In front of number 13 on what used to be Pushkinska Street, now Italïiska Street, in the historic center of the beautiful port city of Odesa, a statue is hidden from view by wooden planks. This is a common sight in war-torn Ukraine, where the violence of Russian bombs has prompted people to protect monuments from the missiles raining down on the country day after day.

But this statue is not camouflaged for the same reasons. "I was tired of cleaning up graffiti by vandals," explained Alla Nircha, the director of the museum dedicated to Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), located at the far end of a courtyard. This house, called at the time Hôtel du Nord by its Marseille owner, is where the Russian writer lived when he arrived in exile in Odesa in 1823.

Today, Pushkin is a shunned figure in Ukraine, the symbol of an imperialist and colonialist Russia that imposed streets named after him and statues bearing his effigy in every city of the former Soviet empire. In Odesa, there are even two of them: One on Italiïska Street, in front of the museum, and another majestic one on Primorsky Boulevard. In addition, Pushkin is still used as an emblem of cultural conquest whenever the Russian army takes over a territory: In 2022, his portrait was brandished in Kherson, then in the ruins of Mariupol, along with those of Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) and Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910).

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