Tanya Richartbwn, Cambridge University, UK Sq an on a Late Fall Day in 2002, Alexandra, a Relations" (Massey 1994: 155)
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wh THE PLACE(S) OF MOLDOV ANKA IN THE MAKING OF ODESSA cu' Tanya Richartbwn, Cambridge University, UK Sq an On a late fall day in 2002, Alexandra, a relations" (Massey 1994: 155). Three elements are ou lawyer in her late forties of mixed German, Polish interwoven in the concept of place: locale, the ce and Russian ancestry. was showing me the settings in which social relations are constituted; ar courtyard where she used to live in Moldovanka. a location, the effects upon locales of social and in district in Ukraine's southern port city of Odessa. economic processes operating at wider scales; and 0 One building was crumbling. All the residents had sense of place, the local structure of feeling d moved away except two elderly women still (Agnew 1993: 263). Although Moldovanka waiting for the city authorities to provide them occupies an ambiguous place in the Odessan ( with a new flat. Most residents of the adjacent imaginary, I argue that its symbolic centrality can building (constructed in 1861) where Alexandra be attributed to its construction in, or relation to, 3 I had grown up had also moved out.' She reminisced high culture- most notably in Isaak Babel's about her Russian, Ukrainian, German, Jewish and Odessa Stories. Moldovanka is increasingly being Tatar neighbours and the positive and negative codified as a district in which it is possible to sense sides of courtyard life. Alexandra had taken on the "real Odessa" and witness its kolorit in places cases of Moldovankan clients whose roof caved in such as courtyards and the Starokonnoi Market. I to defend their rights to replacement housing. She suggest that the qualities idealized nowadays about commented: "Many of the buildings in the district such places- solidarity, kinship-like ties, tolerance should be torn down since they can't be restored of ethnic diversity. amicable conversational anyway. There are some plans. however, to make a exchanges- are partly a response to newly kind of park (zapovednik). After all, without emerging inequalities and cleavages, demographic Moldovanka, there would be no Odessan legend.'' changes as a result of out- and in-migration. The kolorit associated with the images and places in The notion of Odessa as a distinct place Moldovanka's is shared ard regenerated through captured with the phrase "Odessan legend" - the spatial practices of touring which mobilize prevails today despite radical political, economic historical and fictional events associated the and demographic ruptures in the 201h century that district's urban landscape. The production of transformed Odessa from the third most prominent Moldovanka becomes a prism for understanding city in the Russian Empire and a key node in Black not only how Odessans articulate their Sea trade routes, to a more marginal Soviet and distinctiveness vis a vis Ukraine and the world now Ukrainian sea port.~ The city is considered outside, but also how the interplay of local and "international," "multi-ethnic," "tolerant" and trans local historical processes (economic, social, often "Russian" and/or "Jewish" but "not literary) sediment in key images and practices of Ukrainian" by many residents and non-residents place. alike. Odessa's unique language and forms of sociality are often referred to as its kolorit, which History in Place can be glossed as colour, vibrancy, exuberance, or Moldovanka developed as a suburb exotic quality. Many Odessans attribute the beyond the 1824 boundary of Odessa's free port degradation and disappearance of the kolorit of boundary (Herlihy 1986: 273). Although some Odessa to being "cut off' from Russia as a result historians claim Moldovanka predates Odessa by of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainization about 30 years, others argue that it was settled policies,3 an imbalance between the outflow of after Odessa was founded. The former suggest that intellectuals and inflow of people from villages Moldovans who worked for the Ottomans in and small towns, and the emigration of Jews. building the fortress Yeni Dunia (New World) Drawing on fieldwork conducted in settled in the area in the late 1760s while the latter Odessa during 200 I /2002 and July 2005, this argue that a contingent of Moldovans, Greeks and article explores the production and reproduction of Albanians fleeing the Ottomans settled there Odessa's distinctiveness through the making of the between 1797 and 1802. At the beginning of the district Moldovanka as place. I treat place as a nineteenth century the territory that became process (Harvey 1993: 21 ), a historical production Moldovanka consisted of two settlements: the constituted by the interplay of the material, Bulgarian settlement Bulgarka, later called perceived and imagined (Lefebvre 1991 ), and Bugaevka; and Novaia Slobodka where "articulated moments in networks of social Moldovans were given relatively small plots on Vnl ?' No.2 Fall 2005. Page: 72 which they built village-style houses and reputation for criminality where new migrants cultivated vineyards and