and Its People, and Investigations by the Same Author, 1st ed. 1624–1996 (Westport, CT: Praeger (New York: Modern Library, 1984), 236; Publishers, 1997), 12. Philadelphia’s Watson, “Notitia of Incidents,” 236. population was 23,0000; see United States 21. Emily Clark, “Atlantic Alliances: Marriage Geological Survey, Modeling Expansion in among People of African Descent in New the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area: A Cellular Orleans, 1759–1830” (unpublished paper Automata Approach (January 2008), http:// presented at a workshop at the Center for mcmcweb.er.usgs.gov/de_river_basin/ North-American Studies, École des Hautes phil/phil_data.html. Études en Sciences Sociales: Louisiana and 13. Hall, Africans in Colonial Louisiana, 278. the Atlantic World in the Eighteenth and 14. Mary Bernard Deggs, Virginia Meacham Nineteenth Centuries, Paris, November Gould, and Charles E. Nolan, No Cross, No 9–10, 2007). Crown: Black Nuns in Nineteenth-Century 22. Clare A. Lyons, Sex among the Rabble: New Orleans (Bloomington: Indiana An Intimate History of Gender and Power University Press, 2001). in the Age of Revolution, Philadelphia, 15. Rebecca J. Scott, Degrees of Freedom: 1730–1830 (Chapel Hill: University of Louisiana and Cuba after Slavery North Carolina Press for the Omohundro (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Institute of Early American History and Harvard University Press, 2005), 42; Bell, Culture, 2006), 193. Lyons reports (377) Revolution, Romanticism. that in Philadelphia, fully 5 percent of 16. Sylvia R. Frey, Water from the Rock: Black the bastardy cases brought before the Resistance in a Revolutionary Age (Princeton, city’s Guardians of the Poor in the 1790s NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 152. were cross-racial cases of black women

How American Is New Orleans? What the Founding Era Has to Tell Us 33 seeking child support from white fathers, by black women seeking child support and they were often successful: men were from white fathers and only two black found culpable and forced to shoulder women succeeded in getting child support responsibility for acting on their illicit lust. payments from white fathers between 1822 But by the 1820s, black woman were being and 1825. cast as evil seductresses who led unwitting 23. Fredrik Barth, ed., Ethnic Groups and white men away. By the 1820s only 1.5 Boundaries: The Social Organization of percent of bastardy cases brought before Culture Difference (Boston: Little, Brown, the Guardians of the Poor were pressed 1969), 9.

34 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 New Orleans and Odesa: The Spaces in Between as a Source of Urbane Diversity

Blair A. Ruble, Director, Kennan Institute, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington, D.C.

What makes a city one ethnicity or another? Is it manner that transcends individual needs and merely the presence of a dominant ethnic group? perceptions if “urban” is to become “urbane.” Is there something about how people relate to As manifested in the experiences of New one another? How does one identity assert itself Orleans and Odesa, urbanity emerges from the in communities predicated on commercial and interaction of place and diversity, rather than cultural exchange? As Samuel Ramer posits at from diversity alone. the outset of this collection, New Orleans and Odesa—two strange and wondrous products of Cracks in the National 18th-century empire building—suggest some Sidewalk answers to these questions. They do so precisely Novelist and storyteller Walker Percy made a because they are especially urbane cities in which similar point in a somewhat folksier style. In nationalists have lost out many times over rather trying to explain why he found the small town than carry the day. of Covington, Louisiana, such a congenial What makes cities not only “urban” but place to live and to write, Percy described the “urbane”? How does a city nurture a sense town as a “pleasant nonplace” that “occupies a of style that facilitates the accommodation of kind of interstice in the South. It falls between difference, creating something of value in the places.”2 Writing in 1980, Percy continued, process? Diversity in and of itself is often seen “Here is one place in the South where a writer as an answer. Bring enough people of differ- can live as happily as a bug in a crack in the ence