The city has two important ports: Odesa itself andPivdennyi Seaport , which used to be called Yuzhne. In December 2021, Pivdennyi port handled 5.77 million tons of cargo.[2] Another important port,Chornomorsk, is in the sameoblast, to the south-west of Odesa. . Railways and pipelines come to these ports. Pipelines connect Odesa's oil and chemical factories toRussia's and theEU's.
Odesa Сircuit Court building and Church of the monastery of St. Panteleimon (church consecrated in 1895; used as a planetarium in 1961–1991).
Odesa is the fifth-largest city inUkraine. It is important in the country's trading. In the19th century, it was the fourth city ofImperial Russia. It was just smaller thanMoscow andSt. Petersburg, andWarsaw.[3] Its old buildings appear to be more Mediterranean than Russian. They were made likeFrench andItalian buildings.
The 142-metre-long Potemkin (originally Richelieu) Stairs. These stairs were constructed between 1834 and 1841.Sergei Eisenstein made them famous in his movieBattleship Potemkin.
From 1819 to 1858, Odesa was a free port. During theSoviet times, it was the most important port of trade in theU.S.S.R. and a Sovietnavalbase. On January 1, 2000, the Quarantine Pier of Odesa trade sea port was made afree port andfree economic zone for 25 years.
TheOttoman Empire controlled Khadjibey after 1529. The nearby region Khadjibey was namedYedisan. In the middle of the18th century, the Ottomans rebuilt afortress at Khadjibey. It was named Eni Dunia.
At the time of thewar between Russia and Turkey (1787–1792), on 25 September 1789,Ivan Gudovich led a group of Russian soldiers to Khadjibey. They took Khadjibey and Yeni Dünya for theRussian Empire. ASpaniard in the Russian army named Major GeneralJosé de Ribas led one group of soldiers. Russians named him Osip Mikhailovich Deribas. The main street in Odesa today is namedDeribasovskaya Street after him. Turkey let Russia keep the city in theTreaty of Jassy in 1792. Russians made it a part of a place they namedNovorossiya.
In 1794, theRussian government decided to build a naval fortress on the ruins of Khadjibey city. In 1795 its new name was first written in government letters. The reasons for the new name are lost, but people had theories.
According to one of the stories, when someone saidOdessos should be the name for the new Russian port,Catherine II said that all names in the South of the Empire were already 'masculine,' and she did not want another one. So, she decided to change it to more 'feminine' Odessa. This story may be false. There were at least two cities (Eupatoria andTheodosia) with names that sound 'feminine' for a Russian; also, Catherine II did not speak Russian when she was a child, and lastly, all cities arefeminine inGreek (and inLatin).
Another story is that the name 'Odesa' is from word-play inFrench. Frenchwas then the language spoken at the Russian court. 'Plenty of water' isassez d'eau in French. If one says this backwards, it sounds like the Greek colony's name. Word-play about water makes sense. Odesa is next to a very big body of water but has a little fresh water. Anyhow, there is still a link with the name of the old Greek colony. So there may be some truth in the things people said long ago.
The new city quickly became a major success. Its early growth owed much to the work of theDuc de Richelieu, who was the city'sgovernor between 1803 and 1814. He fled theFrench Revolution and served in Catherine's army against the Turks. He is credited with designing the city and organising itsamenities and infrastructure. He is also considered to be one of the founding fathers of the city together with another Frenchman, CountAlexandre Langeron, who succeeded him in office. Richelieu is commemorated by a bronze statue, unveiled in 1828 to a design byIvan Martos.
In 1819 the city was made a free port, a status it retained until 1859. It became home to an extremely diverse population ofUkrainians,Russians,Jews,Greeks,Bulgarians,Albanians,Armenians,Italians,Frenchmen,Germans and traders representing many other European nationalities (hence numerous 'ethnic' names on the city's map,e.g.,Frantsuszkiy (French) andItalianskiy (Italian) Boulevards,Grecheskaya (Greek),Evreyskaya (Jewish),Arnautskaya (Albanian) Streets). Itscosmopolitan nature was written about by the great Russian poetAlexander Pushkin, who lived ininternal exile in Odesa between 1823 and 1824. In his letters he wrote that Odesa was a city where "you can smell Europe. French is spoken and there are European papers and magazines to read".
Odesa's growth was interrupted by theCrimean War of 1853–1856, during which it wasbombarded byBritish andFrench naval forces. It soon recovered and the growth in trade made Odesa Russia's largest grain-exporting port. In 1866 the city was linked by rail withKyiv andKharkiv as well asIaşi,Romania.
Richelieu Street and the Opera Theatre in the 1890s.
The city became the home of a largeJewish community during the19th century. By 1897, Jews were about 37% of the population. They were repeatedly subjected to severepersecution.Pogroms were carried out in 1821, 1859, 1871, 1881, and 1905. Many Jews fled abroad, particularly toPalestine after 1882, and the city became an important base of support forZionism.
In 1905 Odesa was the place of a workers' uprising supported by the crew of the Russian battleship Potemkin.Sergei Eisenstein's famous motion picture,Battleship Potemkin, was about the uprising and included a scene where hundreds of Odesan citizens were killed on the great stone staircase (now popularly known as the "Potemkin Steps"), in one of the most famous scenes in motion picture history.
