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Odessa as “Point de Capital”: Economics, History, and Time in Odessa Fiction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 March 2017

Svetlana Natkovich
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Extract

Odessa was founded on the fault line between autocratic agricultural Russia and the international trade routes of emerging global capitalism. It was the place where the use value of agricultural products was converted into the exchange value of commodities. In the rift between these two systems of values, and between the epistemological and psychological perceptions associated with them, a third kind of ontological and epistemological space emerged. This space was conditioned by the evolving patterns of the Odessa grain trade regulated by stock trading, and induced in its turn a unique perception of time, history, and the relation between the real and fi ctitious. This article pinpoints the link between the mechanisms of the Odessa grain trade, the patterns of subjectivity and temporal perception that were molded by Odessa's business culture, and the modes of literary representation that elaborated these patterns into a specific literary idiom associated with Odessa literature.

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Slavic Review , Volume 75 , Issue 4 , Winter 2016 , pp. 847 - 871
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 2016

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References

I would like to thank the editor of Slavic Review and the anonymous readers for their generous guidance in sharpening my arguments. My special gratitude to Efraim Sicher for his support, encouragement, and advice and to Anna Pollmann for her thorough readings and helpful suggestions.

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23. Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 85, 212.

24. Steven Kaplan defined bread as a “pilot sector of the economy” in old regime Europe that “conditioned every phase of social life,” and “shaped the development of commerce and industry, regulated employment, and provided a major source of revenue for the state, the church, the nobility, and large segments of the third estate,” Kaplan, Steven L., Bread, Politics and Political Economy in the Reign of Louis XV, vol. 1 (The Hague, 1976), xvi CrossRefGoogle Scholar; According to Fernand Braudel, cereals represented 52% of calories on the luxurious table at Genoa around 1614–15 and formed 81% of the consumption of the poor at the same time. An average mason's family of fi ve in 1800 Berlin spent 44.2% of their monthly income on bread. Braudel, Fernand, Capitalism and Material Life 1400–1800, trans. Kochan, Miriam (New York, 1973), 89–90 Google Scholar. Therefore, the question of grain supply was a question of strategic importance for individuals and political regimes. For more on the dynamics of grain trade regulation in the 19th century see: Rothstein, Morton, “Centralizing Firms and Spreading Markets: The World of International Grain Traders, 1846–1914,” Business and Economic History, Second Series, no. 17 (1988): 103–13Google Scholar.

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27. Clover, “Value and Temporality,” 22.

28. Whereas at the end of 1860s Russia supplied England with 35 percent of its imported grain, “by 1913 the fi gure had slumped to 9 percent.” (Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 206). In the 1870s Russia exported 33.1% of world's exported wheat, 83.6% of rye, and 63% of oats, but already between 1903–1904 these numbers were 24.7% of wheat, 37.1% of rye, and 42.3% of oats. (Kitanina, Khlebnaia torgovlia Rossii, 151). If in 1845, 56.9% of all Russian grain export was traded through the port of Odessa, in 1875 it was already 22.6% and in 1904 only 17.2%. In 1910, Odessa deteriorated to third place among southern Russian ports, aft er Nikolaev and Rostov-on-Don, with 8.7% of the Russian grain trade export (Sartor, “Khlebnye eksportery Chernomorsko-Azovskogo regiona,” 161–63).

29. Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 206.

30. If in the 1860s and early 1870s the average profit of a dealer was 5–10 kopeks for one pud (circa 16 kg) of sold grain, in the following decades it shrunk down to 1/4 kopek per pud. See Kitanina, Khlebnaia torgovlia Rossii, 82.

31. For example, the report of Odessa's trade council written in 1875 was titled “On the Reasons for the Decline of Odessa Trade and the Means for its Recuperation.” See Zolotov, Khlebnyi eksport Rossii, 118–24.

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38. Vladimir (Ze′ev) Jabotinsky, “Sipur yamai,” in Eri Jabotinsky, ed., Ketavim, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1947), 10, 40; Jabotinsky, Vladimir, The Five: A Novel of Jewish Life in Turn-of the- Century Odessa, trans. Katz, Michael R. (Ithaca, 2005), 137 Google Scholar.

39. Thus, for example, in one of his stories that referred to his student experience in Rome, Jabotinsky's autobiographical protagonist earned his living by extracting statistical data from the Odessa Corn Exchange Bulletin for a conservative member of the Italian parliament. See Vladimir Jabotinsky, “Diana,” in Vladimir (Ze′ev) Jabotinsky. Sochineniia v deviati tomakh, vol. 1 (Minsk, 2007), 458, 467; For English translation / rewrite of the story see: Jabotinsky, Vladimir, “Diana,” in Johnson, Violet Ross, ed., trans., A Pocket Edition of Several Stories, Mostly Reactionary (Paris, 1925), 54–55; 67–68Google Scholar.

