Cosmopolitan Spaces in Odessa: A Case Study of an Urban Context

This is the first book to explore Odessa’s cosmopolitan spaces in an urban context from the nineteenth to twenty-first centuries. Leading scholars shed new light on encounters between Jewish, Ukrainian, and Russian cultures. They debate different understandings of cosmopolitanism as they are reflected in Odessa’s rich multilingual culture, ranging from intellectual history and education to music, opera, and literature. The issues of language and interethnic tensions, imperialist repression, and language choice are still with us today. Moreover, the book affords a historical view of what lay behind the Odessa myth, as well as insights into the Jewish and Ukrainian cultural revivals of the early twentieth century.