City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa, Jarrod Tanny (They Live Gear)

Rindfleisch
Published on May 1, 2021
Full interview with Prof. Jarrod Tanny on "City of Rogues and Schnorrers: Russia's Jews and the Myth of Old Odessa", Wilmington, North Carolina, United States, 21 March 2017.

- 1:54 Odesa was famous for Jewish gangsters, Isaac Babel's (Ð˜ÑÐ°Ð°Ðº Ð‘Ð°Ð±ÐµÐ»ÑŒ) Jewish gangster stories. Writing a social history of Jewish gangster was problematic, Myth of old Odesa
- 4:13 Odesa is a Jewish city of sin, a Judeo kleptocracy, a city overrun and governed by Jewish gangsters. Odesa is a city of sin much in the same way as New Orleans, San Francisco during the gold rush era, and Shanghai during the height of opium trade
- 6:02 Catherine the Great, 1794
- 6:45 Odesa became disproportionately Jewish in the mid-to-late 1800s. Population was one-third Jewish by 1870-80s
- 8:08 Odesa originally was populated by mostly Italians, Greeks, Ukrainians and Russians
- 8:40 Frontier boom town sea port frequented by sailors which led to prostitutes, brothels, musicians
- 9:10 Odesa became known as a Jewish city of sin in the same way that New York became known as a Jewish city, i.e. Jews were the largest ethnic group in New York in the late 1800s early 1900s
- 9:47 Odesa has more in common with New York City than other cities in the Pale of Settlement, e.g. Minsk, Kishinev (ChiÈ™inÄƒu), Kyiv, Warsaw
- 11:04 Warsaw was a Polish city though Poles were barely the majority of the population in the late 1800s. Kyiv considered to be the epicentre of Ukrainian national movement, Ukrainian life. Although located in Ukraine, Odesa was by no means a Ukrainian city
- 12:39 Odesa was not a historic homeland for Russians
- 13:10 Russian languge in Odesa is heavily inflected with foreign languages: vocabulary, sentence structure, Yiddish syntax, word order placement in sentences, incorrect verb conjugations reflect Yiddish grammar rather than Russian grammar
- 14:57 Russian Jews, Ukrainian Jews or just Jews? Jews also called themselves Polacks or Litvaks, Galitzianers (Galician Jews) depending on the region of eastern Europe they came from
- 17:40 After the Bolshevik revolution, many Jews left Odesa to the Russian SSR
- 18:31 Jews were integral to the economy of the Polish commonwealth, Jews served as middlemen between the nobility and the peasants. Khmelnytsky uprising and Jewish massacre
- 19:00 Yiddish literature Sholem Aleichem (×©×œ×•×Ö¾×¢×œ×™×›×) (Ð¨Ð¾Ð»Ð¾Ð¼-ÐÐ»ÐµÐ¹Ñ…ÐµÐ¼)
- 19:29 Definition of a schnorrer. The Jewish word for "mooch", but it also has a special meaning: a schnorrer is a cunning/crafty beggar
- 21:08 Ilya Ilf (Ð˜Ð»ÑŒÑ Ð˜Ð»ÑŒÑ„), Yevgeny Petrov (Ð•Ð²Ð³ÐµÐ½Ð¸Ð¹ ÐŸÐµÑ‚Ñ€Ð¾Ð²) "The Twelve Chairs", Ostap Bender
- 22:05 Sigmund Freud "Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious" (Der Witz und seine Beziehung zum UnbewuÃŸten)
- 23:09 Odesa, Jews, and Jewish gangsters in film during the Soviet period. "Bennie the Howl" Benya Krik (Ð‘ÐµÐ½Ñ ÐšÑ€Ð¸Ðº) based on The Odessa Tales. Soviet film "Intervention", 1968 (Ð˜Ð½Ñ‚ÐµÑ€Ð²ÐµÐ½Ñ†Ð¸Ñ). Lev Slavyn (Ð›ÐµÐ² Ð¡Ð»Ð°Ð²Ð¸Ð½)
- 26:57 Soviet censorship functioned at different levels: time period, medium, and region
- 27:50 In the 1940s, Stalin launched the anti-cosmopolitan campaign. Antisemitism in the Soviet Union: from 1953 to late 1980s you couldn't be "Jewish" in public, no explicitly Jewish films or novels (except for classics). Soviet Jewish jokes were double coded to both hide and express Jewish identity
- 30:40 Soviet jazz musician Leonid Utyosov (Ð›ÐµÐ¾Ð½Ð¸Ð´ Ð£Ñ‚Ñ‘ÑÐ¾Ð²) recorded songs about Jewish gangsters from Odessa; Klezmer music
- 34:30 Tony Soprano, Hollywood, Al Capone
- 35:04 Violence in Odessa. Jewish gangsters in the United States and Ashkenazi world tended to be involved in white collar crimes rather than violent crimes. Meyer Lansky (×ž××™×¨ ×œ×¢× ×¡×§×™) and "Murder Inc."
- 36:00 Crimes Jews involved in New York and Odessa: extortion, fraud, counterfeiting, international trade, e.g. bootlegging, Jews played a very large role in the international prostitution trade. The victims, however, were also Jewish, i.e.g Jewish females would be lured into prostitution and later find themselves working in Constantinople, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, etc. and become trapped
- 38:20 Pogrom of 1905: four hundred deaths; Kishinev pogrom of 1903 (×§×¢×©×¢× ×¢×•×• ×¤××’×¨××): forty nine deaths; World War Two and the 1941 Odessa massacre (Ð“Ð¾Ð»Ð¾ÐºÐ¾ÑÑ‚ Ð² ÐžÐ´ÐµÑÑ–) (××“×¢×¡ ×¨×¦×™×—×”) by Romania
- 40:05 Borders of current Ukrainian state do not reflect the history or demographics of Ukraine. The place of Odesa in Ukrainian history is a complicated topic
- 42:20 Orange Revolution and Odesa

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https://www.amazon.com/City-Rogues-Schnorrers-Russias-Odessa/dp/0253223288

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Video by UkeTube Ukrainian Video