Staple Trade and Urbanization in New RussiaOne of the more promising developments in Russia during the first half of the nineteenth century was the spectacular rise of the Black Sea port of Odessa.1 Catherine II, through the successive partitions of Poland, had established Russian control over a vast expanse of the west–ern and southern steppes. In 1774, through a victorious war against the Turks, she extended the Russian frontier to the western littoral of the Black Sea. Russian dominion over the littoral was gradually enlarged, eastward into the Crimea, and, in 1791, toward the west, into the area con–taining the site of the future city of Odessa. In 1794, to stabilize these conquests and promote trade, Catherine ordered a new city to be built where a small Turkish fortress, Khadzhibei, had once stood. In the classical spirit then fashionable, the new settlement was called Odessa, after an ancient city which had supposedly stood there, and which in turn recalled the name of the wander–ing Greek mariner, Ulysses or Odysseus.2 Thirty-two years later, its population numbered 33,000; by the middle of the nineteenth century, it had grown to 100,000.
Odessa was not among the ten largest Russian cities in 1811, but by 1863, it ranked third. A review of trade statistics should convince historians, as it did contemporaries, that Odessa was a dynamic city. In 1798, Odessa’s exports were valued at 90,977 silver rubles, and its imports at 117,888 rubles. By 1805, exports had grown in value to 3,399,291 rubles and imports to 2,156,844. In eight years, the worth of imports increased eighteen times while that of exports was growing forty-four times. In 1847 (although it should be noted that this was an exceptional year), Odessa’s exports surpassed in value forty-four million rubles, which amounted to about a third of the worth of all exports from Russia.
Between the two periods 1824–33 and 1844–53, the average annual export of wheat from Russia tripled, and in both periods, more than half of the wheat was sent through Odessa. Even before 1850, signs of prosperity excited the visitor to Odessa: the broad boulevards, elegant buildings, numerous schools, including the Richelieu Lyceum (later to become the University of New Russia) and a flourishing academy for young noble ladies.
In 1819, 700 houses were built and plans were laid out for 800 more the following year. Between 1824 and 1827, 4,020,000 rubles (assignats) were spent on private construction in Odessa, 242,000 for shops and 620,000 for grain storehouses. The government expended 808,000 rubles on public buildings, bringing the total spent on construction of all sorts to 4,828,000 paper