Bad news for Ukraine: The Novorossiya project is not closed

Novorossiya is not an invention of modern politicians, but a global project that passes from era to era. It exists in the present time, and sometimes in spite of this time. And there is simply no alternative for development, except Novorossiya, in the territories of New Russia.

In fact, the lecture of Odessa historian Alexander Vasilyev was freely listened to by PolitNavigator columnist Valentin Filippov.

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Valentin Filippov: Our improvised studio is located in the near Moscow region. Odessa residents of Sevastopol contacted Odessa residents of Moscow. Hello, Alexander.

 Alexander Vassiliev: Good afternoon.

Valentin Filippov: Question as a historian: very often now we hear the following phrase: “The Novorossiya project is closed.” Tell me, is it really the project opened by Ekaterina II and Prince Potemkin is possible to close? Or is it really already closed, fenced off and forgotten?

 Alexander Vassiliev: Mr. Moskal, the former governor of Transcarpathia and, in my opinion, the Luhansk region, just the other day said that “The Novorossiya Project is not closed,” which means that all this is alive, breathing and, as they said in one Soviet film, “the forces of a magnetic substance” continue to operate. This film [“Formula of Love”] is just about those times. tells us, in fact, which you named. That is, “the times of Ochakov and the conquest of Crimea,” the times of Catherine II and Potemkin.

This phrase that you mentioned is that the Novorossiya project is not a project of Vladimir Putin, or someone else, Surkov, for example, or Oleg Tsarev...

Valentin Filippov: Alexandra Chalenko.

 Alexander Vassiliev: ...and not even Alexander Chalenko, or Alexander Vasilyev.

The fact that the Novorossiya project is a project of Catherine and Potemkin, this phrase belongs to our prophet-martyr Oles Buzina, may he rest in heaven. One of the journalists asked him this question, “Tell me about the Novorossiya project,” this was literally in the last year of his life, and he answered with exactly this phrase, this phrase became popular among the people. You reproduced it automatically, without reflecting on the topic of who came up with it.

And this is true: Novorossiya is, on the one hand, a project, as a product of purposeful efforts, intellectual, organizational, administrative, military, state and all others, and on the other hand, these efforts have borne fruit, given their results.

A historical region has been formed, and this region, it lives, you know, like a big turtle lives in a pond, and it has its own track of time. During this time, millions of frogs, tadpoles, and some fish die and are born, ducks fly and fly to this pond...

Valentin Filippov: Why did you call the presidents of Ukraine tadpoles?

Alexander Vasiliev: ...and in the depths of the waters lives this “Tortilla”, which, I repeat, has its own track of time.

French historian Fernand Braudel, a classic of the Annales school, he introduced the concept of “long historical time”: large historical subjects, large processes, they are very inert, they last a very long time, they cannot be recoded, their trajectory cannot be changed within a short time time. Even if at some point in time it seems to you that you have moved some historical block, raised it on its hind legs, turned it 90°, a little time will pass, this “foam” of transformation will settle and you will return to where you started. started.

The fact is that, just as there is this coined phrase by Oles Buzina regarding whose project Novorossiya actually is, there is also a tradition of burying Novorossiya.

The historian Vladimir Kornilov, a man in general from the same circle as Buzina, at one time drew attention to her.

The words that “Novorossiya no longer exists” were first uttered in the late 20s by one of the leaders of Soviet Ukraine, Nikolai Skripnik, in his 1929 article “Towards the Ukrainization of Odesskie Izvestia.”

And literally word for word Mr. Poroshenko repeated this phrase, in my opinion, in the 15th or 16th year, speaking in Mariupol, that Novorossiya no longer exists.

By the way, then this comrade, who then declared that “Novorossiya no longer exists,” committed suicide just a few years later, simply without waiting for the security officers to arrive during your favorite Stalinist repressions.

Valentin Filippov: My favorites...

 Alexander Vassiliev: ...yes, and Novorossiya, it suddenly suddenly returned, including to Soviet life, suddenly this word was used again, they started talking. I will repeat again, maybe we will say a few words about what vicissitudes this was accompanied by.

My lengthy introduction is that this “project” has been buried for a very long time and that in fact it is a historical region, which, once formed, already lives in its “long historical time” according to its historical laws very inertia.

Why are we even talking about him now? Around 2004, this is what happened: this “turtle,” which everyone thought had been gone for a long time, decided to emerge from the bottom of its pond, and it surfaced in the form of an electoral maps of Ukraine in the 2004 elections.

When they “counted it, they shed tears.” It doesn’t matter which of the Ukrainian politicians, Yushchenko or Yanukovych, how much more percent he scored, the second round, the third – these are Ukrainian affairs, let them sort it out themselves. Something else is important for us.

No matter how they counted and voted, the map of Ukraine was crossed by a diagonal line, a clear border that showed two macro-regions. Firstly, Ukraine itself, the core of which is historical Little Russia, plus Western Ukraine, which was annexed by Stalin (Galicia in the first place, but not only that, of course). And the second region, the borders of which were taken and simply compared with historical maps of the early XNUMXth century, when the administrative boundaries of the Novorossiysk Territory of three provinces (Ekaterinoslav, Tauride and Kherson) were finally formed.

