Slavo-Serbia: An Episode of the Romanian Colonization of Ukraine in the 18th Century
Slavo-Serbia: An Episode of the Romanian Colonization of Ukraine in the 18th Century

Summary/Abstract: The study presents the colonization policy promoted by the Russian Empire in the 1750s and 1760s in the territories annexed following the war with the Ottoman Empire in 1735–1739 and the Treaty of Belgrade. The military-territorial autonomous unit called Slavo-Serbia (Слалавяносербия) was established on a part of these territories, between the Donetsk River and the cities of Dnipro (Днiпро) and Lugansk in present-day Ukraine, part of the territory of the self-proclaimed Lugansk People’s Republic and Donetsk People’s Republic. The examined sources reveal that a large number of the settlers who came to these territories were Romanians from Moldavia, Wallachia, Transylvania, but also from south of the Danube, who served for a time in the border guard regiments of the Military Frontier created by the Habsburg Empire. The Romanians were the second-largest nation to inhabit the region after Ukrainians. Slavo-Serbia existed for a short period of time, between 1753 and 1764; the population of the villages established by Romanians gradually became Ukrainianized, although in some places they kept their identity until the second half of the 19th century and even later.

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