Boarding house "Polyot" (building "Western Donbass")

Some mines on the land of peasants in the village of Novoekonomicheskoe along the postal road between Bakhmut and Yekaterinoslav, which are sometimes called the “Karakovsky mine”, as of the second half of the 60s.XIXc., were leased from Major General N.I. Shabelsky.

“At the 14th verst from the Grishina [postal] station on the road from Slavyanka to Bakhmut, there is land in the state-owned village of Novoekonomicheskoye. At a distance of one mile to N (north, - approx. ) from this place of the post road, on a hill, a seam of coal has recently been discovered, which is being developed by two mines. It is 3 feet 9 inches thick, strikes hora 11, dips 12 0 toNO(northeast, - approx. ). Up to a depth of 40 feet the coal was loose and destroyed; at greater depths it turned out to be of good quality. The rocks accompanying the formation were traced for 12 miles along the strike, therefore it is possible to hope to open it along its entire extent. It stretches towards the village of Galitsynovka and it would be desirable for this area to be explored. The Ministry of State Property ceded the development of this layer to the landowner [N.I.] Shabelsky for an annual fee of 80 silver rubles.”

"Rudnik", with only 16 employees, was developing a seam of coking coal. P.I. Fomin (with reference to the report of Colonel A.B. Ivanitsky) indicated: “One [coal] seam is being worked, coking coal, mined in large pieces and can withstand long-distance transportation without weathering. They work [in underground mines] using stone support. Lifting coal and people - on a rope using manual vertical gates. Drainage - in buckets. Production - no more than 150,000 poods per year.

Workers' pay is piecework, per cubic fathom of coal, in the amount of 8.50 to 10.50 rubles. per fathom, depending on the depth of the mine.

Peasants from the neighboring village of Karakova work in artels of 10 people each. The artel is divided into two shifts, day and night, and consists of two underground workers (“miner”), one “leader” who delivers the mined coal to the mine, and two “horsemen” for lifting the coal.
A good artel, according to Ivanitsky, will produce one cubic fathom per day, with delivery to the top and with laying per fathom.

When taking into account earnings, only large coal is taken into account; workers are required to lift small coal up for free, and it does not count towards production. The workers receive candles from the owner. Tools, rope, stone support for mines and drifts, steel for welding tools and all other work accessories are delivered by the entrepreneur.

The hiring of workers for coal mining begins after the end of field work, in October, and work [at the “Karakovsky mine”] is carried out before the beginning of the agricultural season, when peasants throughout this region give up working in the mines.” Karakovo coal is also supplied to Slavyansk to the saltworks. Due to the lack of railways near the mines, in the mid-70s. coal mining at the mine ceased.

However, there is information that Shabelsky’s “mine” was far from the first enterprise to develop coal on the lands of Novoekonomichny. In addition to the above-mentioned “mine,” small peasant mines also operated near Novoekonomichny. S.P. Lukovenko notes that “the village peasants used small mines to develop seams whose thickness ranged from 0.36 to 0.89 meters. These layers are called “soot.” Even then [engineer A.S. Brio from Kharkov, who was engaged in chemical research of coal in the vicinity of Novoekonomicheskoye] argued that coal from Novoekonomicheskoye could be used for gas production...

Most of the peasant mines on lands belonging to the community of the village of Novoekonomicheskoye were concentrated along the Gruzskaya gully (the modern territory of the city of Dimitrova), between the Matyukhin and Vodyanaya gully, on the slopes of the Klyuchevoy ravine (the northwestern and western outskirts of the village).

In the Saprykina ravine (the modern territory of the city of Dimitrova), the peasants of Novoekonomicheskoye, while digging a well, stumbled upon a coal seam m 2 4. Then this layer was developed at once in twelve (!) peasant mines.

Mines (pipes, wells) at that time were pits with a depth of 10 to 20 fathoms and up to 2 arshins in diameter. Horizontal workings were removed from the trunk at a distance of no more than 40 fathoms. Each of these mines employed 10-20 people.”

Thus, the peasant mines were practically no different from the “mine” described above, the performance indicators of which some “researchers” of our antiquity exaggerate in every possible way and raise almost to the skies. The closure of the “mine” did not represent any catastrophe either for the local residents or for the then coal industry, due to the presence of its “analogs” nearby, which continued to develop the subsoil, including on the territory belonging to the peasant community of the state-owned village of Novoekonomicheskoye.

In the 60sXIXcentury, Colonel A.B. Ivanitsky (2nd) mentioned the existence of “peasant mines” in the Kurakhovka region: Kurakhovsky - on the left, and Galitsynovsky - on the right bank of the Volchya River. P.I. Fomin presented the above-mentioned report of A.B. Ivanitsky as follows: “Kurakhovsky [mine] of N.I. Shabelsky - near the village of Kurakhovka on the Volchya River. One seam of caking coal is being worked, one working shaft is 14 fathoms deep, the other 8 fathoms deep is mined out and abandoned. Raising coal and people using a horse-drawn winch: in general, the whole device is bad and unreliable... Normal production extends to 80 thousand poods per year, with the usual selling price of 6 kopecks per pood on the spot. The Galitsynovsky mine of Mr. Kotlyarevsky, opened only in 1865, on the right side of the river. Volchya, 7 versts north of Kurakhovka. Work is carried out on one seam with two shafts of 10 and 13 fathoms. Production is 15 thousand poods [per year].”. The price of coal “on the spot” did not exceed 6 kopecks. per pood. Coal was used for steam engines and distilleries. Part of the coal went to Mariupol for home heating, where it sold for 16 kopecks. for pood...

On a pre-revolutionary postcard - a mine with a horse collar

We also note that local historians of Kurakhovka associate with the name of the landowner Shabelsky one of the first mines in the area under the poetic name “Maryina Kopalnya”, the remains of which are perfectly preserved in the area of ​​​​the modern village of Kurakhovka and the village of Zoryanoye (the latter, until the first years of Soviet power, was called Kurakhovka).

The mines in the said report are mentioned as not having railway access roads, but requiring them, since the unresolved "trans"tailor question" seriously limited the productivity of promising mines at that time.

In the second half of the 60s, only one railway was built - Kursk-Kharkov-Azov - in the direction of Kursk - Lozovaya - Slavyansk - Nikitovka - Rostov. In terms of prospects for the development of coal mining, the mines in the area of ​​Kurakhovka and Novoekonomichny were at a big disadvantage compared to the mines in the area of ​​Nikitovka and Khanzhenkovo.

In 1872, A.A. Nosov (junior) published the work “Report on the coal industry in the 1st district of the Western part of the Donetsk Ridge,” which contains information about peasant mines in the area of ​​Novoekonomichny and Kurakhovka with a total coal production of 60 and 75 thousand pounds of coal in year.

“Kurakhovsky coal mine on the land of Mr. Nikolai Shabelsky near the village of Kurakhovka. The number of working coal seams is 3, the thickness of the seams is 1-1 ¼ arshin. The number of working mines is 3. The annual amount of coal mined in pounds is 75,000. The value of a pound of coal at the mining site in kopecks is 10-12. The average number of workers applying is 18. The method of raising coal and draining water is by horse gates. The mined coal is sold at the mine: to distilleries, forges and steam threshers..

Karakovsky coal mine on the land of the state-owned village of Novo-Ekonomicheskoye (Karakova), leased by Mr. Peter Shabelsky.The number of working coal seams is 1, the thickness of the seams is 1 ¼ arshins. The number of working mines is 3. The annual amount of coal mined in pounds is 60,000. The value of a pound of coal at the mining site in kopecks is 10-12. The average number of workers applying is 16. The method of raising coal and draining water is by horse gates. Mined coal is sold locally from 1 ruble to 1 ruble 20 kopecks per 12-pound quarter.".

“The Zolotoy Kolodez coal mine on the land of Mrs. Pyankovich in the Zolotoy Kolodez tract, leased by Mr. Lerouge and company. The number of working coal seams is 1, the thickness of the seams is 1 ¼ arshins. The number of working mines is 1. Exploration work was carried out in the mine.”

In the 70s In the 19th century, attempts to establish a capital mine in the Kurakhovka area and resolve the issue of access roads to the enterprise were carried out by the French Mining and Industrial Society in the south of Russia. The story of the loss of several million francs by the community in Kurakhovka is also described. Let us add on our own that the study of the issue of construction and closure of the Kurakhovskaya branch in the 70s.XIXcentury is complicated by the fact that statistics on coal production by the “French Mining and Industrial Society in the South of Russia” are provided, and mineral fuel shipments for the specified period at the Rudnichnaya station in the form of a general figure for the Rutchenkovsky and Kurakhovsky mines! Thus, the shipment of coal at the Rudnichnaya station began in 1876, and despite the failure in Kurakhovka, the Company in the second half of the 70s. provides more and more coal: 1876 - 325 thousand poods, 1876 - 1221 thousand poods, 1878 - 2372 thousand poods, etc.

Scheme of the first railways Donbass. The Karakovsky and Kurakhovsky mines are indicated, as well as the mothballed Karakovsky branch

For coal mining in Western Donbass during the 70s.XIXThe century was characterized by inconstancy not only throughout the year, but even from year to year the performance of coal mines was unstable. Thus, according to the file of issues of the “Mining Journal” for 1875-1883, 60 thousand pounds were mined at the Karakovo mine in 1873, in 1875 - 10 thousand pounds, in 1878 - 100 thousand pounds; in 1874, 1876, 1877, 1879 the mine was not operational, and since 1880 the mine has not been listed in the relevant statistics. The Zavidovo mine was not operational during 1873-1880. For the Zoloto-Kolodeznaya mine, only 1873 was productive, when 69 thousand poods were produced here; in other periods the mine was considered inactive. Since 1877, the Zavidovskaya and Zoloto-Kolodeznaya mines have been taken over by the Novorossiysk Society of Coal and Iron Production. The last two mines are also missing from the 1881 report.

“27) Karakovsky mine on the land of the village of Novoekonomicheskoye (Karakovo), leased by Mr. Shabelsky. The layer is 4 feet 1 inch thick. Shaft 2. Did not work during 1874.
28) Zavidovsky mine on the land of Princess Kudasheva, near the village of Khlopova (Zavidova). The formation is 2 feet 14 inches thick; mine 1. During 1874, no work was carried out...

29) [Mine] Golden Well on the land of Mr. Pyankovic, leased by the French company Le Rouge, Bonnet and others, near the village of Golden Well. There are 2 layers, 2 feet and 1 foot 6 inches thick. There are 3 mines, 1 of them is not working. During 1874, it limited itself to exploration work only.

30) Belyansky mine on the land of peasants in the village of Maryevka, leased by Mr. Chernobaev. There are 2 layers 2 feet and 1 foot 8 inches thick. The mine was not working" (apparently, we are talking about a mine in the area of ​​​​the village of Belyansky and the Maryevka farm on the Mayachka River in the area west of Kramatorsk. According to the above documents, from 1874 to 1880 the mine was listed as inactive, since 1877 - the Novorossiysk Society coal and iron production).

Since 1881, on the lands of the village of Novoekonomichnoye, coal was mined at the Tyagunov mine, by 1884 - at the Rosinga mine. In September 1883, the newspaper “Ekaterinoslav Provincial Leaflet” reported on the development of devices discovered in the 70s. coal seams in the area of ​​the villages of Dobropolye and Zolotoy Kolodez (Annovka, Paraskoveevka). The “pioneers” of coal mining in the territory of the modern city of Dobropolye and in the immediate vicinity are considered to be the landowners from the modern village of Annovka - the Enin brothers.

In the early 80s, in connection with the construction of the Catherine Railway, research on coal deposits in the Western Donbass, discovered in the 50-70s, as well as their development, intensified. In 1882, mining engineer V.A. visited the western part of Bakhmut district. Domger and Professor A.V. Gurov, both studied coal outcrops near the village of Zavidovo. In 1882-1883 V.A. Domger and D.A. Stempkovsky also studied a section of a coal deposit in the valley of the Solyonaya River.

Near the village of Aleksandrovka (Samara River valley), Professor A.V. Gurov discovered 5 coal seams by drilling - this was how the Nosov brothers’ hypothesis about the presence of coal in this area was confirmed; The boundaries of the distribution of coal deposits were pushed back by 40 km. The construction of the Ekaterininskaya Railway, the route of which ultimately bypassed Kurakhovka, greatly accelerated the development of coal seams in the Grishino area.

Professor Gurov A.V.

“Mining Journal” in 1883 indicated: “The research of Mr. Gurov’s master of geology, followed only recently, showed ... that in the southwestern part of the Izyum district of the Kharkov province the same extraction of mineral fuel is possible as in the neighboring Bakhmut district of the Ekaterinoslav province . It was assumed that the thickness of the layers hiding the layer of coal in the western part of the Bakhmut district was insignificant, but there was an opinion that this thickness increases to the north, and that therefore exploration in the area adjacent to the [Kursk-Kharkov-] Azov road between the Barvenkovo ​​and Nadezhdovka, that is, in the very northwestern corner of Bakhmutsky district and in the southern part of Izyumsky district, is generally risky and expensive. Despite this, in the fall of last year, at the mouth of the Granichnaya ravine, which flows into the Samara River, near the village of Aleksandrovka, a borehole was laid on the land of Mr. Nitskevich, according to the instructions of Mr. Gurov. This well gave the most brilliant results; namely, at a depth of 12 fathoms it encountered a coal formation, and at a depth of 13 ½ fathoms a layer of coal 1 ½ arshins thick. It is clear that such a favorable outcome of the exploration aroused competition among the surrounding residents, and now the entire area adjacent to the Gavrilovka [Kursk-Kharkov-] Azov road is being explored in the most thorough manner.

From this it is clear that the western part of Bakhmut district, and the southwestern part of Izyum district, are currently in the preparatory period of mining activity, and are rich in mountainsYuthan fossils. If we take into account that it is in this part of the Izyum district that is cut through by the Azov road, then the significance of the discovery made by Mr. Gurov increases even more. The development of coal deposits here will not only reduce the cost of mineral fuel in the nearest main consumption points, for example in Kharkov, but will also soon push forward the issue of supplying Moscow with Donetsk coal. The importance of coal deposits in Izyumsky district is further enhanced by the proximity of the Slavic saltworks, where mineral fuel is used to boil down salt.”.

The construction of the Catherine Railway gave impetus to the revival of artisanal coal mining in the Selidovka area. Just like 30 years ago, the area from Kurakhovka to Galitsynivka was covered with “diggings”, the remains of most of which are well preserved to this day, thanks to their location on the right high and steep bank of the Volchya River...

By the beginning of the 80s.XIXcentury, coal areas were planned, which should be served by the future railway: from the Rudnichnaya station of the Konstantinovskaya (from 1880 - Donetsk) railway, through Kurakhovka, the village and the Grishino station of the Ekaterininskaya railway under construction, Zavidovo or Shtepino, and further - in the direction of Aleksandrovka and Gavrilovka station of the Kursko-Kharkovsko-Sevastopol railway.

Western Donbass

The story about the development of Donbass would not be complete if we did not devote at least a few lines to Western Donbass, which is now part of the Dnepropetrovsk region. Like the whole of Novorossiya, this region became part of Russia during the imperial period, but coal was discovered here relatively late, and the full-fledged industrial development of black fuel began only in the middle of the twentieth century. The city of Pavlograd is considered the informal capital of Western Donbass. In addition, major centers of coal mining are Ternovka and Pershotravensk (Shakhterskoye).

It is interesting to note that until now there is no consensus among local historians on the date of foundation of Pavlograd. Some suggest counting from the Matveevka farmstead, founded on the site of the future Pavlograd by the honored Cossack Matvey Khizhnyak shortly after the abolition of the Zaporozhye Sich54. Others point out that the Zaporozhye foreman cannot in any way be considered the founder of the city, whose ancestry should be traced back to the village of Luganskoe55, founded here in 1779, in which the headquarters of the Lugansk pikemen regiment was located.

Regimental Sergeant Major Matvey Khizhnyak himself, or, as he was called in the documents, Khizhnyakovsky, did not manage here for long. His farm was located in a very convenient location on the road from west to east, and therefore in September 1775 the farm was transferred to the rank of a state military settlement. The land became the property of the treasury, and the residents received the status of military villagers. They were exempt from most taxes, but in return they had to send a certain number of horsemen to the royal service.

In return for Matveevka, the former owner received the title of Osadchy, the position of Zemstvo caretaker, as well as the village of Buzinovaya and 5,000 acres of land as property. In addition, he (now as a civil servant) continued to govern the settlement and its surroundings, and monitored the settlement and colonization of the region. For his labors, he subsequently received the rank of captain and ended his life as a respectable and respected man.

In 1779, one and a half thousand people already lived in Matveevka, which made the settlement a large settlement in this still underdeveloped region. Moreover, a significant part of the inhabitants were soldiers of one of the companies of the Lugansk pike regiment, who appeared here around 1770. At the end of the decade, the regiment's headquarters was transferred here from Bakhmut, and at the end of 1780 or in the first half of 1781, the expanded Matveevka became the Lugansk settlement. It is interesting to note that the regiment at that time was commanded by Colonel Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutuzov, who later became famous as the conqueror of Napoleon. At his new place of service, Kutuzov received ownership of the land on which he built the village of Mikhailovka. In 1780 there were 10 courtyards, in which forty people lived. In 1783, the Lugansk and Poltava pike regiments were combined into one, called the Mariupol Light Horse Regiment, which was still located in the settlement. The regiment commander remained Kutuzov, who remained in the Donbass until August 1785, when he was transferred to a new duty station.

In 1780, a hundred kilometers from Lugansk, at the confluence of the Solona River and the Volchya River, a fortification was built, called Pavlograd. However, in 1784, the fortification was renamed Pavlovskaya Sloboda, and the village of Luganskoye was named Pavlograd. At the same time, the settlement received the status of a city and a county center.

An idea of ​​what the region looked like at this time can be given to us by the “Description of the cities of the Azov province,” which says56: “ The land is fertile, but according to the news of the settlement of both state-owned and landowner villages, it is not yet sufficiently cultivated. There are plenty of small common fish in rivers and lakes. There are no forests at all, except for a small amount of blackthorn, elderberry and blackberry, and they are delivered for the building from other places, and the villagers make mud huts, braiding them with brushwood and covering them with clay. They heat themselves with straw and reeds, and grow trees of various kinds by planting and sowing. Residents practice arable farming and cattle breeding, obtaining food from it».

Since Pavlograd stood at the intersection of important communication routes from Yekaterinoslav to Bakhmut and from Kharkov to the coast, it quickly grew and became rich, turning into the economic and administrative center of the region. However, after the start of the industrial boom in the second half of the nineteenth century, Pavlograd found itself in the shadow of the rapidly growing cities of the central Donbass, which grew rich in coal mining and metal production.

Pavlograd remained primarily an agrarian and trading city. Residents grew bread, were engaged in cattle breeding and gardening. Several dozen wind and water mills provided the region with flour. The city was famous for its horses; it was not for nothing that a grazing horse was placed on the first coat of arms of Pavlograd, approved in 1811. Fairs were held here three times a year, lasting four days.

In the mid-nineteenth century, a tobacco factory was opened in Pavlograd, and in the early 1860s there were 5 lard factories, 2 candle factories, 2 tanneries, 2 brick factories and a tobacco factory. In 1874, a railway was built through the city, which revived provincial life, but still Pavlograd continued to remain an agricultural settlement that did not stand out in any way among other settlements in Novorossiya. Only at the very end of the 19th century did the first industrial enterprises begin to appear in the city: factories for the production of chaises and agricultural machinery. So Pavlograd began to transform from an agricultural city into a commercial and industrial city.

At the turn of the century, the entire industry of the city produced products worth 2,064,700 rubles, which was a very modest amount for Donbass. For example, enterprises in Lugansk produced products worth 11,310,266 rubles, and Mariupol - 9,777,590 rubles. But in Pavlograd, trading offices were actively developing, of which there were four times more than industrial production, so that in terms of the total number of operating companies and their turnover, Pavlograd was second only to a few Donbass cities. The main goods of local businessmen were grain, flour, eggs, leather and groceries.

Founded in 1775, the Ternovka settlement remained an ordinary settlement until 1959, when the first exploration mine was opened here. In 1964, the first industrial mine was built in Ternovka, and the following year the construction of the giant West Donbass mine began. A mining settlement grew up next to the mines, which received city status in 1976.

It is difficult to overestimate the importance of Western Donbass for modern Ukraine. Especially now, during the war, when a significant part of the coal enterprises ended up in the occupied territories.

Today, 10 mines in Western Donbass produce half of the country’s black gold. But even long before current events, the creation of Western Donbass became a significant milestone in the development of not only the Dnieper region, but also the neighboring industrial regions - Donetsk and Zaporozhye.

The fact is that about a hundred years ago geologists discovered the most powerful Western Donbass coal deposit in close proximity to the metallurgical megacities into which Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye, Krivoy Rog and Dneprodzerzhinsk, which was catching up with them, were rapidly turning. And metallurgists, on whom the Ukrainian economy rested for many decades, needed coke for smelting steel and cast iron, as well as electricity produced at thermal power plants - also, by the way, powered by thermal coal. And the deposit of this black gold turned out to be, one might say, close to the metallurgical giants of the Dnieper region.

And so, in the early 50s, geologists, having come to the conclusion that the reserves of the Western Donbass deposit, covering more than 12 thousand square kilometers (that is, more than a third of the area of ​​the entire Dnieper region), were huge (the estimated reserve reaches 25 billion tons of coal), gave good for its development. And in 1952, on the outskirts of the village of Ternovka (which later turned into a city of 30,000), they began construction of the first exploration mine. And already in 1959 the first ton of coal was mined there.

Since then, the predominantly agricultural eastern part of the Dnepropetrovsk region began to rapidly transform. And in fifty years it has changed beyond recognition. The population of the largest industrial center on the left bank of the Dnieper region - 45 thousand people Pavlograd - increased two and a half times by the 90s. New cities with a population of thirty thousand appeared - Ternovka and Pershotravensk. The population of mining villages has grown significantly, such as Bogdanovka, Boguslav, Nikolaevka...

In addition to 11 mines, other coal mining enterprises were built: the Pavlogradskaya central processing plant, the Dneproshakhtostroy plant, the Pershotravensky RMZ and others. More than 30 thousand local residents received well-paid jobs there. In general, some half a century after the start of construction of the first mine, the once agricultural hinterland turned into the most modern coal basin in Ukraine. With accumulated powerful scientific and production potential, which was preserved even in such a time of crisis.

Since 2005, 10 mines in Western Donbass have been part of the private company DTEK. Over 11 years, the owner invested UAH 12 billion in their development. Thanks to this, Pavlogradugol is now the leader of the coal industry in Ukraine; labor and industrial records are being set here to this day, the most modern technologies, unique even for Europe, are being introduced - for example, a plow coal mining complex, a frontal niche-cutting complex or monorail transport.

Our mines still have to work and work!

No matter how much we talk about the technological revolution, which also affected mining, there are still many people living in captivity of stereotypes that prevent them from adequately perceiving real life.

On the eve of the professional miners' holiday, let's analyze the veracity of at least a few myths about miners and their work.

Myth one. Miner's work is hard, mechanical, thoughtless.

Many people have an outdated perception of mining work. They say the guys are waving pickaxes, shoveling coal, and at best, armed with jackhammers.

But this is no longer the case. But basically, labor in underground mines is not only mechanized as much as possible - it is also computerized. They are no longer digging into the ground and cutting down coal with pickaxes and jackhammers, but with huge combines stuffed with electronics, reminiscent of self-propelled guns. A shovel is used only occasionally - for example, to clear spilled coal from a working.

The workings are equipped with modern underground conveyors through which coal is delivered. When the development of the industry was just beginning, it was done by horse teams. During the construction of the mines of Western Donbass (60 years ago), they were no longer used. Now coal is delivered to the mountain by fast underground conveyors. People are transported by trains, which in the old fashioned way are called “carriages”.

And at the Stepnoy mine, an overhead monorail was introduced, which greatly facilitates the transportation of materials and equipment and makes the work of operating personnel as safe as possible.

Since complex modern equipment now operates in mines, this requires specific knowledge and skills from miners. For a long time now, everyone has not been allowed into the mine. It’s not enough to just be a healthy person (after all, underground work requires good physical shape). Before descending into the underground workings, miners are checked by doctors. And at the slightest drop in blood pressure they leave it on the surface. Not to mention even a slight degree of alcoholic intoxication. Then the culprit is fired - and it is unlikely that he will be hired at another mine. Therefore, the issue of drinking alcohol in miners’ groups has also long been a myth. Work and alcohol are incompatible things for miners, just like for professional drivers.

In addition to good health and work culture, modern miners also need to have professional training, to understand mechanics and electronics. According to statistics, every second miner in Western Donbass has a higher or vocational education.

Now miners are the real elite of the working class in the region. Most miners are educated, disciplined people who lead a healthy lifestyle. Among them are many athletes who defend not only the honor of an enterprise or city, but even the honor of the entire country. For example: Grigory Lobachev, mining foreman of DTEK Mine "Ternovskoe" - European champion in the double event among amateur men in the 95 kg weight category, silver medalist of the European Kettlebell Lifting Championship among veterans aged 45-59 years; Yuri Denichenko, a veteran miner from Pavlograd, is a seven-time world champion in kettlebell lifting.

Myth two. Coal in Western Donbass is running out. The mines will soon be closed. The region faces unemployment and extinction.

The industrial reserves of the Zapadnodonbasskoye coal deposit amount to 699.2 million tons, which, at the current level of production, represents a supply of coal for 56 years. This is evidenced by the multimillion-dollar investments that DTEK is making in the development of production. Private capital would not invest money in a hopeless business.

And finally. Even the following fact testifies to the huge reserves of coal in the Western Donbass deposit: initially (in 1962), the designers planned to build 22 (!) mines in the region. The productivity of each was supposed to be 1,300 thousand tons of coal per year. Today, 10 mines in the region produce about 18 million tons of sunstone per year.

So, the mines of the Dnieper region still have to work and work!

Sometimes a small fragment of memory triggers an avalanche in response. Fragments of your past life are woven into your life today and sometimes a very interesting picture is created. So a short memory associated with pigeons caused a small stream, as it filled, very interesting facts were revealed. Which I have not compared before. Judge for yourself:

In 1987, our department began sinking a shaft at the Menzhinsky mine in Pervomaisk, Lugansk region.The barrel was gorgeous. Eight meters deep, a little more than a kilometer deep. For each cycle during its construction (four meters of penetration) we laid and detonated half a ton of explosives. It was time for perestroika, but clouds were just beginning to gather over the Union. Without straining too much, we walked sixty to seventy meters a month. And the salary was six hundred - seven hundred rubles. Those Soviet ones. And I, with a little more than two years of experience as a tunneler, received the same salary as everyone else. Against the background of the fact that three years ago my salary was two hundred and forty.

At the end of the Union, a project for a deep reconstruction of this mine was developed. Even though the mine had passed its centenary, there was still a lot of coal there.

This mine dates back to 1872. The mine built at that time was named by the female name “Maria.” And since it was one of the deepest at that time, they began to call it Maria Glubokaya. And the mine was unofficially called that until its last breath. Maria was built next to the village of Petromaryevka, which gradually grew and turned into the city of Pervomaisk.

There is another legend that explains why this mine was named so.

“There was a worker at the mine, Yevsey, who came here to work from the Oryol region, where he had a wife. He was young and he hid the fact that he had a wife and began to walk with the foreman’s daughter Maria. After some time, his legal wife conveyed the news to Yevsey that she was going to him. Yevsey got scared and decided to get rid of Maria. He took her to the steppe and threw her into an old pit. The girl survived. Then, disguised as a guy, she got a job where Yevsey worked. There she appeared to her killer. Yevsey got scared, quit his job and began to say that a ghost was wandering underground in the mine. From then on, the mine began to be called Maria."

Until now, the coal reserves of this mine underground are estimated at 70 - 80 million tons. And what kind of one, too. High-quality coking, low-sulfur. Therefore, despite its depth and the hellish working conditions underground (the temperature in the mine faces reaches forty degrees), no one dares to sign her death warrant.

