Europe-Asia Studies

ISSN: 0966-8136 (Print) 1465-3427 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ceas20

The Production of ‘Novorossiya’: A Territorial

Brand in Public Debates

Mikhail Suslov

To cite this article: Mikhail Suslov (2017) The Production of ‘Novorossiya’: A Territorial Brand in
Public Debates, Europe-Asia Studies, 69:2, 202-221, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2017.1285009

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2017.1285009

Published online: 22 Mar 2017.

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 EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, 2017
Vol. 69, No. 2, March 2017, 202–221

The Production of ‘Novorossiya’: A

Territorial Brand in Public Debates

MIKHAIL SUSLOV

Abstract
The essay inquires into the cultural production of ‘Novorossiya’ as a politically-coloured territorial ‘brand’,
promoted by pro-Kremlin intellectuals, activists of the Donbas rebellion, and internet users. It argues that
‘Novorossiya’ is not only constructed from the building blocks of historical traditions, but also framed by
geographical metaphors in popular imagination. Drawing on studies in critical geopolitics and fan fiction,
this research interprets ‘Novorossiya’s’ constituency in the Russian-language internet as a sort of political
‘fandom’. Relative to the annexation of Crimea, however, this ‘brand’ has been less successful on the ‘market’
of geopolitical projects.

THE ANNEXATION OF CRIMEA IN MARCH 2014 AND THE WAR IN Donbas have made a strong
impression on the popular imagination and substantially changed perceptions of Russia’s
place, role, and mission in the world amongst the Russian population. Mass media and
social networks have hyped up these events as Russia’s return from historical obscurity
and transformation from geopolitical periphery into international pivot. In today’s Russia,
people are preoccupied with space, territoriality, and cartography to an extent that evokes
Walter Benjamin’s observations about the exaggerated importance of maps in Soviet Russia
in the 1920s (Benjamin 2005, p. 37). Disenchantment in communist teleology and attenuation
of the liberal thrust to catch up with the West have made spatial imagery of the country
more pertinent and consequential than any futuristic projecting (Clowes 2011; Suslov
2013). Territoriality brings both pain and hope to the popular imaginary, providing corporeal
metaphors of a dismembered body,1 as well as geopolitical theories proving Russia’s lasting
international importance as long as it still possesses the Eurasian ‘heartland’. The unfinished
work of mourning victims of the past (Etkind 2013) has a compensatory flipside: intensive
work to mourn the lost limbs of Russia’s geo-body (Billé 2014). As in the case of Crimea,

The author wants to acknowledge the valuable suggestions received from Joanna Szostek as well as from the
anonymous reviewers of the manuscript.
With respect to Figures 2 and 3, the author has made every reasonable effort to contact the copyright
holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. If you are the copyright holder, please
contact the author and Taylor & Francis so as to facilitate a correction, if appropriate.
  1See Aleksandr Prokhanov’s speech in support of the annexation of Crimea of 18 March 2014: ‘When we were
half-dead, [the Westerners] dismembered us by chainsaws, [they] chopped off [our] hands, legs, ears …’, available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYV7TVuTTZ4, accessed 1 September 2015.

ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/17/2000202–20 © 2017 University of Glasgow

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2017.1285009
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 203

eastern Ukraine has been the locus of undying territorial ‘phantom pains’ for most Russians.
Hence, the armed pro-Russian rebellion in the region against the Ukrainian government has
been widely discussed and almost unanimously supported in Russia (Sakwa 2014; Fedor
2015; Hutchings & Szostek 2015). A vision of ‘Novorossiya’, which inspired the separatist
movement, has shaped the geopolitical ideology of the ‘Russian world’. It has established
a universal antagonistic border that is constitutive for the whole imaginary community of
Russians. Together with the meme ‘Crimea is ours!’, ‘Novorossiya’ is a territorial concept
that signals whether one belongs to ‘us’ or to the ‘fifth column’. Indeed, in today’s Russian
geopolitics, ‘geo’ eclipses ‘politics’.
‘Novorossiya’ in its present shape was a short-lived venture. It was mentioned in Putin’s
‘direct line’ phone-in of 17 April 2014 (Putin 2014a), then quickly fell out of favour with
Russia’s highest officials, yet has remained in the discourses of pro-Kremlin public intellectuals
and in Donbas itself. On 24 May 2014 the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic
(Donetskaya Narodnaya Respublika—DPR) and Lugansk People’s Republic (Luganskaya
Narodnaya Respublika—LPR) established the confederative ‘Union of Novorossiya’, branded
in the Russian media as part of the broader Russian World. The results of the presidential
elections in Ukraine (25 May 2014) were a cold shower for supporters of ‘Novorossiya’,
because they showed quite substantial support for President Poroshenko—and by extension for
the idea of a united Ukraine—even in regions comprising the historical lands of ‘Novorossiya’.
The Kremlin’s reticence to openly support the pro-Russian separatists has led to a popular
meme that Putin is ‘ditching Novorossiya’ (slivaet Novorossiyu).2 On 18 May 2015 Oleg
Tsarev, speaker of the parliament of ‘Novorossiya’, proclaimed the break-up of ‘Novorossiya’
as a confederative state on the grounds that its existence had not been stipulated in the Minsk
agreements. The confrontation in eastern Ukraine is continuing but ‘Novorossiya’ is no longer
the key component of its ideological mobilisation. This concept therefore belongs more or
less to contemporary history and an explanation is required as to why it was not a success
story (if ‘success’ is an appropriate word to describe an idea that encouraged hundreds or
thousands of people to fight and die in Donbas).
The present essay analyses how the concept of ‘Novorossiya’ has been used in popular
discussions. It identifies concomitant ideas, visions, and emotions that are intimately related
to its spatial characteristics (such as, borders), as well as to the imbrication of historical and
cultural legacies and memories associated with this place. The essay focuses on how the
digital environment, especially social networks such as Facebook and Vkontakte, mediate
circulation of geopolitical knowledge and facilitate geopolitical identity making.
This study is based on analysis of the Russian-language sector of social networks, most
notably facebook.com (36%), twitter.com (25%), vk.com (24%), and livejournal.com
(12%),3 with a particular focus on discussion threads about geopolitics. Discussion content
was obtained from the Integrum Social Media service, which monitored messages in social
networks mentioning the keyword ‘Novorossiya’. The sample is drawn from the period

  2The essay does not focus on political analysis, but it is worth mentioning the expert community’s opinion
that, as early as summer 2014, the Kremlin had already decided to reincorporate DPR and LPR into Ukraine
in order to use them as its leverage on the otherwise recalcitrant country (Zygar’ 2015, p. 356).
  3Data relate to the percentage of messages containing the keyword ‘Novorossiya’ over total number of
messages analysed while researching this essay.
204 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

between 21 February and 8 March 2015.4 From more than 3,000 messages collected by
Integrum, some 300 were sampled for further qualitative study. The sample also includes
manually collected statements (200) from the public discussion wall of the group Tipichnyi
Donetsk on vk.com, monitored between July 2014 and August 2015. Those messages were
chosen on the basis of their explicit intention to serve as arguments in geopolitical debates.
This means priority was given to polemical interjections rather than to original posts. The
sampling excluded quotations from the press and online agencies, as well as posts only
tangentially dealing with geopolitical deliberation.