gardens. Mikhailovskaia flocked (Herlihy 1986; Sylvester 1996, 200 I). Square was the centre of the Moldovan settlement Although some factories were built in the district and the site of the first Orthodox church (1820) prior to the October revolution many more were outside the centre of the city as well as of a built afterwards. However, although Moldovanka cemetery. Located nearby were military barracks was a suburb at the edge of Odessa even as late as and country houses of the city's wealthy residents, the 1930s, nowadays, given that Odessa has including the dacha of Richelieu. In the first third expanded considerably to the north and south, of the 19th century Moldovanka emerged as the spatially it is a relatively central district. dominant settlement. Moldovanka at the Margin and the Centre Architects who designed buildings in Odessa's central district (such as Boffo, Torichelli, Isaak Babel's image ofMoldovanka as a and Dalakva) also played a role in planning poor, crime-ridden district with larger-than-life Moldovanka. If the 1835 general plan is compared characters often stands for all of Odessa- it is the with a contemporary map, it is evident that the symbolic centre of the Odessan Myth (Cukierman grid-like network of Moldovankan streets, squares 1980). The Odessan Myth refers to the history and and lanes has remained largely unchanged development of a constellation of images and ideas (Dontsova 200 I: 74 ). Once Moldovanka was about the distinctiveness of Odessa among cities of included in the general city plan. it had to have the Russian Empire primarily, though not "approved facades" which were the responsibility exclusively, in Russian-language texts (Naidorf of the city architects. Although the blueprints for 200 I: 329).4 Although symbolically central to the the homes of ordinary residents were neither myth, the district has been geographically, complex nor highly varied, a "comfortable district socially, and economically marginal in relation to with character was constructed" (ibid: 80). the centre of the city (Sylvester 1996, 200 I), much Churches, civic institutions and more cumbersome like the faubourgs in nineteenth-century French multi-flat buildings that appeared later on, blended cities (Merriman 1991). Dontsova's book about in with the existing single story dwellings without Moldovanka argues for the district's symbolic diminishing their value (ibid: 80). Thus, after 1835 centrality in the city on the basis of the existence the suburb gradually transformed from a of important cultural institutions and architectural conglomerate of village-like settlements that monuments. The polarities of centre and margin included a few large plots held by richer surface often in comments about Moldovanka. as landowners to a suburb more urban in form. with Alexandra, some of whom stress the mythical and some the mundane. As the 19th century progressed, the population became more multi-ethnic. Although A consideration ofthe complicated and Bulgarskaia Street was originally settled by inseparable relationships between "high" and Bulgarians in the 1830s, by the end of the century "low" culture, centre and periphery, the physical the street's residents comprised Jews, Ukrainians, body and geographical space opens up possibilities Russians, Poles, Germans, Greeks, and Roma. for interpreting the relationship images of There were many churches- including a catholic Moldovanka to its perceived status as socially and cathedral -of architectural interest in Moldovanka, economically marginal (Stallybrass and White most of which were blown up in the 1930s. By the 1986: 2). Marginality is a relational condition end of the nineteenth century, Jews made up a whose meaning shifts when viewed by individuals significant part of the district's population as can from inside and outside the margins (Day, et al. be seen by the presence of eleven prayer houses 1999). The social definition of marginal places and and the relocation of the Jewish Hospital (founded spaces is often closely related to the categorization in 180 I) to the district in the 1820s during a of objects, practices, ideas and social relationships cholera epidemic. Moldovanka, despite its as belonging to "low culture" (Shields 1991: 5). concentration of Jews. "was in no sense a ghetto The politics of the process of symbolic exclusion a district where Jews were legally obligated or depends on "positional superiority ... which puts willingly chose to reside" (Herlihy 1986: 274; see the High in a whole series of possible relationships also Klier 2002). with the Low without ever losing the upper hand" (in Stallybrass and White 1986: 5). This allows a By the end of the century, Moldovanka series of ambivalent representations and had transformed from a mixed district of dachas relationships to the "low" or the "marginal" and an and villagers to a poor neighbourhood with a interlocking interdependency of the "high" on the Vol. 23. No.2 Fall 2005, Page: 73 "low" as a result of which "the low-Other is of World War I Moldovanka was described as a despised and denied at the level of political "city of thieves" or "a city within a city" organization and social being whilst it is (Sylvester 200 I).