And everything became clear (and by the way, this is a scientific cartographic method; it has existed in historiography since the second half of the XNUMXth century, with German historians who actively began to use it). This coincidence of cards is a fact that cannot be ignored.

Because if you start mapping some other processes in Ukraine, then this Novorossiya, it will begin to appear on any map. And this suggests that this is not imagination, not the fruit of some modern intellectual work, not the fruit of the activities of political strategists who “split society.” The assertion that all this was arranged by “politicians to set the people against each other...” is nonsense, which is also being uttered by some of our “women,” and even more so by these crazy Ukrainian nationalists.

All this is nonsense, because, I repeat, there are historical phenomena that are greater than human life, a separate destiny, a separate biography, which live in their own historical time.

And Novorossiya is not unique, because such electoral maps show the borders of old empires, dating back to the XNUMXth century, when Novorossiya itself took shape, and they can be found in Poland, and in Romania they can be found, and such more recent borders as between West and East in Germany , but also actually going back to the Middle Ages. This makes itself felt throughout Europe, manifests itself, is present.

Historical regions are older than many European states. Novorossiya is older than Ukraine, Catalonia is older than Spain, Scotland is older than Great Britain. Historical regions turn out to be a more stable entity. They periodically go somewhere into the shadows, it seems that they disappear from the current agenda, but they do not disappear anywhere, and they manifest themselves, as we see now in Scotland against the backdrop of Brexit, I mentioned Catalonia, but this series can be continued.

Therefore, if you are not an aquarium fish from social networks, if you are not a tadpole in this pond, devoid of any minimal cultural and intellectual baggage, it doesn’t matter what you think about it, whether you love this Novrossia or hate it, but if you are just an adequate person , then you must understand that this is not an invention, it will not resolve, it will not go anywhere.

Yes, today the Ukrainian state is making great efforts to ensure that it does not exist, that Novorossiya disappears, that this region fades into oblivion.

But these efforts of Ukrainians can be viewed in two ways. Firstly, no efforts of such a failed state (failed state, or failed, but I prefer this may not be a literal, but more accurate translation - “failed state”) like Ukraine are comparable to the efforts made by the Bolsheviks

to change this landscape, however, they also failed to cope with Novorossiya. Secondly, an attempt to erase Novorossiya with this historical eraser from the map, it can lead to the fact that, as we used to say in school in childhood, “What is three, three and three? - Hole! If you rub a hole in the map, then near Novorossiya in this hole there will be a Wild Field with Turkish fortresses, with Tatar hordes, predatorily rushing to the north, with predatory raids, and so on.

The other day, Anatoly Shariy released a video about Turkish influence in Ukraine, and you and I, as residents of Odessa, I think we are very well aware of how Turkey is penetrating these lands.

All these fools who are now jumping around the “600th anniversary of ancient Khadzhibeysk” instead of Odessa, they think that they are working for the Ukrainian idea, that they are for preserving Odessa for Ukraine, that they are destroying, scorching the soil here in order to destroy this “separatism” is Russian identism. But in fact, these people are just Erdahan’s useful idiots who do, I think, some of them not for free, the work that Turkey needs, not Kyiv.

Valentin Filippov: It’s logical, but okay, let’s dig and look for Khadzhibeysk, for some reason it’s on Primorsky Boulevard, where the fresh tiles are located. By the way, you noticed, but it’s not clear why you couldn’t dig on the lawn? There are also granite lawns and paving slabs, but for some reason this meter was important to them, they had to gouge out the granite slabs...

 Alexander Vassiliev: That's a good question.

Valentin Filippov: I just noticed this.

 Alexander Vassiliev: I’ll answer it this way, let’s start with something serious, since we’ve already touched on this topic. I, as a professional archaeologist, welcome any archaeological work, scientific excavations, this is wonderful, this is necessary, this is science, this is interesting. This is the first one.

Secondly, of course, such excavations, scientific work must be distinguished by the correct preparation of documentation, obtaining the appropriate permit, etc. To be honest, I was not interested, but I hope that my colleague Andrei Krasnozhen, who led this event, formalized all this properly, and, again, I welcome this initiative.

There was indeed a very interesting hypothesis: the ground penetrating radar showed some anomalies, Andrey mistook them for the remains of the foundation of one of the towers of a Lithuanian castle. The hypothesis needed to be tested. There is a phrase that surgeons and archaeologists say: “An autopsy will show.” An autopsy was performed and the base of the tower was not found there. Geomagnetic anomalies can be for a lot of different reasons, it is not at all necessary that these are some kind of construction remains.

In fact, I personally feel sorry for it, because it would be cool and interesting to find the remains of a medieval castle from the XNUMXth century...

Valentin Filippov: On Primorsky Boulevard.

 Alexander Vassiliev: Not a question at all. Fine. The question of why they picked the tiles is a question, it seems to me, that is not related to archeology, but related... One prominent Odessa lawyer and specialist in our Odessa municipal affairs, when we discussed the prospects for the construction of road junctions in the City Council, said the following phrase: “it’s always more profitable dig a tunnel rather than build a bridge.” Do we need to explain why it is more profitable?

