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On Wednesday morning, residents of the southern Ukrainian port city of Odesa woke up to a novel yet controversial art installation. Within sight of the Potemkin Stairs in the historical heart of the seaside downtown, someone had redecorated the local monument to Russian tsarina Catherine the Great — by covering her bronze head with a scarlet executioner's hood and placing a hangman's noose in her outstretched left hand.
The event, which inspired public discussions similar to those surrounding the issue of the removal of public monuments to Confederate generals in the southern United States, served as a reminder that not all Ukrainian citizens wish to see their state declare its cultural independence from Russia.
But those opposing the cultural transition are now in the minority in Odesa — a result of Russia's war on Ukraine.
"When the mayor's office conducted a poll last month, just over 50% of local citizens were in favor of removing the monument from the square," Odesa city council member Petro Obukhov told Newsweek. "This is actually an important milestone, because when a similar poll was conducted back in May, support stood at only 14%."
The cause behind the abrupt shift in public opinion was not difficult for municipal officials to decipher.
"With every Russian rocket strike, every suicide drone attack, every air alert siren and funeral of a loved one, support for removing the monument has grown," Obukhov said.
Residents who suddenly found themselves in the minority, however, were still prevalent in the small crowd of locals stopping by to snap selfies in the shadow of the hooded monument.
"This is absolutely terrible. Without her [Catherine the Great], there would be no Odesa," Olga, who was passing by with her granddaughter, told Newsweek, before offering up five minutes of conspiracy theories about Germany trucking Ukraine's black earth out of the country and the Japanese government conducting secret negotiations to replace the Ukrainian population with its own.
Igor, a sailor, feared that "when the Russians see what our town fools did to their beauty, they're really going to f*** us up."
Vadim, who was chatting with Igor, was surprised to learn that the current monument was a replica of an earlier statue, which was removed by Bolshevik authorities in 1920. The modern version was put up in 2007.
"I still think we should preserve it," Vadim said. "It has artistic value."
After a group of middle-aged people carrying cans of pre-mixed cocktails had finished posing for photographs in front of the monument, a reveler who did not wish to share her name said that she disapproved of the art installation.
"These activists are trying to rewrite history," she told Newsweek. "First they took away Lenin, then they banned the Russian language, and now they're saying that Odesa was never even part of Russia."
City council member Obukhov, who spoke with Newsweek in the Russian language, disagreed.
"It's true that Catherine the Great signed an order which led to the development of Odesa, and that tsar Alexander I further stimulated the growth of the city by making it a duty-free port," he explained. "Such historical facts belong in textbooks, but that does not mean the Russian imperial leaders who did these things deserve to have a place of honor in the middle of our city in the year 2022, in the middle of an actual war between Russia and Ukraine."
Despite the backlash from some segments of the local community, those responsible for drawing attention to the issue of historical memory believe that Wednesday's events offer an opportunity to educate the public. Among those on the square was Vladislav Balinskyi, head of the NGO Green Leaf and the man who that morning had climbed the ladder to redecorate the controversial monument, even as air alert sirens blared in the background.
"By making a scene like this, we help draw the public's attention to the historical facts," Balinskyi told Newsweek. "A lot of the people who oppose removing the monument simply don't know that it was only put back up a few years ago, or that there was a settlement on the site of Odesa long before Russian armies arrived and took it in battle."
"It's important for the citizenry to understand those things," he added, "so that the removal of the monument is accepted as legitimate."
While Balinskyi is critical of the mayor's party for refusing to vote in the city council on the issue of the monument's removal, he remains certain that the question of the monument's fate can only be answered via democratic means.
"This problem will ultimately be solved by uniting public opinion around the monument's removal," he said. "After that, the public can do whatever it wants with the statue itself — melt it down and use the bronze for something, put it in a museum, let someone take it home with them — whatever."
"The important thing is that everyone commits to making the decision in a civilized way," Balinskyi added.
