The image of today’s Odesa is a product of the variety of ethnic, social
and professional groups you wouldn’t have seen often elsewhere in Ukraine:
Ukrainian writers and Italian architects, Ukrainian chumaks, the old-time salt
traders, and Jewish merchants, Ukrainian sailors and French designers,
Ukrainian Cossacks and Russian officials, Ukrainian scholars and Polish
revolutionaries, Ukrainian students and Greek entrepreneurs, as well as
profiteers, port coachmen and policemen with no distinct ethnic origin. One
thing they all had in common was freedom of spirit, ideas and actions.
“In a
peasant guy, a sea captain, a university professor, one suddenly recognized a
Cossack from the free Zaporizhian Sich[1] - a
mix of adventurism, humor, strength and poetry,” Lev Slavin, an Odesa-born
writer, described the locals in the early 20th century. In the
19th century, priests recorded mentions of legendary Cossack,
including Maksym Zalizniak, Ivan Honta and Sava Chalyi, and of the most recent
feats of Zaporizhian Cossacks, from people who lived in villages around Odesa.
The Cossacks, in addition to their own customs and glorious past, brought to
Odesa tolerance for other peoples with which they shared a common history.
Zamfir Arbore, a Bukovinian-born Romanian ethnographer, offers one proof to
that in the line of a song he recorded locally: “When the Wallachians[2] came
to us, they were all good. They joined the Cossacks and became brothers to us.”
The rule of
khans
History of a
settlement usually starts with the first written record of it. According to
this principle, Odesa’s birthyear is 1415, the year of the first ever recorded
mentions of Kachybei (otherwise known as Kochubei or Khadzhybei) port, the name
of the settlement where Odesa later developed. “When ambassadors from the
Patriarch and Greek Emperor arrived in Poland to visit King Władysław with a
letter and tin bullas indicating their status, and the Turks were tantalizing
and oppressing them in every manner possible, they needed generous assistance
with grain. Władysław, the Polish king, in his holy compassion, signs a
document committing himself to providing that assistance. He gives and
generously presents the requested amount of grain that they need to take from
his royal Koczubejiv port,” Jan Długosz, a 15th-century Polish
chronicler, mentioned the predecessor of Odesa in his fundamental Historia
Polonica, The History of Poland.
Most
historians suggest that Kachybei was originally founded by Prince Vytautas, a
famous ruler of the medieval Lithuania. Under the Lithaunian-Rus Commonwealth,
a federation of semi-independent princedoms that emerged in the 14th century
and existed for nearly two centuries, Kachybei city and the settlements around
it were politically and economically integrated with the rest of the Ukrainian
territory. In the official treaties of 1431 between the rival candidates for
the Lithuanian throne, Kachybei and Dashkiv (today’s Ochakiv, a city near Odesa
known for its castle) were specifically recorded as “castles of Podilia”, a
historical Ukrainian region in the south-west.
The
territory around Khadzhybei fortress was known elsewhere as the Kochubei
Tataria or the Khanate Ukraine. The farmers, most of them Ukrainians, who moved
there from the adjacent territories, gave a tithe of their harvest to the Tatar
rulers. Surprisingly, Ukrainian peasants found life in the Khanate Ukraine
easier than under the Polish lords. Quite a few of them were Cossacks, and more
settled down along the Black Sea coast. In his report for the Russian
government dating May 12, 1747, a Zaporizhian Sich otaman wrote that many
Cossacks were “trading various goods” on the Turkish territories, traveling for
salt, hunting, and brewing spirits, some of them living in the lands stretching
as far as the Black Sea. Officially, these Cossacks were serving in the tsar’s
army. Some, however, grew weary of the Russian rule and fled to the endless
Black Sea steppes for good.
Eventually, many settled down in the suburbs of
Khadzhybei and the villages around it, living on hunting, gardening and
farming. The most intense phase of the resettlement began after Catherine the
Great demolished Zaporizhian Sich in 1775. Many Cossack-style stone crosses
scattered around the villages and steppes near Odesa serve as a proof of this
mass migration to this today.In the 1450s, the powerful Ottoman Empire and its
vassal state, the Crimean Khanate, conquered Kachybei along with the rest of
the adjacent Black Sea coast. The new masters changed the city name into a more
Turkic-sounding Khadzhybei although it was further mentioned as Kachybei,
Kuchubei, Kudzhabei and the like in documents up until the 1750s. Later, it was
renamed into Yeni Dunya, the new world in Turkic languages.
Khadzhybei
was annexed to the Russian Empire after the 1787-1791 Russo-Turkish War thanks
to the numerous battles fought by the Black Sea Cossacks, the ex-Zaporizhian
warriors, against the Tatars. On September 14, 1789, the city was stormed by
just two batteries of the Regular Russian army and six regiments of the Black
Sea Cossacks led by otaman Zakhariy Chepiha and military judge Anton Holovatyi.
