The Rise and Fall of Odessa's Merchant Fleet
Journal: Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard (DASH) (Harvard University)
Year: 2024

For almost two centuries, the Black Sea port of Odessa was an important center of merchant seafaring. Straddling the periods of the Russian Empire and the USSR, this part of Southern Ukraine was intricately linked to its merchant fleet as the hub of grain shipments, cruise industries, as well as an extension of the Russo-Soviet political power. By the 1980s, one of the largest merchant fleets in the world, the so-called Black Sea Shipping Company (BSC) reached its zenith. BSC directly employed t