City of Thieves: Moldavanka, Criminality, and Respectability in Prerevolutionary Odessa

1. Quotation from Isaak Babel’s story “The King,” in The Collected Stories of Isaac Babel, trans. Walter Morrison (New York: New American Library, 1955), 205.

2. Vladimir Jabotinsky, “Memoirs by My Typewriter,” in The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe, ed. Lucy W. Dawidowich (New York: Schocken, 1967), 398.

3. St. Petersburg’s population tripled in the second half of the nineteenth century, from 490,808 in 1856 to 1,566,000 in 1910. The total number of Moscow inhabitants grew at a similar rate, from 368,765 to 1,481,240 over the same period. Figures cited are from Michael F. Hamm, ed., The City in Late Imperial Russia(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1986), 3.

4. Sergei Witte was minister of finance from 1892 to 1903, serving first under Alexander III and then under Nicholas II. A graduate of the Odessa university, Witte moved from a brilliant career in business into public administration, using his post as finance minister to direct a far-reaching campaign to end Russian economic “backwardness” once and for all. His efforts focused especially on the development of heavy industry, pumping millions of state rubles into railway construction, metallurgy, and fuels. This “experiment in state capitalism... channeled about two-thirds of the government’s revenues into economic development, thus fueling Russia’s first major industrial boom.” For a summary account, see David Mac Kenzie and Michael W. Curran, A History of Russia, the Soviet Union, and Beyond, 5th ed. (Belmont, CA: West/Wadsworth, 1999), quotation from pp. 324-5. For an outstanding overview of Russian urban development in the second half of the nineteenth century, see Daniel R. Brower, The Russian City between Tradition and Modernity 1850-1900(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990). For studies of specific cities, see James Bater, St. Petersburg: Industrialization and Change(London, 1976); Joseph Bradley, Muzhik and Muscovite: Urbanization in Late Imperial Russia(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985); Michael F. Hamm, Kiev: A Portrait, 1800-1917(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993); Patricia Herlihy, Odessa: A History, 1794-1914(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986); and Robert W. Thurston, Liberal City, Conservative State: Moscow and Russia’s Urban Crisis, 1906-1914(Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987).

5. Patricia Herlihy discussed Catherine’s desire to make Odessa “her St. Petersburg” in a paper titled “The Empress’s New City,” presented at the international symposium, “The Vanished World Revisited: The Myth and Reality of Odessa,” Grinnell College, Iowa, 6 November 1996. See also Herlihy, Odessa, 4-5.

6. Catherine’s intentions to exploit Odessa’s location both militarily and commercially were made clear in the decree she issued officially founding the city: “Desiring to extend Russian trade on the Black Sea and recognizing the advantageous position of [Odessa] and its many attendant uses, we have found it desirable to establish there a naval harbor together with a port for commercial vessels.” The ukazis quoted in Frederick W. Skinner, “City Planning in Russia: The Development of Odessa, 1789-1892” (Ph.D. diss., Princeton University, 1973), 39. Odessa’s population boomed from 2,349 in 1795 to more than 100,000 by mid-century. At the turn of the twentieth century, city inhabitants numbered nearly half a million, reaching more than 630,000 by 1914. For population statistics, see Frederick W. Skinner, “Odessa and the Problem of Urban Modernization,” in Hamm, City in Late Imperial Russia, 211; Herlihy, Odessa, 234; and Obzor Odesskago gradonachalstva za 1914(Odessa, 1916), 37 (hereafter, OOG).

7. For a discussion of Odessa’s reputation as Russia’s nineteenth-century El Dorado, see Robert Weinberg, The Revolution of 1905 in Odessa: Blood on the Steps(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 1-12.