together to bump up against one another, sidewalk, where he can mosey out now and and accommodation somehow will take place. then and sniff the air just to make sure this is Unfortunately, difference can create conflict as not just any crack in any sidewalk.”3 well as acceptance. After all, according to some By seeing himself—and other writers— reckonings, the Detroit metropolitan area is as happy bugs thriving in society’s interstices, home to the widest range of ethnic groups of Percy was returning to an observation he had any American city at the outset of the 21st cen- made about New Orleans a dozen years previ- tury. But whatever its virtues, contemporary ously. In explaining his love for the “Big Easy,” Detroit does not evoke the adjective “urbane.” Percy described the space carved out in New Barcelona philosopher and urban thinker York by “millions of souls” as “a horrid thing, Pep Subirós has observed that mere heteroge- a howling vacuum.”4 Mobile, Alabama, he con- neity does not produce a “civic” and “urbane” tinued, “has no interstices. It is older than New urban community.1 For Subirós, a city must si- Orleans. It has wrought iron, better azaleas, an multaneously accept both difference and shared older Mardi Gras. It appears easygoing and has points of reference for a genuinely civic iden- had no riots. Yet it suffers from the spiritual tity and urbane culture to emerge. Local leg- damps, Alabama anoxia. Twenty-four hours in ends, memories, and tellings of history must Mobile and you have the feeling a plastic bag go beyond binary understandings of society to is tied around your head and you’re breathing embrace pluralism in order for civitas to reign. your own air. Mobile’s public space is continu- Civic identity must somehow embrace a variety ous with the private space of its front parlors. of urban groups and individuals; city residents So where New York is a vacuum, Mobile is a must relate to one another in a shared public pressure cooker.”5

New Orleans and Odesa: The Spaces in Between as a Source of Urbane Diversity 35 For Percy, New Orleans was a perfect mix, ing to income, race, confession, ethnicity, and a place that “is both intimately related to the any other manner of human self-invention have South, and yet in a real sense cut adrift not only been forced to find ways of interacting with from the South but from the rest of Louisiana, one another. somewhat like Mont-St. Michel awash at high Writing a century before Percy, a future tide.”6 His beloved New Orleans represented a chronicler of all things Japanese, Lafcadio marriage “of George Babbitt and Marianne.”7 Hearn, found himself perfecting his obser- Percy, like Subirós, is talking around some vational and literary skills in New Orleans. of the essential ingredients for the commodi- Immediately taken with the city, Hearn noted, ous blending of difference that lies at the heart “If this be not the cosmopolitan city of the of an elegant city style that is sometimes called world, it is certainly the cosmopolitan city of “urbanity.” A community must not only be the Americas. While standing in the bar-room diverse, but must become a protected public of the St. Charles Hotel recently, where the auc- meeting place in which people of difference tion sales of real estate are held, a friend pointed come and go and interact with one another. out to me foreigners from almost all parts of the George Babbitt and Marianne must not only world.” 8 stare across crowded cityscapes at one another; Historians could well dispute Hearn on his they must connect. facts—New York and Chicago were arguably But if they are to do so, urban space (both even more cosmopolitan than New Orleans at literal and figurative) must be both shared and the time (1877). No matter, the key to Hearn’s protected. There must be a place for people both observation lies elsewhere. Auction sales of real to remain different and to interact. Mere size is estate were not handled by a cold counting- not, in and of itself, a critical factor in creating house or exchange; nor were they limited to urbanity as defined here. Percy’s Covington, some native elite as they might have been in the Louisiana, was as tiny as it was urbane. Large great cities to the north. Hearn offers his obser- or small, a genuinely urbane community must vations about seeing “Herzegovinians, Cubans, furnish protection while allowing people—not