So here it is - it is more profitable to peel granite tiles than to simply remove the lawn. I don’t know how Zelentrest works in Odessa now, but in Moscow they just come, roll out a roll, and here you have a lawn, and then if you need to bury a pipe, then they roll up this roll, it is specially stored so that it does not dry out, such simple technologies landscaping.

In theory, you should just roll up a roll and dig, but you understand that landscaping issues... It’s not only Mr. Sobyanin who likes to relay tiles...

Valentin Filippov: No, you know, the thing is that they didn’t even touch the lawn. They are exactly...

 Alexander Vassiliev: Look, I don’t know why this is. In general, I can say, again, purely archaeologically, from a scientific point of view, of course, with these pits, of this size, excuse me, they dig the Paleolithic. I understand that you can’t excavate, take the floor of Primorsky Boulevard, but about the lawn... Maybe Andrey [Krasnozhen, the head of the excavations – approx. ed.] ask about this.

In my practice as an archaeologist, I have encountered the need to work with a pickaxe before reaching a cultural layer. I assure you guys, this is a very unpleasant story. If a person makes a choice in favor of pounding concrete, he must have some very serious reasons. But I don’t know about them, I can’t say. This is probably one of the mysteries of “ancient Khadzhibey”.

Valentin Filippov: Fine. I wanted to ask partly about the economy...

 Alexander Vassiliev: Sorry for interrupting you, let us now move on from these excavations, and I will conceptualize them a little in the context of the history of Novorossiya...

Valentin Filippov: But conceptualize it. I’ll ask something stupid now, then we’ll cut it out. Listen, I was taught from childhood that there was never water in Odessa. I don’t understand at all how there could be some kind of settlement on the site of Odessa if there is no water.

 Alexander Vassiliev: If you remember, there is a beam across which the Mother-in-law’s bridge is thrown [Military beam - at. ed.]. All these beams were formed...

Valentin Filippov: Listen, I understand this.

 Alexander Vassiliev: That is, there was probably water in this place...

Valentin Filippov: Well, there was a trickle.

 Alexander Vassiliev: By the way, this is a very valuable remark. There is something that these guys don’t understand, who claim that Odessa is 600 years old, and that Andrei Krasnozhen himself once explained to me.

Even if these excavations or some others had been successful, and they would have discovered cultural layers there, construction sites, say, from the XNUMXth-XNUMXth centuries, if all this had been discovered in such super-preservation. It wouldn't have given these shavarniks anything anyway. I'll explain why.

The fact is that in this place the settlement existed intermittently, with such hiatuses and breaks. Roughly speaking: there was a medieval period, then there was nothing, the castle was abandoned, it was apparently being destroyed, there was just a steppe around where horses grazed, and there was nothing else. Then a Turkish fortress appeared, it was rebuilt, at the beginning they apparently introduced a garrison, restored the castle, and then, apparently, they surrounded the castle with additional modern fortifications, another row of fortifications, already directly in the era of the Russian-Turkish wars.

Apparently this new fortress was called Yeni-Dunya - New World. That is, there was a gap between the Turkish fortress (which was stormed by our wonderful Russian soldiers with Russian Cossacks led by the Russian commander De Ribas) and that very “Lithuanian castle”. Nobody lived, nothing happened.

There was no continuous development, as it was, for example, in Kyiv. Naturally, Soviet historians, under the influence of the party leadership, lied that the city existed in the XNUMXth century. Of course, there was no Kyiv yet. But since at least the XNUMXth century, with the arrival of the Varangians, Kyiv has already appeared and then it develops continuously. The Tatars burned it, then the Lithuanians took it during the Khmelnitsky wars, Hetman Radzivil captured it, but still the city, at the very least, continued to exist in the same place.

Or a classic example is Rome. Starting from...

Valentin Filippov: Well yes, yes, yes...

 Alexander Vassiliev: ... from the time of the legendary Roman kings to the present day, all this has existed continuously, there have simply been periods of prosperity and periods of decline. But the main thing is that there were no breaks.

In the case, I repeat, even the evidence base regarding all this... There were breaks. That is, we can no longer talk about 600 years ago, when the Turks colonized here and began to build a fortress, they came to a bare place where no one lived by that time, at least it could not even be called some kind of urban-type settlement.

Now about what this whole story is all about with this 600th anniversary and so on: the fact is that this kind of fuss, it exists not only in Odessa, we just believe that Odessa is such a center of the universe...

Valentin Filippov: And so it is.

 Alexander Vassiliev: The waves of the Atlantic Ocean crash on the shores of the Big Fountain.

But in fact, if we look a little at what is happening there with the neighbors, what is happening with whom, it turns out that the same story exists in Kherson, the same story exists in Nikolaev, the same story exists in Mariupol, in Berdyansk, in Lugansk, which was founded by Catherine as the first industrial center of Donbass, in Yekaterinoslav, and in Elisavetgrad, and so on, and so on - throughout New Russia. Precisely in Novorossiya.

There are local “local historians”, “historians”, some figures who prove that all these cities were not founded by Potemkin and Catherine, but existed earlier. The same applies to Donetsk - Yuzovka and this entire agglomeration - Gorlovka, Makeevka, etc., which in reality was founded even later, in the second half of the XNUMXth century, and Ukrainian figures prove that much earlier. They prove that all this was founded by Ukrainians.