8. According to the 1897 census, the national breakdown of the Odessa population (as determined by native language) was as follows: Russian (including Ukrainian and Belorussian), 59 percent; Jewish, 31 percent; Polish, 4.3 percent; German, 2.5 percent; Greek, 1.3 percent; Tatar, Armenian, French, Italian, Czech, Bulgarian, Romanian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Turkish, and others, less than 1 percent each. See Pervaia vseobshchaia perepis’ naseleniia Rossiiskoi Imperii. 1897 g. Tom 47 Gorod Odessa(St. Petersburg, 1904), vi (hereafter, “1897 Census”). Per the same source, pp. 2-3, more than fifty languages were spoken in Odessa, and dozens of religions were practiced there. According to the city prefect’s annual report for 1914, barely half of Odessa’s population was Russian Orthodox, while nearly a full third was Jewish. Odessa also had significant numbers of Roman Catholics, Protestants, Armenian Catholics, Old Believers, Muslims, and others. See OOG, 37. The two Russian cities larger than Odessa were Moscow and St. Petersburg. The Polish city of Warsaw, then part of Russia’s imperial holdings, was also larger.

9. The 1897 Census, viii, shows that 27.1 percent of Odessa’s population was peasant. Per the annual report of the city prefect, by 1914 that population rose only slightly to 30.5 percent of the total. SeeOOG,37. By contrast, peasants made up more than 67 percent of Moscow’s 1902 population and 68 percent of St. Petersburg’s 1910 total. See A. G. Rashin, Naselenie Rossii za 100 let (1811-1913 g.g.): stasticheskie ocherki(Moscow, 1956), 125. For excellent discussions of peasant influence on city life in the capital cities, see Brower, Russian City, especially 75-91, and Bradley, Muzhik and Muscovite. On the lack of peasant influence in Odessa, see Weinberg, Revolution of 1905, 14.

10. The dominant element in the Odessa populationwas the meshchanstvo, an amorphous yet decidedly urban estate that per the 1897 Census, p. viii, comprised nearly 58 percent of the city’s total. Daniel Orlovsky, “The Lower Middle Strata in Revolutionary Russia,” in Between Tsar and People: Educated Society and the Quest for Public Identity in Late Imperial Russia, ed. Edith W. Clowes, Samuel D. Kassow, and James L. West (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991), 249, defines the meshchanstvoas the lower middle strata of Russian urban society, a category encompassing people who by occupation were “located between the property-owning or higher-status professional ‘middle-class,’ on the one hand, and blue-collar factory or peasant agrarian labor, on the other.” Looking specifically at Odessa, Skinner conceives of the group in larger terms, seeing it as ranging “across the broad middle spectrum of the social order, bridging wealth and poverty, connecting bourgeois to underworld.” See Skinner, “Odessa,” 211-3.

11. Skinner, “City Planning,” 174.

12. “Little Paris” was one of Odessa’s many monikers. The city was also known as the “pearl on the Black Sea,” the “southern beauty,” the “Palmyra of the south,” the “capital of the south,” and “little Vienna.” See Grigorii Moskvich, Putevoditel’ po Odessa(Odessa, 1913), 1.

13. Judah Waten, From Odessa to Odessa(Melbourne: Chehire, 1969), 7.

14. See, for example, S. P. Beletskii, Rozysknoi al’bom. Vypusk I. Vory-Karmanniki (Marvikhery) (St. Petersburg, 1913). See also Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi federatsii, f. 1742, “Kollektsiia fotoportretov i fotografiia lits, prokhodivshikh po delam politseiskikh uchrezhdenii.”

15. See, for example, an article detailing the capture in Moldavanka of a gang of eleven thieves implicated in the murder of an Odessa merchant. Vestnik politsii, no. 7, 20 January 1908, 22.

16. “Dni nashei zhizni: V mire prestupnikov,”Odesskaia pochta(hereafter, OP), no. 1337, Friday, 7 September 1912, 2.

17. The character of the gangster king Benya Krik appears in a number of Babel’s stories. For English language translations of “The King,”“How It Was Done in Odessa,”“The Father,” and “Lyubka the Cossack,” see Collected Stories of Isaac Babel. For “Odessa” and “Sunset,” see You Must Know Everything, ed. Nathalie Babel, trans. Max Hayward (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966). For “Froim Grach,” see The Lonely Years, ed. Nathalie Babel, trans. Max Hayward (New York: Farrar Straus, 1964). For “Justice in Brackets,” see Isaac Babel: Collected Stories, trans. David McDuff (New York: Penguin, 1994). For comparative analysis of Babel’s gangsters with real-life equivalents, see Boris Briker, “The Underworld of Benia Krik and I. Babel’s Odessa Stories,”Canadian Slavonic Papers36, nos. 1-2 (1994): 115-34.

18. Since Odessa was a publishing center, newspapers were in no short supply. According to the 1914 city directory, Vsia Odessa. Adresnaia i spravochnaia kniga vsei Odessy s otdelom Odesskii uezd(Odessa, 1914), 139-41, there were more than sixty periodicals in a variety of languages in regular publication, catering to a wide variety of audiences. On the far right were Russkaia rech’(the official organ of the infamous Union of the Russian People), Russkaia kopeika, and Rossiianin, all blatantly xenophobic and virulently anti-Semitic. Of the three, Russkaia rech’had the highest circulation figures, approximately 74,000 annually. In the center of the political spectrum were mainstream liberal papers such as Odesskie novosti, which boasted an annual circulation of more than 7 million. Two other popular liberal dailies were Odesskii listok, with annual circulation of more than 5 million, and Iuzhnaia mysl’, billed as “an organ of the avant-garde,” at 4.5 million. The most popular of the “boulevard” newspapers was Odesskaia pochta, described by a Soviet historian as “intended for the tastes and interests of the petty bourgeoisie and philistine masses,” which claimed an annual circulation of well over 20 million. Circulation figures are from L. N. Beliaeva et al., eds., Bibliografiia periodicheskikh izdani Rosii, 1901-1916(Leningrad, 1959); S. M. Kovbasiuk et al., eds., Odessa: Ocherk istorii goroda-geroia(Odessa, 1957), 113; and Obzor odesskogo graonachalstva za 1912 (Odessa, 1913), 35. While I examined the full range of available periodicals, I rely most heavily on two: Odesskii listokand Odesskaia pochta. Both were widely read popular dailies, each targeting a broad middleclass audience. While sharing some common characteristics (including major advertisers), each paper provides a distinct (if significantly overlapping) viewof the city. Odesskii listokwas Odessa’s oldest continuing periodical, founded in 1872. The editor-publisher in 1912 was S. M. Navrotskaia, a noble who assumed leadership of the paper in 1911 upon the death of her husband, V. V. Navrotskii. Destined in 1917 to become the official organ of Odessa’s liberal Kadet party, Odesskii listok’s political bias tended toward moderate progressivism (more conservative than Odesskie novosti), evoking notions of enlightened Christian ethics, prim respectability, and self-conscious modernity. As such, it was most likely to appeal to professionals, businessmen, and others in the middle class. Odesskaia pochta, founded in 1908, was a paper clearly of the boulevard genre. Under the guiding hand of editor-publisher A. Finkel’, a man with a reputation for activism in Odessa’s Jewish community, Odesskaia pochtaspoke to the concerns of the city’s lower-middle class, particularly the Jewish meshchanstvo. In terms of general style, choice of story line, and language of presentation, the paper was closer to the street than Odesskii listok, catering to the tastes of Odessa’s Jewish “everyman.” This said, it is crucial to note that Odesskaia pochta, like Odesskii listok, conceived of itself consciously as a tool for liberal social change, as an organ of the new intelligentsia.

