Never fully Russian, not truly Ukrainian, Odessa remains a one-of-a-kind cosmopolitan city. Even if from its conception, it was marked by French culture. And for good reason: from the outset it was governed by a French nobleman, the Duke of Richelieu, great-grandnephew of the illustrious cardinal. He gave him his main arteries and an exceptional diet that allowed him to free himself from the rules. A rebellious spirit that endures: Vladimir Putin who believes that it is historically part of Novorossia (New Russia) that he would like to see constituted. An opinion that is not shared by the inhabitants who claim to be above all like Odossites. .
>> War in Ukraine: the Russian noose is tightening on Odessa
Colonized by the Greeks in Antiquity, invaded by the Mongols in the 13th century, Ottoman in the 16th century then conquered by the Cossacks at the end of the 18th century, Odessa is today a cosmopolitan Ukrainian city of more than one million inhabitants. It is located in the southeast of the country, near the border with Moldova.
Because it wants to be a city “à la française”
In addition to its marked urbanism, such as the Frantsuzsky boulevard (the boulevard of the French) which the old N5 tramway takes towards the beaches or the opera house built on the model of that of Paris before being destroyed in 1873 by a fire and rebuilt on the Italian Baroque model of the Vienna Opera, the French language remained in vogue there for a long time. The first newspapers to come off the press, The Odessa Messenger and Odessa News, were written in French. Pushkin wrote the first lines of his poems there in the language of Molière. And even today, randomly on a street, you will be answered in French.
Which one’Odessa modernbuilt on a steep cliff overlooking the Black Sea, must many to a Frenchman. Officially founded in 1794 by Empress Catherine II of Russia with the aim of opening the Empire to the West, its governance was entrusted by Alexander 1st to the great nephew of Cardinal de Richelieu, the Duke of Richelieu, a French emigrant who fled the Revolution. He is considered one of the founders of the city that he modeledstar checkerboard by appealing to French and Italian architects who wanted to embody the values of the Enlightenment. He also built the port and obtained from Alexander 1st a system of privileges which enabled him to make it a very attractive commercial crossroads. He remained an emblematic figure of the city. At the foot of the bronze statue which represents him in a Roman toga since 1828 and dominates the monumental Potemkin staircase, we can read: “To Duke Emmanuel de Richelieu, governor from 1803 to 1814 of New Russia, who was the basis of the well-being of Odessa”.
Through its international cultural aura
A century after its creation, Odessa had indeed become the third city of the Russian Empire after Moscow and Saint Petersburg, and therefore the El Dorado promised by Catherine II: a trading city but also a brilliant cultural metropolis. It hosts one of the oldest museums in Ukraine, the Archaeological Museum, and also has a fine arts museum which notably contains works by Vassily Kandinsky. Since a missile attack on March 3, the director indicated that the works were sheltered in the basement.
“Throughout its history, the city has been built by absorbing diverse cultures, not just Western or Slavicexplained in 2009 to International mail Valentin Dubovenko, a city councilor from Odessa. There are currently 137 nationalities there. It is a cosmopolitan city. We really have a separate mentality. What is Ukrainian does not suit us, and we do not suit Ukraine. We are not Russian either. We are Odesites.”
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Southern city, meeting point of the Russian and Mediterranean worlds, Odessa is often nicknamed the “Slavic Marseilles”. Writer Isaac Babel described his hometown in 1930 as follows: “Odessa is our own Marseille!” These two port cities have been twinned for a quarter of a century. Out of solidarity, the town hall of Marseilles installed in front of the town hall, shortly after the start of the Russian offensive, a work called The heart-anchor of Odessadonated in 2017 by the mayor of Odessa and recalling the arms of the Ukrainian city.
Because it has inspired writers and filmmakers
It was in Odessa that Gogol wrote part of his novel Dead Souls where Pushkin began Eugene Onegin in 1821: “I was in beautiful Odessa. The sky over there is clear for a long time. Commerce hoists its sails: it is active and opulent. Over there everything has an air of Europe. You feel that you are in the South One sees a thousand colors shining, one hears the beautiful language of Italy ringing in the streets, one sees passing proud Slavs, Frenchmen, Greeks, Moldavians, Armenians, Spaniards, and Moor-Ali, old Egyptian, corsair retired today.”
Balzac had been fantasizing about Odessa ever since he had received a letter from Madame Hanska, his future mistress. He will go so far as to make the Father Gorioton his deathbed, to go and make pasta there to ensure the fortune of his daughters.
And in 1925, Soviet filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein forever immortalized the city by using it as the setting for his film Battleship Potemkin. Entirely shot in natural settings aboard a real warship, the film, commissioned by the Soviet authorities, related a famous episode of the Russian Revolution of 1905: a mutiny aboard the battleship Potemkin, the beginnings of the revolutionary contagion which had won the city and which was followed by fierce repression by the imperial power with this scene which has become cult, even if it never existed, the massacre of civilians on the steps of the Primorsky staircase. This six-minute scene, however, made an impression with the image of a baby in a stroller running down the steps.
The political message sent was already more than clear at the time: no question for Ukraine of hoping to leave the bosom of the USSR. A message to the sinister resurgence.
Finally, it should be noted that Odessa has also left its mark on a New York district, Brighton Beach, located at the extreme south of the borough of Brooklyn, along the Coney Island peninsula. Nicknamed “Little Odessa”, the district brings together a large community of Jews who fled Russian pogroms and Nazi persecution at the beginning of the 20th century. Members of organized crime have taken advantage of these waves of migration to settle in the United States. Even if he denies having wanted to make a film on the Jewish Russian mafia as such, it is from this context that the director James Gray was inspired in 1994 for his first feature film, entitled Little Odessa.