Spanish-Americans, Italians, Englishmen, old- just writers—to “sniff the air.” Urbane diver- country French and Creole French, Portuguese, sity thrives on societal interstices in which folks Greeks from the Levant, Russians, Canadians, of many hues can live side by side without de- Brazilians”—and about his Southern friends vouring one another. who conduct their business dealings in French, Portuguese, Spanish and Modern Greek—while Nurturing Neutral Ground describing a visit to a hotel bar. Here is Walker Why, an intelligent reader must be asking by Percy’s congenial crack in the sidewalk, a classic now, are “urbanity” and “urbane” important? “space in between.” Isn’t “urban” sufficient? Once again, we are re- Being itself somehow neither one place nor minded of New Orleans, a city where a boule- another—a city caught between the American vard median is not just a physical barrier but a South and the Latin Caribbean, between metaphysical “neutral ground.” Protestant and Catholic, between American and The polished elegance of manner suggested European, between African and European— by notions of “urbanity” and “urbane” are es- pre-Katrina New Orleans bred just the sort of sential for explaining how and why some com- fortuitous “cracks in the sidewalk” of urban munities nurture a creative blending of dif- homogeneity that encourage folks of different ference while others do not. Riots and rough sorts to “mosey out now and then and sniff the edges aside, New Orleans long exhibited— air” together. The city, as S. Frederick Starr alas, prior to Katrina—an urbanity missing in has observed, inverts New England traditions Mobile. But riots and rough edges may not be that form one of the cornerstones of American an aside at all. Perhaps, seeming unpleasantness thought. “Louisiana represents the heart over stands at the heart of the matter of urbane urban the intellect,” Starr tells us, “spontaneity over diversity. The fact that New Orleans’ public calculation, instinct over reason, music over the space is in its streets rather than its front parlors word, forgiveness over judgment, imperma- necessarily meant that groups that vary accord- nence over permanence, and community over

36 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 the isolated and alienated individual.”9 There demonstrated that this position is misguided was always an opportunity for a Percy-style and incomplete at best. mosey or a Hearn-like trip to the bar. New Orleans, Clark continues, “was not These special qualities of the city prior to significantly different from other American cit- Katrina help to explain the powerful images of ies in its history, its sex culture, or its cosmo- loss and grief following the destruction of the politan, polyglot, multiracial population.” The storm. New Orleanians lost their homes, their assignment of exceptionality to the city fit the families, their jobs, their neighborhoods— and needs of New Orleanians and other Americans, a special sense of life that is hard, if not impos- until it didn’t. In fact, New Orleanians “have sible, to recreate elsewhere. Katrina inundated done such a good job that the rest of American the city’s physical and metaphysical neutral has managed to forget that this rich legacy, and ground. New Orleans, are not beyond the boundaries of But hope can be found within the tragedy of American identity, but at its heart.” The nar- Katrina. If the city and its residents were largely rative of difference proved useful to advocates abandoned by government, a spirit of volunteer- of a national American narrative that sought to ism intervened to foster progress. This commit- deny difference in favor of unity, as well as to ment to the community and to rebuilding is in advocates of New Orleans’ exceptionalism— part a result of the city’s special qualities dis- from Creoles wishing to keep the boorish cussed by Walker Percy and others. While we Yankees at bay, to the public relations offices at can all remain cynical about the nature of cor- bureaus of tourism who wanted an exotic prod- porate “volunteerism” in this process, at least uct to sell. Both the city and the country have corporations have been present. been impoverished materially and spiritually by this artificial divide. Nationalism versus Urbane New Orleans is hardly the only city in the Diversity world in such circumstances—even though the The government has