Catherine,
not so great
It is hard
to find a person in Odesa or elsewhere who does not know about the great legacy
of Catherine the Great in Odesa. The Russian empress is widely appreciated as
the founder and benefactor of Odesa, one of the first people who ever saw the
city as the future center of the region and paved a path to its thriving.
It is hardly
known who came up with the name Odesa first. According to one version, poorly
remembered today but confirmed documentarily, the author is Andrian Hrybovskyi,
Catherine’s confidante. “Newspapers write that the emperor was pleased to see
Odesa founded upon the instruction of Prince Zubov. I played an important role
in this: I wrote the decree about the creation of this city and named this
place Odesa instead of Khadzhybei, a name the empress approved as well,” he
wrote in his memoires in 1828.
According to
Hrybovskyi, it was him that came up with the name Odesa. This version may seem
questionable. However, pre-revolution historians regarded Andrian Hrybovskyi as
an honest and humble man who retained sharp memory until the end of his life.
Also, he did not intend his memoires to be published, and he was Catherine’s
state secretary, so he was actually in charge of compiling decrees and dealing
with city renaming issues. Andrian Hrybovskyi was born on August 26, 1767, in
the village of Lubny, Poltava Oblast. His paternal and maternal ancestors were
from noble Cossack families.
Almost all
“new cities” built by the Russian tsars are on the spots where older
settlements already stood. One of the examples is the Ukrainian settlement
Polovytsia that turned into Katerynoslav, today’s Dnipropetrovsk. The building
of new cities ate up huge sums of the empire money. It also took hundreds of
soldiers’ lives. In 1787, for instance, 12 regiments were involved in the
building of Katerynoslav and some pre-revolution authors gave shocking rates of
deaths at construction sites.
By the time
intense building began in it, Odesa was home to 400 or 450 Black Sea Cossacks
with their families, or almost 10% of the city’s population, so it was mostly
them who were involved in the construction. Numerous accounts of their deaths
and what caused them are available these days: “crushed!!!”, “killed!!!”,
“killed by a stone slab”. Building a city was not easy, and the process
involved various ethnic and social groups.
In the end,
however, all this hard work often proved futile. Most cities built at such high
cost disappeared in the early 19thcentury altogether, or were barely
surviving. Only a handful developed properly. At this background, the turbulent
development of Odesa in the early 19th century seemed to be a
miracle. “This was the way Catherine built any city – ours was an exception to
the rule,” Volodymyr Yakovlev, historian and head of the Odesa Society of
History and Antiquities, wrote in the late 19th century.
“Notably, the revival of Khadzhybei was of little important to her in
comparison to, say, Katerynoslav, Kherson, Voznesensk… The city (Odesa – Ed.)
earned itself its primary role in the south with its own life, its own trade.”
Finding its
own path
In fact,
Khadzybei was never among the cities favored by Catherine the Great. A fortress
surrounded by a small Greek settlement in the middle of one of Russia’s gubernias was
the future foreseen for it by the Russian officials. Its convenience as a trade
center revealed itself slowly and naturally, and the Russian government
realized the importance of its location only after Duc de Richelieu became
mayor. He took charge of Odesa in 1803, seven years after Catherine the Great
died. Perhaps, Catherine saw Odesa as an important seaport, not a center of the gubernia or
the region. But she allocated little funding to the building of the port in
Khadzhybei, compared to the sums channeled to the Mykolayiv, Kherson and other
seaports. The empress often mentioned
“Khadzybei’s convenient location” in her
decrees, and this compliment is often quoted today to prove the importance of
the city to the Russian ruler. However, historian Volodymyr Yakovlev explained
that these were merely clichés used in the then administrative language for
all, even less promising settlements. Catherine exempted Odesa from taxes and
the obligation to quarter troops for five years, and allowed wine trade there.
On the other hand, similar privileges were enjoyed by all “new” cities, yet
they hardly thrived as a result. In fact, it took Odesa a decade to get greater
privileges that other, more important cities already had under
Catherine.
Apparently,
Odesa turned into the capital of Southern Ukraine contrary to the wishes and
plans of Catherine the Great, not as a result of them. The empress herself
would probably be shocked to learn that she is seen as the greatest
“benefactor” of Odesa these days. What caused Odesa’s turbulent development in
the early 19th century then? In fact, it was no secret to
either historians or dwellers of Odesa at the time. Back in 1791, a French
traveler who visited Southern Ukraine wrote that “enough bread to feed the
entire Europe is rotting in Podillia and Volyn”. He mentioned many other foods
that had then been popular in the West. When the Right and the Left Bank
Ukraine united under the rule of the Russian Empire, the Black Sea ports became
the shortest path for Ukrainian grain to reach Europe. Khadzhybei turned out to
be the most convenient of all.