According to the reconstruction project, it was planned to add two more shafts to the two old ones. One of them was ready by the time construction of the second began. It was held in the suburban village of Borschevatoye. Now this village is located on the front line and regularly appears in military reports under the name Kalinovo-Borschevatoye. When the first shaft was built to a depth of nine hundred meters, working in the mine became much easier. Ventilation has improved. If the second shaft had been completed, the mine would probably have remained operational and there would have been a real war over its ownership. She was worth it. But there were two fires at the mine. The second fire raged for several months. The fire was such that it was impossible to even get close to the source of combustion. Everything in that wing burned out. Moreover, the fire went up the third trunk. The heat was such that all the metal structures in the trunk melted and the concrete support began to collapse from the heat. To prevent the trunk from collapsing completely, it was covered with rock. And from then on, clouds began to gather over the mine.

Drilling of the fourth shaft was completed by the end of 1989. And simultaneously with the excavation, they began to prepare metal structures to fill it with beams, beams to which conductors are attached, rails or long box-shaped beams along which the cage or skip runs. But perestroika struck and mine construction began. We call the installation of metal structures in a shaft reinforcement. After four or six meters, a tier is installed. After installing the tier, conductors are suspended from the beams. And after that the trunk is closed and the installation of the pile driver begins. After the pile driver is mounted from the barrel, the conductors are connected to the pile driver conductors. The cage or skip is attached and the shaft begins to live the life of a mine. But this trunk did not live to see that happy moment. Perestroika, Ukraine's independence, and then the fire did their job. But all the metal structures for reinforcement were prepared. Prepared during the late USSR. And they lay there and rusted slowly.

They probably would have found their happiness in Turkey in the form of scrap metal, but that was not fate. When we began to complete the construction of the shaft in Pavlogradugol, these metal structures came in very handy. After a little rework, they all found a new life in another mine. And they live there to this day. Just like this mine itself lives and produces coal. So Pervomaisk and Pershotravensk involuntarily became brothers, next to which at the mine it all found a second life. CHECK OUT THE GAME OF DESTINY. THE DYING MINE OF PERVOMAYSK GAVE ITS PART TO THE DYING MINE OF PERSHOTRAVENSK (ALSO PERVOMAYSK, ONLY IN UKRAINIAN) AND THIS SAVED ITS LIFE!

And what gratitude was there from the non-brothers to Pervomaisk for this noble deed? When the non-brothers approached Pervomaisk in 2014, they turned it into ruins with cannons. This is such Ukrainian gratitude!

A long time ago, when I was writing my series “Coal of Ukraine,” I briefly reviewed the Western Donbass. A slight desire to return to this topic appeared after writing the previous post. In which I wrote about the work we did at one of the mines in Western Donbass. I wrote that the shaft that we were completing was not drilled using the classic shaft method, but using drilling. In the USSR, a lot of work was done to find alternative methods for sinking shafts. Several types of vertical roadheaders have been developed. But all of them were built in single copies and most of them died without reaching the end of the designed depth of the trunk. It turned out to be a difficult task.

In Western Donbass they used the drilling method. Shafts had been drilled before. But they mostly drilled small-diameter shafts for ventilation. But in this case, they used the method for full-fledged shafts through which the entire mine worked. It didn’t work out, due to insufficient experience and poor controllability of the working tool. The barrel was moving and moving very much. Why was all this done? It's simple. To reduce costs during the construction of mines. After all, shaft sinking took the lion's share of the funds allocated for construction. It's a very expensive business.

And one more remarkable fact. The decision itself to begin the development of Western Donbass. After all, by this time the main Donbass was providing a decent amount of coal. Kuzbass has improved and Ekibastus has started to work. To say that the coals of Western Donabsaa were distinguished by some special quality is not true. Ordinary gas coals. And the layers are not quite of outstanding thickness. Around a meter. Did the construction and operation of mines somehow solve the employment problem? The same cannot be said. This was not a region in which there was a shortage of work. Moreover, to begin construction, a large number of Kuzbass miners were resettled and they actually built mines there at the first stage. Industrialization of local collective farmers? Same question. But they started and there was a reason for it.

According to the master plan, Western Donbass was planned to be opened with small mines, of which about fifty were to be set up. And their lifespan would be limited to twenty-five to thirty years. Small compared to mines in other regions. In general, just continuous questions.

And there was one more problem: high water content. Surface waters and quicksand. And very aggressive underground water, highly mineralized. Which, among other things, had to be put somewhere after pumping it out of the mine.

But this decision had its own logic, completely invisible from the outside. Small mines open up a smaller amount of water table area compared to large mines and make it easier to pump out water. They make it less expensive. An untouched area is left between the mines. T.n. rear sights. So that they don't steal each other's coal. These pillars give, at least slightly, stability to the mined-out space throughout the entire region. A smaller amount of mined-out lavas, a smaller amount of water accumulates in the extinguished lavas and collapsed space.