“Khadzhibeevsk”, of course, also stands out here. After all, this entire collective ataman Gutsalyuk [director of the Odessa branch of the Institute of National Remembrance], at the very least, still exists in Odessa, in a city in which “show-off is more valuable than money.” And so they managed to show off even against the general Ukrainian background: they found this Lithuanian castle and apparently imagine themselves as some kind of “steppe knights”, feudal lords and landlords.

In all cases, except Odessa, we are talking about all sorts of Cossack villages, not even villages, no. There is, for example, such a concept as a “winter road”, this is a place where...

Valentin Filippov: We overwintered.

 Alexander Vassiliev: Yes. All summer the Zaporozhye Cossack is fishing: either on a raid, or he can get salt, or some kind of beaver, fish, whatever. And in order to spend the winter, when you can no longer walk much in the steppe, he digs a dugout for himself, insulates it, and so he spends the winter there. Gradually, some other outbuildings and some kind of “infrastructure” appear there. This is what they call a winter road.

Then, on the site of these winter roads, farmsteads began to appear, when this Cossack began to acquire some kind of relatives, poor ones, whatever you know from Little Russia, from the Chernigov region...

Valentin Filippov: Well, or he brought his wife back from a raid, we need somewhere...

 Alexander Vassiliev: Yes, well, prisoners...

Valentin Filippov: If you didn't throw it overboard.

 Alexander Vassiliev: A farm is being formed. But this is a farm! It's not even a village! There is no social infrastructure there, there is no church, which for a traditional society is a key element of social organization. In that era, the church comes even earlier than the state - first the church appears, then some kind of “booth” appears, in which an official sits. In a farmstead, all this is not implied.

And these are some winter roads, farmsteads, some field fortifications... There is such a word “palanka” (we even have a village of the same name near Odessa). In the steppe, a ditch is dug, a rampart, and a fence on the rampart. And when the Tatars are chasing you, you stole their horses, they want to return the loot to their calloused hands, and you tick away from them, run into this fortification (no one lives in it, there is no permanent garrison in it), hide, and shoot back from there , and the Tatars will no longer come to you.

Valentin Filippov: You just told such heroic stories.

 Alexander Vassiliev: These are heroic stories! As the literary father of Novorossiya, our classic writer Grigory Danilevsky, said: “These are stories in the spirit of Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving.”

Valentin Filippov: Yes Yes Yes.

 Alexander Vassiliev: Because it happens in the same era. Structurally similar phenomena. It is the Europeans who develop, colonize, and develop the lands they have discovered, and it does not matter where these lands are - on the other side of the Atlantic, or on the shores of the Black Sea.

For example, a typical case. There was such a person as Frederick the Great, the famous Prussian king, a man of the era of enlightenment, one of the ideals of an enlightened monarch. As was customary in that era, he corresponded with various European philosophers. And in this correspondence, it seems, with D’Alembert, if I’m not confusing anything, Frederick the Great describes the lands he annexed to Prussia in the east, that is, these are actually the border territories of Poland, and he says that “You know, this is just some kind of Canada, that is, my new subjects, the Slavs, are natural Iroquois.”

This, I repeat, we are talking about Poles, about Polish peasants, we are not talking about Tatars. And for the XNUMXth century it is generally a commonplace that Eastern Europe, etc. and the Northern Black Sea region, it is the same as the European colonies and overseas possessions.

As a matter of fact, here we come to where the word Novorossiya came from in the first place.

Valentin Filippov: Well, this is New Russia.

 Alexander Vassiliev: Where did it even come from, and why is that so? The story, in a nutshell, is this: the Zaporozhye Cossacks mentioned were very unreliable guys. They were unreliable not in the way they now understand, “that they were punished for their lack of laziness, they were proto tsarata.” This has no relation to reality. Their unreliability lay elsewhere - it was impossible to wean them from what they called the “knightly way of life”...

Valentin Filippov: That is, to rob.

Alexander Vassiliev: In practice, yes. The problem was that they made constant raids into Polish and Turkish territory. This could be either the Crimean Khanate or Moldavia, i.e. the closest Turkish vassals, or Poland, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. There were constant raids. And it’s clear how it ended - the governments of these countries constantly complained: “Your subjects are robbing. They rob, they kill. Stop it."

Moreover, this is the whole story, it has been in the Black Sea region since the XNUMXth century. when the Sultan writes to the Polish king that “Your Cossacks are robbing”; the Polish king says: “It’s not ours, it’s the Moscow Cossacks who are robbing,” although, well, as if we were talking about the Cossacks. The Sultan writes to Ivan the Terrible, for example, Ivan the Terrible writes, “These are not the sovereign’s people, but robbers.” In short: “they are not there.” This is a hybrid war... The same thing works in the opposite direction. The Tatars attack, the Polish king complains to the Sultan, who replies: “Don’t you have sabers to defend your wife?”

And so the entire 16th, 17th centuries last, the 18th century comes, and everything revolves around the same plot. Therefore, when today they talk about Cossack “volition,” it is not about “independence,” but precisely about the fact that...

Valentin Filippov: No, well, listen, where has this been seen, so that the Cossack does not get the booty?

Alexander Vassiliev: "Zipuns", yes.

Since it was necessary to do something about this, the government of Elizabeth Petrovna came to the conclusion that there was a good option - to recruit Serbs in the Balkans. It was at this time that the so-called “Military Border” in the Balkans was eliminated. This was the border of the Austrian Empire, which was guarded by the Serbs, there were regular Austro-Turkish wars there, the Austrians moved the border to the south, and as a result, a crowd of armed men ended up inside the country, and they, by their, so to speak, frostbite, well, of course, could give anyone a head start.

After all, when the military border was eliminated, what does that mean? They disarm, infringe on their rights, stop paying money, and so on. And then the Russian government began to recruit them, saying: “We have beautiful lands. And we, on the same conditions, let’s settle you on our border.” And the Serbs began to move.

This is how the territory appeared, which was called New Serbia. It was such a narrow strip of land between the Dnieper and the Southern Bug. And the second was the same colony, called Slavic-Serbia. It appeared in the Donbass, roughly speaking, on the Seversky Donets. What happened next?

Even earlier, the so-called “Ukrainian Line” was built along the border, which is also a very interesting story. This “Ukrainian Line” was guarded by “Ukrainians,” well, that’s what the people who guarded it were called, “Ukrainians.” Therefore, when they say: “There has never been such a word,” this is not entirely true. There was a word. But what do you think, who are the “Ukrainians”?

Valentin Filippov: Well, who? Some kind of Cossacks.

Alexander Vassiliev: No. “Ukrainians” were Russian service people, the so-called “odnodvortsy”. These are the guys who, under Peter I, did not become nobles because they were very poor, but they were not peasants either. These were archers, gunners, city Cossacks, and so on. Their descendants formed such a separate social stratum, they were called “odnodvortsy”, and they were obliged to perform military service.

They mostly lived in the Black Earth Region, in the Oryol region, Kursk region, and so on. They were recruited there, formed into regiments, and they guarded the border, which stretched from the Dnieper on the Left Bank just somewhere to the Seversky Donets basin.

This is how a chain of settlements appeared in the south, not just of people loyal to the government, but of people purposefully placed there by the government. In this they differed from the Cossacks, who acted on the principle: “we have always lived here and now let us serve you.” In those days, the Cossacks founded the New Sich, whose possessions were even further south.

When Catherine came to power after the coup, she immediately began various reforms, transformations, and so on.

And there was such a general Melgunov, close to Peter III. This was the only person from his entourage who was not afraid when Catherine started the coup, but who said: “Listen, let’s raise the guard, troops, garrisons. We will crush the rebels.” Everyone said: “No, no, no,” the Tsar was really unpopular, but Catherine was the opposite. But this was the only person who spoke out against Catherine.

He then served under arrest for several months, Catherine eventually released him, why should a person be “marinated”, but she sent him to the Ukrainian army. The Ukrainian army is an army that holds defenses at the edge, that is, border troops. And specifically he was appointed to conduct an audit of that very New Serbia. It was there that huge abuses were revealed. Serbs... well, you know, Balkan people, someone stole something there, corruption. They were cool guys, grunts, they were hussars, a hussar regiment was formed from them, all cool guys, but there were big problems in terms of financial discipline.

Valentin Filippov: Yes... It’s better to send to the next war...

Alexander Vassiliev: And so Melgunov came to deal with these same Serbs. And he drew up a project in which he proposed all these southern military settlements (let’s call them that, yes, this is not Alexander I’s era of settlement, but the essence is generally similar), he proposed to unite them into one province. He wrote a report, he submitted the report to the Panin brothers (high-ranking nobles of Catherine's reign), they together approved it, and sent it to Catherine for signature.

Ekaterina made two notes in this document, crossed out the text of the report and marked with her own hand what needed to be corrected. Two things. And they are in conjunction very important for understanding.

The first thing was: in Melgunov’s report, it was proposed to form an Uhlan regiment from local Cossacks. Uhlans are a type of Polish light cavalry armed with pikes. The Seven Years' War, in which they showed themselves very well, had just ended, and these lancers began to appear in all the armies of Europe. And they suggested: let’s also make ourselves such lancers, let’s recruit them from the Cossacks.

Catherine crossed out the word “Uhlans,” a Polish word, and wrote: “Call them pikemen,” a pike regiment. That is, she translated the term, Russified it.

Secondly, the authors of the report proposed to name the new province in honor of Catherine, well, as if to make such a curtsy. Catherine, especially at the beginning of her reign, was emphatically modest.

This is the style that the Bolsheviks named the city in honor of themselves, who were still alive. There is Comrade Zinoviev - the city of Zinovievsk, Comrade Stalin - the city, and not only one. There are several in honor of Kirov, and several in honor of Kalinin. For example, here is Stalingrad, which became famous for its defense in the Second World War. it was called Stalingrad-on-Volga, so as not to be confused, for example, with the city of Stalino in the Donbass.

But this is true, by the way. Let's return to Novorossiya.