Unlike
Russian officials, the merchants demanded immediate repair of the local quay
and construction of the port. They found allies in the government. Platon
Zubov, General Governor and another confidante of the empress, supported the
idea to build the seaport in Khadzhybei, probably seeking a benefit for
himself. He signed a request to Catherine the Great to provide the necessary
funding. She did not reject the idea but allocated only part of the sum needed
immediately. As a result, the seaport construction was only completed under Duc
de Richelieu. Until then, “the sailors were reluctant to enter the seaport
lacking a reliable shelter from a storm.” Moreover, both Catherine the Great,
and her successor, Paul I, restricted grain exports from Odesa for fear of poor
harvests – or so they explained this. All this hampered rather than facilitated
the city development.
Abundant
trade compensated for the lack of goodwill from the tsars. Thanks to the
exports of Ukrainian and partly Moldovan grain, Odesa hit many records of
economic and demographic growth by the standards of the 19th century.
In its golden years, grain exports constituted the biggest part of trade at
Odesa seaport.
Hardly any
historian researching Odesa before the October Revolution did not point it out.
However, almost all of their stories began with glorification of Catherine the
Great as the “founder” in an attempt to fit into the imperial framework of the
time. Similarly, Soviet historians first paid due allegiance to the Communist
environment, then wrote what they really knew about Odesa’s history.
Meanwhile,
it was Ukrainian Cossacks who liberated Khadzybei that later became Odesa, and
the surrounding land, from the Ottoman rule. It was the descendants of the
Black Sea and Zaporizhian Cossacks who were building and developing Odesa
starting from the late 18th century. It was Ukrainian farmers
who worked hard to provide Odesa’s enormous growth in the first half of the 19th century,
making it the wealthiest city in Ukraine. Why, then, regard the empress who
crushed old freedoms of the Cossacks, dooming them to exile and miseries and
Ukrainian peasants – to serfdom, as the founder and benefactor of Odesa.
The golden
years
When
Catherine’s son, Paul I of Russia, lifted restrictions on grain exports, Odesa
saw enormous economic growth that surprised the entire Europe. By the end of
the 1820s, the exports of Ukrainian and partly Moldavian grain made Odesa the
first and the fourth most populated city in Ukraine and the Russian Empire
respectively, outnumbered by St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw. “Grain controls
Odesa” went a 19th-century local saying. Grain was delivered bychumaks from
all over Ukraine. In good years, the carts heading to Odesa counted hundreds of
thousands, sometimes millions.
The common
population of Odesa grew as peasants from adjacent Ukrainian territories moved
in. This could not but affect the language. In 1842, Professor Kostiantyn
Zelenetskyi wrote in Odesa Newsletter that the “Great
Russians” who came to Odesa instantly noted the peculiar local dialect,
including different accents in words that were typical for Ukrainian rather
than Russian; a multitude of “Little Russian” words; “Galician” structures in
sentences; and different pronunciation of many letters and verbs – Professor
Zelenetskyi explained that these were all borrowed “from Ukraine”. According to
him, native speakers of this “incorrect language” were the indigenous
population, as well as “many Great Russians who, as they mingled with Little
Russians, took over many phrases, although they guarded their nationality.”
This was the birth of the “Odesa language”, a mix of Russian and Ukrainian.
Odesa
elites, including officials, landlords and intelligentsia, too, felt vibrant
connection with the rest of Ukrainian terrain. Many stemmed from old noble and
free Cossack families, and were graduates of Kharkiv and Kyiv universities.
Hence the proactive role Odesa later played in the national liberation movement
of Ukrainian culture and politics. Fundamental volumes on the history of
Zaporizhian Sich by Apollon Skalkovskyi were written and published in Odesa in
the 1830-1880s. Ukrainian community in Odesa led by Leonid Smolenskyi was among
the most powerful and well-organized in the late 19th century.
Odesa-based Prosvita, the educational initiative, emerged in 1905 to become one
of the earliest and the largest of the kind in the Russian-ruled Ukraine. A
number of outstanding figures in Ukrainian National Revolution of 1917-1921
were born and educated in Odesa. In January 1918, the most violent battles
between the Ukrainian haydamaky and the Red Guards took place
in Odesa (120 fallen participants were buried in a common grave at Kulikovo
Pole, the arena of the May 2, 2014 tragedy).
History
seems to be repeating today. Despite the long-standing and determined attempts
of Russian imperialistic forces, Odesa once again unexpectedly shows its
Ukrainian face. This is hardly surprising: despite its somewhat foreignness,
something not unusual in a seaport city, it has for centuries remained
primarily Ukrainian. Geopolitically and historically, it is a link
between Ukraine and the Western world, a city that is Ukrainian and European at
the same time.
[1] Zaporizhian
Sich was the stronghold of the Cossacks and their state. Located in today’s
Zaporizhia Oblast, it was organized as a free military state, a bulwark against
Tatar attacks, and a shelter for peasants who fled the oppressive rule of the
ruling class elsewhere in Ukraine
[2] Wallachia
is a historical and geographical region of Romania. At different periods, it
had been under the Hungarian, Ottoman and Russian rule
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