19. Historians focusing on European urban life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries discuss the tendency of bourgeois observers to imagine their cities as divided into distinct cultural geographical spaces, into “zones of light and dark, with certain areas off limits to the respectable.” Ruth Harris, Murders and Madness: Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin de Siècle(New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 328. Sharp divisions between safe and dangerous urban spaces belied underlying assumptions clearly linking unrespectable, immoral, and certainly criminal behavior with the urban lower classes. An early proponent of this argument was Louis Chevalier, Laboring Classes and Dangerous Classes in Paris during the First Half of the Nineteenth Century(New York: H. Fertig, 1973). See also Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). In recent years, historians focusing on late Imperial Russian cities have likewise been making connections (although not always explicitly) between representations of otherness and urban cultural geography. See, especially, Hubertus Jahn, “Der St. Petersburger Heumarkt im 19. Jahrhundert. Metamorphosen eines Stadtviertels,”Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas44 (1996): 162-77; Roshanna P. Sylvester, “Cultural Transgressions, Bourgeois Fears: Violent Crime in Odessa’s Central Entertainment District,”Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas44 (1996): 503-22; Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism: Crime, Culture, and Power in St. Petersburg, 1900-1914(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993); Brower, Russian City; Hamm, Kiev; and others.

20. I amusing the idea of cultural appropriation in the sense suggested by Roger Chartier and others. See, for example, Roger Chartier, “Culture as Appropriation: Popular Cultural Uses in Early Modern France,” in Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century, ed. Steven L. Kaplan (Berlin: Mouton, 1984), 229-53.

21. For a more detailed discussion of this, see Roshanna P. Sylvester, “Making an Appearance: Urban ‘Types’ and the Creation of Respectability in Odessa’s Popular Press, 1912-14,”Slavic Review59, no. 4 (2000): 802-23.

22. For stories focusing on the lack of adequate public services in Moldavanka, see “Slukhi i fakty,”Odesskii listok(hereafter, OL), no. 126, Friday, 1 June 1912, 5; “Interesy Moldavanki,”OL, no. 99, Saturday, 28 April 1912, 2; “Slukhi i fakty,”OL, no. 27, Thursday, 2 February 1912, 5; “‘Tolchok’ i Moldavanka,”OL, no. 40, Saturday, 18 February 1912, 3; “Dni nashei zhizni,”OP, no. 1837, Thursday, 23 January 1914, 2; “Dni nashei zhizni,”OP, no. 1245, Tuesday, 7 June 1912, 3; and “Na okrainakh,”OL, no. 186, Saturday, 11 August 1912, 5.

23. “Dni nashei zhizni: Moldavanka noch’iu,”OP, no. 1184, Friday, 6 April 1912, 2. “Faust” was the prolific writer Iakov Osipovich Sirkis, who also wrote for the Odessa satirical journal Krokodiland was the father of Osip Kolychev, a Soviet poet popular in the 1930s, especially for the hit song, “Young Guard.” Many thanks to Elena Karakina of the Odessa Literary Museum and especially to local history aficionado Sergei Lushchik for providing this information.

24. For a sampling of stories relating to deaths or injuries resulting from poor housing conditions, see “Zhertvy ugara,”OL, no. 17, Saturday, 21 January 1912, 5; “Dnevnik proishevstvii” (hereafter “DP”), OL, no. 24, Sunday, 29 January 1912, 4; “DP,”OL, no. 58, Saturday, 10 March 1912, 3; “DP,”OL, no. 4, Thursday, 5 January 1912, 3; and “DP,”OL, Wednesday, 11 January 1912, 5.

25. “Grandioznaia ‘oblava,’”OL, no. 281, Tuesday, 4 December 1912, 48.

26. Quotations are from the following Isaev pieces: “Na tolkuchem rynke,”OL, no. 92, Friday, 20 April 1912, 3; “Nosilshchiki tolkuchago rynka,”OL, no. 114, Friday, 18 May 1912, 3; and “‘Tolkuchii,’”OL, no. 210, Sunday, 9 September 1912, 4.

