Table Of Content

This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:24:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions KALEIDOSCOPIC ODESSA: HISTORY AND PLACE IN CONTEMPORARY UKRAINE Ukraine’s ‘Orange Revolution’ and its aftermath exposed some of the deep political, social, and cultural rifts running through the former Soviet republic. This book explores the intersection of these divisions in Odessa, a Black Sea port in Ukraine that was once the Russian Empire’s southern window to Europe. Odessans view their city as a cosmopoli tan place with close ties to Russia and the world despite the state’s attempt to generate feelings of national belonging. Odessans’ sense of place is cultivated in various urban spaces through the narration of his tories that are both intimate and official, imperial and local, traumatic and nostalgic. In illuminating the interplay of history with competing senses of place and nation in Odessa, this study shows how nation building policies interact with the legacies and memories of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Exploring the tensions between local and national identities in a post Soviet setting from the point of view of everyday life, Tanya Rich ardson argues that Odessans’ sense of their distinctiveness is character istic of those living in borderland countries like Ukraine. At the same time she explores the many ways in which local conceptions of cosmo politanism shaped and preserved the city’s identity within a newly formed state. Drawing on the existing literature and her own direct observations and experiences in settings such as history classes, mar kets, and walking groups, Richardson presents a unique work of urban ethnography that is both analytically sophisticated and methodologi cally innovative. A fascinating and richly detailed study, Kaleidoscopic Odessa will be of interest to anthropologists, Slavicists, sociologists, his torians, urban planners, and general readers alike. (Anthropological Horizons) tanya richardson is an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Wilfrid Laurier University. This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:24:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ANTHROPOLOGICAL HORIZONS Editor: Michael Lambek, University of Toronto This series, begun in 1991, focuses on theoretically informed ethno graphic works addressing issues of mind and body, knowledge and power, equality and inequality, the individual and the collective. Inter disciplinary in its perspective, the series makes a unique contribution in several other academic disciplines: women’s studies, history, philos ophy, psychology, political science, and sociology. For a list of the books published in this series see page 281. This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:24:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Kaleidoscopic Odessa: History and Place in Contemporary Ukraine Tanya Richardson UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO PRESS Toronto Buffalo London This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:24:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2008 Toronto Buffalo London www.utppublishing.com Printed in Canada ISBN 978 0 8020 9837 5 (cloth) ISBN 978 0 8020 9563 3 (paper) Printed on acid free paper Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication Richardson, Tanya Kaleidoscopic Odessa : history and place in contemporary Ukraine / Tanya Richardson. (Anthropological horizons) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978 0 8020 9837 5 (bound). ISBN 978 0 8020 9563 3 (pbk.) 1. Odesa (Ukraine) – History. 2. Odesa (Ukraine) – Social conditions. 3. Sociology, Urban – Ukraine – Odesa. I. Title. II. Series. DK508.95.O33R43 2008 947.7(cid:99)2 C2008 902850 3 This book has been published with the help of a grant from the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, through the Aid to Scholarly Publications Programme, using funds provided by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council. University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial support for its publishing activities of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP). This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:24:50 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgments ix Note on Transliteration and Translation xiii 1. Kaleidoscopic Odessa 3 On the Edges and Afterlives of Empires 6 A Cosmopolitan Place 15 Kaleidoscopic History 21 History in an Eastern European Borderland 24 From Textbooks to Talking Streets 33 2. Uncertain Subjects: Youth, History, and Nation 40 Lessons in History 43 Home Truths 53 On Knowing History: The Holocaust 61 Talking History, Talking Politics 66 3. Living History and the Afterlives of States 74 Remembered Lives, Remembered History 77 ‘Everyone had their own war’: Remembering the Second World War in Odessa 93 4. On Odessa’s Kolorit and the Place(s) of Moldovanka 106 History in Place 109 Moldovanka at the Margins and the Centre 111 This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:35:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions vi Contents Courtyards and Markets as Places of Kolorit 119 Touring Moldovanka and the Performativity of Place 134 5. Walking Streets, Talking History: The Making of Odessa 139 The My Odessa Club 142 Walking the Streets of Old Odessa 143 Mapping History, Making Place 148 Disputing History 154 Odessa as Courtyard 157 Transforming Cityscape, Transforming Society 164 Walking the City, Making the Self 166 6. Between Cosmopolitan and Provincial: Spaces of History and the Place of Odes(s)a 171 Spaces of History 173 The Odessa Literature Museum 176 A Jewish Capital in a Provincial Town 188 Ukrainian History in a ‘Non Ukrainian City’ 197 Epilogue 207 Notes 221 Bibliography 241 Index 263 This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:35:29 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Illustrations 1 Map of Odessa, 1915 (Skinner 1986) xiv 2 The Odessa Opera Theatre 12 3 Primorskii Boulevard 13 4 Map of the expansion of the Russian Empire in the late eighteenth century (Subtelny 1991) 26 5 Courtyard at the corner of Malaia Arnautskaia and Utesev Streets 121 6 Courtyard on Balkovskaia Street near Dalnitskaia Street 122 7 Street vendors at the Old Horse Market on Petropavlovskaia Street 130 8 Street vendors on Rizovskaia Street 131 9 Valery Netrebsky and the My Odessa club in a courtyard on Ste povaia Street 145 10 Participants examine a pre revolutionary roof tile made in Marseille 153 11 The original Balkovskaia Street 158 12 The courtyard at 133 Balkovskaia Street 159 13 The My Odessa club in a courtyard on Bogdanov Street 161 14 Members of the My Odessa club speak with a local resident on Stepovaia Street 162 This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:44:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions viii Illustrations 15 Entrance hall in the Odessa Literature Museum (photo by Georgy Isaev) 181 16 Room dedicated to the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth centuries in the Odessa Literature Museum (photo by Georgy Isaev) 183 17 Display dedicated to the works of Isaac Babel and Konstantin Paustovsky (photo by Georgy Isaev) 186 This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:44:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Acknowledgments It is a great pleasure to be able to acknowledge the contributions of many people and institutions to the making of this book. My deepest gratitude goes to the numerous Odessans who generously shared their knowledge, stories, and sense of place with me with characteristic warmth and wit. I thank Professor Emma Gansova for her friendship, intellectual engagement, and tireless efforts to ensure the smooth progress of my research. Anna Misiuk, Mark Naidorf, Taras Maksy miuk, Valery Netrebsky, Tatiana Dontsova, and Albert Malinovsky all spent many, many hours sharing not only their knowledge of Odessa’s histories and contemporary transformations, but also, more impor tantly, how to learn about them. I am profoundly grateful to Leonid Kinoshever, Mikhail Kordonsky, Roman Kremen, Tatiana Rybnikova, Vladimir Chaplin, Mikhail and Olga Kozorovitsky, Vladimir Mikhail enko, and Nina Cherniavskaia for conversations and introductions that opened up new paths of research. Special thanks must go to the direc tor, teachers, and students of the school in Tairova that I attended year long for their patience in dealing with the puzzling presence of an eth nographer. Support from a number of institutions enabled me to undertake and write up the research for this book. I was awarded doctoral fellowships from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, and Lucy Cavendish College. The Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain, the William Wyse Fund, and Lucy Cavendish College provided additional fieldwork funding. The Institute for Civic Education at Kyiv Mohyla Academy and the Institute of Social Sciences at the Odessa National University offered me institutional bases while I was in Ukraine. A postdoctoral This content downloaded from 155.69.24.171 on Tue, 20 Oct 2015 22:55:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions