The Persuasive Power of the Odesa Myth

Is Odesa the witty, golden, independent port it claims to be, or is the famous Odesan arrogance just a clever mask designed to hide a deeper, more complicated reality?

Citizens of Odesa have been celebrating their city and themselves from the first decades after its founding in 1794. ^[1] Having taken over a Turkish fortress and sparsely populated environs, Catherine II's first concern was to anchor the site with a population ready to defend it. ^[2]

Notices were sent throughout Europe that settlers were welcome and would be rewarded with land, tax exemptions, and with a church of their choice. To encourage serfs to settle in Odesa was impossible, but authorities often looked the other way when fugitives arrived.

Among others, Greek and Italian merchants, Bulgarians, Albanians, Tatars, Swiss, Germans, Frenchmen, and some Englishmen responded to the call, if not to homestead, at least to the lure of commercial possibilities, or to furnish the new city with services and goods. Because Jews could reside legally in Odesa, Polish and especially Galician Jews migrated there. ^[3] Thus from its inception the city and port consisted of many non-Slavs, although Russian officials and Polish landlords along with some Ukrainians also settled in the city. ^[4]

Origins of the Myth

Flattered by the enthusiastic reports of travelers from Europe, the United States, and Russia, early Odesan began to believe in the "myth of Odesa." As Menachem-Mendl puts it, "I want you to know it is simply not in my power to describe the city of Odesa — how big and beautiful it is — the people here, so wonderful and good-hearted, and the terrific business one can do here." ^[5] Local historians, filmmakers, poets, novelists, journalists, and memoirists extolled Odesa as a cosmopolitan, energetic oasis of freedom and beauty and elaborated on the Odesa myth during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. ^[6]

In the early 1820s, N. Chizhov, naval cadet and friend of the poet Alexander Pushkin, and a future Decembrist, writes lyrically of Odesa:

Imagine that everyone gathers here [in the garden] to enjoy the cool evening and aromatic fragrance of flowers. The tall Turk offers you a tasty Asian drink, while a pretty Italian woman sitting under the dense shade of an elm brought over from the shores of the Volga, proffers ice cream in a cut-glass tumbler… A fellow citizen of the great Washington walks alongside the bearded inhabitants of Cairo and Alexandria; the ancient descendants of the Normans from the steep cliffs of Norway, the splendid Spaniard from the shores of Guadalquivir, residents of Albion, Provence, and Sicily gather, it seems, in order to represent here an abridgement of the universe. It can be said that nowhere in Russia is there another place where you might find such a spectacle. ^[7]

The legend of the "golden City" — it goes without saying — was born not on an empty place; in its first half-century young Odesa was the largest exporter of grain in the world, even in the years of the Continental Blockade.^[8]

The Odesa myth grew stronger and circulated in Russia and abroad. A typical Mediterranean port in appearance and function — cosmopolitan, energetic, with an independent character — appeared improbably on the "dikoe pole" (wild field) at the border of barracks-like Russia. Persuaded that they were somehow exceptional, Odesan embraced the image projected on them by outsiders. The result was, some might say, that they generated in themselves superciliousness, arrogance, and an augmented self-esteem completed by a certain narcissism and infantilism.

The self-understanding of the Odesan guaranteed them a priori a special quality, one that lent them moral dividends. The Odessit derived as much self-satisfaction from urban citizenship as from a certain perception of Odesa's historical past.

The popular singer and bandleader Leonid Utesev expresses this pride in the first lines of his memoirs: "I was born in Odesa. You think I am bragging? But it's really true. Many people would like to have been born in Odesa, but not everyone manages to." ^[9]

Or more recently, Anatolii Kazak, a cinematographer, noted that whenever one informs others that he or she was born in Odesa, they smile and mention, "Odesa humor, Odesa songs, Odesa jokes, and the characteristic Odesa speech, an Odessit is without fail merry, witty, sharp; he is never despondent, petty; he has a superior and fascinating personality." ^[10]

How fares this self-identification of Odesan at the turn of the twenty-first century? Two historical mythologies compete: the first maintains that everything that is good occurred in the past, and the second posits that all that is good is still to come sometime in the future.