Methodological note: the brand ‘Novorossiya’ and its ideological meaning

This research is informed by approaches inspired by critical geopolitics and conceptual history.
For critical geopolitics, territory is not taken for granted as the monumental natural backdrop
for political action. Instead, territory is understood as a social construct, resultant of many
hegemonic projects, ideologies, policies, and grassroots’ resistances (Ó Tuathail 1996, p. 1;
Lefebvre 2009, p. 170). The second methodological pillar is conceptual history. ‘Novorossiya’
is considered here as a concept that condenses and fixes different, often competing, meanings,
and is informed by various non-representational experiences, metaphors, visuals, and
feelings. In this capacity, a concept is used as an argument in political polemics with a certain
illocutionary force (Tully 1988; Palonen 1997; Skinner 2002).5 The core of this research is
hence to understand how, why, and in which contexts people use the term ‘Novorossiya’,
because by so doing, they work out its territory and borders.
This task requires heightened attention to conventional and minor ideological writing,
rather than to ‘great texts’ or original speculations that often emerge from a desire to resist and
overthrow conventional wisdom. The essay insists that spatial concepts are also normative and
illocutionary. ‘Novorossiya’ is a conceptual innovation intended to change some conventions
and norms about thinking of the post-Soviet space for the purpose of legitimising a specific
course of political actions. Yet, it cannot change all conventions, it needs some conceptual
‘fulcrum’ bequeathed from historical legacies and memories. In this context, we can speak of
the ‘invention of tradition’ (Hobsbawm & Ranger 2012): usable pasts create usable spaces.
This approach brings together expert knowledge on ‘Novorossiya’ and discussions
about it in the online environment. Digital social media have become a breeding ground for
geopolitical concepts, far more so than advocacy journalism and academia (Suslov 2015).
The internet serves as the main platform for political deliberation in Russia (Gorny 2006).
So the majority of work in the production of space is being done by ordinary internet users,
acting both as producers and consumers of geopolitical knowledge (that is, ‘prosumers’). As
online commentators, they not only passively reflect expert opinions but actively produce

  4This specific timeframe has been identified as the most opportune for studying ‘Novorossiya’. After the
second Minsk agreements (12 February 2015), the frontline stabilised and the life in the territory controlled
by DPR and LPR normalised. Hence, ideological construction around the concept of ‘Novorossiya’ became
less dependent on what was happening on the battlefields and began to focus more on its ideological framing
and popular imagination.
  5‘[T]o be able to characterize a work in … terms of its intended illocutionary force is equivalent to
understanding what the writer may have meant by writing in that particular way’ (Skinner 2002, p. 100).
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 205

new meanings.6 Skinner’s approach resonates with studies of active audiences and their
creative reception of cultural products. Scholars in this field argue that the flow of ideological
signification is not unidirectional, that is, from experts to grassroots; instead, political meanings
are created in the process of communicative interaction with audiences (Dodds 2006; Dittmer
& Dodds 2008; Woon 2014).
This essay examines the geopolitical concept of ‘Novorossiya’ as a cultural product, or
a popular ‘brand’, generated by the elite but capable of attracting attention and forming
emotional bonds with its consumers. This ‘brand’ has consolidated a relatively stable group
of political activists, who could be called ‘fans’ of ‘Novorossiya’ with a nod to fandom
studies. The fans of ‘Novorossiya’ mostly came from the already existing political fandom of
President Putin (Goscilo 2013; Nikiporets-Takigava & Pain 2016). This geopolitical fandom,
based mostly online, mediates between the ‘Novorossiya’ concept and relatively passive
(television) spectators. The fandom of ‘Novorossiya’ has also generated the identity of ‘anti-
fandom’—those who hate this cultural product, but unwillingly participate in promoting the
concept through their vocal dislike of it (Gray 2003). Political activists in this interpretation
could be seen as ‘fans of politics’, whose consumption is culture-based, individual-oriented,
and highly emotional (Burwell & Boler 2008; Ouellette 2012; Sandvoss 2013).
This type of consumption requires the consumable commodity to be a brand, that is,
‘a shortcut to consumer choice, enabling differentiation between broadly similar products’
(Scammell 2007). Understanding ‘Novorossiya’ as a brand with regional, transnational, and
trans-border dimensions implies that difference is created by inscribing ideological meaning
on particular territory. The inscription highlights essential properties of the territory, which
could be easily consumed as a market commodity and, at the same time, recycled for the
purpose of nation-building (Hospers 2006). The ideological ‘branding’ of territory follows
the same logic as capitalist commodification of the qualitative aspects of space, discussed by
Henri Lefebvre. ‘Novorossiya’ in this sense possesses a space of specific market value—akin
to the value of sun and sea or snow and mountains (Lefebvre 1991; Molotch 1993). It is a
huge adventure park, which, at least in 2014–2015, supplied spectators with their daily dose
of adrenalin and provided an outlet for some who wanted to escape the routine of daily life.
The commodification of ‘Novorossiya’ is, however, not unproblematic. Unlike many other
territorial disputes in the post-Soviet space, there is no clear-cut ethnic, cultural, and linguistic
line between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian supporters in Donbas. Michael Gentile’s findings
have shown that the pre-war pro-Russian group in Luhans’k tended to be somewhat less
educated, less fluent in English, less tolerant to homosexuality, older, and less satisfied with
their lives than the pro-Ukrainian constituency (Gentile 2015). Differences between the two
groups, however, were actually very small. In fact, there is a large group of well-educated
people who know foreign languages and are relatively young, who nevertheless constituted
fertile soil for the ‘Novorossiya’ concept. As Elise Giuliano puts it, ‘[in Ukraine] ethnic
and linguistic identities do not translate directly into political alienation from the central
state’ (Giuliano 2015, p. 520), and neither do social identities in a broader sense. These
recent studies are built upon previous examinations of identity-formation in Ukraine, which
showed that, even if there are two territorially bounded poles of identification (that is, Crimea
and Galicia), most of the country represents an unlimited spectrum of combined, mixed,
  6This research acknowledges the massive participation of paid pro-Kremlin commentators in the discussions,
but for the study of ideological conventional norms this is almost irrelevant. The ‘trolls’ have to speak the
‘common language’ in order to meaningfully participate in the discussion and not just cry in the wilderness.
206 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

and complementary identities (Pirie 1996; Shulman 1998; Barrington 2001; Kulyk 2001;
Barrington & Herron 2004).
The proposed approach is aimed at connecting decisively cultural and intellectual history by
seeing how the geopolitical concept of ‘Novorossiya’ is being understood and contextualised
by audiences. From this we can infer whether the concept is capable of producing new political
and geographical reality.

