Odesa: identity, resistance, and imperial legacy
Date and time:
Tuesday 6 May, 2025
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
Swedenborg Hall
20-21 Bloomsbury Way
London
WC1A 2TH
Odesa is one of Russia’s most coveted prizes in its war of aggression and occupation against Ukraine. It is struck almost nightly by drone and missile attacks. Odesa has also been the target of Russian propaganda and disinformation. Historically, a largely Russophone city, and one with a past closely linked to Russian imperialism, Odesa has been a central part of the Russian myth that claims Russian-speaking Ukrainians as part of the ‘Russian world’, and that has been used to justify the brutal invasions of 2014 and 2022.
Odesa, however, has always had its own, distinctive, multicultural identity, one that belongs to no empire and resists easy categorisation.
Today, Russian violence and propaganda have provoked its inhabitants to reimagine their city as a place of Ukrainian anti-imperial resistance. But these processes are complex, and nowhere are Ukraine’s cultural dilemmas around the imperial and Soviet past felt more acutely than here.
Join us for a discussion featuring Odesans and foreign observers, as they explore Odesa’s identities and histories in the light of its dramatic present, and try to overcome some of the myths that still surround this unique city.
Organised in partnership with University College London and the British Academy.
The Ukrainian Institute London is an independent charity entirely funded through donations, ticket sales, and project grants. All proceeds from ticket sales directly support our programme.
Speaker
Julian Evans
Julian Evans has been writing about Ukraine for nearly 30 years. His recent book, Undefeatable: Odesa in Love and War, is a dramatic, intimate memoir of one of the world’s most human, irrepressible cities, and a tour de force of the personal and political, offering fresh insights into the history of Putin’s murderous war against Ukraine and its cultural and human impacts. Luke Harding of the Guardian called it ‘a brilliant portrait of a country and a city under attack’. Evans has also reported on the war from the frontline. His other books include Transit of Venus: Travels in the Pacific and Semi-Invisible Man, an acclaimed biography of the writer Norman Lewis. He has presented radio and television documentaries including BBC Radio 3’s twenty-part series on the rise of the European novel, The Romantic Road, and the BBC Four film José Saramago: a Life of Resistance. He is a recipient of the Académie Française Prix du Rayonnement de la Langue Française.
Speaker
Oksana Dovgopolova
Oksana Dovgopolova is Professor of History at the Kyiv School of Economics, and a co-founder and curator of the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform. The main areas of her research interests include the development of the new Ukrainian Language of commemoration in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war, and Odesa’s image in ‘memory entrepreneurship’. Dolgopolova teaches courses on the contemporary practices of commemoration. She is a co-organiser of the Laboratory of Artistic Research of War Experiences ‘Land to Return, Land to Care’ (2022), and the Laboratory of Memorial Practices in Ukraine (2024). She is also a curator of the art exhibitions ‘From 1914 till Ukraine’ at the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2023), ‘Ground Shadows’ at the Kazerne Dossin Memorial Center (2023), and ‘Mikki-Mouse Steppe’ at the Odesa National Fine Art Museum (2024), among others. In 2024, she co-curated the Ukrainian pavilion ‘From South to North’ at the first Malta Biennale of Contemporary Art.
Speaker
Olga Sydorushkina
Olga Sydorushkina is a Ukrainian film curator and cultural manager with over fifteen years of experience in delivering cultural projects in Ukraine and internationally. She has worked as a coordinator and film selector at the Odesa International Film Festival, and curated the film programme at the Green Theatre in Odesa. Currently, she is a film programmer at Docudays UA and Programme Curator at the Ukrainian Institute London. Olga is also the CEO and co-founder of PORUCH, a contemporary culture festival based in Odesa, which she launched during the full-scale Russian invasion.
Speaker
Ivan Kozlenko
Ivan Kozlenko is a film scholar, curator, and culture manager. He founded the esteemed Mute Nights silent film festival in Odesa, Ukraine and transformed the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine’s primary film archive, into a leading cultural attraction in Kyiv. Over a decade, he oversaw the restoration of over 70 Ukrainian films, and their reintroduction to global audiences.
Ivan curated significant film retrospectives, including ‘In Transition: Ukrainische Träume’ (Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, Germany, 2023), ‘Kira Muratova’ (Seoul Cinematheque, South Korea, 2019), ‘Odessa in fiamme: occupation / liberation’ (Odesa IFF, 2015), and ‘Ukraine: The Great Experiment’ (Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Italy, 2013).
He has edited authoritative texts and catalogues on Ukrainian cinema, published by Dovzhenko Centre Publishing: Flights in Dreams and Reality (2020), Ivan Kavaleridze. Memoirs, Drama, Journalism (2017), Ukrainian Film Posters of the 1920s: VUFKU (2015), Dovzhenko’s EARTH Framed by Borys Kosarev (2013), and Ukrainian Re-vision. The Film Collection Book (2012). His 2017 novel, Tangier, was a contender for the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year, reflecting his influential role in Ukrainian cultural discourse.
Moderator
Uilleam Blacker
Uilleam Blacker is Associate Professor of Ukrainian and East European Culture at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European studies and a translator of Ukrainian literature. He has written on Ukraine for The Guardian, The Atlantic, Financial Times, Times Literary Supplement, and others, and his translations have appeared in The Guardian, The White Review, Words without Borders, and others. He is currently writing a book on Ukraine’s multilingual literary landscapes.
