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On 05/04/2014 06:57 PM, Louis Proyect wrote: > Even in Soviet times, Odessa was a city low on the pecking order. Again, > as in czarist days, its residents weren't given to taking edicts from > the Russian government all that seriously. One never could be quite sure > of Odessa's Marxist orthodoxy — after all, this was where Leon Trotsky > had gone to school and where Mensheviks flourished before 1917. After > the 1917 revolution, it took several years for the Bolsheviks to subdue > the city. > > The Soviet regime increased Russian presence in the region, but Odessa > never fully embraced Moscow, and it remained a poor cousin to other > Soviet cities. Food and goods were in shorter supply than elsewhere, and > first-rate opera and ballet companies rarely played the gorgeous Opera > House designed by Austrians in the 1880s. > Prof. Herlihy makes some pretty obvious points about the history of the Russian Empire and its attempts to wage imperialist politics vis-a-vis its rivals. But, the above 2 paragraphs are appallingly ignorant. During Soviet times, Odessa was a city of extreme strategic importance. It was the main cargo port of the Soviet Union (counting nearby Mykolaev and Illichevsk ports). It included facilities for roll-on-roll-off ships, which carried freight rail cars to COMECOM states and the West, connecting industrial regions such as the Donbass, the Urals, etc. to external markets. In addition, it contained the largest ship building facilities of the Soviet Union, where aircraft carriers were built. Needless to say, this, along with military facilities alone, ensured heavy investment in universities, and related infrastructure. Moscow's Patrice Lumumba University had a regional campus in the city (where my grandmother worked in one of the dorms), and the medical university was considered among the country's best three of four. It took the Bolsheviks several years to subdue the city, because it was a major landing base of the imperialist Western intervention in the Civil War. The French Navy was stationed there, among other forces, including major White units. It's absurd not to mention this, while discussing 1917. No first-rate opera and ballet companies performing in Odessa? What is this professor smoking to tune her subtle anti-Soviet, Orientalist analysis here? First, the Odessa Conservatory itself was world-class, producing musicians such as violinist David Oistrakh and many others. All the major orchestras, ballets and operas regularly rotated through its theater (spared from demolition during WW II by a sympathetic German officer, with an artistic sensibility, according to local legend) and concert hall. Even the greatest of stars, such as the pianist Sviatoslav Richter, regularly toured through provincial cities, not to mention major stops like Odessa - and this was routine Soviet state practice. I won't even speak to the points about food and goods being in less supply, but this is the most absurd mis-characterization of Odessa's recent history, or Soviet policies, I've ever read. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
