The Ukrainian South: Journeys Through Collective Memory. Notes From A Lecture by Oksana Dovhopolova

In the fall of 2023, as part of the Southern edition of the Antonin Artaud Fellowship, Oksana Dovgopolova gave a lecture titled, The Ukrainian South. Journeys of Collective Memory. She talked about the South of Ukraine as a borderland between the sea and the steppe, and debunked myths about Odesa.

Oksana Dovgopolova is a co-founder and curator of the platform for the culture of memory Past/Future/Art, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Department of Philosophy at the I. I. Mechnikov Odessa National University, member of the Memory Studies Association, author of scientific and educational publications.

It is impossible to begin a conversation about the Ukrainian South without mentioning Odesa. This city is one of the most important in the subregion and, at the same time, one of the most mythologized. Due to its long-standing and deeply rooted myth, Odesa is often perceived as a personified entity. However, as we will see, the very myth that has sustained Odesa in recent decades is, in fact, completely alien to it: it tells the story of a city in decline, one that exists in contradiction to its nature.

The familiar Odesa myth, with its sprats and “Auntie Sonia,” has long outlived its appeal and relevance. What’s worse, this myth is often used as a tool for historical manipulation and as a weapon against Ukraine.

Yet resetting this myth is no easy task. It is not enough to simply tell people that Catherine II was not the founder of Odesa, or to debunk other misconceptions about the city’s history; we must also offer something to replace the myth. One might think it would be enough to tell the story of Odesa’s ”anteriority”, its inventiveness and entrepreneurial drive, and this alone would resolve the issues in how the city is perceived in the collective consciousness. But for some reason, these meanings are absent from the current mythology. Perhaps this is because today’s Odesa bears little resemblance to a city of invention and innovation. Today, it feels provincial.

And it is precisely when we begin searching for new, living myths and delve into the reality of Odesa – both historical and contemporary – that the image of the Ukrainian South begins to emerge, with which this city is inextricably linked. Odesa is now returning to its natural mode of existence, one that inherently connects it to the broader region.

A key feature in the image of the Ukrainian South – and of Odesa as part of it – is its historically established role as a mediator between opposites. If we look at this region not through the lens of which state it belonged to at a particular moment, but through the lens of its functional role, we begin to see it differently.

Today, this region serves as a point of connection between Ukraine and the Mediterranean, just as it did thousands of years ago when it linked Greeks and Scythians, peoples who mistrusted one another, yet were still able to trade and maintain contact here. It was in this very region that the Genoese encountered the Golden Horde, and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania traded with Byzantium through Kachybey. Only when this region fulfils its function as a meeting point and a place for establishing relationships between civilizations can it truly function and develop.

The very reason Odesa managed to thrive as a city lies in the fact that it has always fulfilled its natural role as a port city, a city that serves not only as a logistical hub but also as a crossroads for diverse cultures.

Even if we look at the history of modern Odesa, which was refounded in the 18th century on the site of Khadjibey, we see that its new life did not begin with the typical symbols of an imperial city, such as a church or a city hall, but with a theatre. It was the theatre that became the heart of urban life. Even as part of the Russian Empire, Odesa remained a point of encounter and interaction between different worlds, for the theatre is a space open to anyone, regardless of religion, nationality, or language. This also reveals that the symbolic centre of the city was not an official structure like a town hall, but a place sustained by the community, further underscoring the fact that Odesa’s development followed a trajectory often at odds with the official imperial agenda.

In this way, Odesa emerged as an anti-imperial centre within the empire itself. In his letters to a friend, Pushkin once lamented that he could not read the friend’s latest work while in Odesa, because there was simply no Russian literature to be found in the city. Indeed, the lingua franca in Odesa at the time was Italian, used by people of various backgrounds to communicate across linguistic divides. In fact, most people in Odesa spoke two or three languages out of sheer necessity.

The empire itself always regarded Odesa with a degree of suspicion and distrust. Historical sources often remark that Odesa lacked the “Ruthenian spirit” and did not embody Russian values. It was frequently described as a flamboyant city, a city of sin and money, a city alien to the empire.

The Odesa region was a land of opportunity: a place where people of various nationalities came in search of a better life, and where they had to work hard to surpass what was thought possible. It was the Ukrainian South that served as the main supplier of goods to the port. Likewise, workers from across the southern region of Ukraine flocked to Odesa, sustaining both the port and the city’s everyday life. The majority of Odesa’s population has always consisted of people who were not born there. The city was not only a meeting point of global civilizations, but also a hub for the consolidation of the culture of the Ukrainian South, brought in by those very workers.

During the Soviet period, however, the natural flow of life in the region was disrupted. In the wake of the Holocaust and the political repressions of the 1930s – particularly the so-called “national campaigns” against Germans, Poles, Greeks, and others – Odesa became, for the first time, a monocultural and monolingual Soviet city. It was during this time, when the city was living under its most unnatural conditions, that the well-known myth of Odesa was born.

This familiar myth portrays Odesa as an exclusively Russian city with a Russian culture, cut off from the world, from Ukraine, and from the broader Ukrainian South. That myth, therefore, stands in direct contradiction to all the principles of the city’s natural existence.

Paradoxically, it was with the beginning of the full-scale invasion that the true Odesa myth, organic yet long forgotten, began to reemerge. This happened when the Odesa port ceased operations and then resumed them within the framework of the grain corridor. Only after losing such an obvious part of Odesa’s daily life, its port sounds, did we finally realize how vital the city’s role as a “gateway to the world” is to its normal existence. Even now, if you listen to city tours, you’ll often hear an emphasis on Odesa’s role in 19th-century international grain trade. This suggests that a key element of the foundational Odesa myth has finally surfaced and become part of public awareness.

Likewise, over the past year and a half – though the process began earlier – the region of the Ukrainian South has once again taken on a distinct shape, and for the first time in a long while, Odesa is regaining a sense of its belonging to and dependence on this region. A renewed sense of solidarity and neighbourliness with Mykolaiv and Kherson is now defining the contours of a new kind of southern Ukrainian identity. Gratitude to Mykolaiv for halting the Russian advance, support for the people of Kherson who took to the streets with Ukrainian flags in defiance of armed occupiers: these are now central to how Odesa understands its own identity.

The translation of this material was made possible through the Per Forma grant program, implemented by the Kyiv Contemporary Music Days platform with the support of the Performing Arts Fund NL and the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of the Netherlands, aimed at developing the performing arts sector in Ukraine.

Translation by Yurii Popovych