Odesa, what a city! We have survived plagues, wars, and — perhaps the most enduring challenge of all — some truly regrettable choices in urban planning.
It is a known fact that Odesa is a city of taste, yet for over a century, various empires have tried to turn our beautiful squares into their own personal propaganda billboards. They come, they build, they leave, and the statues crumble. It is almost as if the city itself is rejecting the transplant.
The sun sets on Kremlin imperialism in Odesa (Photo by Jeffree Benet)
Let us take a walk through this comedy of errors.
At the beginning of Odesa's founding (1794), a church dedicated to the Holy Great Martyr Catherine was laid in the center of what is now European Square (Yevropeiska). This church was intended to serve as a garrison church, as numerous military barracks were then located above the sea cliff. A lack of funds prevented the church from being completed, and in 1821, it was dismantled, the barracks were relocated, and the construction of mansions for wealthy Odesans (who never lack funds) began along the slopes.
From the book Géographie. La Terre à vol d'oiseau . Troisième édition illustrée de 176 gravures sur bois.
The Humble Beginnings
The square that remained on the site of the dismantled church began to be named after it, Ekaterininskaya Square (after the saint, not the empress), although some documents refer to it as Dyukovskaya Square or even Elisavetskaya Square. Some time later, a public garden, enclosed by a cast-iron fence (above), was established there. In the early 19th century, the site was occupied by a modest, respectable flowerbed.
Katerynyns'ka Square. Lithograph from the end of the nineteenth century
From the moment the city's water supply system became operational in Odesa (fall 1873), construction of city fountains began. Soon after, a fountain appeared (one of the first to be installed) in 1874, and it adorned the square for 26 years.
Moreover, until the early 20th century, Yekaterininskaya Street began at Primorsky (Nikolaevsky) Boulevard, meaning its first numbers were the semicircular buildings surrounding the Duke monument. At that time, Yekaterininskaya Square didn't have its own numbering system and was simply a beautiful park with a monument.
Later, the city council changed this numbering, and the houses surrounding the square were assigned to Catherine's Square, and the street began to begin where the square ended.
By the way, the fountain that was previously located on the site of the monument was moved to the Palais-Royal, where it remains to this day.
Its architect? Rumors suggest Boffo, but in our city, reliability is often the first casualty of a good story. It was functional, it was beautiful, and it didn’t try to lecture passersby on geopolitics.
A photograph of the ceremonial unveiling of the monument to Catherine II in Odessa in 1900
The Imperial Paperweight
In 1900, the city authorities, with the benevolent "support" of the Russian Empire, decided that a fountain was far too simple. They erected a monument to Catherine II. Let us be clear: this was not art; it was an ideological project designed to assert ownership.
The monument to Catherine II and to the other founders of Odessa. Sculptor: Boris Eduards. The monument was erected in 1900 and destroyed in 1920. It was reconstructed by Oleh Chernoivanov and unveiled in October 2007. Photograph by Ivan Cherevatenko.
It lasted a grand total of 20 years before the Bolsheviks — those other great masters of ideological clutter — decided it was time for a change of scenery.
"From the darkness of the centuries she rose with heavy steps
On the resounding pedestal, a solemn newness,
And the queen's head with a red flag
Wrapped up... And purple, like blood,
Flowing down the bronze body…
…rises over the cityFrom ancient dreams, like a ghost, the shadow of Marat
And watches as the purple flows
There's blood on the monument and birds flickering
"Over the body of the beheaded queen."— Yuri Olesha. Blood on the Monument. April 1917.
Catherine was guillotined, they say, deliberately decapitated. The lion was torn from the pedestal. The inscription was torn down, and the bodies of the executed, Catherine and four hundred of her soldiers, were laid to rest on the ground.
In 1919, Bunin wrote in "Cursed Days":
"Before evening, I was in Catherine Square. It was gloomy and wet. The monument to Catherine was wrapped from head to toe, bandaged in dirty, wet rags, entwined with ropes, and plastered with red wooden stars. And opposite the Cheka monument, the reflections from the red flags, drooping from the rain and looking especially vile, flowed like liquid blood in the wet asphalt."
Karl Marx, soon to be gone with the wind.
The Marx Years: A Comedy of Heads
In 1920, the new Soviet masters, lacking imagination but overflowing with concrete, decided to replace the Empress with a two-meter-tall concrete bust, known as "Karl's Head", tinted to resemble pink granite, the first monument to the new regime in Odesa. A concrete head on a pedestal! One wonders if they expected the philosopher to start reciting manifestos at the passersby.
The leader's head didn't remain on the empress's pedestal for too long. The concrete used to make the bust was of poor quality and hollow. Old-timers said that in a strong sea wind, the monument emitted a dull, monotonous howl, and after a few years, the head fell from its pedestal and shattered.
By the mid-20s, they upgraded to a life-sized statue, typical of the Soviet era. It didn't last long, either. One stormy day, it crumbled. The legs, however, remained in place and provided many inspirations for folk art.
