GUEST COMMENTARY
On Eurofascism
by Sergei Glazyev
Sergei Glazyev is an Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Advisor to the President of the Russian Federation.
This guest commentary was written and made available to publications in the USA and Europe, before the June 7, 2014 inauguration of Petro Poroshenko as President of Ukraine. The version printed here incorporates, with the author’s permission, passages from his March 21, 2014 interview with Radio Radonezh, a Russian station. It is dated March 21-June 7, 2014. Subheads have been added.
Current events in Ukraine are guided by the evil spirit of fascism and Nazism, though it seemed to have dissipated long ago, after World War II. Seventy years after the war, the genie has escaped from the bottle once again, posing a threat not merely in the form of the insignia and rhetoric of Hitler’s henchmen, but also through an obsessive Drang nach Osten [drive toward the East—ed.] policy. The bottle has been uncorked, this time, by the Americans. Just as 76 years ago at Munich, when the British and the French gave Hitler their blessing for his eastward march, so in Kiev today, Washington, London, and Brussels are inciting Yarosh, Tyahnybok, and other Ukrainian Nazis to war with Russia. One is forced to ask, why do this in the 21st Century? And why is Europe, now united in the European Union, taking part in kindling a new war, as if suffering from a total lapse of historical memory?
Answering these questions requires, first of all, an accurate definition of what is happening. This, in turn, must start with identifying the key components of the events, based on facts. The facts are generally known: [former Ukrainian President Viktor] Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, which Ukraine had been under pressure to accept. After that, the United States and its NATO allies physically removed him from power by organizing a violent coup d’état in Kiev, and bringing to power a government that was illegitimate, but fully obedient to them. In this article, it will be called “the junta.”
The goal of this aggression was to gain acceptance of the Association Agreement, as is evidenced by the fact it was indeed, prematurely, signed by the EU leaders and the junta only a month after the latter had seized power. They reported (the document bearing their signatures has not yet been made public!) that only the political part of the agreement has been signed, the part that obligates Ukraine to follow the foreign and defense policy of the EU and to participate, under EU direction, in settling regional civil and military conflicts. With this step, adoption of the Agreement as a whole has become a mere technicality.
The ‘Euro-Occupation’ of Ukraine
In essence, the events in Ukraine mark the country’s forcible subordination to the European Union—what may be called “Euro-occupation.” The EU leaders, who insistently lecture us on obedience to the law and the principles of a law-based state, have themselves flouted the rule of law in this case, by signing an illegitimate treaty with an illegitimate government. Yanukovych was ousted because he refused to sign it. This refusal, moreover, needs to be understood in terms, not only of the Agreement’s content, but also the fact that he had no legal right to accept it, because the Association Agreement violates the Ukrainian Constitution, which makes no provision for the transfer of state sovereignty to another party.
According to the Ukrainian Constitution, an international agreement that conflicts with the Constitution may be signed only if the Constitution is amended beforehand. The U.S.- and EU-installed junta ignored this requirement. It follows that the U.S. and EU organized the overthrow of Ukraine’s legitimate government, in order to deprive the country of its political independence. The next step will be to impose their preferred economic and trade policies on Ukraine, through its accession to the economic part of the Agreement.
Furthermore, although the current Euro-occupation differs from the occupation of Ukraine in 1941, in that, so far, it has occurred without an invasion by foreign armies, its coercive nature is beyond any doubt. Just as the fascists stripped the population of occupied Ukraine of all civil rights, the modern junta and its American and European backers treat the opponents of Euro-integration as criminals, groundlessly accusing them of separatism and terrorism, imprisoning them, or even deploying Nazi guerrillas to shoot them.
As long as President Yanukovych was on track to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, he was the recipient of all kinds of praise and coaxing from high-ranking EU officials and politicians. The minute he refused, however, American agents of influence (as well as official U.S. representatives, such as the Ambassador to Ukraine, the Assistant Secretary of State, and representatives of the intelligence agencies), together with European politicians, began to castigate him and extol his political opponents. They provided massive informational, political, and financial aid to the Euromaidan protests, turning them into the staging ground for the coup d’état. Many of the protest actions, including criminal attacks against law enforcement personnel and government building seizures, accompanied by murders and beatings of a large number of people, were supported, organized, and planned with the participation of the American Embassy and European officials and politicians, who not only “interfered” in Ukraine’s domestic affairs, but carried out aggression against the country via the Nazi guerrillas they had cultivated.
