New Ukraine vs Novorussia: myths and realities of geopolitical changes during the second half of the XVIIIth – at the end of the XIXth century

Abstract

The aim of the research is to reconstruct the peculiarities of geopolitical changes, which took place on the territory of southern Ukraine during the second part of the XVIIIth – the end of the XIXth century. The research methodology is based on the principles of scientism, historical methods, verification, author’s objectiveness, the frontier theory, a human dimension, regionalism, and also on the use of general scientific (analysis, synthesis, generalization) and special-historical (historicalgenetic, historical-typological, historical-systemic) methods. The scientific novelty consists in the fact that the process of incorporation and colonization of the southern Ukrainian region has been specified on the basis of the documents unknown before. It has been emphasized that the southern Ukrainian region had a lot of peculiarities, which differed it from other regions of the Russian Empire. It was characteristic of the spirit of free enterprising; it nearly did not know any serfdom and, besides, through southern ports not only new goods but progressive ideas were spread out from modernized West Europe. The Empire had been striving to implement an artificial project “Novorussia” for a long time, but this policy became a failure. The region was populated by the Ukrainians; it was formed in close economical and socio-cultural relationships with the left and right banks Ukraine and became an integral part of Great Ukraine. In the research the south of Ukraine is characterized as “New Ukraine” to counterbalance Russia’s failed “Novorussia” project. The memoirs by West European and Russian political and public figures as well as ordinary travellers round the region have been studied and the attention is focused on the fact that the southern Ukrainian region had nothing in common with backward Russia. The same time, modernization, colonization, cultural and other factors only proved it. The Conclusions. As a result of the present research, the conclusions have been made saying that the term “New Ukraine” has more rights to exist as a manifestation of the beginning of “a new life” in many aspects (political, economical, socio-cultural, etc.). The new Ukrainian region from the very beginning was given a strong impetus to development in the West-European direction and the residents of the region did not inherit Russia’s values.