27. Obzhorka(literally, “little gourmand”) was a colloquialism used to describe a low-quality cafeteria or eatery.

28. “Na tolkuchem rynke,”OL, no. 146, Sunday, 24 June 1912, 4.

29. “Slukhi i fakty,”OL, no. 18, Sunday, 22 January 1912, 6.

30. For a smattering of the many possible examples reported in 1912 of the presence of thieves, prostitutes, and fencers of stolen goods at the flea market, see “DP” in OLon 11 January, 29 January, 31 January, 9 February, 9 March, 5 July, and 2 December. For reports of rapes in the flea market, see DP, OL, no. 280, Sunday, 2 December 1912, 4, and “Gnusnoe nasilie,”OL, no. 164, Tuesday, 17 July 1912, 3.

31. “Nosilshchiki tolkuchago rynka,”OL, no. 114, Friday, 18 May 1912, 3.

32. Among the many reports of muggings in Moldavanka, see “DP,”OL, no. 2, Tuesday, 3 January 1912, 5 (Balkovskaia); no. 229, Wednesday, 3 October 1912, 4 (Balkovskaia); no. 26, Wednesday, 1 February 1912, 4 (Balkovskaia); no. 42, Tuesday, 21 February 1912, 5 (Manezhnaia); no. 205, Tuesday, 4 September 1912, 3 (Miasoedovskaia); no. 204, Sunday, 2 September 1912, 4 (Miasoedovskaia); no. 58, Saturday, 10 March 1912, 3 (Petropavlovskaia); no. 259, Wednesday, 7 November 1912, 5 (Prokhorovskaia); no. 19, Tuesday, 24 January 1912, 4 (Stepovaia); no. 280, Sunday, 2 December 1912, 4 (Stepovaia); no. 13, Tuesday, 17 January 1912, 4 (Staroportofrankovskaia); and no. 76, Sunday, 1 April 1912, 5 (Zaporozhskaia). See also “Ogrableniia,”OL, no. 232, Saturday, 6 October 1912, 3. Examples of violent street fights and assaults can be found in “DP,”OL, no. 32, Thursday, 9 February 1912, 5 (Panteleimonovskaia); no. 19, Tuesday, 24 January 1912, 4 (Vorontsovskaia); no. 48, Tuesday, 28 February 1912, 4 (Gradonachalnicheskaia); no. 129, Tuesday, 5 June 1912, 4 (Kosvennaia); no. 7, Tuesday, 10 January 1912, 4 (Manezhnaia); no. 258, Tuesday, 6 November 1912, 4 (Stepovaia). See also “Izbieniia,”OL, no. 117, Tuesday, 22 May 1912, 4, and “Ulichnaia rasprava,”OL, no. 45, Friday, 24 February 1912, 3. For murders and attempted murders on the street, see “Ubiistvo,”OL, no. 211, Tuesday, 11 September 1912, 5; “Ubiistvo,”OL, no. 142, Wednesday, 20 June 1912, 3; “Pokushenie na ubiistvo,”OL, no. 84, Wednesday, 11 April 1912, 3; and below.

33. “Zverskoe ubiistvo vorami nevinnago cheloveka,”OP, no. 1875, Sunday, 2 March 1914, 4.

34. “Kalendar Odesskoi kopeiki: Dokole?”Odesskaia kopeika, no. 18, 8 March 1914, 2.

35. “Dikie nravy,”OL, no. 205, Tuesday, 4 September 1912, 2.

