“I personally do not support a memorial war at a time when our country is at war,” Mr Trukhanov said, arguing that with emotions running high any attempt to rewrite history could be polarizing. But he will put his own views to one side, he said, as the commission considers whether monuments and sculptures should be moved from squares and street corners to a memorial park. A member of the Odessa city parliament, Peter Obukhov, has drawn up a list of statutes and street names he would like to remove as part of the city’s “disposal”. A statue of the 18th-century general Alexander Suvorov and the area named after him should, he believes, represent a symbol of Russian imperialism. Historical figures with a strong connection to Odessa should stay, he believes, including Pushkin and Gogol. “Putin created this situation where Ukrainian society hates everything Russian – history, art, music – so now we see these things in a new light,” Mr Trukhanov said, explaining how the public mood had spoiled Odessa’s Russian heritage. . “But we also have to think about what to replace them with. we have to choose things that we won’t have to replace again in 10 years,” he said.
Cornerstone of national identity
Since the Euromaidan uprising in 2014, the Ukrainian language has emerged as a cornerstone of a national identity increasingly at odds with Russia, with the Ukrainian government introducing laws aimed at promoting its use. Ukrainian has been mandated as the language to be used in most aspects of public life, including schools, while new laws this year have restricted the availability of Russian books and music and required publications registered in the country to publish in Ukrainian. Separatists in eastern Ukraine have argued that Russian speakers are victims of increasing discrimination, and Moscow has cited a crackdown on the Russian language as part of its justification for annexing Crimea in 2014. Monitoring groups have raised concerns about inadequate safeguards for minority languages. But if Mr Putin’s invasion was – as many Ukrainians believe – an attempt to stamp out an independent identity distinct from Russia, it failed miserably. Ana Furtak, who was out with her two young children in an Odessa park on a recent afternoon, said that since the war she had found a greater range of Ukrainian songs and media available online for her children. “I want my grandchildren to be ignorant of the Russian language,” she said, speaking in Russian herself.
