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Novorossiya (Russian: Новоро́ссия, literally New Russia) is a historic area now mostly located in southern Ukraine, in southern Russia, in Bessarabia and in Transnistria.
The western part of New Russia (between the Dnister and the Dniepr rivers) was known as Dykra in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and subsequently the province of Yedisan in the Ottoman Empire, and was previously inhabited, as well as the central part, by the Nogai Horde.
The Russian Empire gradually gained control over the area by peace treaties with the Ottoman Empire at the conclusion of the Russo-Turkish Wars of 1735-1739, 1768-1774, 1787-1792, and 1806-1812. The colonization of the land at the end of 18th century was led by Prince Potemkin who was granted the powers of an absolute ruler over the area by Catherine the Great. The lands were generously given to the Russian dvoryanstvo (nobility), and the enserfed peasantry from Russia and Ukraine were transferred to cultivate what was a sparsely populated steppe. Also Catherine the Great invited European settlers to these newly conquered lands: Germans, Poles, Italians, Greeks, Serbs, and others.
New cities founded during colonization included Novorossiysk, Yekaterinoslav (now Dnipropetrovsk), Nikolaev (Mykolaiv), Kherson, and Odessa.
In modern terms it encompasses Donetsk Oblast, Luhansk Oblast, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, Zaporizhia Oblast, Mykolaiv Oblast, Kherson Oblast, Odessa Oblast and Crimea in Ukraine, Krasnodar Krai, Stavropol Krai, Rostov Oblast, and the Republic of Adygea in Russia, Bessarabia and Transnistria.
Politically, people living in the region mostly have a pro-Russian orientation, and even in the parts of New Russia which are not in Russia today, Russian is the most common language in cities, and Ukrainian in villages. In the 2006 Ukrainian parliamentary election, the pro-Russian Party of Regions gained a majority in the regions of Ukraine which were once Novorossiya. In Moldova a whole region named Transnistria declared its independence. The official language in the region is Russian, and it is supported mainly by Russia as it has a pro-Russian orientation. Those regions feature almost an equal percentage both of Ukrainian and Russian populations.
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