slation of Foreign Books, "to bring enlightenment to those Russians who could not read either French or German."1421 It is clear that, like Peter I, Catherine the Great desired to construct a new nobility, a "new race,441I which would both resemble western noblemen and prove knowledgeable in discussions of modern is

d Poland split much of the territory of what'=s now Ukraine along the Dnierper river. Russia's advance continued a century later, during the rule of Catherine the Great, =ho imagined her domains along the Black Sea constituted "Novorossiya,&=uot; or "new Russia" -- a term revived by the pro-Russian separatists in ea

rusalem. "Believe me, you will acquire immortal fame such as no other sovereign of Russia ever had," said Grigoriy Potemkin, a prominent adviser to Catherine the Great, when offering the empress counsel in 1780 on plans to wrest Crimea away from Ottoman suzerainty. "This glory will open the way to still further an