EN
The study is devoted to the fate of one important symbol of Odessa – the monument to the founders of this city. This monument has been repeatedly covered up, destroyed, again unveiled and restored over the past hundred years. From the position of a broader history of this monument and the city, the author attempts to offer answers to several questions related to the local, national and transnational social functionality of this repeated restoration and destruction. The text argues that the presence or absence of the Odessa monument to the Russian Tsarina reveals differently conceived memorial images of the city. However, the narrative value of the observed monumental phenomenon is much broader and refers to the national context, to the tragic outcome of the socio-political development of post-Soviet Ukraine.