The Mail-Journal, Volume 22, Number 49, Milford, Kosciusko County, 4 December 1985 — Page 5

Sixth In A Series

Odessa is Russia's only warm water deep sea port

By DELLA AND ARCH BAUMGARTNER ODESSA, Ukraine, USSR, Wednesday, Oct. 9 — Russia isn’t all cold weather and big fur hats. It has its “Florida,” too.

Odessa is Russia’s only warm water port, and as such is the shipping center of this huge country. It has a population of 1,100,000 and is situated on the north shores of the Black Sea. This population doubles in size, however, during the summer vacation months. It is the third largest city in the Ukraine, Kiev being first with its two millionplus, and Khrakov being second with one and one-half million people. Otir guide told us, “Yes, Odessa is very young. It is only 191 years old, founded as a city in 1794.” Russia Near Land-Locked Russia is not land-locked, but it would seem so considering the enormous land mass of the USSR. Besides Odessa, the only other outlet to the sea is at the Baltic Sea on the north, and that freezes over during the bitter cold winter months and cannot be used. That leaves Odessa, which is ideally situated, for it had a deep water port, able to handle large ships. Ships leaving Odessa or coming into Odessa must travel through the relatively small Sea of Marmara, then through the narrow straits known as the Bosphorus at Istanbul, Turkey, for access to the Mediterranean Sea. It’s easy to see why Odessa has become such an important shipping center for Russia. A few statistics: The Odessabased Black Sea Shipping Company, the USSR’s largest, handles 50 percent of the passengers and 25 percent of the cargo marine traffic in the coun : try. Its fleet numbers some 300 merchant and passenger ships with a total deadweight capacity i of over 3 million tons. ( The total length of Odessa’s moorings is nearly seven kilometers, or a little less than four and one-half miles. Ships of many nations can be seen at the Odessa docks. Walked To The Docks Our group of touring journalists were put up in the Chernoye More Hotel, on Lenin Street, about a mile-plus from the docks,

KMbbbm H * fl THEY PERFORM FOR US — Training can begin young, as we found out when we visited the Ukranian kindergarten at Odessa. After performing their folk dances, they asked each one party to dance with them. It was delightful, if our cadence was a little out of step.

& I j. Lu ‘Tr - VISIT THE CATACOMBS — This photo was taken deep underground, in the famous Odessa catacombs, where resistance fighters lived and fought the occupying German forces during World War 11, which they referred to as the Great Patriotic War.

'- L O 55 " | # Win' w r 1 | ’Tm Isl Mi J wife* Jfe JU UM ODESSA OPERA HOUSE — The outside view of the Odessa Opera House, located near the Black Sea port, is stately and beautiful, as is the interior. This photo shows the flowers around the building in full bloom.

easy walking distance. Not too much can be said for our room in the Chemoye More, other than we were glad to get there and do some unpacking. By American standards, at least, it would be considered a second class hotel. It should be noted, however, that all Russian hotels, second class or not, have refreshing hot water, even though their taps (hot and cold) are often reversed. All rooms seem to have low-slung but reasonably comfortable beds. All our rooms had corner showers in small bathrooms, with the water running on the floor to a drain under the lavatory. Quarters resembled a mobile home. All of our rooms have had television sets in them, but transmission is for a few evening hours, and then it is not programs as we think of them. w Soccer games, maybe, or some fellows in a panel discussion speaking Russian, Ukranian, or whatever. One thing our room does have is a view. Off in the distance is a cathedral with its enormous onion-like spirals shooting to the sky. And at night we could see in the distance a large moving electric sign carrying some sort of message. This had a definite state-side appearance. Early yesterday morning we were accompanied by Peggy Ann Hutchinson, crack reporter for, the Medford, Oregon, daily newspaper, The Mail Tribune, on a walking trip to the docks of Odessa. The weather was warm, and the two-and-one-half mile walk made for good exercise after our constant travels and interviews. What we weren’t prepared for was the hundreds of crows and pigeons in the trees lining the street. One walked the sidewalks at his own peril, and the squawking of the. birds became an incessant pounding assault on the ears. We found Odessa an old — we’d say rundown — city, with old buildings, many in much need of repair. The sidewalks, while they were broad and tree-lined, were of asphalt and broken in many places, so one had to keep an eye