been largely absent fol- roster of similar cities and towns is unfortu- lowing Katrina, both the dysfunctional local nately limited. To name one, Odesa, in pres- government and the more purposeful federal ent-day Ukraine, has long been home to an ex- government. Where is the federal government? travagant urbane diversity. Why is it absent? Not through neglect. The fact Despite its very Old World location on the site of the matter is that rebuilding New Orleans of the ancient worlds surrounding the Black Sea, does not fit into the ideological vision of the Odesa is a young city—considerably younger government of the United States, an ideologi- than New Orleans. Founded by imperial decree cal vision that views all governmental action as on May 27, 1794, Odesa became an American- suspect. style frontier town of long and straight avenues But the forces driving federal neglect go offering broad vistas; of rampant, not-always- deeper. As Emily Clark argues in her contribu- licit land speculation; of cosmopolitan freedom; tion, both New Orleanians and other Americans and of a forgiving attitude toward sins of all na- chose to present the city as the internal “other.” tures. As Mark Twain noted in the 1860s, “Look Everything that New Orleans represents—its up the street or down the street, this way or that ease of diversity and of social networking, for way, we saw only America.”11 example, its very urbanity—has been portrayed Odesa was from the very beginning not only as antithetical to the underlying vision of the a place in between, but a town—to borrow good society held by those dominating the from New Orleans—where les bons temps most United States government at present, and in the definitely ont roulé. Like New Orleans, Odesa past. No American political leader has been as was a product of imperial dreams and delusions clear minded in speech as former British Prime cast down on the far edge of empire. Minister Margaret Thatcher was when she Empress Catherine II, “the Great” (who once stunningly declared that there is “no such ruled from 1762 to 1796), devoted much of her thing as society.”10 But many American politi- reign to trying to extend Russia’s reach to en- cal leaders believe she was right, and everything velop the Black Sea and secure Constantinople. about New Orleans throughout its history has So dedicated was she to this objective that

New Orleans and Odesa: The Spaces in Between as a Source of Urbane Diversity 37 the gardens of her lavish palace outside St. Over the course of the next 11 years, Petersburg contained a re-creation of the Black Richelieu secured Odessa’s fate as a place in Sea in symbolic miniature.12 Her soldiers se- between. Russian and Ukrainian peasants, cured the Crimea in 1783, and additional lands Cossacks from Chernihiv and Poltava, Jews along the Black Sea littoral over the course of from the overcrowded “pale” of settlements, 1787–91. Catherine called the new territo- Ottoman Christians (Bulgarians, Gagauzy, ries in the southwestern corner of her empire Moldavians, Serbs, Greeks, and Armenians), Novorossiia (“New Russia”). Gypsies, Catholic Germans, Swiss Protestants, Two free-spirited foreign adventurers— Mennonites, Hungarians, Poles, Italians, a Naples-born soldier of fortune of Spanish Islamic Nogai Turks, and all other manner of and Irish stock named Joseph de Ribas and people converged on the boomtown port at the a Dutch military engineer named Franz de edge of so many different worlds.17 Richelieu Voland—proposed building a garrison city at eventually returned to France, where he be- the site of the Ottoman fortress of Teni-Dunai came prime minister for the restored Bourbon at Khadzhibei. On May 27, 1794, Catherine monarchy, leaving behind what he himself approved de Ribas and de Voland’s proposal called “the best pearl in the Russian crown” on for a new town and port between the Danube the shores of the Black Sea.18 Odessa would re- and Dnieper river deltas. Their settlement was main a raucous, wide-open, and randy patch of quickly named Odessa, perhaps as a conse- earth—becoming the port through which the quence of an imperial utterance emitted, fit- grain riches of Ukraine and Russia’s vast Black tingly, during a court ball.13 Earth steppe would pass to reach the outside Imperial ballroom chatter and decrees aside, world. de Ribas and de Voland needed people with Like Catherine’s son