Odessa - A History, 1794–1914

By the late 19th century Odessa was the most polyglot and cosmopolitan city in the empire. In the first decades of the 20th century, however, strikes, revolutionary agitation, and pogroms brought on the city’s decline. Herlihy contrasts Odessa’s rapid development in the 19th century with the growing tension in its society up to the First World War.