Alexander Deribas, the great-nephew of the founder of Odesa, Joseph De Ribas, and the author of a book written in 1913 of historical–social essays and sketches was the first global mythmaker of "Old Odesa." ^[11]

Deribas was unreservedly an adherent of the first mythology. He justified his approach by saying that it was pointless to remember the bad, and in any case, after retouching the past a bit, there remains only the good. Such sedative and selective approaches to life and to history undoubtedly seduced historical consciousness.

Instinctively, memoirists and historians chose to omit painful episodes in the city's history, each assiduously plucking out the raisins from the bun and throwing out the bun, so to speak, retaining only the good memories. Another hypertrophic model of the history of the city is that of Dorothea Atlas, who reduced all the tensions to the conflict between certain friends and enemies of Odesa. ^[12]

Here history acquired more the characteristics of the Slavic mentality, amply exemplified by fairy tales, legends, or refrains from byliny and presented the historical chronicle of the city as an eternal conflict between the abstraction of Good and Evil, their contest and the predictable victory of the former over the latter.

Absolute good is embodied in those who benefited the city: Deribas, Richelieu, Vorontsov (an internationalist). Evil was Rastopchin, supporters of Mordvinov, Vigel' and other good old-fashioned national patriots.^[13] If there are no enemies, some must be invented. In Atlas's time the enemies were among other "bombers," foreigners, the lowly, politicians, intelligentsia, has-beens, rootless cosmopolitans.

If we turn to the present, to the election of the President of Ukraine in 2004, then it is evident that Odesa has an enemy. The habit of manipulating social consciousness is all too ready to posit an enemy, be it in the image of Russia (candidate Yanukovich), in the image of the West (candidate Yushchenko), or in the image of Donetsk (Yanukovich) in the image of L'viv (Yushchenko).

The Soviet Appropriation of the Myth

The Soviets could choose between the sunny version of Odesa's history painted by De Ribas or the gloomier rendition of Atlas; indeed they chose what suited their ideology. For example, the new Soviet regime rapturously accepted the axiom of the exceptionalism of Odesa. The country had need of heroes — not only people, but hero cities.

Long before the Great Patriotic War, before the heroic defense in the summer-fall of 1941, Odesa became "the Golden City," not simply golden, but Soviet golden.

In Odesa, "by the bluest Black Sea in the world," diggers, pilots, reindeer breeders, builders of Dneprogas and Magnitigorsk and, "swineherdesses and shepherds," rested after heavy labors.^[14] Here these vacationers met, according to the formula, the most hospitable, the merriest, the most fascinating, and the wittiest citizens in the world: Odesan. Multi-national Odesa was a miniature "new historical community — the Soviet people."

The Soviet view of Odesa and the view in the belles lettres of Pushkin, Batiushkov and Tumanskii, Babel', Paustovskii, and Il'f and Petrov had strangely coincided to create a harmonious infantile Odesa.^[15] Yet if some "renegade," or "dissident" would look around, not all was affable, hospitable, or funny on every occasion.

Citizens of various ages and professions strolled around for various reasons, but they were not really jovial. Even though they all had pleasant expressions on their faces, they would look at you and listen, not because they wanted to hear or understand what you were saying, but only as a pretext to joke, pun, or banter. And that is exactly the synthesis of Odesan and Soviet ideology — an excising of the very substance of meaning and leaving only the exotic aesthetic of humor.

This stereotype is the source of the never ending masks, images of the happy heroes of film such as Happy-Go-Lucky Guys, Two Soldiers, and other artistic personages composed of "100 percent Odesan."

Soviet Odesa served a special function as a supplier of satire and humor, as a home for funny shows and witty punning, as a haven for outspoken Jews. No matter what others would say, limited criticism of Soviet reality spiced up Odesan irony, which was not only was doled out, but also from time to time even encouraged.

In a sense Odesa was conferred the privilege of being an urban "Holy Fool," a harmless character who could speak the truth under the cover of feigned madness. Odesa was very happy to carry out its role of revelling in its own importance and uniqueness, being able to show its readiness to doubt and disagree without openly challenging the authorities. After all it has always shown "more color, spunk, and irreverence than other cities in the former Soviet Union."^[16]

Here it should be noted that the important Odesa "Humorina," that is, the All-Union First of April holiday of humor with elements of carnival, has been celebrated since 1973. The Club of the Merry and Witty (KVN) has been functioning from the mid-1960s and has won the All-Soviet-Union humor championship four times.

The Golden Duke film festival, the annual international jazz festival, the festival of contemporary art, the first Literary Museum in the Soviet Union, the International Club of Odesan, and other groups and activities also mark the celebratory inclinations of the natives. This historical-cultural baggage has remained with Odesa as it was picked up by independent Ukraine, although to please the new political state of affairs, party ideologues at first swiftly recolored the biography of the city to fit the new stereotypes.

Soon this latter-day Bolshevik zeal abated, however, because from the perspective of the capital Kyiv, the usual function of Odesa did not in the least lose its attractiveness. The designations of the "southern Palmyra" or the "capital of humor," remained as before. Just the same, the city began to meditate on its dried up moral and material resources.

Already during the time of the Soviet Union the economy of the city fell into complete decline: the housing stock became enormously dilapidated, and a large part of the municipal and cultural monuments as well as the entire urban transportation system were in catastrophic condition. But at the collapse of the Soviet Union, the process of privatization and the first accumulation of capital proceeded chaotically, barbarically, and was a far cry from the environment of democratic principles.

When the matter arose concerning the monuments of history and culture, the responsible department often acted the dog in the manger. Instead of leasing these buildings for a modest rent for an extended term requiring simple maintenance, officials burdened investors with the requirement of reconstruction as a condition for low rent. Such a policy led to a sharp worsening of the structural condition of the buildings.

Historical buildings such as the Odesa Branch of the Russian Technical Society, the Palace of Sailors, and even the Vorontsov Palace went without owners for years because of such exactions. The "star of Odesa," the academic Theatre of Opera and Ballet, has for many years been in the midst of restoration.

Odesa's arrogance, encouraged by the high and the low, has in the end played a nasty joke on the citizenry. Odesan delusions of their worth extended so far that that they never once turned to UNESCO with a list of city monuments or statues to ask for assistance for preservation. Such apparent foolishness can be explained not only by patriotic blindness, but also by the isolation of the Soviet people for many years from the outside world, from the living city-legends of Europe, and from the planet.

Compared to other cities in Russia, the USSR, and Ukraine, Odesa actually is something outstanding both with regard to its society and to its architecture.^[17] In this judgment world opinion was in accord with that of Odesan. When they were finally solicited, however, the experts of UNESCO, upon a close examination of Odesa's historical cultural monuments, concluded that they did not possess conspicuous cultural value.^[18]

Shaping the City

Perhaps the single truly attractive feature of Odesa's urban design consists in the fact that its historical center was shaped by a single general plan as brilliant as it was simple. One could say that Odesa sat on a high precipice, with her legs hung over to the basin of the bay of Odesa. Franz de Volán, a colleague of the founder of Odesa, De Ribas and a military engineer from Holland planned the urban street design, having in mind above all the importance of the port for the future city.^[19]

A plan of Odessa, 1892. Published in Leipzig.

Aiming to make his design conform to the natural contours of the terrain, Devoland planned a system of straight perpendicular streets side by side, the direction of which conformed to the orientation of the deep ravines cutting through the high Odesa plateau. The ravines served as natural steep descents to the shore and to the Quarantine and Practical Harbors. To the west of the rectangular streets was planned another grid of blocks, lying at a 45 degree angle in relation to the first. All the streets led to the sea.

The transition from this general plan to specific details was accomplished by architects primarily of Mediterranean origin:

Francesco and Giovanni Frapolli, Giordano Toricelli, Francesco Boffo, Gaetano Dall'Aqua, Giovanni Scudieri, Luigi Cambiaggio, and Francesco Morandi, whose best work coincided with the governance of Richelieu, Koble, Langeron, and Vorontsov.^[20]

As a direct descendant of the ancient Greek colonies of the Northern Black Sea (mythology was embedded into the very birth of the city), Odesa replicated their appearance: the social centers were formed basically around three market squares: the Old Bazaar (Free Market), the Greek Bazaar (the Northern or Aleksandrovskii Square) and the New Bazaar (Kherson Square).^[21]

These squares that lay along the transportation arteries imitated the ancient agora and were bordered exclusively by buildings earmarked for trade and decorated with stone arcades and porticos. To the rear of these imposing facades were built modest houses of the Greek commercial elite.^[22] The style of their one- and two-story houses with deeply vaulted cellars and isolated internal courtyards to insure privacy, confirmed the tradition of "my house is my castle."

The only demand made by homeowners of Italian architects was functionality. The natives of Southern Italy and France, South Slavic countries, and Anatolia also incorporated the essentials of their native ways of life into their new residences in Odesa. Imposing houses were relatively rare at the turn of the nineteenth century, but there were a few: the house of M. Kramarev on Preobrazhenskaia Street, Felix Deribas on Deribasovskaia Street, L. Lashkarev on Grecheskaia Street.

Later a series of mansions appeared, among which were the palatial country house of Vorontsov, the State Stock Exchange and various offices. Then came stone bridges, the Boulevard staircase, and the monument to Richelieu. Even in later years of deliberate beautification, functionality nonetheless always dominated Odesa's approach to urban planning.

For example, the colossal storehouses of Sabanskii and Papudov played an important role during the period of the Free Port from 1819 to 1859. After the Crimean War, disastrous for Russia and the Odesan grain trade, they were transformed into expensive rental properties; the gigantic grain storage place of Rafalovich was reconstructed into the Russian Theater.

For almost the entire second half of the nineteenth century the real estate market in the city experienced an enormous boom in rental property. The precipitous growth of the population, the development of stylish sea healthresorts, the building of railroads, the creation of ROPiT (Russian Society of Shipping and Trade), the Voluntary Fleet, private shipping companies, the growth of exportimport operations, the strengthening of the regional money market — all of these factors inflated prices for real estate and correspondingly for rents.

A new army of landlords was more concerned about extracting profits than in erecting pompous outward appearances. Dozens of such monotonous buildings from that time survive to this day. A fortunate exception is the few private residences and offices belonging to the generation of sons, that is, the descendants of the patriarchs of grain exporters and traders (Marazli, Abaza, Rodokanaki, Ralli, Mavrokordato, Papudov, and Sevastopulo), who received European educations with corresponding polish.

These youths had a predilection for buildings not with the patina of antiquity, imitating the picturesque ruins of Ol'via and Pantikapea but for buildings of European capitals. Even the nouveau riches rooted in Odesa, such as Anatra, Ashkenazi, Dement'ev, Efrusi, Libman, Mendelevich, Russov and Fal'ts-Fein, came up to the new European standard with their buildings.

In the course of the construction competition to simulate Western Europe, the patriarchal architecture of ancient Odesa and of the Southern Palmyra gradually dissolved and Odesa metamorphosed into "Little Paris."

Unlike their frugal fathers, the sons learned how to put on airs and to master pretentiousness. Around 1830, Odesa presented a unified architectural ensemble, one that was a successful mirror of an ancient city; by the middle of the nineteenth century, however, eclecticism became one of the dominant characteristics of the city scene. Little by little the porticos along the length of the thoroughfare Aleksandrovskii Prospekt were closed.

Instead of facades with Ionian and Doric columns, at best there remained decorative pilasters. And the Prospekt itself lost importance. It was closed on one side by the Deribaskovskaia Street houses built by the city architect G. I. Toricelli.

And in the middle of the Greek market arose the round house of A. I. Maiorov along with the no less extensive home of the beer king, I. A. Ansel'm. From the 1870s, profitable houses replaced buildings of classical design. The building boom at the turn of the twentieth century led to the formation of a kind of metaphorical modern museum under the sky, while destroying sometimes the best of the classical models: for example, the house of Kramerev (now the Passage), the guardhouse, (the house of Libman), and the house of Marini (the hotel Bol'shaia Moskovskaia).

The making of the architectural fabric of the city became completely pragmatic, with no one casting a glance at the past. Today, no one would find controversial the then modern designs of prominent architects Aleksandr Bernardazzi, L'ev Blodek, Eduard Mesner, Valer'ian Shmidt, Felix Gonsiorovskii, and Vil'gel'm Kabiol'skii who worked between 1880 and 1910. Simply put, life's demands had to be met and people had to put up with it.

Later, the Bolshevik state joyfully squeezed common workers and countless party and Soviet institutions into the spacious rental houses and into the luxurious single homes of the destroyed nobility. Sturdy as were those buildings, they could not last forever, and after seventy heroic years they were in sorry condition.

The highest achievement of the years from 1930 to 1950 was the Stalin Imperial style, a form of housing that proved its worth in building for the "radiant future." Nonetheless, later Odesan rejoiced in the Khrushchev-style houses where hundreds of people lived like worker bees in individual cells and awaited the soon-to-arrive full communistic society.^[23]

The inevitability of change is supremely evident, but not to the Odessit, an inveterate municipal patriot, who furiously gesticulating tries to convince the visitor that the local theater is the third in the world according to its beauty or that this or that house has the longest balcony in Europe, that the Potemkin steps is the eighth wonder of the world, etc. Odesa, it must be said, when it comes to formal art criticism, lives with its head turned backward. Memoirs, anecdotes by regional historians or by their dilettante analogues, the regional experts, are invoked to support the notion of the purported harmonious architectural beauty of the past.^[24]

Odesa is simultaneously seized by two mutually exclusive realities. One is an active, sometimes too active, attempt to inscribe the city into a new historical context. The second is a convulsive, rather hysterical, grasp for the past, one that is putatively heroic. Those who wish to justify bulldozed attacks on the old houses grope for some kind of ideological basis, although progress for itself need not be based on theory. New buildings and structures thrust through the turf suddenly as though they were mushrooms. Everything gives evidence that the city has a "primitive accumulation of capital," sufficient for massive construction projects, even making allowances for mammoth corruption.

As Mikhail Gorbachev put it, "the process has started and it cannot be stopped."

The Once and Future Myth

The peculiarities of Odesa, the Odesa myth, and in particular, that of its multi-ethnic composition, dictate policy at all levels, including that of the local administration and shape the construction process. Investors and their shadowy protectors and comrade-in-arms, the officials, demonstrate constant loyalty to the idea of a multi-ethnic city, with stress on generously financing the building of cultural and educational centers, churches, and memorial complexes, representing various religions and ethnic groups.

Not only a battle for spheres of influence and an instrument to launder money, but also an opportunity to pay reverence to the Odesa mentality, to invoke an element of the Odesa myth insofar as this myth is profitable, the construction of new building serves the purpose of manipulating social consciousness, providing regional and material surrogates for bread and circuses.

The Rabelaisian model of the carnvalesque city (once inhabited by Mikhail Bakhtin) remains real. Odesan continue to pose with alacrity as mutes donning masks corresponding to their assumed identity, preferring even fake holidays to monotonous provincial vegetation. This is a struggle in which all the intellectual efforts of the municipal patriots oddly coincide with the goals of businessmen, who pragmatically exploit the Odesa myth to extract money out of it.

Despite the expressed doubts concerning the durability of the Odesa myth, which prevailed against even new public relations campaigns, the recent election of the President of Ukraine only demonstrates its lasting power. During the elections of 2004, Odesa behaved exactly as it did in 1917-1918; it did not take sides.

During the Civil War the choice was between Petrograd and Kyiv, between the Petrograd Soviet and the Central Rada. In 2004 the choice was between Donetsk and L'viv. So wrapped up in the myth of its uniqueness, Odesa as before attempted to creep by Scylla and Charybdis.

Already at the time of perestroika, Odesa nurtured radical ideas of becoming a free city, or a city-state, based on a series of precedents, among which was the historical experiment of Odesa as a porto-franco (1819-1859). At the time of Gorbachev no one could predict to what degree the USSR would collapse, or if there would be permitted a free city, resembling something like those of the Hanseatic League. This invaluable experience with the powerful myth of a free-city does not register with contemporary masters of public relations. With the building (in part by German investors) of a super highway from Odesa to Kyiv, Odesa will be tethered more tightly to its capital, thus thwarting its inclination to float by the sea as an independent entity.