The use of Nazis and religious fanatics to undermine political stability in various regions of the world is a favorite method of the American intelligence agencies. It has been employed against Russia in the Caucasus, in Central Asia, and now even in Eastern Europe. The Eastern Partnership program, which the U.S. encouraged the Poles and EU officials to initiate, was aimed against Russia from the outset, with the objective of breaking the former Soviet republics’ relations with Russia. This break was supposed to be finalized by contracting legal Association Agreements between each of these countries and the EU.
The ‘European Choice’
In order to provide political grounds for these agreements, a campaign was launched to fan Russophobia and spread a myth called “the European choice.” This mythical “European choice” was then artificially counterposed to the Eurasian integration process, with Western politicians and the media falsely depicting the latter as an attempt to restore the USSR.
The Eastern Partnership program has failed in every single former Soviet republic. Belarus had already made its own choice, creating a Union State with Russia. Kazakhstan, another key Eurasian country (though not formally an Eastern Partnership target), likewise chose its own path, forming the Customs Union with Russia and Belarus. Armenia and Kyrgyzstan have decided to join this process. The province of Gagauzia has spurned the adoption of Russophobia as a cornerstone of Moldovan policy; the Gagauz referendum, rejecting European integration in favor of the Customs Union, challenged the legitimacy of Chisinau’s “European choice.” Georgia, the only republic to have made a relatively legitimate decision in favor of Association with the EU, paid for its “European choice” with the loss of control over a part of its territory, where people did not want to live under Euro-occupation. The same scenario is now being imposed on Ukraine—loss of a part of its territory, where the citizens do not accept the leadership’s “European choice.”
The coercion of Ukraine to sign the EU Association Agreement became entangled with Russophobia, as a reaction of the Ukrainian public conscience, wounded by the decision of the people of Crimea to join the Russian Federation. Since the majority of Ukrainians still do not automatically think of themselves as divided from Russia, there has been a strong push to inculcate a perception of this episode as Russian aggression and the annexation of part of their territory. This is why Brzezinski talks about the “Finlandization” of Ukraine, as a way to anesthetize the brains of our political elite during the American operation to sever Ukraine’s ties with historical Russia. While under anesthesia, we Russians are supposed to accept a feeling of guilt for our mythical oppression of the Ukrainian people, while the latter are force-fed loathing for Russia, with which they have allegedly battled for ages over Little Russia and Novorossiya (Figure 1).[1]
Only a superficial observer, however, would see the current anti-Russian hysteria in the Ukrainian media, so striking in its frenzied Russophobia, as a spontaneous reaction to the Crimean drama. In reality, it is a piece of evidence that the war being waged against Russia is now entering an overt phase. For two decades, we were fairly tolerant of the manifestations of Nazi ideology in Ukraine, not taking it too seriously, in view of the apparent absence of clear preconditions for Nazism. The lack of such preconditions, however, was completely compensated by the persistent sowing of Russophobia through support for numerous nationalist organizations. The discrepancy between their ideology and historical accuracy does not bother the führers of these organizations. In return for a pittance from NATO member countries, they are completely unrestrained in painting Russia as the enemy image. The result is unconvincing, because of our common history, language and culture: Kiev is the mother of all Russian cities, the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra is a major holy site of the Orthodox world, and it was at the Kiev-Mohyla Academy that the modern Russian language took shape.
We cannot forget the historical importance of Little Russia (Ukraine) for us. We have never divided Russia and Ukraine, in our minds. I myself grew up in Ukraine; we never felt differentiated by ethnic origin, not at school, or in our neighborhood, or at work. We were together as one people, speaking the same language, sharing the same faith and understanding of the meaning of life. And all of us—Russians, Ukrainians, Jews, and other ethnic groups living in Zaporozhye and throughout most of Ukraine, with the exception of the far western part—knew that we were one people, although we were aware there were some Nazis out there in the forests of western Ukraine, who still didn’t understand that the war was over. Even in Soviet times, when I happened to visit Lviv, I was struck by people’s hostility to speaking in Russian. Since I am fluent in Ukrainian, it wasn’t a problem for me, but I couldn’t fail to notice: As long as you spoke with them in Ukrainian, that was all right, but if you switched to Russian, the tension was palpable.
