Chronograph of Odessa can be found here
In ancient times (V century BC) on the territory of modern Odessa there were two ancient Greek settlements - the harbor of Istrian (the area of Primorsky Boulevard) and the harbor of Asiakov (the area of Luzanovka). The water level was lower that time, so the territory of the former settlements is now covered by the sea.
What happens next is the tectonic processes of migration of human masses, called the "Great Migration of Nations". Everything at that moment looks like kind of a big blank, so historians think no one lived here at that time. But wait a second, that’s over a thousand years! And at the end of that period, the Nogai Horde (the Black Sea branch of the Golden Horde) settled here.
In 1362, after the Battle of Blue Waters, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania seized the coast, and the Nogai Horde got to skedaddle. At the beginning of the 15th century, the Lithuanians based their fortress here and named it Kotsyubeev (et in portu suo Regio Kaczubyeiow) and a port pier (first mentioned in 1415).
From 1484, these lands were conquered by the Ottoman Empire. The local population were predominantly Tatars. Kotsyubeev was renamed into Khadzhibey (translated from Turkish as “The one who visited Mecca”). By the end of XV century, Khadzhibey had become a trading city.
In 1764, the Ottomans completed the construction of an old Lithuanian fortress near the settlement of Khadzhibey. They called it Yeni-Dunya (New World).
On September 14 (September 25, according to a new style), 1789, during the Russian-Turkish war (1787-1791), the Yeni-Dunya fortress was captured by detachments of regular Russian troops and Black Sea Cossacks under the command of the Frenchman Jose de Ribas (he would become the first mayor of Odessa), as well as a separate corps of the Russian army under the command of I.V. Gudovich.
Initially, they decided to build a military settlement on the site of Khadzhibey to protect the territories recently captured from the Turks, but later they decided to seize even more territories to the south, and to make a Russian city on the site of Khadzhibey, after clearing it of everything that could remind of its Ottoman past.
From that moment on, the Ottoman past of the city of Khadzhibey was officially wiped out, and the chronology of the Russian city with the name of Odessa began in 1794.
Until 1905, the economic growth of the city took place, primarily due to the port. Odessa became the fourth most important city in the Russian Empire after St. Petersburg, Moscow and Warsaw. Odessa got the name South Palmyra, North Palmyra was called the capital of the Russian Empire - St. Petersburg.
In 1905, Emperor Nicholas II presented his subjects with the Parliament and something like the first Constitution. Odessites understood this as permission to kill and rob Jews. The next year, the first rich Jews left Odessa, and from that moment decline of the “Pearl by the Sea” began. Further, Russia got involved in the First World War, this led to a chain of events that plunged Russia into the Civil War.
In 1919, a lot of those Odessites who were commonly called the elite left Odessa. Millions of Russian citizens (about 12 million) perished in the fire of the Civil War, and Odessa was replenished with new citizens - the proletariat. From that moment on, Odessa also received the glory of a “gangster city”.
Since 1919, the Bolsheviks destroyed the remnants of Odessa, which de Richelieu began to create, churches were closed, "enemies of the people" were shot - Odessa was degrading (except for the NEP era), like the whole country, which received a new name - the USSR.
During World War II, Odessa was occupied by Romania. During that time, the city lost almost half of the population, mostly Jews.
In the post-war period, Odessa was the major port on the Black Sea, a city of sailors. Closer to the fall of the USSR, Jews again left Odessa en masse. Very few of them left in the city.
After the collapse of the USSR, Odessa became a Ukrainian city and, like all of Ukraine, is trying to become a European city, despite the everlasting glory of the “gangster city”, as well as all the “comforts” inherited from the dead Soviet Union.
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