to the ground while walking. It was an experience, nonetheless, for the city was coming to life. Shops were opening, and the little bakeries were doing a brisk business. We were surprised to find people walking out of bakeries with rolls and/or loaves of bread in their hands, with no packaging or wrapping of the merchandise. It was early and the lines had not begun to form yet. We saw several barber shops and beauty parlors open and doing business. We passed a garment factory where women were busy as the proverbial bees, obviously trying to meet some sort of quota. We passed that same shop at night when we walked home from an opera, and found the garment factory still running at full speed. But overtime pay — forget it! We soon heard the familiar sound of printing presses, and followed it to a building where we could watch through a closed screen door. They were running large, sheet-fed presses. Again, we found the same commercial printing plant running a night shift. Arriving at the dock, we found ourselves at the top of the 191-step staircase leading to the dock area, known as the Potemkin Stairway. It is broad and impressive. Ordinarily, one could look from this vantage point and see for miles along the deep sea harbor, but this morning it was foggy and visibility was poor. In June 1905, during the abortive “First Revolution,” the mutinous battleship Potemkin entered Odessa port and was enthusiastically hailed by the workers. The czarist authorities staged a base provocation to prevent the insurgent, sailors joining the revolutionary workers. The port was set on fire by provocateurs and the workers who crowded the port and the Seaside Boulevard were brutally massacred by troops and* police under the pretext of fighting the fire. To commemorate this tragic event the people named this massive stairway on Seaside Boulevard the Potemkin Stairway. Near the top of the stairway is the ever-present stone bust of Alexander Pushkin, the revered

poet who lived for a time in Odessa. He even has one of the main streets named after him. The United States makes no such commemorations for its literary figures. All is not roses in the USSR. For instance, several in our group saw two women, one owner of a small store, the other an irate customer, haggling over a dressed chicken, one tugging one way, the other tugging the opposite way. The store owner won the fray, and finally, in frustration, banged the poor bird down on the counter three or four times. Our friends missed a real picture opportunity, but said later they would not have had quite the nerve to stand around photographing this altercation., Attend The Opera This isn’t to pretend we journalists are a bunch of opera buffs, for this we aren’t, but when talk came around to whether or not we cared to attend the opera here at Odessa, it was a resounding “Yes!” Our bus took us to the opera which we were informed was one of the best opera buildings in the world, ranking right along with the Paris, Vienna, New York and Milan opera houses. We can attest that the building was absolutely beautiful on the interior, with its large, comfortable seats and four rows of boxes in horseshoe shape, gilded in gold. We thought the outside attractive with its large ornamentations, but someone used the word “gross” to describe it, and so we’re not all of like mind. The opera was in the Ukraine language and the program was so printed. We were told it was a love story, and were given a helpful description. The program told us nothing. We’re sure the singing was magnificent, and the staging and costuming were superb. It should tell the reader something that many of us walked the mile-plus back to our hotel at Intermission. It should be said, too, that Odessa is more than a vacation resort and health center, and the major Russian shipping center. It is famous as a major scientific center, one of the Ukranian Republic’s five such centers. Well known are the Order of Lenin USSR Research Institute of Selection and Genetics, the Tairov Viticulture and Wine Making Research Institute of Eye Diseases and Tissue Therapy. Our tour director, Nancy Mathews of Tracy, California, had tried for six months to wrangle a look at this latter center but to no avail. Odessa also has 16 higher and 26 specialized secondary educational establishments with a student body of over 120,000. Like most other Russian cities we have visited, Odessa abounds in huge stone statues, usually of military figures and events. We were reminded again by our guide that the Soviet Union is not strictly monolithic. It has over 100 different nationalities, has 52 distinctly different languages and has five different and distinct alphabets. Visit A Kindergarten . We had an opportunity to visit a Ukranian kindergarten in Odessa, with youngsters ages IMe to 7. A small boy and girl named Alexander and Olga, about five years of age, greeted us at the door and on small trays had little Matrushka painted dolls, giving one to each of us as a souvenir. They were little dolls like one finds here with four to twenty in a set, one inside the other. We were ushered into a room where the headmistress spoke to us through our guide, then a dance routine of Ukranian dances was performed by some 30 boys and girls of five or six years. Each was dressed in Ukranian costume. They danced to the accompaniment of a piano player. We were informed they performed Russian, Lithuanian, Polish, Carnival and Ukranian dances. They did the native dance for us that Americans have come to know as the “chicken dance.” It has a native significance of long standing. Then the little girls came amongst us and picked out a male member of our party to dance, and the little boys likewise picked out a lady of our group. We did some twirling and stepping, including the chicken dance, that could loosely be called dancing. We left the floor to the gracious bows of the young troopers. “Real people to people stuff,” we thought. The youngsters are divided into small groups of about 20 to 25 children in each group. Total enrollment: 280 children. The school is open from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. and costs 500 rubles per chid per year. The school frees working mothers to return to their before we entered “Don’t spoil our littteMßlren by giving them candy Mangum.” Obviously, they have had some bad experiences, and consider this American largesse obscene and unhealthy in the growth pattern of their young charges. The ever-pervading presence Jnf Lenin is evident in the