Where is Novorossiya? Territorial indeterminacy

Any social and conceptual framing of difference, including the modern nation-state,
requires a correspondent spatial delimitation (Gottdiener 1993; Jones 2006), such as an
easily imagined border (Abbott 1995). Cultural framing of a specific territory crucially
depends on the availability of distinctive spatial landmarks (islands, mount ridges, valleys
and so on), which can facilitate visualisation of this territory and its differentiation from
contiguous land (Williams & Smith 1983). The reverse should also be true: difficulties in
successfully imagining and delineating an ‘alternative’ territory impede the construction of
political difference. Unlike Crimea, with its peninsular territoriality,7 ‘Novorossiya’ has no
‘natural’ dividing lines along geographical objects, ethnicity, language, religion, or culture;
it is inscribed most clearly on historical maps.
In spite of attempts by ideologists to trace the genealogy of ‘Novorossiya’ to Homer and
represent it as the progenitor of the ‘Russian World’ (Prokhanov 2014), the historical master-
narrative refers mostly to the Russian imperial past. The term ‘Novorossiya’ emerged on 22
March 1764, when Catherine the Great issued a decree establishing a guberniya (region) called
Novorossiya on the territories of Slavyanoserbiya (in today’s Luhans’k region), Kremenchug
province, and the ‘Ukrainian defence line’. In the following few decades its territory was
adjusted several times. The administrative reform of 1802 put an end to the official term
‘Novorossiya’ on imperial maps, breaking the province into three guberniyas (with centres
in Nikolaev, Ekaterinoslav, and Crimea), the region of the Army of Don, and Bessarabia
(see Figure 1). Yet, the word ‘Novorossiya’ continued to circulate. For example, in 1865
the University of Novorossiya was established in Odessa. This town hosted the newspaper
Novorossiiskii Telegraf (1869–1900). In 1838, the town of Novorossiysk was founded in the
Northern Caucasus (Krasnodar krai in today’s Russia).
The imperial cartographic scholarship (Loskutova 2013) contained conflicting accounts
of Novorossiya and did not always consider it a self-standing territorial entity. Konstantin
Arsen’ev, for example, dissolved Novorossiya into the ‘steppe space’ (Stepnoe Prostranstvo)
embracing vast areas of Low Volga, the South Urals, and North Caspian guberniyas (Arsen’ev
1848). The influential Geographical and Statistical Dictionary of the Russian Empire (1863–
1885), edited by famous traveller and scholar Petr Semenov Tyan-Shanskii, has no entry on
‘Novorossiya’ at all. Elsewhere, however, he mentioned Novorossiya as consisting of the
guberniyas of Crimea, Kherson, Ekaterinoslav, and Bessarabia.8 From the nineteenth century,
Novorossiya was very loosely connected to lands on the Northern shore of the Black Sea,
speaking more to the idea of newness and renovation than offering any precise spatial vision.

  7Crimea has been imagined as an island too, which is an ideal space for locating a utopia. See Vasilii
Aksenov’s fantasy novel The Island of Crimea (1985) and the journal of the same name, edited by Sergei
Gradirovskii, one of the architects of the ideology of the ‘Russian world’.
  8See, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar’ Brokgauza i Efrona, vol. 27a (St Petersburg, Semenovskaya tipolit., 1899).
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 207

FIGURE 1. MAP OF Gubernia NOVOROSSIYA, 1800, AND THE TERRITORY OF THE

PRO-RUSSIAN REBELLION IN DONBAS.
Source: Created by Maksim Domskii (reproduced with permission).

The difficulty of geographically locating ‘Novorossiya’ becomes clear from the map in
Figure 1, which depicts territories historically referred to as ‘Novorossiya’ (in 1800), onto
which a map of the territory controlled by insurgents in January 2015 has been superimposed.
It is easy to note the expansionist potential ingrained in the term ‘Novorossiya’, and the
fact that the territory of the pro-Russian rebellion is peripheral to historical Novorossiya,
not including its core cities of Dnipro, Kremenchuk, Kropyvnytskyi, Odesa, Kherson, and
Mykolayiv.
Since the pro-Russian rebellion started in spring 2014, there have been two dominant
approaches to locating ‘Novorossiya’ on the map. The first harks back to its (problematic)
imperial territorial outline, which sustains an interpretation of ‘Novorossiya’ as part and
parcel of the Russian World. In this approach, the geographical outline of ‘Novorossiya’
refers to late eighteenth century cartography. The second capitalises on Donbas territorial
imagery and encapsulates a socialist reading of ‘Novorossiya’ as a fortress in the fight against
global, Ukrainian and—importantly—Russian oligarchic capitalism. It has two geographical
contours: the Donbas region and the whole of left-bank Ukraine. There is no impenetrable
barrier between the imperial and the socialist approaches, and ideologists juggled both
according to their immediate needs.
The imperial approach has been promoted by right-wing and nationalistic intellectuals,
many of whom are members of the so called Izborsk Club. Sergei Plekhanov and Mikhail
Delyagin thus call ‘Novorossiya’ the Piedmont of the Russian nation (Delyagin 2014;
Plekhanov 2014). This vision resonates with Putin’s Crimea speech of 18 March 2014 (Putin
208 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