Paul, contemporary which to populate their “American” new town. Ukrainian nationalists are troubled by the re- Foreigners rushed in, as did traders large and alities of Odesa. As Patricia Herlihy demon- small, respected and dissolute. More important, strates in her contribution to the present vol- one of Catherine’s last decrees, issued only after ume, the city’s founding legends are affronts her death, proclaimed the entire province of to a Ukrainian state-building enterprise that Novorossiia an amnesty zone for runaway serfs. by definition seeks to undo the realities that About three thousand Russian and Ukrainian Catherine wrought. Battles over language serfs immediately rushed to the area around serve as surrogates for deeper divisions between Odessa during the last years of the 18th century worldviews that embrace or reject diversity. As so that they could live in freedom.14 An air of with New Orleans, the rejection of Odesa by religious tolerance took hold, with Christian many national politicians is ideological. Odesa and Muslim former Turkish subjects joining represents an alternative future with space for all with Christian and Jewish Russian subjects to sorts of folks not dedicated to the project of cre- create a “crack in the sidewalk” of southeastern ating a Ukrainian state. No wonder, as Herlihy Europe. Just three years after Odesa’s founding, recounts, hundreds of Ukrainian Cossacks a third of the city’s residents lived without ap- found a returned Catherine to be more offen- propriate legal documentation.15 sive than a monument to Bolshevik heroes. Catherine’s son, the Emperor Paul I (1796–1801), eagerly set out to dismantle much of Finding Charm in a Horrible what his mother had achieved, including Odessa. Town Paul dismissed de Ribas and de Voland, allow- Famed Odessa author Isaac Babel put it this way ing the city to languish until he was assassinated in 1916: “Odesa is a horrible town. It’s com- a few years later. In 1803, Catherine’s grandson mon knowledge.... And yet I feel that there are Tsar Alexander I (1801–25) named a 36-year-old quite a few good things one can say about this Frenchman who had fled the revolution in his important town, the most charming city of the own country—the duc de Richelieu, a great- Russian Empire. If you think about it, it is a nephew of the famed cardinal—to preside over town in which you can live free and easy.”19 the increasingly rambunctious frontier town in A place in between where, to pursue Walker the far southwestern reaches of his empire.16 Percy’s metaphor, residents can seek the protec-

38 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 tion of the crack in the sidewalk while mosey- a world-acclaimed school of classical violin, and ing out from time to time to meet people unlike host to wildly popular vaudeville halls. Both cit- themselves. Doing so, however, required street ies share jazz in a manner of fashion, with many smarts and a lesson or two in the School of Hard popular Jewish jazzmen in the United States— Knocks, as we learned from Brian Horowitz in such as Ted Louis, Arte Shaw, and Vernon his essay in the present volume. Duke—and Soviet jazz icon Leonid Utesov hav- More significantly for our purposes, ing ties of one sort or another to Odesa’s ver- Horowitz describes the struggle between na- sion of Storyville, the (in)famous Jewish district tionalists and integrationists within the Odessa of Moldovanka.22 Both were cities that gloried Jewish community of a century ago. These in the carnivalesque; both are the sorts of towns battles share some of the underlying tensions that, in the words of Vladimir Jabotinsky, “cre- found in Clark’s New Orleans and Herlihy’s ate their own type of people.”23 21st-century Odesa. In all three cases, battles between two groups get played out on a num- Urbanity as a Verb, not a Noun ber of fronts, including, but not limited to, the Odesa’s characters populate the pages of writ- nature of philanthropic activities in the com- ers who drew on the city for inspiration. If munity and the nature of education, especially New Orleans has inspired such writers as Sher- language education. wood Anderson, George Washington Cable, In the end, after considerable conflict, Truman Capote, Kate Chopin, Zora Neale Horowitz’s Jewish integrationists won out on Hurston, Walker Percy, William Faulkner, a number of issues. Their victory is important