The Phenomenon OF ODESA

A phenomenon is an object of perception, when an idea is perceived somewhere between the mind and heart. The Odesa phenomenon is difficult to understand precisely because it is the result of a spatial and temporal combination of natural, geopolitical, and other elements of the multidimensional communications space. The creative bioenergy stemmed from magnetically impassioned individuals, “European liberalism,” multiethnic composition, the traditions of economic freedom and self- government, and, of course, the transit trade. The nostalgia for that “gem by the sea” (in the words of a once popular song about the city) is the boundary between the inner and now lost outer world of the free seaport. The absence of direct contact with the past that stays in one’s mind causes pain and a certain manner of conduct, including a risk-taking enterprising spirit. Reviving Odesa means regaining the spirit of a lost world via an impassioned nostalgia. This city of the sun, free winds, sea, and steppe is literally brimming with the spirit of freedom.

Odesa’s first city governor, French Duke Emmanuel Richelieu, described it as “the finest gem in the Russian crown.” It was born in the Russian geopolitical space, on the east-west and north-south communications axes. Odesa is unique in that it is situated on the edge of the Great Eurasian Steppe and the Mediterranean region, on the junction of the navigable rivers Dnipro, South Buh, Danube, and Dnister. A deep defined area of water favored rapid seaport construction, as Odesa would become the Russian Empire’s principal southern gateway to the sea.

With time, Odesa evolved into Russia’s third richest and best-planned city, after St. Petersburg and Moscow, a major hub of foreign trade on a par with ancient Palmyra and grain-export venue. Its self-government (as evidenced by the post of city governor) and free port status favored Odesa’s progress. Its golden age (in the first half of the nineteenth century) produced quite a few personalities, particularly the so-called marginal biculturalists, people representing two cultures.

Its borderland condition begot marginal sentiments accompanied by mental discomfort and activity of marginal social elements. The city’s 200-year-old history knows repeated outbursts of anti-Semitism and Odesa was one of the centers of the Narodnaya Volya terrorist movement (that assassinated Tsar Aleksandr II in 1867 —Ed.)and other revolutionary organizations; it would further contribute to both the Red and White terror. Soviet power in the city was exercised primarily by so-called groundless marginals.

Let us consider the role played by the geopolitical, geoeconomic, and social and cultural borderline factors involved in Odesa’s phenomenon. The status of the city was significantly influenced by the geopolitical situation in Eurasia. In the Black Sea region, geographically the most isolated part of the world ocean, cross the super-ethnic boundaries of war and peace. Here periods of confrontation were followed by complimentary development, intensive trade, and exchange of information.

In the early nineteenth century, the Russian Empire placed increasing emphasis on Black Sea trade, eventually centered in Odesa, which took over Crimean transit trade, as the peninsula had become Russia’s main naval base, this status lasting for two centuries. Thus the geopolitical and geoeconomic functions were delimited between the Crimea and Odesa.

Odesa’s geoeconomic position is unique. Here the Great Eurasian Steppe broadly advances toward the sea, cutting especially deeply into the continent. Odesa became Russia’s maritime gate to Europe, through which passed shipments grain, the gold of the steppe, as had been the case with Seville delivering gold from the New World. Trade growth and trends depended on the Mediterranean geopolitical situation. When British-Russian trade via Baltic seaports became impossible because of Napoleon’s Continental System and many European countries could no longer receive goods from the East, Odesa transit trade was a real salvation. The annexation of the Transcaucasus by Russia provided favorable conditions for the transit of goods from Central Europe via Odesa and on by sea to the Caucasian coast and to Iran.

The narrowness of the domestic market, the need to attract capital, and the absence of a merchant fleet determined the introduction of free port transactions. Actually, preferential treatment was effected in 1819. Odesa could now import goods duty free and sell them within a strictly demarcated area. Looking back at past experience, one can list a host of pros and cons concerning free port procedures. We will, however, single out the most essential aspects. Free port transactions were the prerequisite of Odesa’s prosperity, meaning a breakthrough to the civilized world of Europe and the beginning of the Russian Empire’s transition to an open economy and free enterprise.

