27 September 2026, 10:08
The Real Moldavanka: Odessa Has Reimagined the District’s History
Ця стаття також доступна українською
Olga Konstantinova. PHOTO: Intent
On September 26, activists from the civic organization “Zmist” presented the results of the project “(Not) Fictional Moldavanka.”
The project was mentored by the Odessa National Art Museum; one of its outcomes was the opening of a new hub, which has become a social and cultural center in Odessa’s historic district — Moldavanka — and is located in the Ivan and Yuriy Lyp Branch Library No. 8 at 13 Bohdan Khmelnytsky Street.
To implement the project, starting in April 2026, staff from the museum and library, along with community leaders, conducted three focus groups with neighborhood 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 district’s future, while debunking certain myths about the district perpetuated by film and literature.
“We worked together with the Odessa Centralized City Library System for Children—our partners—to transform 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 the children’s library network, the “Real Moldavanka” project is unique in that it gave new impetus to all previous research on the neighborhood.
“Moldavanka had been viewed from various angles—both as a high-crime area and as a stagnant neighborhood. We found active people in Moldavanka, developed a series of projects with them that will be implemented in the future, and created a cultural center where the community can gather,” the director explained.
Next week, a concert by veteran Oleksandr Dyuzhikov —a resident of Moldavanka—is scheduled to take place at the space. Therefore, according to Olga Stemberska, the neighborhood will develop 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 “The Real Moldavanka,” explained Olga Dzerik, people who visited 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 story are people—and alongside them are the city, events, jokes, commerce, and food. And it is precisely because of this that people felt that Moldavanka exists and is alive,” emphasized Olga Dzerik.
The project is being implemented with the support of the “Partnership for a Strong Ukraine” Program, which is funded by the governments of the United Kingdom, Estonia, Canada, Norway, Finland, Switzerland, and Sweden.