At the top of the steps, which lead down to the port, stands a statue ofCardinal Richelieu. The actual massacre took place in streets nearby, not on the steps themselves, but the movie caused many to visit Odesa to see the site of the "slaughter". The steps continue to be a tourist attraction. The film was made at Odesa's Cinema Factory, one of the oldest cinema studios in the former Soviet Union.
The people of Odesa suffered from a greatfamine that occurred in 1921–1922 as a result of the war.Romanian andGerman forces from 1941 to 1944 occupied the city duringWorld War II, causing severe damage and many casualties.
Under theAxis occupation, approximately 60,000 Odesans, mostlyJews, were eithermassacred or deported.[5][6] Many parts of Odesa were damaged during its fall and later recapture in April 1944, when the city was finally liberated by theSoviet Army. It was one of the first four Soviet cities to be awarded the title of "Hero City" in 1945.
During the1960s and1970s, the city grew tremendously. Between the1970s and1990s, most of Odesa's survivingJews emigrated toIsrael, theUnited States and otherWestern countries. Many of Odesa's middle and upper classes moved toMoscow andLeningrad.The city grew even more with newrural migrants elsewhere from Ukraine. Industrial professionals were invited from Russia as well as other Soviet republics.
Despite being part of theUkraine Socialist Republic, the city preserved and somewhatreinforced its unique cosmopolitan mix of Russian/Ukrainian/Mediterranean culture. It also preserved its predominantly Russian speaking environment, with a uniquely accented dialect of Russian being spoken in the city. The city's Russian, Ukrainian,Greek,Armenian,Moldovan,Azeri and Jewish communities, have all contributed to the different aspects of Odesa.
Odesa (Google Map) is above the hills overlooking a smallharbor. It is approximately 31 km (19 mi.) north of the estuary of theDniester river and some 443 km (275 mi) south of the Ukrainian capitalKyiv. The city has acontinental climate (Dfa in theKöppen climate classification) with average temperatures in January of -2 °C (29 °F), and July of 22 °C (73 °F). It averages only 350 mm (14 in) rain annually.
Odesa Public Library (now Archaeological Museum), like so many other landmarks in the city, was designed inNeoclassical style.
Odesa is a popular tourist destination. It has manyresorts in and around the city. TheTolstoy,Vorontsov, andPotocki families ownedpalaces in Odesa. They are still open for visits from the public.
Most of the city's 19th century houses were built oflimestone mined nearby. Abandoned mines were later used and broadened by localsmugglers. This created a complicatedlabyrinth of underground tunnels beneath Odesa, known as "catacombs". They are a now a great attraction forextreme tourists. Such tours, however, are not officially sanctioned and are dangerous because the layout of the catacombs has not been fully mapped and the tunnels themselves are unsafe. These tunnels are a primary reason why subway was never built in Odesa.
The economy of Odesa is based on its port and its close distance to nearby ice-free ports in the mouths of theDnieper, the SouthernBug, theDniester and theDanube rivers. During the Soviet period, it was the USSR's largest trading port. Since Ukraine's independence, Odesa remains the busiest international port in the country. Odesa is also a home to almost 5% of all IT companies registered in Ukraine.[9] It helps the city to thrive and attract talented software programmers from other cities of Ukraine and abroad.[10]
↑Herlihy, Patricia (1977). "The Ethnic Composition of the City of Odessa in the Nineteenth Century": 53.{{cite journal}}:Cite journal requires|journal= (help)
"Murder of the Jews of Romania".Yad Vashem. RetrievedOctober 22, 2024.Romania [...] had a Jewish population of about 757,000 beforeWorld War II [...] the Romanian army, with the partial cooperation ofEinsatzgruppe D and some of the local population, massacred 100,000-120,000 of the Jewish population of Bessarabia and North Bukovina [...] In total, 380,000 – 400,000 Jews, including the Jews ofTransnistria, were murdered in Romanian-controlled areas under the dictatorship ofAntonescu.
International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania. Final Report. President of the commission: Elie Wiesel. Edited by Tuvia Friling, Radu Ioanid, and Mihail E. Ionescu. Iași: Polirom, 2004.
Ioanid, Radu. The Holocaust in Romania: The Destruction of Jews and Roma under the Antonescu Regime, 1940–1944. Second edition. Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2022.
Kruglov, Aleksander, and Kiril Feferman. “Bloody Snow: The Mass Slaughter of Odessa Jews in Berezovka Uezd in the First Half of 1941.” Yad Vashem Studies 47, no. 2 (2019): 15.
Solonari, Vladimir. A Satellite Empire: Romanian Rule in Southwestern Ukraine, 1941–1944. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.
Zipperstein, Steven J. The Jews of Odessa: A Cultural History, 1794–1881. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1985.
↑"Twinnings"(PDF).Central Union of Municipalities & Communities of Greece. Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 15 January 2016. Retrieved25 August 2013.
↑"Gradovi prijatelji Splita" [Split Twin Towns].Grad Split [Split Official City Website] (in Croatian).Archived from the original on 24 March 2012. Retrieved19 December 2013.
↑"Ciudades Hermanadas con València" [Valencia Twin/Sister Cities].Ajuntament de València [City of Valencia] (in Spanish).Archived from the original on 29 October 2012. Retrieved8 August 2013.