2014b), in which he described the Russian people as the biggest divided nation in the world.
It also resonates with Putin’s later ‘direct line’ phone-in (17 April 2014), during which he
referred to historical Novorossiya as a precursor to the contemporary pro-Russian separatist
movement. In the view of traditionalist commentator Egor Kholmogorov, Novorossiya is more
than Donbas. For him, the latter is ‘simply a part of Russia’ and nothing else (Kholmogorov
2014). Similarly, an iconic figure of the rebellion, Igor’ Strelkov (Girkin), whose views
are dominated by anti-revolutionary traditionalism and Orthodoxy, preferred to speak of
the ‘Russian Vendée’ in the South-East of Ukraine (Polikarpov 2014, p. 229). Meanwhile,
ideologists with a socialist propensity, who extol the region’s Soviet-era heavy industry, centre
their vision on Donbas as the pivot of ‘Novorossiya’ (Glaz’ev 2015).
Key public figures of the pro-Russian insurgency struggle with this ambiguity surrounding
the territorial positioning of ‘Novorossiya’ but, unlike Moscow-based ‘couch warriors’,
they have something to lose: actual political control over some territory in Luhans’k and
Donets’k regions. Pavel Gubarev, one of the most prominent activists in Donbas, has offered
a much more precise geographical vision of what ‘Novorossiya’ should be in the future.
He distinguishes between ‘Larger Novorossiya’ and ‘Larger Novorossiya Plus’. The former
coincides with the historical Novorossiya guberniya, that is, the imperial version, whereas
the latter includes the regions of Cherkasy, Poltava, Chernihiv, Sumy, and Kyiv, that is the
socialist version, embracing all of left-bank Ukraine. Importantly, Gubarev sees this difference
as pragmatic rather than ideological: it is good to have ‘Larger Novorossiya Plus’, but, if this
plan fails, ‘Larger Novorossiya’ would represent an appropriate alternative (Gubarev 2014a,
2014b). Gubarev’s statement powerfully visualises the covert cravings of Russian ideologues
to position ‘Novorossiya’ as a project that excludes—territorially as well as ideologically—the
existence of independent Ukraine. The newspaper Novorossiya, the mouthpiece of the DPR,
has similarly voiced the idea of splitting Ukraine into large ‘Novorossiya’ and pro-Russian
Ukraine proper. The latter, after a time, would gradually be accepted into Russia (Luganskii
2015a, p. 3; 2015b, p. 4). In the official press of the insurgents, ‘Novorossiya’ is used as
a synonym for the DNR and LNR (Sedov 2015), which makes ‘Novorossiya’ a tool for
displaying the threat of expansionism to the Kyiv government.
In spring 2014, the leadership of the DNR held ambitious visions of their would-be country.
They proclaimed its belonging to ‘Russian civilisation’ (sometimes referred to as the ‘Russian
world’ in official documents of the republics) but also stipulated its independent geopolitical
course towards integration with the Eurasian Economic Union, launched on 1 January 2015.9
These statements sent a clear message to the Kremlin: the republics did not see themselves
as parts of the Russian Federation in its present shape but, rather, as more autonomous
players on the international arena. However, when hopes for a mass pro-Russian movement
in Eastern and Southern Ukraine had faded away, the spokespeople of the DNR and LNR
switched their emphasis to prioritising the development of local, Donbas-based patriotism
over ‘Novorossiya’ patriotism. This became especially visible after the Minsk agreements,
when the two self-declared peoples’ republics had stabilised their borderline with Ukraine.10
The newspaper Novorossiya repeatedly highlights the militiamen’s professional connections to

  9‘Programma OPD “Partiya Novorossii”’, in Materialy dlya noveishei istorii Novorossii (St Petersburg,
Kvadrivium, 2014).
10
On 17 April 2014 Gubarev issued an official statement, in which he consistently used the ambiguous term
‘people of Donbas and Novorossiya’, without explaining whether these terms are synonymous, or nested, or
overlapping (Surnin 2015, pp. 123–25).
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 209

the Donbas coal region, describing them as ‘former tractor drives and miners’, or ‘yesterday’s
steelmakers and pitmen’ (Luganskii 2015b, p. 4).
This kind of regional affinity required inventing a different—neither imperial nor Soviet—
tradition. From the beginning of 2015 the elites of the DPR and LPR started to invest a lot
of energy into popularising the short-lived Donets’k–Krivoi Rog Republic (DKRR), which
existed in February–March 1918 on the territories of Yekaterinoslav, Khar’kiv, Luhans’k,
Donets’k, Zaporizhzhia, and partially Sumy, Kherson, Mykolayiv, and Russian Rostov
regions, with its centre in Khar’kiv (later Luhans’k). On 6 February 2015, the DPR adopted
a memorandum that acknowledged the historical ties between the DKRR and DPR, not
even mentioning ‘Novorossiya’ (Memorandum 2015, p. 8). One of the leaders of the DNR,
Andrei Purgin, proposed to make 12 February, the day when this republic was proclaimed,
a national holiday in the DNR.11 In February 2015, Donets’k hosted a historical exhibition
dedicated to this event. Following the same line, journalist Vsevolod Petrovskii (Nesterov
2015), of a socialist persuasion, reverentially referred to Lenin’s support for the socialist
DKRR. The DKRR fits the ideological agenda of the insurgency’s leaders in three respects,
insofar as it represents a socialist, independent state that remains closely tied to Russia. From
the viewpoint of geographical imagination, however, it only complicates already convoluted
historical associations, as the DKRR did not fully coincide territorially either with historical
Novorossiya, or with today’s ‘Novorossiya’.
The ‘where’ of ‘Novorossiya’ is arguably the most daunting question for pro-Russian
intellectuals and grassroots online polemists alike. Their opponents quickly spotted the weak
link in their argumentation and worked out a trolling strategy (Hopkinson 2013), which
consists of repeatedly asking an opponent to show ‘Novorossiya’ on a map, as illustrated in
the following example:

What is Novorossiya?
I am [looking for it] in Google maps … Nothing(((
Show me where it is on the map (((.12

The territorial perplexity associated with ‘Novorossiya’ is expressed in countless posts by

pro-Russian users. For them it is clear neither where ‘Novorossiya’ should appear in the future,
nor where it is located in the present. As one user succinctly put it, ‘the utmost idiocy is that
people from the DNR and LNR do not know where the borders of Novorossiya start and where
[they] end’.13 It is not uncommon for the whole of Ukraine to be referred to as ‘Novorossiya’,
perhaps with the exception of the ‘most inveterate [osobo r’ianye] regions’.14 One of the few
controversial themes amongst pro-Russian users is whether ‘Novorossiya’ should capture and

11
‘V Donetske pochtili pamiat’ pervogo rukovoditelya Donetsko-Krivorozhskoi Sovetskoi Respubliki’,
Novorossiya, 22, 17 February 2015, p. 5.
12
Sam Fisher’s post on 31 July 2014, available at: https://vk.com/donetsk, accessed 1 May 2015. Here ‘(((’
stands for the emoji ‘frowning face’. See also, Zloy Banderovets’s post on 23 September 2015, available at:
https://vk.com/donetsk, accessed 1 May 2015; Anastasia Alamaska’s post on 25 September 2015, available
at: https://vk.com/donetsk, accessed 1 May 2015.
13
Roman Tagiev’s post on 22 February 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall168439337_1387915, accessed
1 May 2015.
14
putingoodluck’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall-78275866_5164, accessed 1 May
2015.
210 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

