ABSTRACT
Odessa’s demographics predicted, and its history reflected, more violent and volatile Jewish-Gentile relations than prevailed elsewhere in the Pale. To begin with, the city was home to the largest and, arguably, the most secular and independent Jewish population in the Empire. Jewish settlement in Odessa was not suppressed or subjected to the same restriction and regulation as in Kiev. As a result, its Jewish population grew throughout the 19th Century from 12.8 percent of the total in 1827 to 34.4 percent in 1897. The history of Odessa in 1905 provides a compelling example of the inter-relation of revolutionary and anti-Jewish events. The city’s best-known event in 1905 was the mutiny of the battleship Potemkin (known to many from Sergei Eizenshtein’s film), whose sailors met with a tumultuous welcome when they landed in Odessa in June, seeking the support of other ships’ crews and inadvertently reinforcing the city’s own mutiny and rebellion.
