Apart-Hotel Paradis: Visiting Odessa

Short Destination Guide for Beginners

The ladies' world of old Odessa

clock June 10, 2009 14:41 by author admin

   The ladies' world of old Odessa did not resemble that of other Russian cities. Women from St. Petersburg, Moscow, and other cities remarked on the extraordinary (to them) combination of noble aristocrats and merchant families in high society. While ladies from the merchant stratum did not feel very comfortable in society's salons at first, the women of Odessa freed themselves of social prejudices much sooner than their contemporaries in Russia's two main cities. Moreover, the wealthiest wholesalers' wives quickly overtook their noble rivals, and their homes became the centers of the local beaumonde.  

      One of the brightest examples of the burgeoning bourgeoisie was the great Odessa beauty, the Greek Ariadna Evstratyevna Papudova. Her marriage to Konstantin Fotyevich Papudov was a profitable alliance of two major business families. Papudov exported grain and his charming spouse reigned at balls, masquerades, and social events. All the great social lions fell in love with her—not only in Odessa, but in Paris: from the richest Odessites, Marazli, to Baron Rothschild, who gave Ariadna the Palais de Sagan on the Champs Elysees. When she gave balls at her enormous house on Sobornaya Square, she invited 500-600 guests. Ariadna died over a century ago, yet Odessites to this day refer to the house as Papudova's House.

Based on the book "Odessa memories" written by Nicholas V. Iljine

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19th century - International Odessa

clock June 2, 2009 17:35 by author admin

    As one traveler observed, Odessa possessed "Italian houses, Russian officials, French ships, and German artisans." Even the Dire de Richelieu, noting that so little Russian was spoken in the city, ordered the high school he founded to teach the Russian language. By 1892, the number of foreign non-subjects was 7 percent of the population, a much larger percentage than in Moscow (0.75 percent) or even St. Petersburg, the much vaunted "Window to the West, whose foreigners constituted only 2.35 percent of its population. Odessa's colorful mix of population stamped the character of the city at least until the 1917 revolution.

A native of the city, born in 1880, made this observation:
Even if it was a city in Russia and in my time very russified in language, Odessa was not a Russian city. Nor was it a Jewish city, though Jews were probably the largest ethnic community, particularly when one takes into account that half of the so-called Russians were actually Ukrainians, a people just as different from the Russians as Americans from Britons, or Englishmen from Irishmen. At least four great peoples—three ancient ones, and the fourth a young one—united to build the city: first the Greeks and Italians, a little later came the Jews, and only in the 1
840s did the actual Russian influence begin to grow. The city was also full of Poles, Armenians,Caucasians, Tatars, Moldavians, and a hall dozen other peoples. In Odessa everybody was an Odessan and every-one who was literate read the same newspapers and thought about the same Russian problems.

Based on the book "Odessa memories" written by Nicholas V. Iljine

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