Tennessee Williams, and Anne Rice, Odesa for Odesa’s continuing ability to function as provided the raw material for the likes of a “crack in the sidewalk,” a place of diversity Sholem Aleichem, Isaac Babel, Ivan Bunin, under the umbrella of a compelling local vision Aleksandr Kuprin, Yuri Olesha, Valentine (if not ideology). While Horowitz doesn’t even Katayev, and the incomparable Soviet sati- attempt to draw causal arrows between these rists Il’ya Il’f (Il’ya Fainzilberg) and Yevgeny outcomes and the local Odesa environment, Petrov (Valentine Katayev’s younger brother it is fair to note that nationalists won similar Yevgeny). Il’f and Petrov’s legendary con man battles elsewhere at this time in Jewish commu- Ostap Bender personifies the contradictions so nities under even less pressure than was being important for creating urbane diversity out of exerted in Odesa. in-between urban spaces and places. Bender Like New Orleans, Odesa had become a cos- in particular reveals how sweet the smell of mopolitan city, and more; it remained a place his hometown’s often noxious atmosphere can where different people could “sniff the air” to- be—and how indispensable local contradic- gether. Like New Orleans, Odesa was a place tions can become to the creation of urbane of communal violence as well as embrace, with diversity—when residents “mosey out now anti-Jewish pogroms every bit as fierce as anti- and then and sniff the air.” African race riots an ocean away.20 Like New The loveable rapscallion and con man Bender Orleans, Odesa had become a town in which came to symbolize the fast and loose entrepre- a large minority population—of African heri- neurs unleashed by Lenin’s New Economic tage in New Orleans and of Jewish heritage in Policy (NEP) of the 1920s. Lenin took “one step Odesa—defined much of the tenor of the town. back” toward capitalism by relegalizing small (A third of Odessa’s population claimed Yiddish trade, after having taken “two steps forward” as its native language a century after the city’s during the Bolshevik Revolution. Small-scale founding).21 merchants who seemed to believe in the adage As in New Orleans, an undertone of illicit “Buyer beware!” flooded Russian cities. Il’f and enterprise bound diverse populations together Petrov, drawing on characters from their native in Odesa, with eyes cast askance at various pur- Odesa, invented the prototypical “NEPman” in veyors of stricter moral codes who would pe- the form of Bender—a figment of their imagi- riodically descend to rectify moral incertitude. nations that was quickly absorbed into Soviet Like New Orleans, Odesa had become a town lore, even shaping the work of the American of music: a lover of grand Italian opera, home to filmmaker Mel Brooks. Bender would have

New Orleans and Odesa: The Spaces in Between as a Source of Urbane Diversity 39 made the perfect partner for Max Bialystock in homogenization of that which is heteroge- Brooks’s The Producers. neous in an effort to “save” it for modernity. Il’f and Petrov place their adorable scamp New Orleans and Odesa remain places in at the heart of their two most famous romps between in full rebellion against the world across NEP Russia, the novel The Twelve around them. One considerable lesson of New Chairs, which appeared in 1928, and The Little Orleans and Odesa, alas, may prove to be the Golden Calf, which followed in 1931. Bender’s incompatibility of the up-to-date with the pursuit of comically obtained wealth took him urbanely tolerant. to the far corners of the Soviet Union. But no We can see that these great cities are under matter where he tried his latest con, Bender threat right now. In all of the discussions about was very much a product of Odesa. This be- how to rebuild New Orleans, much of the de- comes obvious in the hyperbolic description bate has been about everything but urbanity of his own lineage toward the close of The and even tolerance. Odesa now finds itself in Twelve Chairs. a state that is busy creating itself, demanding Bender finds himself on a riverboat float- accommodation of a new national project that, ing down the Volga past the Chuvash city of as is the case with all nation-building exercises, Cheboksary after having spent hundreds of is inimical to the quirky rebellion against ho- pages in an unsuccessful search for a miss- mogeneity the city has stood for throughout its ing chair (1 from a set