The Real Moldavanka: Odessa Has Reimagined the District’s History

A new hub, which is set to become the social and cultural center of Odessa’s historic Moldavanka district, was opened on September 26 by representatives of the civic organization “Zmistom.”

The project was mentored by the Odessa National Art Museum, and the hub itself was opened in the premises of the Ivan and Yuriy Lyp Branch Library No. 8 at 13 Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street, along with an exhibition titled “(Un)imagined Moldavanka.”

To implement the project, starting in April 2026, museum and library staff, along with community leaders, conducted three focus groups with local residents and 10 in-depth interviews with historians, local historians, researchers, tour guides, and media representatives.   

They explored how people perceive Moldavanka, what they consider its heritage, what threats they see, and how they envision the neighborhood’s future—while debunking some myths about the neighborhood perpetuated by film and literature.

“We worked together with the Odesa branch—our partners—on transforming the branch’s space, which has become a hub for the Moldavanka community. We moved away from myths and collected the oral family history of Moldavanka—the memory that truly lives there,” said Olga Konstantinova, operations director of the nonprofit organization “Zmist.”

According to Olga Stemberska, director of a network of children’s libraries, the “Real Moldavanka” project is unique in that it has refuted all previous studies of the neighborhood.

“Moldavanka had been viewed from various angles—both as a high-crime neighborhood and as an underdeveloped area—but we have overturned all of those studies. We found active people in Moldavanka and developed a series of projects with them that will work in the future; we created a cultural center where the community can gather,” the director explained.

Next week, a concert by veteran Oleksandr Dyuzhikov —a Moldavanka resident—is scheduled to take place at the venue. So, according to Olga Stemberska, the neighborhood will thrive thanks to the new hub.

The organizers also plan to create a museum dedicated to the district within the hub. As Olga Dzerik, a senior research associate at the Odesa National Art Museum and curator of the exhibition “Moldavanka: Not a Fiction,” Olga Dzerik, visitors to the exhibition offered items that they have kept as family heirlooms and are willing to donate to the future museum.

“There are a million myths about Moldavanka, and debunking them all isn’t the best approach. That’s why we decided that the main characters of our stories are people, and that the city, events, jokes, commerce, and food are all part of that. And it is precisely because of this that people felt that Moldavanka exists and is alive,” emphasized Olga Dzerik.

Кирило Бойко