36. Many of the rapes reported in Moldavanka involved the attack by two or more men of young women or girls. The flea market was an especially common venue for such rapes. See, for example, “DP,”OL, no. 280, Sunday, 2 December 1912, 4, and “Gnusnoe nasilie,”OL, no. 164, Tuesday, 17 July 1912, 3. For other instances of gang rape in Moldavanka, see “DP,”OL, no. 105, Sunday, 6 May 1912, 4 (Dalnitskaia); “Nasilie,”OL, no. 112, Wednesday, 16 May 1912, 4 (Pishonovskaia); and “Gnusnoe nasilie,”OP, no. 1941, Thursday, 8 May 1914, 3. For instances of child molestation, see “Nasilie,”OL, no. 112, Wednesday, 16 May 1912, 4, and “DP,”OL, no. 178, Thursday, 2 August 1912, 4 (ul. 19 Fevralia). For cases of domestic violence, see “Ottseubiistvo”, OL, no. 6, Sunday, 8 January 1912, 4; “Koshmarnaia drama,”OL, no. 136, Wednesday, 13 June 1912, 3; “DP,”OL, no. 58, Saturday, 10 March 1912, 3 (Staroportofrankovskaia); “Mat’ i doch’ (Krovovaia drama),”OP, no. 2321, Monday, 25 May 1915, 3; and “DP,”OL, no. 283, Thursday, 6 December 1912, 4.

37. See, for example, “DP,”OL, no. 11, Saturday, 14 January 1912, 4; “DP,”OL, no. 127, Tuesday, 24 January 1912, 3; and “Deti ulitsy”, OL, no. 68, Thursday, 22 March 1912, 4.

38. See “Uzhasy zhizni,”OL, no. 118, Wednesday, 23 May 1912, 5, and “Nashi deti,”OL, no. 143, Thursday, 21 June 1912, 3.

39. “Dni nashei zhizni,”OP, no. 1914, Friday, 11 April 1914, 2.

40. “Kartinki Moldavanki,”OP, no. 2330, Wednesday, 4 June 1915, 3.

41. Ibid. Faust quotes the words of the little song hummed by young Moldavanka girls: “Oy, mama I want to get married. Oy, mama, arrange me a marriage. I can’t wait anymore, I need a young fiancé!”

42. “Na dne Odessy (Detskaia prostitutsiia),”OP, no. 1242, Monday, 4 June 1912, 4. Laura Engelstein, The Keys to Happiness: Sex and the Search for Modernity in Fin-de-Siecle Russia(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1992), 274-98, analyzes the powerful symbolism of the juvenile prostitute who personified contemporary concerns about “the urban sexual threat” as well as the disintegration of morality associated with the “chaotic state” of urban lower-class family life.

43. Neuberger, Hooliganism, 186. Chapter 4 of Neuberger’s book (pp. 158-215), is devoted to analysis of contemporary discourse about the connections between lower-class family life, youth culture, and juvenile crime.

44. Concern about children of the street was certainly not limited to Odessa. For discussion of such issues in nineteenth-century New York, see Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987), 193-216.

45. “‘Moldavanka,’ eia vragi i druz’ia,”OP, no. 2461, Monday, 12 October 1915, 3.

46. “Deti ulitsy,”OL, no. 44, Thursday, 23 February 1912, 3.

47. “Dni nashei zhizni: V mire prestipnikov,”OP, no. 1341, Tuesday, 11 September 1912, 2.

48. “Kartinki Moldavanki,”OP, no. 2330, Wednesday, 4 June 1915, 3.

49. “Dni nashei zhizni: V mire prestipnikov,”OP, no. 1341, Tuesday, 11 September 1912, 2.

50. The various competing, contradictory, and overlapping explanations of juvenile crime offered by Russian journalists, jurists, criminologists, social reformers, and other contemporary observers stressed biological, moral, and social factors. See, especially, Neuberger, Hooliganism, and Engelstein, Keys to Happiness.

51. “Kartinki Moldavanki,”OP, no. 2330, Wednesday, 4 June 1915, 3.

52. Ibid.

53. “‘Moldavanka,’ eia vragi i druz’ia,”OP, no. 2463, Wednesday, 14 October 1915, 3.