Wild lies have been employed, playing on tragic episodes in our common history, such as the Revolution and the Civil War, as well as the Holodomor famine of the 1930s, which are falsely attributed solely to Russian tyranny. Russophobia, based on Nazism, is being made the cornerstone of Ukraine’s national identity.
‘Ukrainian Nazism’
This article is not concerned with exposing the objective absurdity of the Ukrainian Nazis’ hysterical Russophobia, but rather with establishing the reasons for its re-emergence in the 21st Century. This requires an awareness that such “Ukrainian Nazism” is an artificial construct, created by the age-old enemies of the Russian world. Ukrainian exclusionary nationalism and fascism, cultivated from abroad, has always been aimed at Moscow. At first it was promoted by Poland, which viewed Ukraine as its own borderland, and established its own vertical power structure to administer it. Then came Austria-Hungary, which invested large amounts of money over a long period of time, to encourage Ukrainian separatism.
During the German fascist occupation, these separatist tendencies were the ground in which the Bandera movement and the Polizei sprang up, aiding the German fascists in establishing their order in Ukraine, including though punitive operations and enslavement of the population. Their modern followers are now doing likewise: Under the guidance of their American instructors, guerrillas of the Banderite Right Sector are conducting punitive operations against the population in the Donbass, helping the U.S.-installed junta “cleanse” cities of supporters of greater integration with Russia, and assuming police functions for the establishment of a pro-American, anti-Russian order.
It is obvious that without steady American and European support, neither the coup d’état nor the existence of the Kiev junta would have been possible. Unfortunately, as the famous dictum goes, “history teaches us, that history teaches us nothing.” This is a catastrophe for Europe, which has more than once had to deal with instances of the proto-fascist model of government that has now taken shape in Ukraine. It involves, essentially, a symbiotic relationship between the fascists and big capital. A symbiosis of this type gave rise to Hitler, who was supported by major German capitalists, seduced by the opportunity, under the cover of national-socialist rhetoric, to make money from government orders and the militarization of the economy. This applied not only to German capitalists, but also Europeans and Americans. There were collaborators with the Hitler regime in practically all the European countries and the United States.
Few people realized that the torch marches would be followed by the ovens at Auschwitz, and that tens of millions of people would die in the fires of World War II. The same dynamic is playing out in Kiev now, except that the shout of “Heil Hitler!” has been replaced by “Glory to the heroes!”—heroes whose great feat was to execute defenseless Jews at Babi Yar. Moreover, the Ukrainian oligarchy—including the leaders of some Jewish organizations—is financing the anti-Semites and Nazis of Right Sector, who are the armed bulwark of the current regime in Ukraine. The Maidan sponsors have forgotten that, in the symbiotic relationship between Nazis and big capital, the Nazis always get the upper hand over the liberal businessmen. The latter are forced either to become Nazis themselves, or to leave the country. This is already happening in Ukraine: The oligarchs who remain in the country are competing with the petty führers of Right Sector in the domain of Russophobic and anti-Muscovite rhetoric, as well as in grabbing the property of those of their fellow businessmen who have fled the country.
The current rulers in Kiev count on protection from their American and European patrons, pledging to them daily that they will fight the “Russian occupation” to the last standing “Muscovite.”[2] They obviously underestimate how dangerous Nazis are, because Nazis truly believe they are a “superior race,” while all others, including the businessmen who sponsor them, are viewed as “sub-human” creatures, against whom violence of all sorts is permissible. That is why Nazis always prevail, within their symbiotic relationship with the bourgeoisie, who are then forced either to submit, or flee the country. There is no doubt that if the Bandera followers are not forcibly stopped, the Nazi regime in Ukraine will develop, expand, and penetrate more deeply. The only thing still in doubt will be Ukraine’s “European choice,” as the country reeks more and more of the fascism of 80 years ago.
The Eurobureaucracy
Of course, Eurofascism today is very different from its 20th-Century German, Italian, and Spanish versions. European national states have receded into the past, entering the European Union and submitting to the Eurobureaucracy. The latter has become the leading political power in Europe, easily quashing any bids for sovereignty by individual European countries. The bureaucracy’s power is based not on an army, but on its monopoly over the issuance of currency, over the mass media, and over the regulation of trade, all of which are managed by the bureaucracy in the interests of European big capital. In every conflict with national governments during the past decade, the Eurobureaucracy has invariably prevailed, forcing European nations to accept its technocrat governments and its policies. Those policies are based on the consistent rejection of all national traditions, from Christian moral standards to how sausages are produced.
