To millions of readers, Ostap Bender is the ultimate fictional rogue—the charming, quick-witted "Great Combinator" of Soviet literature who outsmarted the system with a flash of his white scarf and a tipped captain's hat. But behind the pages of Ilya Ilf and Evgeny Petrov's classic novels lies a real Odesa story.
In 2006, the National Bank of Ukraine issued a 500-hryvnia note—at the time roughly equivalent in popular demand to a U.S. $100 bill.
The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrim's Progress is the title of the acerbically funny travelogue penned by Mark Twain during his 1867 trip through Europe and the Holy Land...
Walking through modern Odesa, you quickly learn that history here is never straightforward.
From mayors to movie stars, poets to pilots — these are the people who gave Odesa its soul. Some built it, some sang it, some bled for it. But all left a mark that time can't erase.
What does modern Ukrainian art even look like? It’s like asking what the internet feels like—it’s everything and nothing, all at once. You can’t pin it down, but you know it when you see it.
A Wander Through a Fiery Journal...
Meet the visionaries, soldiers, and statesmen who forged Odesa from a windswept frontier into a thriving port city. From Cossack warriors to European aristocrats, their ambition and resilience shaped the city's foundation and its enduring character.
March 10 marks more than a date on the calendar—it recalls the morning when a self-taught mechanic from Odesa lifted a French-built biplane into the air and rewrote the early history of aviation on Ukrainian soil.