Odessa

Odessa, in point of population the fourth city of Russia, stands on the shore of the Black Sea, about midway between the estuaries of the Dnieper (25 miles to the south-west) and the Dnieper, 90 miles north-east of the Danube mouth, and by rail 967 miles from Moscow and 381 from Kieff. The city is built facing the sea on low cliffs, seamed with deep ravines and hollowed out by galleries in the soft rock, in which numbers of the poorest inhabitants herd together. Above ground its streets are long and broad, and cross each other at right angles. Odessa was only founded in 1794, near a Turkish fort that fell into Russian hands in 1789; but it quickly became the principal export town for the extensive corn-growing districts of South Russia. Its progress was greatly aided by its being declared a free port from 1817 to 1857, and again by the construction of the railway to Kieff in 1866. The population has increased rapidly, from 3150 in 1796 to 25,000 in 1814, 100,000 in 1850, 184,800 in 1873, 270,600 in 1887, and 404,651 in 1897. Close upon 70,000 of these were Jews, sharing with the Greeks most of the trade. Merchants of many other nationalities dwell here also. The harbour is made up of a roadstead and three basins, protected by moles against the dangerous winds that sweep the Black Sea. It is impeded by ice—scarcely ever closed by it—during an average of only a fortnight in the year. The imports in 1894 had a value of over £9,000,000 (less than in 1886 or 1891); the exports, over £21,000,000 (more than in any preceding year). The bulk of the exports is grain, especially wheat; but the figures for wheat fluctuate greatly, according to the crop and legislation about exporting it. Yet the value of the gross exports has steadily increased, doubling between 1886, when the figure was £8,279,900, and 1889, when it reached £16,787,700. Sugar (£1,217,400 in 1889), wool, and flour are the remaining chief items of export. The imports (raw cotton, oils, groceries, iron and steel, coal, food-stuffs, fruits, tea, tobacco, machinery) average £3,856,500 (five years from 1885). An average of 1295 vessels of 1,370,256 tons enter the port every year, an average of 716 of these vessels, with a tonnage of 1,180,245, being British, the Russian tonnage being only one-fifth of this. But the Russians carry on a large and increasing coasting trade. The chief branches of industrial activity are flour-milling, sugar and oil refining, and, in a secondary degree, the manufacture of tobacco, machinery, leather, soap, chemicals, biscuits, &c. Odessa has a university (1865) with close upon 600 students, and the usual cabinets and collections; a great number of schools, including a cadet, a commercial, and two music schools; several learned societies, and a public library (1829) of 40,000 vols., many of them rare. The museum of the Historical and Antiquarian Society contains treasures from the coasts of the Black Sea, belonging to the Hellenic, the Veneto-Genoese, and the Tartaro-Mongol civilisations. Amongst the public buildings of Odessa we mention the cathedral (1802-49), which is the church of the Archbishop of Kherson, three dozen other churches, a very fine opera-house (1887), palatial grain-warehouses, corn-elevators, and the 'palais royal,' which, with its gardens and park, is a favourite place of resort. Monuments to Count Worontsoff (1863), the Duke de Richelieu (1827)—both great benefactors of Odessa—and Pushkin (1889) adorn the city. Water is brought by aqueduct (27 miles long) from the Dnieper. Numerous coast batteries have been built since 1876 to prevent a recurrence of bombardment, such as happened when the British fleet sailed past the city in April 1854. Odessa has an unenviable notoriety as a home of the cholera, for its persecution of the Jews, and for its Nihilist sympathies.