of 12) that has hidden history. This profound rejection of homogene- within it the jewels of a deceased lady of means. ity stands as close to the heart of the challenges Explaining that no one will miss him when he discussed by Patricia Herlihy as language, eth- is dead, Bender conjures up his gravestone: nicity, or religion. Perhaps the primary struggle is over lan- Here lies the unknown central-heating en- guage, and, as in the Jewish community dis- gineer and conqueror, Ostap-Suleiman- cussed by Brian Horowitz, Odesa’s urbanity is Bertha-Maria Bender Bey, whose father was under challenge by those who wish to impose a Turkish citizen who died without leaving order from the outside in the name of nation his son, Ostap-Suleiman, a cent. The de- building. Is language choice dictated from ceased’s mother was a countess of indepen- above? Or is it, as Laada Bilaniuk suggests, dent means.24 something that becomes a choice within the context of a specific situation?25 Is language Such a ridiculous lineage does not seem to be a “noun,” an unchangeable object? Or a quite as silly within the context of Odesa, a city more fluid “verb” that can alter itself over time that was in reality a “crack in the sidewalk” be- and place and circumstance? Odesa, as Herlihy tween all of the worlds implied by the names knows better than anyone, has always been a Ostap, Suleiman, Bertha, Maria, Bender, and “verb,” an action—not a “noun,” an object. Bey. As Il’f and Petrov knew well, one could The same can be said of New Orleans, at least encounter deceased countesses of independent prior to Katrina, as is apparent in Clark’s ac- means on the streets of Odesa as well. count of the city. Given the difficult recent New Orleans and Odesa have remained rari- histories of both cities, one has to ask whether ties throughout much of their histories. They the same observations will be made about both are towns infused with moral skepticism and cities in the 21st century. Might the final para- tolerance for the various ambiguities and pec- graph in the next edition of this collection be cadilloes of life—generators of unique urban that both cities have become more representa- cultures that embrace diversity. They do this tive of their countries than not? with style and panache; they are simultaneously “urban” and “urbane.” The Interstices of a The special achievements of both New Polite World Orleans and Odesa often have been be- Perhaps the writers of both cities provide the sieged, given their status as cities standing answer to that question. If so, one need not de- in opposition to much of the modern world. spair about either New Orleans or Odesa being Lurking behind each facade is the threat of domesticated anytime soon.

40 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 John Kennedy Toole’s bilious, larger-than- to embrace pluralism. New Orleans and Odesa life hero (a figment of New Orleans imagina- have offered an alternative vision for a 21st cen- tion every bit as memorable as Ostap Bender) tury overwhelmed by division, hatred, conflict, Ignatius P. Riley flies into one of his recurring and gated communities. One hopes that these expansive rages as he encounters what would cities both will be able to find ways of continu- now would be recognized, some four decades ing to bring that vision to reality as they face later, as “gentrification.” As Ignatius approaches unimaginable challenges in the years ahead. a preciously renovated 18th-century town- house, Toole takes us yet again into his cre- Endnotes ation’s tortured soul: 1. Pep Subirós, “Barcelona: Cultural Strategies and Urban Renewal, 1979–1997,” in John The hand of the professional decorator had J. Czaplicka and Blair A. Ruble, eds., exorcized whatever ghosts of the French Composing Urban History and the Constitution bourgeoisie might still haunt the thick brick of Civic Identities (Washington, DC/ walls of the building. The exterior was Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center and painted canary yellow; the gas jets in the Johns Hopkins University Presses, 2003), reproduction brass lanterns mounted on ei- 291–320. ther side of the carriageway flickered softly, 2. Walker Percy, “Why I Live Where I Live,” their amber flames rippling in reflection on in Walker Percy (Patrick Samway, ed.), the black enamel of the gate and shutters. Signposts in a Strange Land (New York: On the flagstone