The cookie-cutter, gender-neutral, and idea-free Europoliticians little resemble the raving führers of the Third Reich. What they have in common is a maniacal confidence that they are in the right, and readiness to force people to obey. Although the Eurofascists’ forms of compulsion are far softer, it is still a harsh approach. Dissent is not tolerated, and violence is allowed, up to and including the physical extermination of those who disagree with Brussels’ policies. Of course, the thousands who have died during the drive to instill “European values” in Yugoslavia, Georgia, Moldova, and now Ukraine, do not compare with the millions of victims of the German fascist invaders during World War II. But who has tallied up the indirect human casualties from the promotion of homosexuality and drugs, the ruin of national manufacturing sectors, or the degradation of culture? Entire European nations are disappearing in the crucible of European integration.
The Italian word fascio, from which “fascism” derives, denotes a union, or something bound together. In its current understanding, it refers to unification without preservation of the identity of what is integrated—whether people, social groups, or countries. Today’s Eurofascists are trying to erase not only national economic and cultural differences, but also the diversity of human individuals, including differentiation by sex and age. What’s more, the aggressiveness with which the Eurofascists are fighting to expand their area of influence sometimes reminds us of the paranoia of Hitler’s supporters, who were preoccupied with the conquest of Lebensraum for the superior Aryan race. Suffice it to recall the hysteria of the European politicians who appeared at the Maidan and in the Ukrainian media. They justified the crimes of the proponents of Eurointegration and groundlessly denounced those who disagreed with Ukraine’s “European choice,” taking the Goebbels approach that the more monstrous a lie is, the more it resembles the truth.
Today the driver of Eurofascism is the Eurobureaucracy, which gets its directions from Washington. The United States supports the eastward expansion of the EU and NATO in every way possible, viewing these organizations as important components of its global empire. The U.S. exercises control over the EU through supranational institutions, which have crushed the nation-states that joined the EU. Deprived of economic, financial, foreign-policy and military sovereignty, they submit to the directives of the European Commission, which are adopted under intense pressure from the U.S.
In essence, the EU is a bureaucratic empire that arranges things within its economic space in the interests of European and American capital, under U.S. control. Like any empire, it strives to expand, and does so by drawing neighboring countries into Association Agreements, under which they hand their sovereignty over to the European Commission. In order to make these countries accept becoming EU colonies, fear-mongering about an external threat is employed, with the U.S.-guided media portraying Russia as aggressive and bellicose, for this purpose. Under this pretext, the EU and NATO moved quickly to occupy the countries of Eastern Europe after the Soviet Union collapsed; the war in the Balkans was organized for this purpose. The next victims of Eurofascism were the Baltic republics, which Russophobic Nazis forced to join the EU and NATO. Then Eurofascism reached Georgia, where Nazis under American guidance unleashed civil war. Today, the Eurofascists are using the Georgian model in Ukraine, in order to force it sign the Association Agreement with the EU, as a subservient territory and a bridgehead for attacking Russia.
Eurasian Integration
The U.S. sees the principal threat to its plans for putting the Eurobureaucracy in charge of the post-Soviet area, as being the Eurasian integration process, which is developing successfully around the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan Customs Union. The EU and the U.S. have invested at least $10 billion in building up anti-Russian networks, in order to prevent Ukraine from taking part in that process. In parallel, using the support of Polish and Baltic Russophobes, as well as media under the control of American media moguls, the United States is inciting European officials against Russia, with the goal of isolating the former Soviet republics from the Eurasian integration process. The Eastern Partnership program, which they inspired, is a cover for aggression against Russia in the former Soviet area. This aggression takes the form of forcing former Soviet republics to enter EU Association Agreements, under which they transfer their sovereign economic, trade, foreign-policy and defense functions to the European Commission.
For Ukraine, the Association Agreement with the European Union means transferring to Brussels its sovereign functions of regulating trade and other foreign economic relations, technical standards, and veterinary, sanitary, and pest inspections, as well as opening its market to European goods. The agreement contains a thousand pages of EU directives that Ukraine would be required to follow. Every section mandates that Ukrainian legislation be brought into compliance with the requirements of Brussels. Moreover, Ukraine would assume the obligation to comply not only with current Brussels directives, but also future ones, in the drafting of which Ukraine will have no part.
