Abstract
Odessa, a port city on the Black Sea, has been known from its founding at the end of the eighteenth century as a cosmopolitan place, welcoming traders and settlers of many nationalities; but it has also been the site of bloody conflict at various times in its history, notably at the beginning of the twentieth century.1 This chapter proposes to re-examine the revolution of 1905 by conceptualising it as a phenomenon of the built city. In particular, it looks at the relation between physical violence and Odessa’s planning and architecture. Since the three kinds of conflict that erupted in that year — demands for political change, economic class antagonism and religious enmity — are unfortunately still with us in the contemporary world, it is hoped that this historical example may prove illuminating for some of the themes addressed in this book.
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Notes
These divergent processes are not usually studied together. Part of the vast literature on Odessa focuses on the city’s harmonious diversity, another is devoted to its revolutionary history and yet another to the pogroms that happened there. See P. Herlihy (1986) Odessa: A History (1794–1914) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press) for an overall study;and discussion in Humphrey (2010) ‘Odessa: Pogroms in a Cosmopolitan City’, Ab Imperio 4, 1–50.
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S. Eisenstein (1987) Nonindifferent Nature. Translated by Herbert Marshall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 159–165;see also discussion in A. Vidler (2001) Warped Space: Art, Architecture, and Anxiety in Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press).
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D. Gerould (1989) ‘Historical Simulation and Popular Entertainment: The “Potemkin” Mutiny from Reconstructed Newsreel to Black Sea Stunt Men’, The Drama Review 33(2), 161–184.
R. Weinberg (1993) The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press), p. 133.
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C. Humphrey (2010) ‘Odessa: Pogroms in a Cosmopolitan City’, Ab Imperio 4, 1–50.
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© 2013 Caroline Humphrey
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Humphrey, C. (2013). Violence and Urban Architecture: Events at the Ensemble of the Odessa Steps in 1904–1905. In: Pullan, W., Baillie, B. (eds) Locating Urban Conflicts. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316882_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137316882_3
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-35015-5
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