This article addresses the policies of the Russian authorities in Bessarabia in the two decades that followed the annexation of this territory in 1812. It examines the process of discursive and administrative construction of the Bessarabian province out of the territories that for centuries existed under different political jurisdictions. The article argues that the early Russian accounts of Bessarabia re-described these territories into a single whole, a province whose exotic nature and population distinguished it from other parts of the Russian Empire. The article further claims that each of the three consecutive attempts to define the form of administration of Bessarabia undertaken by the Russian authorities in the years following 1812 reflected a different perception of the province’s place within the imperial space. Thus, the initial idea to use Bessarabia as a conduit of Russian influence in the European Turkey gave place to the vision of this province as part of Russia’s self-governing Western borderlands and finally to the re-definition of Bessarabia as part of New Russia. Without fully negating its predecessor, each new vision and the accompanying administrative changes consolidated the discursive and institutional identity of Bessarabia, which ultimately enabled this province to outlast the empire that created it.