City of Rogues and Schnorrers

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Old Odessa, on the Black Sea, gained notoriety as a legendary city ofJewish gangsters and swindlers, a frontier boomtown mythologized for theadventurers, criminals, and merrymakers who flocked there to seek easy wealth andlead lives of debauchery and excess. Odessa is also famed for the brand of Jewishhumor brought there in the 19th century from the shtetls of Eastern Europe and thatflourished throughout Soviet times. From a broad historical perspective, JarrodTanny examines the hybrid Judeo-Russian culture that emerged in Odessa in the 19thcentury and persisted through the Soviet era and beyond. The book shows how the artof eminent Soviet-era figures such as Isaac Babel, Il'ia Ilf, Evgenii Petrov, andLeonid Utesov grew out of the Odessa Russian-Jewish culture into which they wereborn and which shaped their lives.