Plainly put, after signing the Agreement, Ukraine is to become a colony of the European Union, blindly obeying its demands. These include requirements which Ukrainian industry is unable to carry out, and which will harm the Ukrainian economy. Ukraine is to completely open its market to European goods, which will lead to a $4 billion increase in Ukraine’s imports and drive uncompetitive Ukrainian industrial products out of the market. Ukraine will be obliged to meet European standards, which would take EU150 billion of investment in economic modernization. There are no sources for such amounts of money.
According to estimates by Ukrainian and Russian economists, Ukraine, after signing the Agreement, can look forward to a deterioration of its already negative balance of trade and balance of payments, and, as a consequence, default. This year, Ukraine has a projected balance of payments deficit of approximately $50 billion. Its currency reserves suffice for only three months—one quarter. Even if the full amounts of assistance mentioned in various talks were to materialize, they would win only one or two additional months. Thus, Ukraine under its current regime can expect to experience a drop in the standard of living not by 15 or 20 percent, but by half or two-thirds, with the residents of southeastern Ukraine, who are employed in major industrial plants, being the hardest hit.
The EU would achieve certain advantages from an Association Agreement with Ukraine, by way of an expanded market for its products and the opportunity to acquire devalued Ukrainian assets. U.S. corporations, for their part, would gain access to shale gas deposits, which they would like to supplement with pipeline infrastructure and a market for nuclear fuel elements for power plants. The main goal, however, is geopolitical: After signing the Association Agreement, Ukraine would not be able to participate in the Customs Union with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. It is for this outcome that the U.S. and the EU resorted to aggression against Ukraine, organizing an armed seizure of power by their protégés. While they accuse Russia of annexing Crimea, they themselves have taken over Ukraine as a whole, by installing a junta under their control. The junta’s mission is to strip Ukraine of its sovereignty and put it under the EU, through signing the Association Agreement.
The disaster in Ukraine may be termed aggression against Russia by the U.S. and its NATO allies. This is a contemporary version of Eurofascism, which differs from the previous face of fascism during World War II in that it employs “soft” power with just some elements of armed action in cases of extreme necessity, as well as the use of Nazi ideology as a supplementary rather than an absolute ideology. One of the main defining elements of Eurofascism has been preserved, however, and that is the division of citizens into superior ones (those who support the “European choice”) and inferior ones, who have no right to their own opinions and toward whom all is permitted. Another feature is the readiness to use violence and commit crimes in dealing with political opponents. The final aspect that needs to be understood, is what drives the rebirth of fascism in Europe; without grasping this, it is impossible to develop a resistance plan and save the Russian world from this latest threat of Euro-occupation.
Neocons: Maniacal Misantropes
The theory of long-term economic development recognizes an interrelationship between long waves of economic activity and long waves of military and political tension. Periodic shifts from one dominant technological mode to the next alternate with economic depressions, wherein increased government spending is used as an incentive for overcoming the crisis. The spending is concentrated in the military-industrial complex, because the liberal economic ideology allows enhancement of the role of the state only for national security objectives. Therefore, military and political tension is promoted and international conflicts provoked, to justify increased defense spending.
This is what is happening at present: The U.S. is attempting to resolve its accumulated economic, financial, and industrial imbalances at other countries’ expense, by escalating international conflicts that will allow it to write off debts, appropriate assets belonging to others, and weaken its geopolitical rivals. When this was done during the Great Depression of the 1930s, the result was World War II. The American aggression against Ukraine pursues all of the above-mentioned goals. First, economic sanctions against Russia are intended to wipe out billions of dollars of U.S. debt to Russia. A second objective is to take over Ukrainian state assets, including the natural gas transport system, mineral deposits, the country’s gold reserves, and valuable art and cultural objects. Third, to capture Ukrainian markets of importance to American companies, such as nuclear fuel, aircraft, energy sources, and others. Fourth, to weaken not only Russia, but also the European Union, whose economy will sustain an estimated trillion-dollar loss from economic sanctions against Russia. Fifth, to attract capital flight from instability in Europe, to the USA.
Thus, war in Ukraine is just business for the United States. Judging by reports in the media, the U.S. has already recouped its spending on the Orange Revolution and the Maidan by carrying off treasures from the ransacked National Museum of Russian Art and National Historical Museum, taking over potential gas fields, and forcing the Ukrainian government to switch from Russian to American nuclear fuel supplies for its power plants. In addition, the Americans have moved ahead on their long-term objective of splitting Ukraine from Russia, turning what used to be “Little Russia” into a state hostile to Russia, in order to prevent it from joining the Eurasian integration process.
