Odessa, Russia

Odesa (also spelled Odessa) is the third most populous city and municipality in Ukraine and a major seaport and transport hub located in the south-west of the country, on the northwestern shore of the Black Sea. The city is also the administrative centre of the Odesa Raion and Odesa Oblast, as well as a multiethnic cultural centre. As of January 2021 Odesa's population was approximately

In classical antiquity a large Greek settlement existed at its location. The first chronicle mention of the Slavic settlement-port of Kotsiubijiv, which was part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, dates back to 1415, when a ship was sent from here to Constantinople by sea. After a period of Lithuanian Grand Duchy control, the port and its surroundings became part of the domain of the Ottomans in 1529, under the name Hacibey, and remained there until the empire's defeat in the Russo-Turkish War of 1792.

In 1794, the modern city of Odesa was founded by a decree of the Russian empress Catherine the Great. From 1819 to 1858, Odesa was a free port. During the Soviet period, it was an important trading port and a naval base.

During the 19th century, Odesa was the fourth largest city of the Russian Empire, after Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Warsaw. Its historical architecture is more Mediterranean than Russian, having been heavily influenced by French and Italian styles. Some buildings are built in a mixture of different styles, including Art Nouveau, Renaissance and Classicist.

Odesa is a warm-water port. The city of Odesa hosts both the Port of Odesa and Port Pivdennyi, a significant oil terminal situated in the city's suburbs. Another notable port, Chornomorsk, is located in the same oblast, to the south-west of Odesa. Together they represent a major transport hub integrating with railways. Odesa's oil and chemical processing facilities are connected to the Russian and other European networks by strategic pipelines. In 2000, the Quarantine Pier at Odesa Commercial Sea Port was declared a free port and free economic zone for a period of 25 years.

Name

* en, or , link=yes
* uk, Оде́са, translit=Odesa
*russian: Оде́сса, translit=Odessa
* yi, אָדעס, translit=Odes

Odesa is sometimes called the "Pearl by the Sea", the "Southern Capital", "Odesa-mama" and "The Humour Capital", as well as "Southern Palmyra".

In 1795 the city was named Odessa in accordance with the Greek Plan of Catherine the Great. Catherine's Secretary of State Adrian Gribovsky claimed in his memoirs that the name was his suggestion. Some expressed doubts about this claim, while others noted the reputation of Gribovsky as an honest and modest man. Odesa is located between the ancient Greek cities of Tyras and Olbia and it was named as a feminine form for the ancient Greek city of ''Odessos'' ( grc, Ὀδησσός). This refers to the second ancient Odessos, founded between the end of the 5th and beginning of the 4th centuries BC (the first one, identified with modern Varna in Bulgaria, is the older of the two, founded c. 610 BC). The exact location of this ancient Odessos is unknown, but modern efforts have attempted to localize it 40 km northeast of Odesa, near the village of , Odesa Oblast., near the Tylihul Estuary.

"Odessa" is the traditional English transliteration of the city's name, still used in the Lexico and Britannica dictionaries (but no longer in Encyclopædia Britannica) as the primary name, but "Odesa" increasingly appears in dictionaries as the primary name for the Ukrainian city. ''Odesa'' became the internationally standardized Latin-alphabet transliteration of the Ukrainian name according to the Ukrainian National romanization system ( ukr, Одеса), which was adopted for official use by Ukraine's cabinet in 2010, approved by the UN Group of Experts on Geographical Names in 2012, and adopted by the BGN/PCGN in 2019. ''Odessa'', meanwhile, is the literal transliteration of the city's Russian name (russian: Одесса), which was historically favoured until Ukraine's independence (similarly to the spelling of "Kyiv" versus "Kiev").

As noted by the ''Christian Science Monitor'', many in the media historically spelled the city "Odessa", even after changing the spelling of "Kiev" to "Kyiv", but the media has been shifting to proper Ukrainian transliterations.

History

Early history

Odesa was the site of a large Greek settlement no later than the middle of the 6th century BC (a necropolis from the 5th–3rd centuries BC has long been known in this area). Some scholars believe it to have been a trade settlement established by the Greek city of Histria. Whether the Bay of Odesa is the ancient "Port of the Histrians" cannot yet be considered a settled question based on the available evidence. Archaeological artifacts confirm extensive links between the Odesa area and the eastern Mediterranean.

In the Middle Ages successive rulers of the Odesa region included various nomadic tribes (Petchenegs, Cumans), the Golden Horde, the Crimean Khanate, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, and the Ottoman Empire. Yedisan Crimean Tatars traded there in the 14th century.

