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Culture of Odessa


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Politicians, military leaders and spies

Ze'ev Jabotinsky was born in Odessa, and largely developed his version of Zionism there in early 1920s.

Marshal of the Soviet Union Rodion Yakovlevich Malinovsky a military commander in World War II and Defense Minister of the Soviet Union was born in Odessa. Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal lived in Odessa.

Interestingly, Georgi Rosenblum employed by William Melville as one of the first spies of the British Secret Service Bureau

Literature

Poet Anna Akhmatova was born in Bolshoy Fontan near Odessa. The city has produced many writers, including Isaac Babel, whose series of short stories, Odessa Tales, are set in the city. Other odessites are the duo Ilf and Petrov, and Yuri Olesha. Vera Inber, a poet and writer, as well as the famous poet and journalist, Margarita Aliger were both born in Odessa. The Italian writer, slavist and anti-fascist dissident Leone Ginzburg was born in Odessa into a Jewish family, and then went to Italy where he grew up and lived.

One of the most prominent pre-war Soviet writers, Valentin Kataev, was born here and began his writing career as early as high school (gymnasia). Before moving to Moscow in 1922, he made quite a few acquaintances here, including Yury Olesha and Ilya Ilf (Ilf's co-author Petrov was in fact Kataev's brother, Petrov being his pen-name). Kataev became a benefactor for these young authors, who would become some of the most talented and popular Russian writers of this period. In 1955 Kataev became the first chief editor of the Youth (Russian: ??????, Yunost�), one of the leading literature magazines of the Ottepel of the 1950s and 1960s.

These authors and comedians played a great role in establishing the "Odessa myth" in the Soviet Union. Odessites were and are viewed in Russian culture (in the broad sense of the word "Russian") as sharp-witted, street-wise and eternally optimistic. These qualities are reflected in the
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