incorporate Kyiv, or whether it should be satisfied with expelling ‘fascists’ from Donbas.15
Another user is puzzled about whether Odesa should be incorporated into ‘Novorossiya’ ‘or
the Americans would not let it happen’.16 The geographical messiness of ‘Novorossiya’ is
further aggravated by its unclear relationship with Russia proper. Some users claim it to be
ancient Russian lands;17 others support the idea of a state, independent from both Ukraine and
Russia. If the restoration of historical Novorossiya is at stake, Russia should moreover cede
substantial parts of its territory, including Crimea, the Rostov-on-Don region, and Kuban. As
an extravagant territorial projection of the idea of the ‘Russian Spring’, some users suggest
incorporating Russia into the territory of ‘Novorossiya’.18
Donbas’s relationship to ‘Novorossiya’ is as puzzling for online users as for public
intellectuals. In spite of the attempts of the DNR to propagate Donbas patriotism, many
users consciously neglect self-identification with Donbas in favour of ‘Novorossiya’,19
because Donbas is framed as an old industrial, economically depressed region with low social
prestige and associations with the unpopular workers’ and communist movements (‘pathetic
depressive Lugandon’;20 ‘half-destroyed Donbas, forgotten by God’21). It is not infrequent to
encounter ironic ‘Dambass’ spelling of the term, which mocks uneducated inhabitants who
cannot correctly write the name of their region, or even—catering for the English-speaking
audience—‘Dumbass’. In contrast, ‘Novorossiya’ is reminiscent of a much more attractive
imperial historical legacy and hints at the possibility of ‘rejuvenation’ and ‘renaissance’.
However, the politically loaded terms novoross (that is, a ‘New Russian’) and ‘people
of Novorossiya’ are conspicuously rare. Novoross sounds especially weird to a Russian ear,
whereas ‘people of Novorossiya’ is somewhat more common. However, the most typical
reference is to the ‘inhabitants of Novorossiya’ (zhiteli Novorossii), which highlights their
passive and geographical relation to ‘Novorossiya’ as a merely spatial location. In this sense,
the linguistic convention puts ‘Novorossiya’ on a par with any Russian oblast’; the common
phrase is, for example, ‘inhabitants of Perm krai’, whereas there is no politically-coloured
term to represent those ‘inhabitants’ as a community. The political debate is centred on the
name of the territory, not on the name of the people. As one user observes, ‘journalists do not
know what to say. Sometimes they say “inhabitants of Novorossiya”, sometimes, obviously
on orders from above, they flounder and say “inhabitants of the South-East of Ukraine”.
Hesitations, hesitations’.22

15
Sebastyan Pereyra’s post on 1 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall288332879_6054951, accessed
1 May 2015; too_brutal’s post on 1 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall399557_13402, accessed 1
May 2015.
16
frigeridga1975’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: https://twitter.com/frigeridga1975/status/57451
6094951669760, accessed 1 May 2015.
17
Yurii Zaitsev’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall238589801_6126698, accessed 1
May 2015.
18
Aleksei Sharkov’s post on 2 March 2015, available at: http://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?id=1000033
80105151&story_fbid=673157446140253, accessed 1 May 2015.
19
Dimosha Milovanov’s post on 22 February 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall114654888_8234, accessed
1 May 2015.
20
emiliozk’s post on 1 March 2015, available at: http://emiliozk.livejournal.com/366964.html?thread=621684,
accessed 1 May 2015. The play on words parallels the name of the city Lugansk (Luhans’k) with the obscene
Russian gandon (condom).
21
Oleg Yakhnenko’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall276694117_1190041, accessed
1 May 2015.
22
Andrei Solonnikov’s post on 22 February 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall244408971_101298,
accessed 1 May 2015.
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 211

Ideology of Novorossiya
Different political projects require different territories to sustain them (Lefebvre 2009, p. 186).
From its very inception, the concept of ‘Novorossiya’ was informed by various competing
ideologies from both the left and right wings of the political spectrum (Laruelle 2015), which
correspond to various outlines of its borders. Different versions of imperial and socialist
territoriality roughly correspond to two main ideological argumentation threads in relation
to ‘Novorossiya’: traditionalism, which also embraces imperial monarchism, right-wing
nationalism, and white-power racism on the one hand, and anti-globalism with concomitant
ramifications of an anti-oligarchic revolutionary stance, ideology of the grassroots’ resistance,
and Soviet nostalgia, on the other. However, more often than not, ‘Novorossiya’ serves as a
symbolic (and sometimes actual) meeting ground for the political extremes of the left and right.
The common denominator for all these political speculations is the vision of ‘Novorossiya’ as
a locus of national regeneration or palingenesis. This interpretation points at the readiness to
radically cast off all shackles and restore the perennial truths and ‘natural’ order of things.23
Some regions, especially those associated with territorial ‘phantom pains’, are fetishised
and become over-represented in the geopolitical imagination, acquiring the contours of ‘a
condensed symbol of the nation itself’ (Billé 2014, p. 173). In Russia, where according to the
aphorism of Vasilii Klyuchevskii, the centre lies on the periphery, distant lands, sometimes
outside of the state borders, quite often acquire exaggerated symbolic importance as places
of regeneration (Bassin 1999). The very name of ‘Novorossiya’ (that is, ‘New Russia’) makes
it a paradigmatic place of palingenetic hopes. For example, the leadership of DNR even
insists that ‘Novorossiya’ is not just a part of the Russian civilisation but its most precious
‘pearl’, the condensation of ‘Russianness’, with its military glory, economic success, and
cultural heterogeneity. With a tinge of nostalgia for the socialist past, Pavel Gubarev calls
‘Novorossiya’ the showcase of late Soviet prosperity. He identified his visions as a mixture
of traditionalism and socialist-coloured futurism and called to ‘combine Orthodoxy with the
roaring rocket’s nozzles’ (Gubarev 2016, pp. 7–9, 69).
In the same place Gubarev mentions that, in order to understand his motivations, one has to
read the Soviet-era science fiction novel The Bull’s Hour (1968) by Ivan Efremov, who depicts
a Communist Earth expanding into outer space. The utopian and futuristic connotations of the
brand ‘Novorossiya’ are obvious in the following examples. The leader of the pro-Russian
militants, the ‘vice-Defence Minister’ of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Fedor Berezin, is
a professional science fiction writer who has authored several dozen books in the genres of
‘alternative history’ and ‘military science fiction’ (voennaya fantastika). Several other science
fiction authors, such as Luhans’k writers Gleb Bobrov, Andrei Kruz, and Grigorii Savitskii,
who had prophesied a military ‘clash of civilisations’ in Ukraine, have joined or openly
supported the pro-Russian insurgents. Capitalising on the Soviet science fiction term ‘close
target fantasy’, those authors publish in the book series ‘Close combat fantasy’ (fantastika
blizhnego pritsela—fantastika blizhnego boya),24 implying an association between this kind
of science fiction and real-life military conflict. ‘Novorossiya’ has become a post-Soviet

