How Things Are Done In Odesa

Odesa, legendary Black Sea port city and vital geo-strategic nexus of global trade, is living through Russia's war against Ukraine. Always fiercely independent, both from Moscow and Kiev, its legendary past of rogues & schnorrers has given Odesa a world reputation as a city of possibility and promise. Monica Whitlock tells its story.

Founded in 1794 by Catherine the Great as part of her expanding empire of Novo Rossiya, Odesa began as a dusty boom town of enormous opportunity & possibility connecting the chill of Imperial Russia to the warmth of the wider world.. A port city possessed of eternal optimism & a wicked sense of humour, it's confines brimmed with violinists, poets, writers and a gallery of rogues- real and imagined.

Its most beloved literary son is Isaac Babel. Raised in the Moldavanka- still a place of liminal existence, Babel's Odessa Tales of gangster anti-heroes like Benya Krik are forever interwoven with how Odesites and the wider world imagine the city - beautiful and bad! It is of course only partially true. Filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin forever fixed the city and its majestic steps on the cultural world map.

From its foundational boom town days onwards its streets and people could make you rich or ruin you. In the crumbling days of the Soviet empire it was a place to dream of escape to a world beyond. Musician Alec Koypt, who grew up in the rugged streets of Molodvanka, shipping proprietor Roman Morgenshtern, Anna Misyuk of the city's literary museum, historians Jarod Tanny & Steven Zipperstein along with Babel translator & Odessite Boris Dralyuk are our guides.

Producer Mark Burman

Monica Whitlock explores the cultural history of legendary Black Sea port city Odesa.