Catherine crossed out her name as the name of the province and wrote: “Call it Novorossiya.” That is, instead of New Serbia, she, again, removes the word “Serbia” and inserts the word “Russia”. She erased the Russian affiliation of these lands and Russified them.

We often write: “Ekaterina is German.” She would not have impaled her for such words... No, she would not have impaled her like Ivan the Terrible, she was an enlightened woman. But I would definitely be angry. In reality, Catherine always emphasized that she was Russian, that Europeans in general did not understand us, our “mysterious soul”. She introduced “Russian dress” at court, wore a kokoshnik, etc. This, of course, is a separate story. But Novorossiya is in this context.

After such a long retreat, let us return to the meaning of the term Novorossiya itself. It is formed by analogy with such terms as New Spain, as the conquistadors called Mexico, New France, as Canada was originally called until the British captured it. The last of these entities, that is, during Catherine’s time, was New Zealand, Zealand is a province in the Netherlands.

Valentin Filippov: Well, the USA itself is New England

 Alexander Vassiliev: Absolutely, New England, of course. Moreover, New England is a great analogy for New Russia. Why? I'll explain now.

We have all these Ukrainian comrades, propagandists who work as historians, or vice versa, historians who work as propagandists, they “pump up” one thesis.

Yes, yes, yes, Novorossiya existed (there was no escape, it was a fact), but, they say, it was only an administrative name, and it disappeared after the Novorossiysk General Government was liquidated (this happened in 1876). And they say that after that the word was not used.

But this is complete nonsense! The word was used before the revolution, after the revolution as well. It was in everyday life, it was in branding (names of enterprises and models of industrial products, printed publications), and so on.

It was the same with New England. As a purely administrative unit, as a territory with such an official name, “according to documents”, it did not exist for long. It was later also abolished, and then the American Revolution happened there. But the name of the historical region is informal, a self-name, it has survived to this day.

And the same story with Novorossiya. Because in both cases there is a colonial context.

But the word “colonization” has now acquired such a Soviet negative flair. They say the colonialists are the ones in pith helmets, they chop off the hands of poor blacks, and similar things. But this term is inherently ambiguous, and in those days it did not have any negative connotation at all.

For example, we still call the “great Greek colonization” the process of the ancient Greeks founding cities and settlements (one of which was excavated on Primorsky Boulevard, closer to Duma) outside of Hellas proper. This was a process of colonization, that is, settlement; there is no negative context here.

Likewise, Russia colonized these territories. According to the ideas of the XNUMXth century (not our humanistic XNUMXst century), according to the ideas of the Enlightenment, if the lands were not systematically cultivated by farmers, but some people lived on them who roamed there, hunter-gatherers, Indians there, and so on, then such lands were considered no man's land. "No Man's Land" And the one who will process it has the right to it.

It was under this sauce that Novorossiya was developed and annexed to Russia. And only after this, in this region, in this steppe space, north of the Black Sea and Azov coasts, the construction of cities begins. In place, of course, there are some kind of dugouts, winter roads, palankas, sheds and other such ephemeral settlement structures.

What else is important to note here. Ukrainians also say that Catherine “destroyed Zaporizhzhya Sich”, destroyed everything, and they say Novorossiya was stolen from the Cossacks.

Well, firstly, the territory of Novorossiya is larger than the maximum borders of the territory of the Liberties of the Grassroots Zaporozhye Army. Secondly, we know the most beautiful document “I am writing in the retinue the constitution of Pylyp Orlik”

Valentin Filippov: Yes

Alexander Vassiliev: We just literally live by it until today

Valentin Filippov: Yes, I noticed

Alexander Vassiliev: What is written in it, in the constitution? Has anyone ever opened it? Firstly, as Vladimir Kornilov wrote, there is no “Pylyp” there, but Philip. Written by "Philip Orlik"

Valentin Filippov: But Pylyp is readable. Don’t you know the new rules of Ukrainian language?

Alexander Vassiliev: Well, yes, the person was renamed in absentia, well, OK, they respect him so much that they don’t even call him by name.

Orlik signed the document as hetman, Mazepa’s heir, and on the Cossacks’ side there was Kosche Ataman Kost Gordienko, so he represented the Zaporozhian Army. Essentially, this is an agreement between two parties. What is written there in this constitution?

One of the points says that if and when we conquer these lands from Moscow, with the help of the Swedish king, then it is prohibited to build on these territories, the territories of the Zaporozhye Sich, fortresses, cities, settlements, or populate them with people. Directly prohibited. That is, the Constitution of Ukraine prohibits the construction of cities in the future Novorossiya.

Therefore, these villains who built that 600-year-old Kuchubiivsk, they generally violate the constitution of Philip Orlik, where is the Constitutional Court looking?

Valentin Filippov: In principle, Ukraine is a very consistent country and power. I want nothing to happen here...

 Alexander Vassiliev: Yes, everything is heading towards this

Valentin Filippov: Wait... you say it beautifully, but Novorossiya is some kind of economic project, it’s a whole economic complex. Today, if this complex is completely destroyed, if it is made unclaimed, and this is easily done by surrounding it with barbed wire, relatively speaking, there will be no Novorossiya, maybe there will be no cities, the cities are shrinking. 

Alexander Vassiliev: I’ll tell you separately about the economic complex. This is actually a very interesting story.