It has become increasingly evident that separatism in Ukraine has powerful and strong roots; it would not take a very strong shock to lead to the dissolution of the country. At the same time that the prestige of Odesa and the region is decaying and declining, Odesa impetuously sees its golden separate future. Believing in the Odesa myth, municipal ideologues proclaim, "we are not Russians, nor Ukrainians, nor Jews, nor Americans, nor Bushmen, nor Chinese — we are Odesan!"

The election of 2004 showed that, far from being a simple homogenous Danish Kingdom, Ukraine possesses sufficient fuel to ignite a bonfire of hatred and confrontation between regions and fellow countrymen. The country literally felt as though it were on the brink of a civil war. The centralizing power must understand, respect and, if worse come to worst, tolerate regional mentalities, perhaps even going so far as to form a federal government.

Only the blind do not see the difference between Odesa and Ivano-Frankovsk, Donetsk and L'viv, Ternopol' and Khar'kiv, Chernivtsi and Sevastopol'. Attempts at a totalitarian levelling of regional ideologies that are based on historical and cultural traditions, even the most absurd and paradoxical ones, are perceived as only to lead to the strengthening of centrifugal forces.

Another conundrum: the more independent Odesa becomes, (and not it alone) the more it will become a Ukrainian city. Although Odesa no longer attracts foreigners for settlement as it did in the nineteenth century, it harbors the notion that it is multinational by catering to the descendents of foreigners. Various ethnic and religious communities contributed to the establishment of many societies and churches. Funds from expatriates helped to build Catholic and Protestant churches and to restore synagogues.

In recent years cultural institutions of various faiths and ethnic groups have either been rebuilt or created anew, namely, a series of Orthodox churches such as the Transfiguration Cathedral, the Gregory Bogoslov Church, the port church named St. Nicholas Mirlikiiskii, the Alexander Church, the Archangel Michael women's monastery, the Church Sturdza Charitable Community (Society), the Church of Adriana and Natalie and others.

Other confessions are also well-represented: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the main Catholic Church on Ekaterinskaia Street, the Church St. Gregory Prosvititel's, the renovated Main Synagogue on Richelieu Street, the synagogues on Remeslennaia and Malaia Arnautskaia Streets, the rectory at the Evangelical Lutheran Church on Novosel'skaia street, the Reformed Church on Pasteur Street (Khersonskaia), the Evangelical Churches on Balkovskaia and Kartamyshevskaia Streets, and the Muslim cultural center on Richelevskaia Street built largely through the generosity of Kivan Adnan a Muslim entrepreneur.

Suddenly, the city boasts Greek, Bulgarian, French, Italian, and other cultural associations as well as a variety of Jewish cultural educational organizations and societies. Most of these institutions either own their property within the city or in the oblast', or they are in the process of acquiring the property.

It is telling that the creators of many of these new buildings of culture, indeed the new constructions in general, give little heed to the surrounding architecture and are not overly concerned with visual or city planning harmony. The hastily assembled contemporary architecture reminds one of the cloak of a dervish with his multicolored pieces of splendid brocade and cashmere sewn together with homespun linen and sacking.

The words of a Czech journalist, observing Times Square with it vibrant coloration: "the colors completely do not match one another, and as the saying goes, there is here neither rhyme nor reason, and yet this motley collection unexpectedly creates a thing of beauty" applies likewise to Odesa.^[25]

In odd and inexplicable ways the seemingly unsuitable buildings in terms of scale, chronology, style, function, and structure in the historical center of Odesa convey a sense of harmony. Whatever attempts have been made to regulate this flow of construction and to direct it into some artistic channel, as a rule, have ended in failure. The usual view of chaos clearly needs revision.

