New Russia

The International Business Times (U.K.) asks, in the headline to a Friday story, “Why is Vladimir Putin referring to eastern Ukraine as ‘New Russia’?” The Bullers of Molotschna colony would have been able to answer that question.

As the following article explains, the term “New Russia” (Novorossiya) historically refers to the area conquered by Catherine (II) the Great in the late eighteenth century and controlled by her heirs, the tsars of the nineteenth century. Of interest to us is that New Russia included the area of the Molotschna colony, as well as the land of the Nogai and the other German settlers and Russian peasants and separatists surrounding the Molotschna colony, as shown in the map accompanying the article. Thus, the Bullers of Molotschna colony would immediately have recognized that the term refers to the area of the Russian Empire in which they lived.

Although it is commonly thought that Putin hopes to rebuild in some form the Soviet Union of the twentieth century, one wonders whether he has an even earlier historical period in mind, the glory days of the Russian Empire created by Catherine and other Russian tsars of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Putin’s use of the term “New Russia” certainly lends support to that hypothesis.