After the Crimean War the geopolitical and geoeconomic situation in the region changed again, now deadlocked between the antagonistic Russian and Ottoman empires. With the independence of Moldavia and Wallachia, and after Romania proclaimed independence, a new gateway to the Black Sea formed, a railroad reaching as far as the Danubian port of Gala ь ti that also accommodated ships and was now becoming a leading grain trader on the Black Sea. Geopolitical transformations in the region and the absence of transport routes to Odesa led to a gradual stagnation of the city’s economy; capital was now flowing out and into Gala ь ti and Br Л ila. Strange as it may seem, Odesa’s golden age ended just as significant reforms were beginning in Russia. Yet the free port experience helped establish Russia’s customs treatment. The latter protected domestic business and the import of foreign capital. Among those standing by the cradle of the new Russian policy were Count Sergei Witte, graduate of Novorossiysk University [now Odesa State University], and prominent Russian scientist Dmitry Mendeleyev whose destiny was also associated with Odesa.

The city’s borderline communicativeness was due to a combination of intensive information exchanges (including interethnic transfer of hereditary information) reflected in the appearance and flourishing of talented reformers, businessmen, scientists, men of the arts, particularly literati and musicians. This outburst of talent was facilitated by personal liberty, social contract, as well as the city’s intense interethnic economic and information contacts. Thus appeared the Odesa subethnic community. Such marginal polyethnicity, given a degree of liberalism and economic freedom, provided qualitatively new intellectual opportunities for the development of the gene pool. The stronger the contacts between the ethnic groups and the broader the freedom of choice, the greater the likelihood of the appearance of not only physically attractive, but also gifted individuals Chronologically, the peak in Odesa’s giving birth to talent was in the late nineteenth century. Gone was the golden age of liberalism and economic freedom, which bears out the overall regularity of temporal dissonance between the social contract and the appearance of talent.

The Odesa phenomenon manifested itself in the city being open to different cultures, the complimentary coexistence of which helped each such culture flourish — primarily Russian, Jewish, and Ukrainian. It was a crossroads of Western European, Slavic, and Mediterranean- Pontic cultural-historical traditions. Odessa was multiethnic but mostly Russian-speaking. The path to the Russian language led through identification with Russian culture and its alleged precious quality of being open to the rest of the world.

Its borderline combination of personal liberty with economic and administrative privileges, particularly free port procedures and self-government (through the city governor) played an important role in Odesa’s past. The town wielded gubernatorial authority in full and took orders only from the ministries of finance and internal affairs; in the judicial domain, he was accountable to the prosecutor general. Without doubt, Odesa was a star among the islands of self-government in the Russian Empire.

Under the Soviets the city was deprived of all these rights and reduced to the status of an ordinary provincial center. The command economy and party control at all levels attached the greatest importance to production, not man. Local authorities considered running collective farms the highest priority. The city’s administrative rank and large production facilities in its territory had the crucial impact on its socioeconomic development. Thus, Kharkiv was Ukraine’s largest venue for machine- building venue as were Donetsk for the coal industry and Dnipropetrovsk for ferrous metallurgy. Prior to the devastating 1990s, Odesa’s Black Sea Steamship Company was a thriving undertaking, yet its influence in solving the city’s socioeconomic problems was limited. In the recent past, export transport revenues settled in Moscow’s purse. Odesa is among the cities that suffered the worst from the Soviet command system. The groundless marginals wielding local authority strove to erase the city’s freedom-loving past and distinguished reform oriented personalities from people’s memories. It was then that the greatest exodus of talent in the city’s and nation’s history took place.

Post-Soviet Odesa inherited the critical condition of the urban environment. Its life is now marked by chronic budget shortages, thriving shadow economy, soaring crime and concealed unemployment rates, disheartening demographic situation, low housing accommodation, and inadequate medical service. The municipal economy cries for modernization and the ecological situation is getting from bad to worse. The city’s once famous beaches are a health threat and people are strongly discouraged to visit them for other reasons as well.

