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Novorossiyaa=Ru-Новороссия.ogg; , ; ; ; "New Russia". is a historical name, used during the era of the Russian Empire for an administrative area that would later become the southern mainland of Ukraine: the region immediately north of the Black Sea and Crimea. The name Novorossiya, which means "New Russia", entered official usage in 1764, after the Russian Empire conquered the Crimean Khanate, and annexed its territories,"Plan for the Colonization of New Russia Gubernia" issued by the Governing Senate – New Russia Gubernia at the Encyclopedia of Ukraine when Novorossiya Governorate (or Province) was founded. Official usage of the name ceased after 1917, when the entire area (minus Crimea) was annexed by the Ukrainian People's Republic, precursor of the Ukrainian SSR.
Novorossiya Governorate was formed in 1764 from military frontier regions and parts of the southern Hetmanate, in anticipation of a war with the Ottoman Empire.Magocsi, Paul R. "A History of Ukraine: The Land and Its Peoples," p. 284. It was further expanded by the annexation of the Zaporozhian Sich in 1775. At various times, Novorossiya encompassed the Moldavian region of Bessarabia, the modern Ukraine's regions of the Black Sea littoral (Prychornomoria), Zaporizhzhia, Tavria, the Azov Sea littoral (Pryazovia), the Tatars region of Crimea, the area around the Kuban River, and the lands.
Vast regions to the North of the Black Sea were sparsely populated and were known on medieval maps as Desolated Places, Wild Fields (as translated from Polish or Ukrainian), or Dykra (in Lithuanian). There were, however, many settlements along the Dnieper River. The Wild Fields had covered roughly the southern territories of modern Ukraine; some say they extended into the modern Southern Russia (Rostov Oblast).
The administrative center of the Novorossiysk Governorate was at the Fortress of St. Elizabeth (today in Kropyvnytskyi) in order to protect the southern borderlands from the Ottoman Empire, and in 1765 this passed to Kremenchuk.
After the annexation of the Ottoman territories to Novorossiya in 1774, the Russian authorities commenced a broad program of colonization, encouraging large migrations from a broader spectrum of ethnic groups. Catherine the Great invited European settlers to these newly conquered lands: Romanians (from Moldavia, Wallachia and Transylvania), Bulgarians, Serbs, Greeks, Albanians, Germans, Polish people, Italians, and others. Catherine the Great granted Kniaz Grigori Potemkin (1739–1791) the powers of an absolute ruler over the area from 1774, after which he directed the Russian colonization of the land. The rulers of Novorossiya gave out land generously to the Russian nobility ( dvoryanstvo) and the Russian serfdom peasantry—mostly from Ukraine and fewer from Russia—to encourage immigration for the cultivation of the then sparsely populated steppe. According to the Historical Dictionary of Ukraine:
In 1775, the Russian Empress Catherine the Great forcefully liquidated the Zaporizhian Sich and annexed its territory to Novorossiya, thus eliminating the independent rule of the Ukrainian Cossacks. The governorate was dissolved in 1783. In 1792, the Russian government declared that the region between the Dniester and the Bug was to become a new principality named " New Moldavia", under Russian suzerainty.E. Lozovan, Romanii orientali, "Neamul Romanesc", 1/1991, p.14 According to the first Russian census of the Yedisan region conducted in 1793 (after the expulsion of the Nogai Tatars) 49 villages out of 67 between the Dniester and the Southern Bug were Romanian.E. Lozovan, Romanii orientali, "Neamul Romanesc", 1/1991, p.32. From 1796 to 1802 Novorossiya was the name of the reestablished Governorate with the capital Novorossiysk (previously and subsequently Ekaterinoslav, the present-day Ukrainian city of Dnipropetrovsk not to be confused with present-day Novorossiysk, Russian Federation). In 1802 it was divided into three governorates, the Yekaterinoslav, Kherson, and the Taurida.
From 1822 to 1873 the Novorossiysk-Bessarabia General Government was centred in Odesa. The region remained part of the Russian Empire until its collapse following the Russian February Revolution in early March 1917.
