Odesa’s Catherinian Myth: Power and Liberation

• In Event: The Image of Catherine II in Russia’s War against Ukraine

Abstract

Odesan urban mythology is a field of contested narratives, launched by the different founding events: founding of the new city in a naked steppe in 1794; the first mention of Kachibej in a Polish chronicle under 1415; the continuity of the city from ancient Greek colonies. The figure of the empress Catherine II appears as a very stable element of the city Myth, implemented in different cultural products. The reasons and consequences of such a narrative constellation deserve serious analysis in context of working through the Russian imperial memoryscape.

Author

• Oksana Dovgopolova, Kyiv School of Economics (Ukraine)