In 1935, Beck was invited to work in the Soviet Union by Head of the Institute of Physics, Odessa University Yelpidifor Anempodistovich Kirillov. At the Odessa University Beck was head of the Department of Theoretical Physics and gave a course of theoretical physics in German; his lectures were simultaneously translated into Ukrainian by his assistant Yu.G. Vekshtein. In 1936–1937 Beck was head of the department of theoretical mechanics at the Institute of Water Transport Engineers in Odessa. Four of his Odessa students – VV Malyarov, MM Alperin, GV Skrotskii and PE Nemirovsky – became professors in Odessa and Moscow.