A group of Ukrainian and foreign cultural figures turned to UNESCO with a request to influence the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyi to stop the “untimely dismantling of the cultural heritage” of Odesa, in particular the monument to the Russian poet Alexander Pushkin. This letter was published by the Italian publication Il Foglio.
The authors of the letter recalled that in January 2023, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee granted the historic center of Odesa the status of a world heritage site under threat due to constant Russian airstrikes. However, now, according to them, a new threat has become the local authorities’ initiative to dismantle 19 monuments and deprive other objects of their protective status.
The letter states that these decisions were made without public consultation and local residents only learned about them through the media. The authors stressed that the hasty decolonization of Odessa, the historic center of the city, which was built during the Russian Empire, is a “dangerous step” because it could endanger the cultural heritage and cosmopolitan spirit of the city.
The letter paid particular attention to the plans to dismantle the monument to Alexander Pushkin, as well as the renaming of streets named after famous historical figures, such as Marshal of the Soviet Union Rodion Malinovsky, writers Ivan Bunin and Konstantin Paustovsky.
The authors believe that such an “arbitrary and authoritarian” approach to dismantling Odessa’s cultural heritage destroys the architectural and historical fabric of the city, affecting its cultural memory and unique identity as a cosmopolitan center of freedom.
In their opinion, any decisions regarding Odesa’s heritage should be made through careful expert evaluation and public discussion. They claim that hundreds of citizens have already turned to local authorities with petitions, but have not received any response.
In this regard, the authors of the letter ask UNESCO to appeal to President Zelensky with a request to postpone the decision on the decolonization of Odesa until a more favorable time, which, in their opinion, will come after the end of the war.
Among the signatories of the letter are such famous persons as Lydia Babel, daughter of the writer Isaak Babel, his grandson Andriy Malyaev-Babel, Ukrainian conductor Oksana Lyniv, and Odesa historian and military officer Oleksandr Babich.