40. Mina Graur's bibliography of Jabotinsky's writings refers to more than 70 of his articles dedicated to Odessa, the vast majority of which were written between 1899 and 1913; Graur, Mina, ed., Kitvei Ze′ev Jabotinsky 1897–1940: Bibliografia (Tel-Aviv, 2007), 887 Google Scholar. For more on Jabotinsky's role in Odessa's cultural milieu in the 1900s see Natkovich, Svetlana, Ben ‘anene zohar: Yetsirato shel Vladimir (Ze’ev) Z’abotinski ba-heksher ha-hevrati (Jerusalem, 2015), 37–55 Google Scholar.

41. Although between 1923 and 1924 the amount of exported wheat shrunk six times in comparison to the data in 1913, the export of rye in this period was actually doubled (554,556 tons of wheat in 1923–24 compared to 3,326,976 tons in 1913; 1,315,980 tons of rye in 1923–24 versus 646,455 tons in 1913). See Rosenberg, Vladimir, Der Getreideexport aus Sovetrussland (Berlin, 1925), 24 Google Scholar.

42. For more on the restructuring of the Russian grain market see Kondratiev, Nikolai, Rynok khlebov i ego regulirovanie vo vremia voiny i revolutsii (Moscow, 1991)Google Scholar.

43. Graziosi, Andrea, The Great Soviet Peasant War: Bolsheviks and Peasants, 1917–1933 (Cambridge, Mass., 1996)Google Scholar.

44. Babel′, Isaak, “How Things Were Done in Odessa,” in Babel′, Nathalie, ed., The Complete Works of Isaac Babel, trans. Constantine, Peter (New York, 2002), 150 Google Scholar.

45. Aleichem, Sholem, “London: Roman fun der Odeser klayne-birzhe,” Kol-mevaser tsu der yidisher folks-bibliotek (1892): 7–24 Google Scholar.

46. Aleichem, Sholem, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, trans. Kahana, Tamara (New York, 1969), 21.Google Scholar

47. Since the fi rst serious critical analysis of Sholem Aleichem's work by Ba’al-Makhshoves (Yisroel Elyashiv) in 1908 and more rigorously in the works of later Marxist Yiddish critics, Menakhem-Mendel was identifi ed as a luft mensh, a prototype of the Jewish petty merchant detached from the actual process of production. See: Ba’al-Makhshoves, “Sholem-Aleichem,” Geklibene shriftn, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1929), 91–109. For the English translation see: Ba’al-Makhshoves, “Sholem Aleichem [A Typology of His Characters],” Prooftexts 6, no. 1, (1986): 7–15; Samuel Niger, “Sholem-Aleichem,” in his Vegn Yidishe shrayber: Kritishe artiklen, vol. 1 (Warsaw, 1912), 117–18; Erik, Max, “Af di shpurn fun Menakhem-Mendlen,” Bikhervelt no. 1, (1928): 3–10 Google Scholar; Erik, Max, “Menakhem Mendl—geshtalt un metod,” Shtern no. 5–6, (1935): 180–202; no. 8 (1935): 60–69Google Scholar. For the English translation see: Max Erik, “Menakhem-Mendl [A Marxist Critique],” trans. David Roskies, Prooft exts 6, no. 1 (1986): 23–39. For an overview of a characterization of Menakhem-Mendel through the lens of the Marxist concept of alienation, see: Miron, Dan, The Image of the Shtetl and Other Studies of Modern Jewish Literary Imagination (Syracuse, 2000), 169–71Google Scholar.

48. Aleichem, Sholem, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, 22 Google Scholar.

49. “Gambit” is a term in the chess lexicon: “an opening in which a player off ers a sacrifi ce, typically of a pawn, for the sake of a compensating advantage,” Oxford English Dictionary Online, at http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/76444?redirectedFrom=gambit (accessed August 3, 2016).

50. Max Erik, one of the central scholars of the Soviet Marxist School of Yiddish literary criticism, claimed that “Menakhem-Mendel failed not because he played the market badly or unluckily. He didn't play at all… . Actually, the only place he played was in his imagination. He imitated and frenetically parodied the grand spectacle of the great capitalist mongers. He performed all the movement of the play without the play itself,” see: Erik, “Menakhem-Mendl [A Marxist Critique],” 30. This disregards, however, the fi ctitious character of the futures trade itself. In fact, Menakhem-Mendel's “performance” is not so much at odds with the behavior of the “sharks” of the exchange. The biggest difference between them is not in the patterns of behavior or contrast between imagination and reality, but in the dexterity to operate with both the abstract and the concrete in one conceptual system.

51. On a psychological analysis of Sholem Aleichem's literature in general and Menakhem-Mendel's character in particular see: Yehiel Yeshaia Trunk, “Yiddishe psikhik un die historishe bedingungen fun ir entviklung,” in his Sholem-Aleykhem: zayn veznun zayne verk (Warsaw, 1937), 85–157; Miron, Dan, ha-Ttsad ha-afel bi-tsehoko shel Shalom Alekhem: Masot al hashivutah shel ha-retsinut be-yahas le-Yidish ule-sifrutah (Tel Aviv, 2004), 55–69 Google Scholar.