Possessing only some formal "general plans" for the development of the city, Odesa is oblivious of the direction in which it should move, or where to perch and how it should develop. It ponders, "does preservation sterilize creativity and innovation? But if there is no preservation will it not then deprive us of roots and indispensable memories needed for innovation?^[26]

If Odesa chooses the direction of becoming a tourist and resort city, then it would be expedient to reconstruct memorial buildings in the historical center in the genre of "green archeology," removing the chief transportation lines one by one to the periphery, leaving the city as "a museum under the open sky," exclusively for pedestrians and bicyclists, ice-cream vendors, street musicians, beggars, and prostitutes.

Or if the city wants to live up to its glory as a strong industrial and commercial center, the restoration of historical facades will encapsulate the insides stuffed with glass and concrete. What standards will be adopted for Odesa's revival — the period before the memorable pre-war year 1913, or before a year such as 1894, the year of the one-hundredth anniversary of Odesa? Or should it be before 1854, the era when the city wore the crown as the world's leading exporter of grain?

No one answers these questions because some answers might suggest a return to cesspools, heating by stove, kerosene lighting, hauled or rain water for drinking and household needs, and transport by carts. This is how mythmaking of the glorious past functions in the civic consciousness of Odesan, who avoid the logical consequences of returning to the past.

While romanticizing Odesa of old, Odesan do not want anything to do with shrivelled acacias or privies. Odesan have become accustomed to the fact that nothing depends on them; they take no initiative, but treasure paperweights of mementoes and picturesque ruins. Not a single city in Ukraine, and in all probability in all the former USSR, can boast of such an abundance of monuments, memorial plaques, and other "street furniture" per capita as can Odesa.

Suffice to say that on one day alone, September 2, 2004, the anniversary of its 210 years, four new monuments were unveiled: one to the romantic Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz, the second to the former Greek city head Grigorii Marazli, the third to the founder of the Greek independence society, "Filiki Eteriia," and the fourth to the orange.

The last is instructive. As the nineteenth century began, Odesan Greeks on behalf of the citizens sent oranges to St. Petersburg to Emperor Paul I. Oranges were an exotic item in those years and especially in the winter, and all the more so in the north of Russia. The reason for the gift was that the new Emperor jealously sought to destroy all the projects undertaken by his mother Catherine II, among which was her pride and joy — Odesa. He had refused therefore to finance the budget of young southern Odesa, so the building of the city and port declined in consequence, and was in danger of never being completed.

Quick-thinking Odesan resorted to a time proven method — the bribe.

Paul took the gift and immediately became more receptive to Odesa, restoring credits and privileges. After 200 years the citizenry decided to honor this curious historical fact with a monument, "The Orange That Saved Odesa," by the sculptor Olexander Tokarev. Literally a couple of months later "the orange revolution" laid claim to the color of this monument as its own symbol.

(Photo Yannick Morelli)

It can be no coincidence that in December 2004, opponents of Viktor Yushchenko hurled oranges at his supporters when he was speaking at an election rally in Odesa.^[27]

Memorials of literary figures in the Sculpture Garden of the Literary Museum lie a few meters from the Orange.^[28] Another gallery of ironic monuments lies appropriately a few tens of meters from the Orange. Outdoor monuments to the citizens' favorite writers, their literary heroes, and figures of the city's folklore have been planted in the Sculpture Garden here each year beginning in 1995, on the first of April. There can be seen the personages of Il'f and Petrov, Kuprin, Kozachinsky, the heroes of the Jewish anecdotes of Rabinovich, the writer Zvanetsky, "the future Odesan genius," the text of the song from the film, "Two Soldiers" and phrases from "Odesa Mama" embodied in bronze and marble.

The difference between the Orange and the Sculpture Garden is just about the same degree as that between the latter and the City Duma, where stands the pre-Revolutionary monument to Pushkin. Shoulder—to-shoulder with the Orange is the old and durable Italian copy of Laocoön.

On the other hand, the classic Primorskii Boulevard and Ekaterinskii Square for long have had monuments side by side of differing quality: the refined bronze monument of the first Odesa Governor the Duc de Richelieu (1828) is twined with the granite block of the sailors of the battleship Potemkin (1965), nicknamed "the iron" by Odesan.