Repeated attempts have been made over the past several years to use Odesa’s socioeconomic and ecological problems in the local power play. If great thinkers and statesmen took part in the discussion of these problems, their most brilliant ideas would be useless under the current administrative-territorial system, as the regional and city administrations have been in a state of confrontation for decades. Odesa’s geostrategic status has also changed, now that it is Ukraine’s major seaport and center of its maritime economy. Still, the city has no administrative rights vested in many other seaports, particularly in Russia’s main seaport of St. Petersburg. Thus one priority task is to restore Odesa’s self-government. In the late 1980s, a free economic zone concept was offered as an alternative and its was effectively used in local politics. Central and local corporate groups began to fight for the right to control the Black Sea Steamship Company soon after Ukraine proclaimed independence, for the company was adding attractive sums in hard cash to the national budget. This in practice resulted in the destruction of Ukraine’s merchant and passenger fleets. Great Odesa, together with Illichivsk and Pivdenny, lost its dominance in Black Sea trade to Istanbul in Turkey, Novorossiysk in Russia, and Constan ь ta in Romania.

Unlike many other Ukrainian cities, Odesa remains open wide to the rest of the world; it has professional personnel experienced in business cooperation with foreign partners. On a par with Kyiv, it is a leading center in advancing an open economy; here one finds most enterprises operating with foreign investment in the region. Yet most of these are intermediaries rather than producers. As the city’s number one enterprise, the Black Sea Steamship Company is replaced by the famous Seventh Kilometer wholesale and retail market providing jobs for many residents and serving as the main guarantor of social stability. The city’s resort facilities have proven noncompetitive now when there is a free choice of resort accommodations; Odesa is still not very attractive to investors. Instability in the Balkans and Caucasus has a negative effect on Odesa’s development. After the Soviet Union’s armored cover fell apart, “earthquake zones” revealed themselves round the city, in the Crimea, Southern Besarabia, and the breakaway Transnistria region of Moldova.

Several development scenarios are possible in Odesa. The USSR’s collapse clearly marked a Eurasian geopolitical rupture at the borders of civilizations, as the exodus of Orthodox Slavs (from central Asia, Grozny, and Sarajevo) gained momentum. The Slavic world had to bid goodbye to its age-old dream of Constantinople on the north-south geopolitical axis.

In the post-bipolar world, the Odesa phenomenon can have exceptional importance in the search for an evolutionary model. The city’s strategy should be developed based on Ukraine’s geopolitical concept as a border state, providing for balanced development and preferential treatment at the crossing of north-south and west-east transport corridors. Forming the communications hub of technological development involves restructuring the municipal economy, reinforcing transit trade, and reducing the industrial ratio, except for harbor- related export or import oriented businesses. Doing all this requires modern fast communications between Odesa and Kyiv, also the Crimea, and territories adjoining the Danube, the Sea of Azov, and foreign seaports (Istanbul, Constan ь ta, Varna), construction of a transport passage across the Danube as part of the Black Sea belt highway. Maybe a new transport corridor from the Varangians to the Greeks, through Gdansk, Warsaw, Lviv, and Odesa, will be built. Introducing preferential treatment on the crossing of such transport corridors would not only accelerate the financial, trade and industrial capital turnover, but also ensure interethnic and interfaith tolerance in this cosmopolitan city.

The Odesa phenomenon is manifest in the strengthening social-psychological nostalgic factor boosting business activity. A unique situation has developed with bipolar nostalgia between this Russian- speaking city and Russia, Jewish residents of Odesa longing for the Promised Land, and former residents now in Israel missing their native city. Odesa may become a bridge linking business activity to a model of border super-ethnic communicativeness.

Odesa must have real self-government rights to provide social conditions in which to assert the individual and citizens’ economic dignity. The free winds of change favor the manifestation of business activity and talent. The Odesa phenomenon is a rare exclusive phenomenon in that borderline condition that will never repeat itself, yet an idealized and eulogized image of a free city will always be its guiding star favoring the rise of business activity and talent.

EDITOR’S NOTE:

The esteemed author mentions a concept of the development of the Ukrainian state, describing it as a border state at the crossroads of north-south and west-east transport corridors. We are inclined to visualize Ukraine’s future not as a buffer state dividing Europe and Russia, but as a European country showing all the required parameters of civilization. It is quite another matter what use our country — our elite, to be precise — will put them to.