A photo by American photographer Brason DeCou in 1933.
And they didn't stop there. The pedestal became a revolving door for whatever symbol the regime felt like imposing on us. We have photographic evidence from 1933, thanks to the American traveler Branson DeCou, showing that at one point, the square was adorned not by a person, but by a giant red Hammer and Sickle. It was as if the city planners were playing a game of musical chairs with the town's square, swapping out the décor to ensure we never forgot who was "managing" the property.
By the way, according to some information, it was here that the Romanians planned to erect a monument to Hitler. During the Nazi occupation, from November 19, 1941, to April 14, 1944, Yekaterininskaya Street bore the name of Adolf Hitler. Bleak days indeed...
April 10, 1944 The first day after the liberation of Odessa from the Romanian and German occupiers
During the Soviet era, the street was renamed in honor of Karl Marx. The name Yekaterininskaya was restored on September 20, 1991.
The pedestal stood empty until the mid-50s, a silent witness to the futility of trying to force history into a mold.
The "Wait, I’ve Found a Ruble" Era
In 1965, the Soviet authorities, ever eager to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the mutiny on the battleship Prince Potemkin-Tavrichesky, decided to plant yet another monument on what was then Karl Marx Square, which they promptly renamed Potemkintsev Square. The unveiling was attended by actual veterans of the ship, though it was the Muscovite creative team, sculptor V.A. Bogdanov and architects M.M. Volkov and Yu.S. Lapin, who truly left their mark.
The work was initially dubbed "the iron" for its heavy pedestal, but Odesa eventually corrected the title. We are a city of sharp observers, and the sailors in the sculpture were posed looking intently at the ground, as if something of great value had gone missing. It didn't take long for local wits to clarify the scene; a meter-long piece of rebar, welded to an iron Ruble, was hammered into the heat-softened asphalt at the sailors’ feet. Suddenly, the revolutionary fervor looked suspiciously like a frantic search for loose change.
We affectionately, and quite accurately, dubbed it "Wait, I’ve found a ruble." It stood until 2007, serving as a monument to Soviet kitsch rather than anything truly historical. When it was finally dismantled, the monument was carefully transported to Customs Square to clear the site for the "restoration" of the Catherine monument, and that is where it remains today.
The monument to the founders of Odessa before its opening (Photo by SegeKot CC 4.0)
The 2007 "Restoration"
Then came the farce of 2007. The monument to Catherine II was resurrected, funded by Russophile businessmen. Chief among them was Ruslan Tarpan, an embezzler whose affection for the city’s imperial past was only surpassed by his business ties to the Kremlin. His projects were never just about aesthetics; they were about cementing an influence that served Moscow’s interests, not Odesa’s. It was a project rooted in political vanity, not heritage.
Cleaning up graffiti constantly, just made the choice easier.
The End of the Colonization
The 2007 "restoration" was a guest that stayed far too long, managing to overstay its welcome for fifteen years. By 2022, the monument had become less of an artistic statement and more of a preferred canvas for Odesa’s activists, who seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of red paint. It possessed the architectural value of a department store mannequin, a hollow replica of an era designed to erase our identity. It was toxic, a symbol of an expansion that tried, and failed, to silence us.
The citizens, however, had other plans. Five petitions for the monument’s removal eventually landed on the President’s desk, but two stand out in the annals of administrative absurdity. One, rather cheekily, proposed replacing the Empress with the adult film star Billy Harrington, a suggestion that received more than the 25,000 signatures required for official consideration. Our government, showing a surprising tolerance for the eccentric, had to take it seriously. On August 1, President Zelensky officially responded to the petitions.
Naturally, Russian propagandists, ever sensitive to irony, had a field day. Journalists rushed to interview the petition’s author, Odesa native Oleksiy Matveyev. While Matveyev admitted his proposal was a joke, his underlying sentiment was quite serious: there is simply no room for colonial icons in our city.
"Actually, I don’t care what will be there," Matveyev remarked with the pragmatism of a man who knows his city. "It could be a monument to Billy Harrington. It could be a monument to Odesa humor. I don’t know, it could be a monument to a dunghill. Anything will be better than a monument of a colonialist, tyrant, and murderer. This is my position."
Today
And now? Now, the site belongs to those to whom it always belonged: the people of Ukraine. Those who have paid the ultimate price to ensure the Moscow yoke never again falls around the necks of our citizens. From the first day after, the flags of the fallen were planted (above). Too many flags since then have joined them.
Monument to fallen defenders... (Photo by Jeffree Benet)
History has a sense of humor, gentlemen. Empires rise, statues crumble, and the fountain of common sense eventually bubbles up again. Odesa is a city that breathes, and it will not be used as a backdrop for someone else’s imperial theater.
— A big thank you to Helen Hatress, who inspired this historical dive on Twitter.
