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When it comes to the culture of Odessa, it is worth noting that its modern features largely appeared thanks to settlers, primarily Jews from Brody. The city’s main synagogue, Brodsky, has survived to this day, located in the center at the corner of Italian and Svyatoslav Karavansky streets. The settlers, although Jewish by nationality, also had deep cultural and political ties with Austro-Hungarian Ukrainians, known as Galicians.
In the 19th century, they became the largest ethnic group in Odessa, representing almost every third resident. Their influence on the cultural and social movements of the city became significant, as they brought ideas of modernization from Galicia to the entirely traditional Russian Empire. This area already had experience in history, views on industrialization, and national movements, which formed similar cultural patterns between Galicians and Odessans.
Galicians developed entrepreneurship, which simultaneously determined material survival and integration into the modern legal system, where private initiative was valued. Settlers from Brody transferred this experience to the soil of Odessa, using the port as a key point for international trade and finding unoccupied niches in the rapidly developing city. Business in this context became not only an economic tool but also a means of cultural self-assertion.
The multinational environment of Galicia — the coexistence of Poles, Jews, Ukrainians, Germans — formed habits of multilingualism and flexibility. Odessa, in turn, like Galicia, was a cultural mix where Bulgarians, Greeks, Ukrainians, and Jews interacted with each other. Galician Jews became catalysts of this process, organically fitting into the diversity and spreading the model of Austro-Hungarian neighborhood to other communities.
National movements in Galicia were actively formed under the influence of new European ideas of the 19th century — modern nationalism and cultural revival. Moving to Odessa, Galician Jews brought these ideas with them, which gradually began to penetrate other ethnic communities, contributing to the formation of their modern national identities. Over time, Odessans of various ethnicities took an active part in the process of creating modern Israel, Bulgaria, Greece, and, of course, Ukraine.
Austro-Hungarian Galicia was familiar with cooperatives and mutual aid societies, which contributed to the establishment of horizontal connections striving for independence from the state. In Odessa, similar initiatives were created not from above, but through networks of personal connections and the participation of “their people.” Galician humor, born in the conditions of coexistence of different peoples, became a way of communication and adaptation.
Humor and irony infiltrated Odessa life, becoming a feature of local culture. Here, laughter served as a tool for bypassing bureaucracy, as well as a method of smoothing conflicts, without losing irony and self-irony. This cultural code reappeared in the form of an ironic attitude towards authority both in Galicia and in Odessa.
Knowledge of languages and European culture opened doors for social advancement in Galicia. Odessa settlers reinforced this tradition, paying attention to the importance of education and professions such as doctor, lawyer, entrepreneur. This became the foundation for forming the capital of the Odessa community.
The culture of Odessa is not only a reflection of the urban phenomenon of the Black Sea but also bears features born in modernized Austro-Hungary. Jews from Brody became the “bridge” that connected two significantly different cultural traditions. Odessa acquired features inherent in Western models: business as a protective mechanism, multiculturalism, nationalism, cooperation, and humor not only as survival but also as a focus on education. These elements bring Galicians and Odessans closer, creating deeper cultural connections than it seems at first glance.
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