Diary: In Odessa
Keith Gessen, 17 April 2014
The last time I was in Odessa my passport was stolen. It was the summer of 1995, and hot. Odessa, sometimes called a mini-Petersburg on account of its handsome 19th-century centre, was a ruin. The opera house was a ruin; the famous boardwalk along Primorsky, which runs at right angles to Eisenstein’s famous steps, was a ruin. Gambrinus, the legendary bar, was still operating in a...