Crossing Communism's chasm

International | Renovating the rubble | Mindy Belz

In Odessa, history died along with freedom when the Bolshevik Revolution seized power 80 years ago. After confiscating privately owned buildings, communists destroyed property records and usually whole histories of what went on inside them.

That kind of state-induced amnesia-invoked all across the former Soviet Union-has made returning building sites to private hands an arduous cause. For both archivist and lawyer, there is no paper trail.

Now a young congregation is trying to outwit both the state and history-in this case, communist history-in order to establish a Reformed church in the city's historic center.

This complicated story begins in the early 19th century when French immigrants to Odessa, escaping the aftermath of their country's revolution, began the Evangelical Reformed Church. The church eventually secured property on Khersonskaya Street, now known as Pastera Street, the church's present site. Members built a neo-Gothic building in 1896 and dedicated it in 1900. Austrians, Brits, Germans, and Swiss, along with the French, attended. Preaching was alternately in German and French. Under the Soviets, the church was closed and converted into a puppet theater.