The name received renewed emphasis when Russian President Vladimir Putin stated in an interview on 17 April 2014 that the territories of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odesa were part of what was called Novorossiya. In May 2014, the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic proclaimed the confederation of Novorossiya and its desire to extend its control towards all of southeastern Ukraine. The confederation had little practical unity and within a year the project was abandoned: on 1 January 2015 the founding leadership announced the project had been put on hold, and on 20 May the constituent members announced the freezing of the political project. (2025). 9783031404504 ISBN 9783031404504
Anna Nemtsova forecast this disintegration in August 2014, and she predicted the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine then too. Oksana Yanyshevskaya, a Ukrainian government official, in a July 2014 interview with her said that Novorossiya "is some sort of artificial idea that lives only in the minds of people in the Kremlin."
In 2016 Marlène Laruelle wrote that Alexander Prokhanov formed the Izborsky Club around the Novorossiya meme.LARUELLE, MARLENE. “The Izborsky Club, or the New Conservative Avant-Garde in Russia.” The Russian Review 75, no. 4 (2016): 626–44. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43919640.
Gerard Toal opines that "In breaking apart a sovereign territorial state, it is helpful, if not always necessary, to have an alternative geopolitical imaginary at the ready and for this ersatz replacement to have some degree of local credibility and support." The Novorossiya idea is just this portmanteau.
The idea of Novorossiya goes hand-in-hand with the erasure of Ukrainian statehood, or as Vladislav Surkov said in his defenestration interview in February 2020, "There is Ukrainian-ness. That is, a specific disorder of the mind. An astonishing enthusiasm for ethnography, driven to the extreme." Surkov claims that Ukraine is "a muddle instead of a state. … But there is no nation. There is only a brochure, 'The Self-Styled Ukraine', but there is no Ukraine."
During the Wagner Group mutiny in June 2023, President Putin used the phrase in a speech responding to the mutiny, praising those "who fought and gave their lives to Novorossiya and for the unity of the Russky Mir".
Multiple ethnicities participated in the founding of the cities of Novorossiya (most of these cities were expansions of older settlements Odesa: Through Cossacks, Khans and Russian Emperors , The Ukrainian Week (18 November 2014)). For example:
According to the report of governor Aleksandr Shmidt (), the ethnic composition of Kherson Governorate (which included the city of Odesa) in 1851 was as follows:Шмидт А. "Материалы для географии и статистики, собранные офицерами генерального штаба. Херсонская губерния. Часть 1". (tr. "Schmidt A.: Materials for geography and statistics collected by officers of the general staff. Kherson province. Part 1") St. Petersburg, 1863, p. 465-466
The 1897 All-Russian Empire Census statistics show that Ukrainian was the native language spoken by most of the population of Novorossiya, but with Russian and Yiddish languages dominating in most city areas.
The 1897 All-Russian Empire Census statistics:
Imperial Russian regiments were used to build these cities, at the expense of hundreds of soldiers' lives.
(2025). 9780190253301 ISBN 9780190253301John O'Loughlina, Gerard Toal, and Vladimir Kolosov: "The rise and fall of "Novorossiya": examining support for a separatist geopolitical imaginary in southeast Ukraine", Post Soviet Affairs Vol 32, no. 2 (2017), 124-144.
Demographics
Ethnicity
The ethnic composition of Novorossiya changed during the beginning of the 19th century due to the intensive movement of colonists who rapidly created towns, villages, and agricultural colonies. During the Russo-Turkish Wars, the major Turkish fortresses of Ozu-Cale, Akkerman, Khadjibey, Kinburn Spit and many others were conquered and destroyed. New cities and settlements were established in their places. Over time the ethnic composition varied.
69.14 7.37 5.40 3.93 2.95 1.81 0.88 0.34 0.25 0.20 0.20 0.04 0.04 0.03 0.01 4.75 1.63 1.02 100
Language
With regard to language usage, Russian language was commonly spoken in the cities and some outside areas, while Ukrainian generally predominated in rural areas, smaller towns, and villages.
42.2% 27.9% 6.7% 0.6% 2.8% 0.2% 5.4% 3.8% 1.2% 13.5% 1.5% 1,447,790 273,302 7 177,376 82 2,336 88 455,819
List of founded cities
Many of the cities that were founded (most of these cities were expansions of older settlements) during the imperial period are major cities today.
First wave
Second wave
Third wave
See also
Notes
External links
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