Again, we return to this phrase that Novorossiya is a project of Catherine and Potemkin. It is simply amazing how much Catherine (and Potemkin together) laid down a matrix that could not be fully realized in their era, including due to the objective level of technological development. But then, when the appropriate level of technology was achieved, all these projects were implemented and took off.

When Ukrainians try to find some ancient farmsteads that preceded them for each of the cities of Novorossiya, it’s funny. Because

a city is a fundamentally different social organism, the most important thing in it is, as you said, the economic model. Because, as the classic of world sociology Max Weber says, a city is a market plus a fortress. This is where any city begins. Simplifying this formula as much as possible: economy plus power.

The power is Russian. There was no other power there. The Cossacks did not have sovereignty, they had self-government, but not power, not sovereignty. Even now we know that there are local governments, and there are state authorities, even according to the constitution, in Ukraine, I mean. It was exactly the same then - the Cossacks did not have sovereign power, there was only local self-government. And the economy.

And in this economy, of course, the main things, for example, for Odessa, for Mariupol, are, first of all, of course, the port, initially this is trade. But not only. Further, the basis of the economy of Novorossiya is, of course, agriculture. The first stage of development of Novorossiya is agricultural.

Moreover, initially the main business asset there was sheep farming, just like somewhere in Australia, in New Zealand at the same time, the same processes were happening. And then grain farming and exports begin to develop rapidly. Grain export. And this export of grain to foreign markets was a key economic driver.

But what's interesting...Valentin, I want you to fixate on this. Now I will give one example of how it worked in Odessa and this will show how the economic model of Novorossiya was structured in general.

You probably know that there was such an entrepreneurial Anatra family in Odessa. And there was the Anatra aviation plant. This Anatra family has a very interesting origin. Her first generation was some eccentric who came from Sicily, just a sailor, you understand what a Sicilian sailor is. He knew how to make boats. He took and built a boat in Odessa and began using this boat to service the ships that were in the roadstead. Bring water and food and get money for it. I think you immediately realized that he was carrying water and food there, and he was unlikely to return empty. Some small “double bass” went there, all sorts of things like that, and on this the first Anatra in Odessa made his capital. He created a company to service ships arriving at the port. You don’t just row the boat yourself and carry water, but maybe you’ll remember what the correct names are for those who serve...

Valentin Filippov: Stevedoring companies

Alexander Vassiliev: Yes, absolutely right, just a word came out. So he and the children organized such a company. The next step for their family business was two things. Firstly, development. They built the Anatra apartment building, a whole block occupies the corner of Yevreiskaya on Pushkinskaya, they built a residential complex - a business that is understandable for modern Odessa. And secondly, grain exports.

Valentin Filippov: Yes, everyone was involved in grain exports.

Alexander Vasiliev: Yes, but each time they invested the money in some more profitable and more complex business. From intermediary services to construction and grain export.

Then they build a large flour-grinding complex and mill on Peresyp. This is already the beginning of light industry. And the last generation of the Anatra family, their son, he graduated from our Novorossiysk Imperial University, Faculty of Chemistry, he was an engineer by profession, being the son of a local Odessa oligarch.

Can you imagine a story where some son of Kaufman, Granovsky, Trukhanov, anyone else receives an engineering education at the Odessa University?

Valentin Filippov: Well, it would make sense if they did that, but they don't.

Alexander Vassiliev: Yes. Why, that’s the question?

Valentin Filippov: We have a good engineering education even now

Alexander Vassiliev: He receives an engineering education, and he invests money in the most high-tech that existed at that time - in aircraft manufacturing. He builds an aircraft factory and the era of Odessa aviation begins: Efimov, Utochkin, Slavorosov, all this most interesting Odessa “movement” of that time.

Now I gave you an example of how the economy of Novorossiya worked as a whole. From agriculture, from livestock breeding, sheep breeding to grain and to industry, and at that time the most technologically advanced. It is clear that not all businesses were built exactly like this from generation to generation...

Valentin Filippov: It’s clear, but the development of the city as a whole went like this.

Alexander Vasiliev: This is not only Odessa. The same thing happened in Yekaterinoslav, then Donbass appeared.

So, when I say that Ekaterina laid down this matrix...for example, Ekaterinoslav. According to Potemkin, it was supposed to become southern Petersburg for Catherine. Because Catherine constantly compared herself with Peter. At first she seemed to imitate him, then she seemed to compete, and at the end of her reign, she rightly, in my opinion, believed that she had surpassed Peter’s achievements.

So it is clear that Peter had his own capital in the north, where he cut a window to Europe, Catherine cut a second window to Europe in the south near the warm sea and she needed to build a new city there, building it right on the shore as a capital was risky, because that we know how difficult it has always been to defend Petrograd, and then Leningrad. Just having a capital right on the shore is a problem for a land power, which Russia has always been.

Therefore, Potemkin decided to build this southern capital, not just the capital of New Russia, but the capital of all Russia, after all, at some distance from the Black Sea, but in a good place. And this, in fact, is how the city of Ekatirinoslav arose.

