Seventh-Kilometer Market
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The Seventh-Kilometer Market (Russian: Промрынок 7ой километр, Promrynok 7oi Kilometr), informally known as Tolchok (Russian: to hit, to shove), is an outdoor market outside of Odessa, Ukraine. Founded in 1989 during Perestroika reforms, it is now possibly the largest market in Europe.
When founded as an Odessa flea market in 1989, it was expelled to an area outside of the city's limits at the seventh kilometer of the Odessa-Ovidiopol highway, thus acquiring its name. As of 2006, the market covers 170 acres (0.69 km²) and consists almost entirely of steel shipping containers, which rent for up to USD 6,000 (EUR 4,700) or more per month. It has roughly 6,000 traders and an estimated 150,000 customers per day. Daily sales, according to the Ukrainian periodical Zerkalo Nedeli, were believed to be as high as USD 20 million in 2004. With a staff of 1,200 (mostly guards and janitors), the market is also the region's largest employer. It is owned by local land and agriculture tycoon Viktor A. Dobriansky and three partners of his.
The independent traders on the market sell all sorts of cheap Asian consumer goods, including many counterfeit Western luxury goods. According to the impressions of S. L. Myers of the New York Times who visited the market in 2006,
- "the market is part third-world bazaar, part post-Soviet Wal-Mart, a place of unadulterated and largely unregulated capitalism where certain questions — about salaries, rents, taxes or last names — are generally met with suspicion."
And Zerkalo Nedeli wrote in 2004 that
- "it is a state within a state, with its own laws and rules. It has become a sinecure for the rich and a trade haven for the poor."
However, Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko did announce in 2005 that he intends to enforce tax laws on the market's thriving shadow economy.
[edit] References
- Steven Lee Myers. "Seventh-Kilometer Market Journal: From Soviet-Era Flea Market to a Giant Makeshift Mall", The New York Times, May 19, 2006.
[edit] External links
- www.7km.net. Retrieved on 2006-05-20. (Russian)
- Seventh-Kilometer Bazaar (HTML). Retrieved on May 20, 2006. Information and pictures of Seventh-Kilometer Market
- "Ukrainian 'mall' not for the dainty" (HTML). www.korrespondent.net. Retrieved on May 20, 2006.((Russian) translation of the International Herald Tribune article[1], a copy of the original NYT article)
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