kindergarten we visited. Just inside the front door is a large line drawing of the revolutionary leader with a smile on his face and hugging a young child. Someone in our party noted, it was the only photo of Lenin we had seen where he was smiling. . The Catacombs We had to visit the catacombs, .the miles of underground tunnelways that were the results of Ukranians ’mining limestone. It reminded us of the catacombs at Rome where we visited two years earlier. One must remember Odessa was occupied by the German Nazis for two and one half years, following a bitter 73-day siege of bombardment and street fighting, and while the city was not. as totally destroyed as was Kiev, the partisan fighting went on. The cavernous catacombs provided a retreat for these obstinate freedom fighters. We walked something like a half mile underground, often bowing our heads to clear low passageways. Partisans lived hpre during this two and one-half-year occupation until the Nazis were driven out in the spring of 1944, doing their cooking, holding classroom study for the young ones. Some questions remain for us:

K*" ww fl ■r • NMMr >• 'W M * *-* * * UKRANIAN KINDERGARTEN — We were charmed by the performance of youngsters when we visited a Ukranian kindergarten at Odessa, and were received at the front door by two children dressed in native costumes. They gave each of us a small Matrushka painted doll as a remembrance of our visit there.

Bilik flfl OUR ODESSA HOTEL — We stayed at the Cheijnoye More Hotel in Odessa, on the Black Sea, a large and beautiful hotel. It was the first hotel where we encountered a shower where the water ran over the bathroom floor to a floor drain.

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Why didn’t the smoke from their underground fires give their location away? Why didn’t the Germans gas or smoke them out? After all, killing was killing and is gassing partisans in the catacombs any different than shooting citizens in cold blood? We were told the catacombs extended over several hundred miles, and, if put into a straight line, would extend from Odessa to Leningrad. They even extend from our point of entry outside the city of Odessa to points underneath the city itself. Our Tour Structured In spite of our extensive visit, it should be noted that our tour was strictly structured by Intourist and the Russian powers that be. For instance, our failure to visit the eye research institute that has gained international acclaim, and the telephone call to Moscow to grant us permission to attend the opera because it wasn’t on our original itinerary. The work of the famous eye clinic was highlighted on a “60 Minutes” Sunday night program on November 24th. Also, we could not help noticing Russian women constantly looking at our shoes. In Russia, there are about six styles of shoes, and while they are sturdy and

Wed., December 4,1985 — THE MAIL-JOURNAL

durable, they have very little style. But, be all this as it may, our tour of the USSR was good, enlightening and educational. It had its moments of comic relief, however, for example, when we boarded the bus for Yalta, our tour leader, Nancy Mathews, showed up late. This wasn’t like

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Nancy. When asked why her usual promptness failed her on this occasion, she said her husband Tom (the Rock Hudson look-alike) had inadvertently locked her in her room! “How did you get out?” Someone asked. “By yelling a lot. How do you suppose?” she replied.

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