Odessa, that jewel upon the Black Sea, was forged in the fires of empire and ambition. In 1794, Catherine the Great, ever the enlightened despot, decreed that a city should rise where once only the echoes of the steppe and the shadows of Ottoman outposts lingered. She envisioned a grand port, a gateway of trade, culture, and—if the winds of history so demanded—naval supremacy. And so, like all great cities, Odessa began with an idea, some bureaucratic enthusiasm, and an awful lot of people who would rather have been somewhere else. Soon, Italian architects, Greek merchants, Jewish traders, and adventurous scoundrels of all stripes set to work, transforming this slice of the empire into a vibrant crossroads where the languages of commerce and mischief were spoken in equal measure. Odessa became the Russian Empire’s window to the wider world, a city of smugglers and scholars, poets and pirates, where the scent of opportunity mixed with the less poetic aroma of the docks.
Fast forward to 1991, and the Soviet Union—the latest in a long line of overbearing landlords—collapsed, leaving Odessa and Ukraine to chart their own course. Independence, however, proved a complicated affair. The city remained a bustling port, but it was also riddled with corruption, its fortunes shifting with the tides of politics and trade. Then came 2014, when the echoes of empire returned with gunfire and burning buildings, as Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty turned Odessa into a battleground of identity. The 2022 invasion by Russia brought fresh devastation, with missiles tearing through markets and museums alike, but Odessa, true to form, refused to bow. Instead, the city has embarked on a determined, and at times contentious, campaign to excise its imperial ghosts—toppling statues, renaming streets, and waging a linguistic battle where the frontlines are street signs and shopfronts. Some decry this as erasure, others as liberation, but all can agree that Odessa remains what it has always been: a place where history is not merely remembered but wrestled with, loudly, in multiple languages, often over a glass of something strong.