Of course, I’m omitting the long backstory, the “first Yekatirinoslav” was transferred from one bank of the river to the other, we’ll leave it all out, but so that in the comments someone doesn’t write “Oh, Vasiliev doesn’t know basic things”

Valentin Filippov: Come on. I'll delete the comment and that's it. Let's not argue with fools.

 Alexander Vasiliev: But that's not the point. When the Ekaterinoslav we now know was founded, the foundation stones were laid personally by Empress Catherine II and Holy Roman Emperor Joseph Habsburg. The Austrian Emperor, he arrived on an unofficial visit.

Do you understand, right? The city was founded by two emperors. Therefore, when they talk about the Dnepropetrovsk clan, about Brezhnev, about Kolomoisky and all these guys, they didn’t come out of nowhere. Neither Brezhnev started out of nowhere, nor did Kolomoisky start out of nowhere. This is a city that was intended to be such a center that would give birth to an elite that would rule the country. Such is the genius loci [lat. “spirit of place” - approx. ed.], this is the idea inherent in Ekaterinoslav.

But when Potemkin dies, the main lobbyist for this project is no longer there. And the city of Yekaterinoslav remains simply a provincial center. Moreover, for a long time the center was not the most developed province. And if you read the description of Ekaterinoslav, for example, when Pushkin arrived there, then even some of the words there are obscene to the large Jewish population living there. It was a provincial town.

It remained in this state for almost the entire XNUMXth century. Odessa was already blooming then! Here is Pushkin in Yekaterinoslav and Pushkin in Odessa, you can simply compare. This is the beginning of the century. The same thing happened in the middle of the century. There are, for example, such notes as “Essays on the Dnieper”, travelogues, as it is now fashionable to say. It says there about Ekaterinoslav, that Potemkin’s palace is in ruins, they were going to build a cathedral like in Rome, they built a small one, well, that’s all.

And suddenly, near Ekaterinoslav, a local archaeologist, Alexander Pol, was looking for traces of ancient cultures in the gullies, and found iron ore. And a frantic industrial boom begins and Ekaterinoslav blossoms before our eyes and becomes, in fact, what was laid out in it by Catherine and Potemkin - the largest and most powerful city. And then the Soviet rocket industry is already developing there.

I want people to understand that this did not come out of nowhere, that it was not Stalin and Beria personally who materialized the space program and the rocket program out of nothing, just as God created the world out of nothing. None of this would have happened if it weren’t for these roots going into the soil of progressive development, including economic and industrial development.

The next moment is Donbass. Catherine, in one of her last decrees, written at the end of her life, ordered the construction of the Lugansk plant. An Englishman arrives with the latest technology. This is a completely different story, how this Englishman was taken out of Britain...

Valentin Filippov: He did not want?

Alexander Vassiliev : He wanted! And the British government said: “Are you guys stunned?” Take it to potential opponents! In the later part of Catherine’s reign, relations with the British were literally “at knifepoint”. Especially after Catherine arranged armed neutrality to help the American rebels.

And in such a situation, take out the greatest specialist! And he boarded the ship and immediately took with him guns, machine tools, drawings... In short, it was a whole adventure!

His name was Charles Gascoigne. The first thing he did was renovate the Petrovsky plant near St. Petersburg, the city is now called Petrozavodsk. And then he is sent into the wilderness, into the steppe, into the “pampas”; he is sent to the Lugan River to build a factory there. And he builds it! And this plant still exists to this day. He later changed his profile there, but it started as a metallurgical plant. Yes, it did not give the expected economic effect then, although it worked and during the War of 1812 the Russian army fought with Lugansk cannons.

But then we saw that the metallurgical industry, the coal industry, all of this originated in the Donbass, and Ekaterina was the first to sign the first piece of paper. It’s amazing how this “Novorossiya project” worked, how it implemented the program laid out in it a century later, after all the founders had died, and suddenly it started to work. And this suggests that this potential inherent in the Novorossiya project is so great, it is so enormous that it is impossible to erase and hide it with these trousers.

Or perhaps you have met people here who are not Russian by identity, but Russian by identity. This is such a young country that appeared in 1991. There is a thesis that this is a young country, that this is a young nation, a nation of Russians and they have nothing to do with Novorossiya or anything like that. Both they and the Ukrainians think that this story is over. But it did not end, because it is not subject to the subjective will and desire of people. These are objective and very serious historical processes that are manifesting themselves and will continue to manifest themselves, I think, for hundreds of years.

Valentin Filippov: OK then. I think that on this positive note about hundreds of years... we won’t be able to check, but I take your word for it. I thank you for this lecture, it is very informative and of course I still have a huge number of questions...

Alexander Vassiliev: I suggest not putting a full stop, but putting a comma, I literally went over this concept “Novorossiya project”. I think it will be very interesting to talk about the XNUMXth century, about the Vorontsov era, about the Pushkin era, to talk about the second half of the XNUMXth century, about the beginning of the XNUMXth, about the era of Alexander III, Nicholas II, about the frantic economic growth that swept these our territories.

And in Soviet times, there were also interesting things that the Soviet comrades wrote about Novorossiya, that they thought, that the party ordered to think about it at one time, and at another time, another. I think this will also be interesting to talk about.

Valentin Filippov: Okay, then we don't say goodbye