54. The tendency of middle-class journalists to engage in this practice is discussed by Sam Bass Warner Jr., “Slums and Skyscrapers: Urban Images, Symbols, and Ideology,” in Cities of the Mind: Images and Themes of the City in the Social Sciences, ed. Lloyd Rodwin and Robert M. Hollister (New York: Plenum, 1984), 186.

55. “Kartinki Moldavanki,”OP, no. 2330, Wednesday, 4 June 1915, 3.

56. “‘Moldavanka,’ eia vragi i druz’ia,”OP, no. 2463, Wednesday, 14 October 1915, 3.

57. “‘Moldavanka,’ eia vragi i druz’ia,”OP, no. 2464, Thursday, 15 October 1915, 2.

58. “‘Moldavanka,’ eia vragi i druz’ia,”OP, No. 2465, Friday, 16 October 1915, 3.

59. “Dom No. 28,”OP, no. 2401, Thursday, 13 August 1915, 3.

60. Ibid.

61. “Obratite vnimanie!”OP, no. 1880, Friday, 7 March 1914, 3

62. “Kartinki Moldavanki,”OP, no. 2331, Thursday, 4 June 1915, 3.

63. Ibid.

64. “Dni nashei zhizni,”OP, no. 1120, Wednesday, 1 February 1912, 2.

65. “Rodnaia kartinka,”OP, no. 1602, Saturday, 1 June 1913, 3.

66. For complaints by Moldavankans about official neglect of their neighborhood, see note 22 above. For discussion of the long-standing tendency of city officials to favor affluent central city neighborhoods at the expense of Moldavanka and other lower-class districts, see Skinner, “Odessa,” 222-3, 336-40, 344-6.

67. See, for example, “Gastroli,”OL, no. 59, Sunday, 11 March 1912, 4.

68. “Slukhi i fakty,”OL, no. 21, Thursday, 26 January 1912, 3.

69. “Pereodetyi v shansonetku vor,”OP, no. 1911, Tuesday, 8 April 1914, 3.

70. See “Arest ‘korolevy’ vorov,”OL, no. 259, Wednesday, 7 November 1912, 5, and “Pokhopedenia ‘korolevy vorovok,’”OL, no. 161, Friday, 13 July 1912, 3.

71. “Priezd ‘korolia’ vorov,”OL, no. 56, Thursday, 8 March 1912, 3.

72. “DP,”OL, no. 4, Thursday, 5 January 1912, 3.

73. “Dni nashei zhizni: V mire prestipnikov,”OP, no. 1351, Friday, 21 September 1912, p. 2.

74. “Kartinki Moldavanki,”OP, no. 2331, Thursday, 4 June 1915, 3.

75. Ibid.

76. See Sylvester, “Cultural Transgressions,” for discussion of “invasions” of lower-class “attackers” into middle-class space.

77. “Odesskie vory i Borodinskiia torzhestva,”OP, no. 1326, Monday, 27 August 1912, 5. The thief known as “Morozhenshchik,” whom Faust mentioned above, was also arrested at this occasion as were his two nephews.

78. “‘Blagorodnyi’ otprysk,”OL, no. 192, Sunday, 19 August 1912, 5.

79. “Dni nashei zhizni: V mire prestipnikov,”OP, no. 1348, Tuesday, 18 September 1912, 3.

80. It is of course possible that Faust himself was the author of the letter. If this was indeed the case, Faust’s uses of the letter become even more transparent.

81. Briker, “Underworld of Benia Krik,” 119-22.

82. Onthe importance of images of success to popular readers, see Jeffrey Brooks, When Russia Learned to Read: Literacy and Popular Literature, 1861-1917(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), 271-2.

83. “Dni nashei zhizni: V mire prestipnikov,”OP, no. 1351, Friday, 21 September 1912, 2.

84. Babel, Collected Stories, 212.

85. For a brilliant discussion of revolutionary discourse, see Orlando Figes and Boris Kolonistskii, Interpreting the Russian Revolution: The Language and Symbols of 1917(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999), especially chaps. 4 and 6.