Since the middle of the 13th century the city's territory belonged to the Golden Horde domain.Vermenych, Ya.
Odessa (ОДЕСА)
'. Encyclopedia of History of Ukraine. 2010. On Italian navigational maps of 14th century on the place of Odesa is indicated the castle of Ginestra, at the time the center of a colony of the Republic of Genoa (''more Gazaria''). At times when the Northern Black Sea littoral was controlled by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, there existed a settlement of Kotsibijiv (Khadjibey) which was first mentioned in 1415 in Polish chronicles by Jan Długosz — a ship with grain was shipped from Kotsiubijiv to Constantinople. By the middle of 15th century the settlement was depopulated.

During the reign of Khan Hacı I Giray of Crimea (1441–1466), the Khanate was endangered by the Golden Horde and the Ottoman Turks and, in search of allies, the khan agreed to cede the area to Lithuania. The site of present-day Odesa was then a fortress known as Khadjibey (named for Hacı I Giray, and also spelled Kocibey in English, Hacıbey or Hocabey in Turkish, and Hacıbey in Crimean Tatar).

Ottoman conquest

Khadjibey came under direct control of the Ottoman Empire after 1529. In the mid-18th century, the Ottomans rebuilt the fortress at Khadjibey (also was known Hocabey), which was named ''Yeni Dünya'' (literally "New World").

Russian conquest of Sanjak of Özi (Ochakiv Oblast)

A series of wars between the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, as well as the demise of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, allowed Russia to start to fully exploit the ancient Black Sea trade across the coastal area through the steppe across southern and eastern Ukraine, into the hinterland of East Central Europe. Stable commercial activity in this region in practice in the past required both security through the overland routes, and knowledge of where products could go overseas. In antiquity, various Greek colonies had taken this role, followed by the Varangians who established Kievan Rus' in the 9th century, as well as various Italian colonies after the Mongol invasion of Europe. Under Catherine the Great, Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca, Russia gained the lands where Mariupol, Kherson, and Mykolaiv would be founded, however, they all were handicapped in various ways relative to how much commercial interest there was. For example, the latter two cities were situated in lowlands near marshes, which provided for poor sanitary conditions in the technology available at that time.

The sleepy fishing village of Odesa had witnessed a sea-change in its fortunes when the wealthy magnate and future Voivode of Kiev (1791), Antoni Protazy Potocki, established trade routes through the port for the ''Polish Black Sea Trading Company'' and set up the infrastructure in the 1780s.

During the Russian-Turkish War of 1787–1792, on 25 September 1789, a detachment of Russian forces, including Zaporozhian Cossacks under Alexander Suvorov and Ivan Gudovich, took Khadjibey and Yeni Dünya for the Russian Empire. One section of the troops came under command of a Spaniard in Russian service, Irishman Major General José de Ribas (known in Russia as Osip Mikhailovich Deribas); today, the main street in Odesa, Deribasivska Street, is named after him.

Russia formally gained possession of the Sanjak of Özi (Ochakiv Oblast) as a result of the Treaty of Jassy (Iaşi) in 1792 and it became a part of Yekaterinoslav Viceroyalty. The Russian Empire took full control of Crimea, as well as land between the Southern Bug and the Dniester, including the Khadzhibey Estuary where the Turkish fortress of Khadjibey was located. The newly acquired Ochakov Oblast was promised to the Cossacks by the Russian government for resettlement. On permission of the Archbishop of Yekaterinoslav Amvrosiy, the Black Sea Kosh Host, that was located around the area between Bender and Ochakiv, built second after Sucleia of 17 June 1792 addressed to General Kakhovsky it was ordered to establish the Dniester Border Line of fortresses. The commander of the land forces in Ochakiv Oblast was appointed Graf (Count) Suvorov-Rymnikskiy. The main fortress was built near Sucleia at the mouth of river Botna as the Head Dniester Fortress by Engineer-Major de Wollant. Near the new fortress saw the formation of a new "Vorstadt" (suburb) where people moved from Sucleia and Parkan. With the establishment of the Voznesensk Governorate on 27 January 1795, the Vorstadt was named Tiraspol.

The Flemish engineer working for the Russian Empress Catherine the Great, José de Ribas's collaborator Franz de Voland recommended the area of Khadjibey fortress as the site for the region's basic port: it had an ice-free harbor, breakwaters could be cheaply constructed that would render the harbor safe and it would have the capacity to accommodate large fleets. The Namestnik of Yekaterinoslav and Voznesensk, Platon Zubov (one of Catherine's favorites), supported this proposal. In 1794 Catherine issued a Rescript to José de Ribas: "Considering favorable Khadjibey location... I order to establish here a navy harbor and trading pierce..." and invested the first money (26.000 rubles) in construction. Franz de Voland drew up a plan that would end up being the city's plan.

However, adjacent to the new official locality, a Moldavian colony already existed, which by the end of the 18th century was an independent settlement named Moldavanka. Some local historians consider that the settlement predates Odesa by about thirty years and assert that the locality was founded by Moldavians who came to build the fortress of Yeni Dunia for the Ottomans and eventually settled in the area in the late 1760s, right next to the settlement of Khadjibey, on what later became the Primorsky Boulevard. Another version posits that the settlement appeared after Odesa itself was founded, as a settlement of Moldavians, Greeks, and Albanians fleeing the Ottoman yoke.Richardson, p. 110.