23
Notwithstanding the appropriateness of the term ‘fascism’ in this context, it is obvious that ‘Novorossiya’
imagery resonates within the large host of semi- and proto-fascist ideologies, such as neo-Eurasianism and
Conservative Revolution, whose intellectual core is conditioned by the thrust towards national regeneration
(Griffin 1993; Umland 2010).
24
See, for example, Savitskii (2014).
212 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

‘Free Republic of Fiume’, a political Gesamtkunstwerk of sorts, combining utopian narrative,

historical performance, and bloody warfare (Young 2011).25
Gubarev’s call to combine traditionalism and futurism resonates amongst all members
of Izborsk Club. It also has parallels with the ideology of ‘atomic Orthodoxy’, formulated
by Orthodox activist Egor Kholmogorov, painter Aleksei Belyaev-Gintovt, and advocacy
journalist Maksim Kalashnikov, whom Gubarev reverentially addressed as his teacher. The
religious implications of separatism in eastern Ukraine have been picked up by the Orthodox
publicist Kirill Frolov, for whom ‘Novorossiya’ represents a springboard for the liberation of
the whole Orthodox world from the fetters of secularism, as well as from a godless Ukraine
dominated by ‘Uniates’ (Greek-Catholics) (Frolov 2015). In this sense ‘Novorossiya’
reconnects with Patriarch Kirill’s vision of Holy Rus’, that is, the territorial projection of
Russia’s cultural fundamentals (Suslov 2014b). This Holy Rus’ imagery became a source
of inspiration for the leadership of ‘Novorossiya’. It is enough to state that the Constitution
of the Donets’k People’s Republic, adopted on 3 June 2014, stipulates in the Preamble that
the self-proclaimed republic is an ‘inseparable part of the Russian World as the Russian
civilisation’, and that Orthodoxy is a pillar of the Russian World.
Likewise, Vitalii Aver’yanov depicts ‘Novorossiya’ as the avant-garde of culturally-defined
Russianness or ‘Russian civilisation’, characterised by three main components: Russian
identity, Orthodoxy, and advanced industry (Aver’yanov 2014). Aver’yanov thus mixes up
imperial and Soviet elements, placing industrial Donbas on an equal footing with Orthodox
centres of historical Novorossiya. As Sergei Mironov concisely puts it in the same vein,
‘Novorossiya’ nurtures two ideas: social justice and the importance of traditional values
(Mironov 2014). Following this line of argumentation, Egor Kholmogorov shrewdly draws
parallels between ‘Novorossiya’ and the American Western frontier. As a space of grassroots
colonisation, ‘Novorossiya’ is Russia’s America, a launching pad for any bold experiment
(Kholmogorov 2014) with a tinge of alternativeness and a futuristic thrust. In Maksim
Kalashnikov’s views, ‘Novorossiya’ is the testing ground for the most advanced industry,
which can be developed in a socialist and protective environment: future-cities (futuropolisy),
marine agriculture, ekranoplany (ground-effect ships), submerged hotels, seacoast farms,
and so on (Kalashnikov 2014). The revolutionary and socialist potential of ‘Novorossiya’
has been highlighted by Sergei Glaz’ev, who parallels the resistance of Donbas to the Civil
War in Spain: it is now on the frontline of a new world war against the global capitalist order
(Glaz’ev 2015). For those intellectuals, ‘Novorossiya’ represents a territorialised ideology,
or ‘a springboard of [political] opportunity’ (Williams & Smith 1983, p. 503).
Similar narratives about Russian civilisation and the Russian World lie behind the
Eurasianist visions of ‘Novorossiya’. In the spirit of the ‘Conservative Revolution’ and the
European New Right movements, Aleksandr Dugin maintains that ‘Novorossiya’ is a project
with far-reaching influence that can transform the whole of Russia and Eurasia in general, as
it incarnates the revolutionary awakening of Russia’s true self. ‘Novorossiya’ hence is not a
territory, it is ‘Russia’s future’ (Dugin 2015). In order to sustain this spirit of radical return to
civilisational roots and escape from the fetters of Modernity, ‘Novorossiya’ ought, however, to
remain an independent state, and not become part of Russia, where oligarchs and Westernised
intellectuals are likely to corrupt the newly born state. Eurasianists, especially those associated
with the movement ‘Young Eurasia’, have cheerfully welcomed ‘Novorossiya’ as a keystone

25
See also Gerasimov (2014).
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 213

in their Eurasian project. ‘Novorossiya’, in their views, is not to necessarily become a part
of Russia but should rather co-exist alongside Russia within a broader integration project
(Georgievskii 2014). For Eurasianists, especially those under the influence of Lev Gumilev,
‘Novorossiya’ represents the westernmost part of the Great Steppe, the cradle of the empire of
Genghis Khan, and the pivot of Eurasian identity. A historical connection between the lands
to the north of the Black Sea and the Golden Horde, the Crimean khanate and the Ottoman
Empire, additionally supplies the Eurasian imagination with the vision of ‘Novorossiya’ as
a place where East meets West.
An important ideological ingredient in thinking about ‘Novorossiya’ is portraying it as a
bastion against forces of globalisation with a clear-cut geopolitical dimension. Most of those
nationalistic intellectuals view Novorossiya as a trump card in the ‘big geopolitical game’ in
which the Russian civilisation is withstanding the pressure of the global West. In July 2014 a
group of patriotic organisations and geopolitical think tanks under the guidance of Colonel-
General Leonid Ivashov, the president of the Academy for Geopolitical Problems, prepared a
‘Military and Political Doctrine for the Struggle in Novorossiya’, which depicts the rebellious
region as the avant-garde of the Russian World in its war against ‘Atlantic civilisation’, and
more specifically as part of the strategy to keep Ukraine in the Russian World (Ivashov 2014).
Similarly to ‘Crimea is ours!’ discourses, which have not been fully controlled by the
government, ‘Novorossiya’ is setting its own agenda, which may or may not cater to the
demands of those in power. The state manifestly lacks powers to fix its meaning in one
particular way, for example, along the lines of the cultural conservatism which marks Vladimir
Putin’s third presidential term. However, unlike the ‘Crimea is ours!’ campaign and such
geopolitical brands as the ‘Russian world’ or ‘Eurasian Union’, which enjoy official support,
‘Novorossiya’ has not managed to enlist the Russian elite into its ‘fandom’. Besides, the
palingenetic connotations of its ideology over-represent this place as the qualitatively most
important territory of the imaginary ‘Russian world’: as the point of growth, a locus of
regeneration, a bastion of resistance to the universal evil forces, and so on. Understandably,
over-representation of the region lying beyond the state borders of the Russian Federation
challenges both official ‘strategic narratives’ (Roselle et al. 2014) on ‘sovereign democracy’
and on the ‘vertical of power’.

