City within a city: institutional infrastructure and strategies for preserving Polish national identity in Odesa (1906–1913)

Abstract

The article provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the institutional infrastructure of the Polish community in Odesa in 1906-1913 as an integrated mechanism for preserving national identity in a multiethnic imperial city. The research focuses on the phenomenon of a “city within a city”, understood as a self-sufficient network of cultural, charitable, educational, economic, and religious institutions that accompanied a person through different stages of the life cycle and transformed everyday mutual assistance into a form of national self-defense.

The methodological basis of the work is a combination of structural-functional analysis, elements of discourse analysis, historical-genetic interpretation, and a comparative approach. This approach makes it possible to examine Polish organizations not as isolated institutions, but as an interconnected system that functioned in the specific political context created by the Revolution of 1905-1907. The source base consists of the Dom Polski calendars published in Odesa, statistical materials, periodicals, and scholarly works on the Polish minority, Roman Catholic communities, and national associations in southern Ukraine.

The article analyzes in detail the mechanisms of social welfare, “parallel education”, cultural leisure, economic solidarity, and religious integration. It reveals how charitable shelters, the library of Dom Polski, the Ognisko association, mutual-aid funds, professional lists of doctors and lawyers, and the Catholic Church created a space in which the Polish language, memory, and culture retained a public presence despite the pressure of Russification. It is proven that these institutions not only satisfied the practical needs of the community but also formed a stable model of everyday loyalty to the national group.

The scientific novelty consists of interpreting the Polish infrastructure of Odesa as a single mechanism for preserving identity rather than as a collection of separate associations or charitable practices. This is important for understanding how a national minority in an imperial city could use everyday, educational, economic, and religious instruments to resist assimilation. Further research should compare this model with the institutional self-organization of other ethnic communities in Odesa.

The article provides a comprehensive reconstruction of the institutional infrastructure of the Polish community in Odesa in 1906-1913 as an integrated mechanism for preserving national identity in a multiethnic imperial city. The research focuses on the phenomenon of a “city within a city”, understood as a self-sufficient network of cultural, charitable, educational, economic, and religious institutions that accompanied a person through different stages of the life cycle and transformed everyday mutual assistance into a form of national self-defense.

The methodological basis of the work is a combination of structural-functional analysis, elements of discourse analysis, historical-genetic interpretation, and a comparative approach. This approach makes it possible to examine Polish organizations not as isolated institutions, but as an interconnected system that functioned in the specific political context created by the Revolution of 1905-1907. The source base consists of the Dom Polski calendars published in Odesa, statistical materials, periodicals, and scholarly works on the Polish minority, Roman Catholic communities, and national associations in southern Ukraine.

The article analyzes in detail the mechanisms of social welfare, “parallel education”, cultural leisure, economic solidarity, and religious integration. It reveals how charitable shelters, the library of Dom Polski, the Ognisko association, mutual-aid funds, professional lists of doctors and lawyers, and the Catholic Church created a space in which the Polish language, memory, and culture retained a public presence despite the pressure of Russification. It is proven that these institutions not only satisfied the practical needs of the community but also formed a stable model of everyday loyalty to the national group.

The scientific novelty consists of interpreting the Polish infrastructure of Odesa as a single mechanism for preserving identity rather than as a collection of separate associations or charitable practices. This is important for understanding how a national minority in an imperial city could use everyday, educational, economic, and religious instruments to resist assimilation. Further research should compare this model with the institutional self-organization of other ethnic communities in Odesa.