On the eve of the fall of the Soviet Union it was possible for Soviets to write, "Perestroika and democratization in all spheres of life in our nation opened the broad possibility to exploit monuments to create human consciousness and humanistic ideas." ^[29] In Odesa that prescription meant turning from the heroic to the humorous.

On the 200th birthday of Pushkin on the street named for him under the walls of the Pushkin Museum and two blocks from the classic monument to him has appeared a new modernized version of the poet by Olexander Tokarev for photo opportunities. Suddenly, the revered Duc de Richelieu, clad in a toga, overlooking the grand staircase, reappears as a twenty-first century dude in jeans. On the De Ribas Street have been placed monuments to Joseph De Ribas, to the legendary balloonist and sportsman Sergei Utochkin who is portrayed as about to launch a paper airplane, to the founder of Soviet Jazz Leonid Utesov, and a bronze chair from Il'f's and Petrov's bestseller comedy, The Twelve Chairs. ^[30] On Preobrazhenskaia Street stands an outdoor monument to the star of a few films, Vera Kholodnaia, and nearby a much earlier sculpture had been placed of "Petia and Gavrik," personages of another best seller, White Sails Gleam by Valentin Kataev.

At the sea terminal stands the monument, "Golden Child," the work of Ernst Neizvestny symbolizing the city and port, while at the ninth sea station of Large Fountain on the outskirts of Odesa one finds a sculpture complex "The Rape of Europe." Somber recollections of the darker moments of the recent past are the monuments to the Odesan victims of Chernobyl, to the victims of the Afghanistan War, to the Sailors lost at Sea, to the Sailor's wife, to the Fighter Pilots of World War II, to the Heroes of the U-Boat Fleet of both World Wars, to the second Jewish Cemetery destroyed in the 1970s, to the massacre of 25,000 Jews by Rumanians in 1941, and to the Jews who were annihilated after they were sent on the Road of Death to Nazi camps.^[31]

No memorials mark the memory of victims of Odesa's nineteenth-century pogroms. Selective memory can chastise outsiders and foreigners for their murders, but the crimes of locals are not acknowledged.

What then does one see? One sees that the historical, literary, and folklore heroes all are abandoning the confines of museums in droves to dot the landscape, and in dominating the terrain, they intensify and strengthen the Odesa myth in the consciousness of Odesan as they go about their ordinary daily business. With each monument, it becomes more and more difficult to find suitable space for another.

Currently only a handful of sculptors such as Olexander Tokarev, Nikolai Stepanov, Vladimir Traskov, Alexander Kniaznik, and Taisia Sud'ina create all of these monuments.

The statue of the Hetman Golovatyi (Photo by Jeffree Benet)

Especially distinctive is the statue of the Hetman Golovatyi, one of the leaders of the Black Sea Cossack Host, which joined the Russian regular army. This monument was erected to please contemporary nationalist patriots who probably do not understand that their hero was a mercenary, an active participant of the bloody conquest of the Caucasus, and it must be said, a rather curious precedent to current events.

Of course aging Odesa maintains her pretensions and claims to originality for the way she decorates herself, for how she applies makeup to prepare for her role. The majority of the monuments of the city, whether international or European, of local significance or not, are becoming decrepit and in neglect. The contrast between the old homes and the new elements of architecture and decoration is striking. Odesa has great difficulty in representing herself as a soubrette.

On the contrary, she more often evokes pity and sympathy, and feels herself to be debased and scorned. Rejuvenation cannot, however, be done piecemeal. Steps must be taken for a makeover.

First Odesa must cease to engage in self-delusion — fasting will not be followed immediately by feasting. No noble benefactors will appear to support the carnival. Odesan themselves must lend their own time and efforts to the project of selfrealization. Only under these conditions will the Odesa myth be strengthen, nourishing itself with new affirmation.

Notwithstanding the ephemeral nature of the Odesa myth, it remains and continues to be a powerful ideological factor. To be sure, the old architecture and new monuments draw attention to the past, but the shape and symbolism of new monuments and buildings force Odesan to confront their future. With earnest effort and honest direction, the Black Sea port may well have commenced to create a new legend for itself.