Novorossiya in online debates

In online debates, a ‘palingenetic’ reading can help to make sense of ‘Novorossiya’
ideologically. This reduces the problem of blurred territoriality by depicting ‘Novorossiya’
as a work-in-progress (Novorossii byt’).26 The language of regeneration is salient in the
following homemade verses entitled There Should Be Novorossiya! (Novorossii byt’!), which
circulated on the internet in March 2015:

This is how the people have decided and ordered

To restore to life a forgotten country.
We remember [this country] and it lives in us,
And [it] has been alive in all [previous] generations.
So let it revive today again,
26
Yana Spas’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall67050309_288341, accessed 1 May
2015.
214 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

And let it become our new house.

And those who want to prevent us from this doing,
We will convict according to new laws [of a crime].27

Symbolically, the palingenetic project of ‘Novorossiya’ is connected with metaphors about

constructing a new home, in contrast to the annexation of Crimea which was framed as
‘returning home’, that is, to Russia. Tropes of regeneration and building a new house somewhat
exclude Russia from assuming the role of a representative of ‘Novorossiya’, as happened in
Crimea. Indeed, There Should Be Novorossiya! clearly stipulates that the initiative belongs
to the people of ‘Novorossiya’ and nobody else.
The trope of constructing a new home corresponds to a common metaphor of territory as
‘our property’ (Forsberg 2003), which is very developed in online debates. The metaphor of
‘property’ creates emotional tension when ‘Novorossiya’ is pictured as occupied or under
threat of occupation by the enemy—hence the affective promise: ‘We will never give you
[“Novorossiya”] to anybody’.28 The ‘property’ metaphor usefully distinguishes ‘us’ from
‘them’, by accusing the Ukrainian army and right-wing activists of ‘coming to our land’29 or
‘invading our territory’.30 The task of the insurgent army is thus to ‘drive out fascists from our
land’,31 or ‘to kick the Ukrainian gangs [ukrobandy] beyond the borders of Novorossiya’.32
This metaphor resonates powerfully with historical reminiscences of the Great Patriotic War
and the liberation of Ukraine from occupation by Nazi Germany. A common propagandistic
device is to call the opponents ‘fascists’, ‘banderites’, and karateli (members of the SS punitive
expeditions against civil population) (Gaufman 2015; Osipian 2015).
Fighting against karateli reconnects the property metaphor with the theme of renaissance
in imagining ‘Novorossiya’. In line with the ideological construction of ‘Novorossiya’, the
renaissance metaphor imparts a sense of a mission to the insurgency. As a consequence, the
common argument in online polemics is that ‘Crimea just left [Ukraine], but Novorossiya will
scorch fascism from all occupied regions’.33 The sense of mission evokes a series of religious
and pre-religious associations wherein ‘Novorossiya’ is a sacral space, where super-natural
forces are at play, and where all normalcy is cancelled (Girard 1972). This interpretation
evokes parallels with Giorgio Agamben’s political philosophy, which maintains that political
relations are based on the biopolitical practices of exclusion (Agamben 1998). In this sense,
a concentration camp serves as the most obvious explanatory model for the politics of the
DNR and LNR, being excluded both from the Ukrainian and Russian legal orders.

27
fashizmynety’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall-40441936_20005, accessed 1 May
2015.
28
fapacbk’s post on 1 March 2015, available at: https://twitter.com/fapacbk/status/572138864208445441,
accessed 1 May 2015.
29
juliya_shado’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall205799280_848, accessed 1 May
2015.
30
Zhenechka Filimonova’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall13918103_831412,
accessed 1 May 2015.
31
Vasily Petrov’s post on 12 February 2015, available at: https://vk.com/wall-64487399?q=новороссия&w=wall-
64487399_21412%2Fall, accessed 1 May 2015.
32
Virita’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://www.liveinternet.ru/users/baroma/post355702992/#B
lCom669759717, accessed 1 May 2015; Elena Talashova’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/
wall67448797_630525, accessed 1 May 2015.
33
allivdeaber’s post on 2 March 2015, available at: https://twitter.com/allivdeaber/status/572140080694870016,
accessed 1 May 2015.
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 215

Following this framing, ‘Novorossiya’ is a place marked by imagery of blood and sacrifice,
with a special focus on the sacrificial death of children at the hands of Ukrainian solders and
right-wing hitmen (‘children were torn into pieces …’).34 One user, drawing on the metaphor of
‘property’, developed this idea as follows: ‘Get out from Novorossiya, karateli. God punishes
you because you destroy Orthodox Churches there, and kill people of Donbas. You will go
to hell …’.35 Likewise, a poem by a certain Anna Vasil’eva mentions blood and death many
times, for example, here, addressing the Kyiv administration:

You have destroyed so many innocent [lives] there,

How could you live with all this blood on your hands?!36

Another poem mixes up themes of sacrificing children, ‘fascist karateli’ occupying our land,
and the geopolitical vision of Ukraine as a pawn in the big game of great powers (one of them
is represented with a racist hint at Barack Obama):

You are fascists on the service of the [US] Department of State,

You are led by the black master,
You wear Nazi uniforms,
You shoot women and men.
You bravely shoot children too ….37

Territorial imagination always utilises a set of biopolitical metaphors, involving the image of
a (predominantly female) body (Warner 1996; Forsberg 2003). Nevertheless, ‘Novorossiya’
has to date failed to develop ‘body’ metaphors or a stable association with a female figure—
partially because the spatial basis of the pro-Russian insurgency is Donbas, a word of the
masculine gender in Russian, imaginatively connected with heavy industry and mining, that
is, with predominantly ‘men’s business’. A few instances of associating ‘Novorossiya’ with
feminine imagery are effectively counter-balanced by representing the typical insurgent as an
epitome of masculinity. The already quoted poem Novorossiya Should Be frames it as follows:

That guy who had simply cut coal,

Has long joined the ranks of the militia.38

Whereas the symbol of the Crimean annexation/reunification is the female figure of the
youthful, glamorous, public prosecutor Natalia Poklonskaya (Suslov 2014a), the Donbas
rebellion has become represented by the iconic figure of ‘Babai the Cossack’, an extravagant-
looking bearded militiaman (see Figure 3). Babai has evoked a wave of visual representations
on social networks, in which his masculine properties are invariably highlighted. One of them,

34
arship’s post on 21 February 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall162605065_90082, accessed 1 May 2015.
35
Dana Zaborova’s post on 1 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall268796847_72, accessed 1 May
2015.
36
Anastasiya Gromova’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall213819383_2391, accessed
1 May 2015.
37
bujhbkkj’s post on 21 February 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall179704429_1458, accessed 1 May
2015.
38
Fashizmynety’s post on 8 March 2015, available at: http://vk.com/wall-40441936_20005, accessed 1
May 2015.
216 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

FIGURE 2. CARTOON ABOUT STRELKOV.