This analysis leaves no room for doubt about the long-term and consistent nature of the American aggression against Russia in Ukraine. If we analyze who is influencing U.S. policy, it is not difficult to see that the ones responsible for these decisions are a handful of deranged radical extremists, the so-called Neocons, who see the entire world through the lens of their war to assert world rule. This is a small group of the American oligarchy. And it is also fascism, is in its own way, based not on radical nationalism, but on global hegemonism. These Neocons are real misanthropes and Satanists, who are even prepared to drop the atomic bomb!
At the same time, if we study the situation in the USA, there are plenty of sober-thinking people. American business is unenthusiastic about sanctions against Russia; I mean normal business, which seeks a return on investment through production and cooperation, rather than through financial speculation and the destruction of other countries. The majority of American citizens, as well, do not understand the point of fomenting a war in the middle of Europe. Therefore, another factor in determining the further course of events will be the extent to which sanity prevails in Washington.
What we are facing today is not America, not the American people, but the organizers of a string of wars, beginning with Iraq, then Yugoslavia, then Libya, the rest of North Africa, Syria, and on to Ukraine. This grouping of maniacal misanthropes, the Neocons, are prepared to plunge the entire world into chaos, in order to affirm their world dominance.
War Against Russia
To this end, Washington is directing its Kiev puppets to escalate the conflict, rather than the reverse. They are also inciting the Ukrainian military against Russia, aiming to drag Russian ground forces into a war against Ukraine. They are encouraging the Nazis there to initiate new combat operations. This is a real war, organized by the United States and its NATO allies. What has occurred is not merely a coup d’état, and not merely some unexpected outbreak of anti-Russian Nazism. It is a war. It is a war we didn’t notice for a long time, but it was prepared gradually, and then moved into its overt phase several months ago. It is not even a war for Ukraine, but a war against us: against Russia. Those are the goals of the forces guiding the Nazi guerrillas. And this well-prepared, paid for, and organized war represents aggression against Ukraine and against Russia by the relevant circles in the United States, Great Britain, the EU, and NATO. The goal of this war is to defeat, dismember, and annihilate Russia. Just like 75 years ago, it is being waged by Eurofascists against Russia, with the use of Ukrainian Nazis cultivated for this purpose.
We should not mince words. The people who have signed Ukraine’s Association Agreement with the EU, signed it with this Nazi government that rests on its machine guns and shoots people, are Eurofascists. Unfortunately, the European Commission has become a “Eurofascist Commission.” I insist on this definition, which is historically and conceptually accurate. And it is strange and sad to see our European partners descend to the level of fascists in the 21st Century.
It is surprising, this position of the European countries that are tailing the U.S. and doing nothing to prevent a further escalation of the crisis. They should understand better than anyone, that Nazis can only be stopped with force. The sooner this is done, the fewer victims and less destruction there will be in Europe. That avalanche of wars across North Africa, the Middle East, the Balkans, and now Ukraine, incited by people in the U.S. in their own interests, threatens Europe most of all; and it was the devastation of Europe in two world wars that gave rise to the American economic miracle in the 20th Century. But the Old World will not survive a Third World War. To prevent such a war means that there must be international acknowledgement that the actions of the U.S. constitute aggression, and that the EU and U.S. officials carrying them out are war criminals. It is important to accord this aggression the legal definition of “Eurofascism” and to condemn the actions of the European politicians and officials who are party to the revival of Nazism under cover of the Eastern Partnership.
[1] Malorossiya (“Little Russia” or “Lesser Russia”) is a term dating back to Greek place-names for the areas populated by eastern Slavs, nearer (“Lesser Russia”) and farther north (“Greater Russia”) of the Black Sea. It has been used at various times to denote all of modern Ukraine or, chiefly, northeastern Ukraine or the left bank of the Dnieper River. Novorossiya (“New Russia”) was introduced in the 18th Century for lands acquired by the Russian Empire under Catherine II in wars with the Ottoman Empire. These included the Black Sea littoral from the Dniester River to Crimea, the Sea of Azov littoral eastward nearly to the mouth of the Don River, and lands along the lower Dnieper.
[2] Moskal, or “Muscovite,” is a derogatory Ukrainian term for a Russian.
