Odessans of All Countries, Unite!

Odessa is a beautiful city-port with more than million population. The city is located on the northwest cost of the Black Sea. The history of Odessa starts in 1794. From that time, Odessa has given Russia and the rest of the World plenty of greatest and famous people: writers and poets, artists and musicians, scientists and engineers, ... , revolutionaries and soldiers, ... , thieves and gangsters. As a result of disintegration of the USSR, the city now belongs to independent Ukraine. But, ... actually, all Odessans over the World know that Odessa belongs to them and they, in turn, belong to their beautiful Odessa.

A boy in this photo is me in 1955. On the background you can see a sculpture of Lenin and Stalin sitting on the bench and talking to each other. For many years this sculpture was in Odessa in the Sobor Square whose name originates from a beautiful church (sobor) which had been destroyed earlier by the followers of Lenin and Stalin. Interestingly, in 1956, the next morning after The Twentieth Congress of The Communist Party (which convicted Stalin), Stalin disappeared from the sculpture. It looked like was offended by the Party and left without answering the last Lenin's question. Lenin left alone and was waiting for Stalin's answer for about ten years until the whole sculpture disappeared from the Sobor Square.