paving beneath both lan- Picador, 1991), 3–9: 3. terns there were old plantation pots in which 3. Ibid., 6. Spanish daggers grew and extended their 4. Walker Percy, “New Orleans Mon Amour,” sharply pointed stilettos. in Walker Percy (Patrick Samway, ed.), Ignatius stood before the building re- Signposts in a Strange Land, 10–22: 10. garding it with extreme distaste. His blue 5. Ibid., 10–11. and yellow eyes denounced the resplendent 6. Ibid., 11–12. facade. His nose rebelled against the very 7. Ibid., 14. noticeable odor of fresh enamel.26 8. Lafcadio Hearn, “The City of the South,” in S. Frederick Starr, ed., Inventing New Ostap Bender and Ignatius P. Riley live in Orleans: Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Jackson, the interstices of a polite world, moseying out MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2001), now and again to breathe a profound human- 13–18: 16. ity into their hometowns. Like Walker Percy’s 9. S. Frederick Starr, “Introduction: The cracks in the sidewalks, the spaces in between Man Who Invented New Orleans,” in S. that they inhabit provide the opportunity for Frederick Starr, ed., Inventing New Orleans: brilliance. Real-life New Orleans and Odesa Writings of Lafcadio Hearn (Jackson, MS: have long revealed the potential for social ge- University Press of Mississippi, 2001), nius reflected in the imaginary Bender and xi–xxvii: xii. Riley. They have urged us to look beyond the 10. “Aids, Education and the Year 2000,” orderly, the conventionally beautiful, and the Women’s Own, 3 October 1987, 8–10. well kept for urbane openings to tolerance. 11. Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History The histories, literature, music, and cul- 1794–1914 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard tures of New Orleans and Odesa have dem- Ukrainian Research Institute/Harvard onstrated that cities can achieve the lofty goals University Press, 1986), 14. For a enumerated by Barcelona’s Pep Subirós. Cities discussion of Odesa’s architectural style are capable of simultaneously accepting differ- over its first century, see Patricia Herlihy, ence and creating shared points of reference. “Commerce and Architecture in Odessa As Samuel Ramer, Patricia Herlihy, Brian in Late Imperial Russia,” in William Craft Horowitz, and Emily Clark demonstrate, local Brumfield, Boris V. Anan’ich, and Yuri legends, memories, and tellings of history can A. Petrov, eds., Commerce in Russian Urban go beyond opposing understandings of society Culture, 1861–1914 (Washington, DC/

New Orleans and Odesa: The Spaces in Between as a Source of Urbane Diversity 41 Baltimore: Woodrow Wilson Center and 21. Herlihy, Odessa, 242. Johns Hopkins University Presses, 2001), 22. S. Frederick Starr, “Jazz: Born in Odessa?” pp. 180–194. (unpublished). Indeed, Vernon Duke’s 12. Dmitri Shvidkovsky, The Empress and the “Some of These Days,” made popular by Architect: British Architecture and Gardens Benny Goodman, is the popular Odesa at the Court of Catherine the Great (New tune “Farewell, Farewell, Odessa Mama” Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). (“Proshchai, Proshchai, Odessa Mama!”). 13. Herlihy, Odessa, 6–7. 23. Vladimir Jabotinsky, “Memoirs by My 14. Ibid., 15. Typewriter,” in Lucy S. Dawidowicz, 15. Ibid. ed., The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and 16. Ibid., 21–48. Thought in Eastern Europe (Syracuse, NY: 17. Ibid., 23–34. Syracuse University Press, 1996), 397. 18. Ibid., 46–48. 24. Il’ia Il’f and Evgenii Petrov, The Twelve 19. Isaac Babel, “Odessa,” in Nathalie Babel, Chairs (John H. C. Richardson, trans.; ed., The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (Peter New York: Random House, 1961), Constantine, trans., with notes; New York: 339–340. W. W. Norton, 2002), 75–79: 75. 25. Laada Bilaniuk, “Language Politics in 20. Oleg Gubar and Alexander Rozenboim, Ukrainian Popular Culture,” [Event “Daily Life in Odessa” [Antonina W. Summary], Kennan Institute, April 16, Bouis, trans.], in Nicolas V. Iljine, ed., 2007, www.wilsoncenter.org/kennan Odessa Memories (Seattle: University of 26. John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Washington Press, 2003), 49–122: 71–76. Dunces (New York: Grove Press, 1987), 309.

42 Kennan Institute Occasional Paper #301 Place, Identity, and Urban Culture: Odesa and New Orleans

Edited by Samuel C. Ramer and Blair A. Ruble