Note: Inscriptions (from left to right): ‘It is important [to me] that the Russians are nearby [that is, ready to
support]. Then, we will fight again. 30 April 1945. Berlin. On the eve of Hitler’s death. Don’t worry, history
schoolbooks will say that you did it yourself’.
Source: https://vk.com/photo-72553817_334306875, accessed 1 September 2015.

FIGURE 3. BABAI THE COSSACK.

Note: Inscription: ‘People’s Army’.
Source: https://vk.com/kazak_babaj?w=wall-67949608_56184, accessed 1 September 2015.

for example, has an inscription ‘Europe has forgotten what a bearded victor looks like. Shall
we remind them?’, bringing to mind successful Russian military campaigns in Europe, most
notably in 1813–1814 and 1944–1945. Babai’s masculine imagery is connected with the
 THE PRODUCTION OF ‘NOVOROSSIYA’ 217

idea of assertiveness, or ‘passionarity’, couched in terms of Lev Gumilev’s popular theory

(Bassin 2016), which has lent its idiosyncratic language to many spokesmen of ‘Novorossiya’,
including, amongst others, Pavel Gubarev. Instead of representing ‘Novorossiya’ as a suffering
fragile body in need of help, its present image as an aggressive warrior is easily incorporated
into the narrative of the Donbas insurgency as Russia’s military encroachment on the territorial
integrity of Ukraine. Figures of armoured women do occasionally circulate on the internet,
but none of them has risen to nationwide fame comparable to that of Natalia Poklonskaya.
The conspicuous absence of female symbolism surrounding ‘Novorossiya’ contributes to a
failure to securitise the border of Novorossiya (Norton 1988). The irony of the situation is
that unlike Natalia Poklonskaya, a resident of Crimea, both Strelkov and Babai are Russians
from Moscow and Kuban’ respectively. Their external provenance raises doubts about the
subjectivity of ‘Novorossiya’.
Figures like Strelkov and Babai the Cossack (Aleksandr Mozhaev) became celebrities
and icons of the insurgency, evoking all sorts of ‘fan-arts’, including cartoons. One cartoon,
published in the group vk.com/superstrelkov, is entitled Colonel Strelkov: A Hero Beyond
Time. It represents the separatist leader as a super-hero in the style of Captain America. The
plotline features Strelkov as a colonel of the Russian Imperial Army during World War I, who
is severely wounded and teetering between life and death. A doctor offers him a mysterious
remedy, which would heal him but make him a saint-like immortal person whose task would
be to help Russia whenever enemies encroach on its territory. His first task in this new
capacity is killing Hitler. In the first picture he is sent to Hitler’s bunker; in the second he
forces Hitler to take poison (the bubble reads: ‘Don’t worry, history schoolbooks will say
that you did it yourself’). In the third, Strelkov is rushing to his next feat, which is organising
protests in Simferopol in 2014, which would end by breaking the Crimean peninsula away
from Ukraine (see Figure 2). A similar appreciation group on vk.com is devoted to Babai the
Cossack, depicted in a way that evokes associations with Fidel Castro and Cuban guerrillas
(see Figure 3).
This specific branding of ‘Novorossiya’ has its reverse side. The widespread vision of
‘Novorossiya’ as a marketable project39 contains latent self-delegitimising potential because it
imparts to the concept of ‘Novorossiya’ a tinge of unreality, an association with something that
is made-up, not natural or historically rooted. The idea of ‘Novorossiya’ as a project generates
a sense of disempowerment, because it suggests that people living in ‘Novorossiya’ are not
masters of their own lives. Instead they are merely soft clay in the hands of mighty—and
mostly externally located—Kremlin politicians. This attitude reveals a deeply seated distrust
towards any political elite, represented as greedy scoundrels, for whom ‘Novorossiya’ is just
an occasion to fill pockets.40 One user, who regularly posts on Donets’k’s public chatroom
on vk.com, wrote:

I was with the militia and helped them when [it all] begun, [then] I guessed the Kremlin’s riddle.
They are using Donbas for their political purposes. Putin needed only Crimea. He uses us to make
sacrifices for the purpose of trading with the West ….41

39
Such as, Dmitrii Kozinkin’s post on 29 May 2015, available at: https://vk.com/donetsk, accessed 1
September 2015.
40
Alla Kutsenko’s post on 30 July 2014, available at: https://vk.com/donetsk, accessed 1 September 2015.
41
Vladimir Surkov’s post on 31 May 2015, available at: https://vk.com/donetsk, accessed 1 September 2015.
218 MIKHAIL SUSLOV

Online debaters have neither managed to elaborate a common territorial visualisation of

‘Novorossiya’, nor have they been successful in drawing a clear-cut historical genealogy. As
a result, the territorial metaphors remain at a fairly basic level, mostly connected with the
vision of ‘Novorossiya’ as ‘our land’ threatened by foreign occupants. Potentially powerful,
this imagery has been undermined by an alternative ‘messianic’ and expansionist interpretation
of ‘Novorossiya’. Oscillation between two master-narratives of ‘Novorossiya’—‘building
our new home’ and ‘returning home to Russia’—have effectively prevented the creation of
political subjectivity on this territory.

Conclusion
Blurred, flexible ‘hyper-borders’ (Richardson 2016) may be considered an advantage for
governing Russia (Ryazanova-Clarke 2013; Pavlovskii 2014) but they are detrimental to
imagining ‘Novorossiya’. The indeterminacy of its territorial parameters and imbrication
of ideological narratives prevented the production of a consistent popular imagination:
‘Novorossiya’ is both a sacrifice and a political subject, a suffering female body and an
aggressively expansionist male force. From the viewpoint suggested at the beginning of
the essay, ‘Novorossiya’ has failed to become a geopolitical brand that can effectively
create and explain the difference between the land and people of ‘Novorossiya’ and the
land and people of Ukraine (or for that matter—Russia). Without ideological support for
‘Novorossiya’ from official Russia, the leadership of the DNR and LNR are now investing
in the alternative territorial brand of ‘Donbas’, which has its shortcomings but which is in
two aspects more implementable than ‘Novorossiya’: its territory roughly coincides with the
region controlled by the self-proclaimed republics, and it refers to the much more historically
and geographically stable borders of the Donbas mining area. Thus, ‘Novorossiya’ mostly
remains in the discussions of the Russian right- and left-wing extremities, such as Izborsk
Club. These circles promote the ‘palingenetic’ imagery of ‘Novorossiya’ as a place of national
regeneration, which is salient and disturbing because it implies a violent and anti-liberal
political course of actions.

MIKHAIL SUSLOV, Uppsala University, Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies,
Uppsala, Sweden. Email: mikhail.suslov@ucrs.uu.se.

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