Pryvoz Market

Privoz began in 1827, when wares were sold from the back of horse driven carts.[4] The market was a large area where carts with goods that were sold at the local bazaar stopped. The place was rather dirty, unpaved area without capital buildings. Until the mid-1860s, the wheel dealers did not pay a market fee. Also, there was no own institution of measures and weights as in the ordinary market of those times [5].

Privoz adjoined the Stary (old) bazaar (also called the Volny (free) market), the first bazaar in Odessa.

The market was burned due to the outbreak of the plague and rebuilt in 1902[6]. In 1904, the only architectural monument was built here - the Fruit Passage. Designed by the famous city architect Fedor Pavlovich Nesturkh, the Passage represented covered shopping galleries with arched entrances[7].

In 2007, a meat and fish corps appeared, after which a shopping center called “New Privoz” was built. Now the Odessa market is being restored and modified again, but it still does not lose its color and remains a place where they not only sell and buy, but also exchange the latest news[8].

In the 1940s zoo animals were moved from the Odessa zoo to Simferopol. Four-year-old elephant Murza (Мурза) escaped. It ran to the fruit section of the Pryvoz Market and ate several apples, pulled out pickled cucumbers from a barrel, and tasted some fresh cabbage and dried fruits. Murza was caught and returned to the zoo. A popular Soviet comedy film, Striped Trip was inspired by this incident.[9]

In the 20s of the XX century, Privoz was led by the famous fraudster Jacob Pireman. One say he bought this post for a considerable bribe. Having become the head of the market, Pireman imposed a personal tribute to all merchants, and he also took hundreds of thousands of budget rubles to reconstruct the market and stole them. When Pireman's scam was uncovered, he was tried and shot. But one say that before the arrest, he hid a treasure - gold coins and diamonds on Privoz.

A western journalist explained his visit to the market:

I headed over to Pryvoz Market, which is sort of like a cross between a department store on the one hand and a recycling center on the other. There's caviar, shoes, accessories, food, perfume, toiletries, things like that. And then there are the guys selling things like rusty old tools laid out on moth-eaten blankets. Or the old school five and a quarter inch floppy disk drives. There's even somebody selling wheels, just wheels, including a matching set of three that were obviously taken from a perambulator at some point.[10]

Privoz was also mentioned in The Odessa Tales of Isaak Babel.

Moi sieur Jason, you are as scary as Monya the Artellerist firing out of two guns. I'd rather go to aunt Pece at Pryvoz and would buy a glass of sunflower seeds as you painfully interestingly 'goutareetye'.

• Bazaar
• History of marketing
• Market (place)
• Retail

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pryvoz Market, Odessa.

• "Official Privoz Market page". Retrieved 2006-02-20.
• Barber, Tony (February 15, 1986). "What would Marx think about this?". The Toronto Star: G18.