Under Paul I of Russia, construction of Odesa was stopped, Franz de Voland was removed from the project, and José de Ribas was implicated in a plot to assassinate the Emperor. After Paul's assassination in 1801, the city resumed construction, and used a plan largely from de Voland's work. It was thus one of the few master planned cities in the Russian Empire.

Renaming of the settlement and establishment of sea port

In 1795, Khadjibey was officially renamed with the feminine name "Odessa" after a Greek colony of Odessos ( grc, Ὀδησσός, in Roman times, Odessus) that supposedly was located in the area. The first census that was conducted in Odesa was in 1797 which accounted for 3,455 people. Since 1795, the city had its own city magistrate, and since 1796 a city council of six members and the Odesa Commodity Exchange. In 1801, in Odesa had opened the first commercial bank. In 1803, the city accounted for 9,000 people.Petro Tronko.
Creation and development of the city of Odessa (Виникнення і розвиток міста Одеса)
'. The History of Cities and Villages of the Ukrainian SSR.

In their settlement, also known as Novaya Slobodka, the Moldavians owned relatively small plots on which they built village-style houses and cultivated vineyards and gardens. What became Mykhailovsky Square was the center of this settlement and the site of its first Orthodox church, the Church of the Dormition, built in 1821 close to the seashore, as well as of a cemetery. Nearby stood the military barracks and the country houses (''dacha'') of the city's wealthy residents, including that of the Duc de Richelieu, appointed by Tzar Alexander I as Governor of Odesa in 1803. Richelieu played a role during Ottoman plague epidemic which hit Odesa in the autumn 1812. Dismissive of any attempt to forge a compromise between quarantine requirements and free trade, Prince Kuriakin (the Saint Petersburg-based High Commissioner for Sanitation) countermanded Richelieu's orders.

In the period from 1795 to 1814, the population of Odesa increased 15 times over and reached almost 20 thousand people. The first city plan was designed by the engineer F. Devollan in the late 18th century. Colonists of various ethnicities settled mainly in the area of the former colony, outside of the official boundaries, and as a consequence, in the first third of the 19th century, Moldavanka emerged as the dominant settlement. After planning by the official architects who designed buildings in Odesa's central district, such as the Italians Francesco Carlo Boffo and Giovanni Torricelli, Moldovanka was included in the general city plan, though the original grid-like plan of Moldovankan streets, lanes and squares remained unchanged.

The new city quickly became a major success although initially it received little state funding and privileges.Odesa: Through Cossacks, Khans and Russian Emperors
The Ukrainian Week (18 November 2014) Its early growth owed much to the work of the Duc de Richelieu, who served as the city's governor between 1803 and 1814. Having fled the French Revolution, he had served in Catherine's army against the Turks. He is credited with designing the city and organizing its amenities and infrastructure, and is considered one of the founding fathers of Odesa, together with another Frenchman, Count Andrault de Langeron, who succeeded him in office.

Richelieu is commemorated by a bronze statue, unveiled in 1828 to a design by Ivan Martos. His contributions to the city are mentioned by Mark Twain in his travelogue ''Innocents Abroad'': "I mention this statue and this stairway because they have their story. Richelieu founded Odessa – watched over it with paternal care – labored with a fertile brain and a wise understanding for its best interests – spent his fortune freely to the same end – endowed it with a sound prosperity, and one which will yet make it one of the great cities of the Old World".

In 1819, Odesa became a free port, a status it retained until 1859. Odesa became home to an extremely diverse population of Albanians, Armenians, Azeris, Bulgarians, Crimean Tatars, Frenchmen, Germans (including Mennonites), Greeks, Italians, Jews, Poles, Romanians, Russians, Turks, Ukrainians, and traders representing many other nationalities (hence numerous "ethnic" names on the city's map, for example ''Frantsuzky'' (French) and ''Italiansky'' (Italian) Boulevards, ''Grecheskaya'' (Greek), ''Yevreyskaya'' (Jewish), ''Arnautskaya'' (Albanian) Streets).

The Filiki Eteria, a Greek freemasonry-style society which was to play an important role in the Greek war of independence, was founded in Odesa in 1814 before relocating to Constantinople in 1818. Odesa's cosmopolitan nature was documented by the great Russian poet Alexander Pushkin, who lived in internal exile in Odesa between 1823 and 1824. In his letters he wrote that Odesa was a city where "the air is filled with all Europe, French is spoken and there are European papers and magazines to read".

Odesa's growth was interrupted by the Crimean War of 1853–1856, during which it was bombarded by British and Imperial French 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 with Kyiv and Kharkiv

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