52. Aleichem, Sholem, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, 17 Google Scholar

53. For example, Patricia Herlihy noted that Odessa's largest proprietors built their warehouses that were as decorative as “the palaces they adjoined,” see: Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 84. While in western Europe the main feature of wholesale storage facilities was their functionality, as opposed to the bourgeois comfort of private houses, Odessa's patterns of urban planning blurred the borders between a product of consumption and a commodity, between domestic and commercial, individual and impersonal. Thus the provincial outsider would experience an illusion of familiarity with local modes of commerce, while in fact operating in an alien world of fi ctitious fi nance.

54. Aleichem, Sholem, The Adventures of Menahem-Mendl, 22 Google Scholar

55. Ibid., 27

56. Ibid., 32

57. Amelia Glaser has referred to the problem of signifi cation, asserting that “Menachem-Mendl is a master of marketplace form, but not of its content.” However, she did not diff erentiate between patterns of the traditional marketplace and a capitalist stock market exchange, whose clash and partial congruence conditioned Menakhem-Mendl's misunderstanding, Glaser, Amelia, Jews and Ukrainians in Russia's Literary Borderlands: From the Shtetl Fair to the Petersburg Bookshop (Evanston, 2012), 97 Google Scholar.

58. Aleichem, Sholem, The Adventures of Menachem-Mendl, 33 Google Scholar.

59. Ibid., 43–44

60. Jabotinsky, The Five, 30.

61. Ibid., 29.

62. On the representation of myth and history in The Five see Natkovich, Ben ‘anene zohar, 245–49.

63. Jabotinsky, “Sipur yamai,” in Eri Jabotinsky, ed., Ketavim, vol. 1 (Jerusalem, 1958), 20.

64. Jabotinsky, The Five, 46

65. Ibid., 18, 24.

66. On Jabotinsky's discourse of passion see Natkovich, Ben ‘anene zohar, 49–62; 234–38.

67. On the Dionysian and Apollonian characteristics of Babel′'s heroes see: Freidin, Gregory, “Fat Tuesday in Odessa: Issak Babel′'s “Di Grasso” as Testament and Manifesto,” The Russian Review 40, no. 2 (March 1981): 101–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Mann, Robert, The Dionysian Art of Isaac Babel (Berkeley, 1994) 39–42, 46–50, 66–73Google Scholar.

68. Sicher, Efraim, “The Road to a Red Calvary: Myth and Mythology in the Works of Isaak Babel’ of the 1920s,” The Slavonic and East European Review 60, no. 4 (October 1982): 528–46Google Scholar. This has been superseded by Sicher, Efraim, Babel′ in Context: A Study in Cultural Identity (Boston, 2012), 129–50Google Scholar.

69. Babel′, “The King,” in The Complete Works, 133.

70. Babel′, “Sunset,” in The Complete Works, 798.

71. See Gregory Freidin's remark that sunshine in Babel′'s Odessa cycle “had less to do with the comfort and warmth of hospitable Odessa and more to do with the city's bourgeois character …” Freidin, Gregory, “Two Babels—Two Aphrodites: Autobiography in Maria and Babel's Peterburg Myth,” in Freidin, Gregory, ed., The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context (Stanford, 2009), 18 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

72. In Russian the word zagotovka used by Babel′ in that context might equally refer to the acquisition, collection, preparation, and requisition of products.

73. Babel′, “Karl-Yankel,” in The Complete Works, 622–23.

74. For another Babel′ story that describes violent expropriation of wheat see: Babel′, “The Ivan and Maria,” in The Complete Works, 667–78.

75. For Babel′'s poetic manifesto see Babel′, “Odessa,” in The Complete Works, 75–79.

76. Freidin, “Fat Tuesday,” 101–21.

77. Babel′, “Di Grasso,” in The Complete Works, 701.

78. Freidin, “Fat Tuesday,” 106.

79. A. K. Zholkovskii and M. B. Iampol′skii, Babel′/Babel (Moscow, 1994), 70–76, 266–84.

80. Ibid., 73

81. Ibid., 75

82. Babel′, “How Things Were Done in Odessa,” in The Complete Works, 147.

83. Ibid., 152

84. Ibid., 147

85. Il′ia Il′f and Evgenii Petrov, The Little Golden Calf: A Satiric Novel, trans. Anne O. Fisher (Montpelier, 2009), 194.

86. On the infl uence of Sholem Aleichem's prose in general and “Menakhem-Mendel” in particular on Il′f and Petrov see Seth L. Wolitz, “Sholem Aleichem's ‘Menachem Mendel′ and Ilf and Petrov's ‘Twelve Chairs,’ “ Chulyot no. 2 (Summer 1994): 127–40.

87. Il′f and Petrov, The Little Golden Calf, 195.

88. The word polozhit′ (to put) is used in the gambling and business lexicon as a synonym of the word vlozhit′ (to invest). And Valiadis's use of the conjunctive mood suggests the possibility of his actual encounter with Snowden and investment with or in him.