And all this was done in order to give the mines a second, main life. Because underneath the coal seams there was something that made the opening of Western Donbass expedient. After mining the coal reserves, the mine was put up for reconstruction. And here the issue of lower initial costs began to play a role. The total costs of reprofiling the mines became smaller. The trunks deepened, new horizons were built and forward. For gingerbread...

But the plans, like many other things, were disrupted by the reconstruction. The mines went to Ukraine and it dealt with them as it did with all the many Soviet legacies. It seems that the universe allowed the emergence of a separate state, Ukraine, to clearly demonstrate to everyone how not to build a state and how not to live in it. So that everyone would look and see all this clearly.

The main, secondary target, the mines of Western Donbass in Ukraine, was safely destroyed. There were no funds for further construction of small mines, and they didn’t really strive for it. Instead of fifty mines, only eleven were built. One of which is closed. And several million cubic meters of water accumulated in it. The mines worked, they raked out coal, and the mine fields of previously planned small mines were added to the mined-out space of the working mines. Aquifers were opened up over a larger area. There was a very large amount of water. The costs of pumping it out increased. A huge amount of water has accumulated in the waste spaces. And all this made the further, main life of the mines of Western Donbass impossible.

Now, due to current circumstances, Ukraine lacks coal. And coal is removed from the remaining mines at an increased speed. Bringing about the demise of a very large region whose mines employ a large number of people. And the hour is not far when the mines of Western Donbass will stop. And if anyone thinks that this is still far away, let them not be deceived. Those mines have ten to fifteen years left to live.

On the right is a skip shaft, in which individual parts of the Menzhinsky mine have found a second life. And I, chatted between these two trunks for ten years. Both on the ground and underground.

Before talking about the realities of the current Donbass, where we got to not without adventure, it would not be amiss to remember its history: as very often happens, its current turn is by no means the only possible one, but quite logical. Some of the photos are from 2011, they differ in the more luscious vegetation.

The weighty word “Donbass”, similar to some kind of industrial sound, is just an abbreviation for “Donetsk coal basin”, the name of which was given in turn by the Seversky Donets, which, together with the lower reaches of the Don, formed the river known to the ancient Greeks, the then border of Europe and Asia in northeastern corner of the Oikumene. This is what it looks like in Kamensk-Shakhtinsky, one of the main cities of Eastern Donbass, which remained part of Russia with the collapse of the USSR. There is also the Western Donbass in the Dnepropetrovsk region (center - Pavlograd), the Northern Donbass in the territory controlled by Ukraine and the Central, or Old, Donbass itself, where the DPR and LPR arose. On my last visit in the summer of 2011, I showed the Seversky Donets in Slobozhansky and, that is, above the Donbass, and this time, on the contrary, below:

But the history of Donbass itself, although very turbulent, is short-lived. For the previous several thousand years, the Wild Field lay here, the very heart of that part of it that was known in Ancient Rus', and even in pre-Russian times - one of the centers of Scythia. The main river of the DPR is Kalmius, with which they identify either the chronicle Kalka, on which ours were first beaten by the Mongols in 1223, or the mythical Kayala, on which the arrogant Prince Igor was captured by the Polovtsians... In the current overpopulation, endless fields and forest shelves, it is already difficult to imagine the spirit ancient steppe. In Novoazovsk, the reserve workers persuaded us to go to the Khomutovskaya Steppe branch, where those landscapes were preserved untouched, but we regretted our time.

The steppe seems empty only to the untrained eye - in fact, it is permeated with history, and its symbol is the mounds, now sandwiched among plowed fields:

People knew that the dead were or were once buried in the mounds, and a Cossack or a merchant would hardly have been able to distinguish an artificial mound from a lonely hill, especially with some kind of swollen ancient settlement on top - that’s why the high hills here are traditionally called “graves.” , be it the legendary Saur-Mogila or the mysterious Maidanova Mogila in the north of the Lugansk region, with the capture of which one user from Kassad’s comments identified the end of the current unrest.

In the no longer Wild Field there are even mysterious things - for example, the Krasnodon Wall, about which local scientists argue whether these are really ancient ruins or just a rock of such an unusual shape:

And of course - stone women, abundantly accumulating near local museums. The largest collection of them is not at all in Dnepr (opetrovsk), but in Lugansk in the courtyard of the local university.

Over time, the nomads were replaced by the Cossacks - it seems to me that the most convincing version of their origin is that weakening tribes like the Pechenegs, when new, more numerous and fierce nomads like the Polovtsians came from the depths of the steppe, themselves came under the protection of Kiev, becoming its vassals beyond the Serpentine Wall , and those who had nothing to lose there fled to them for “freedom” from Rus'. Over time, the fugitive Slavs completely replaced the nomads, but retained part of their way of life, and the floodplains of the Dnieper and Don became their strongholds, a sort of river Tortugas, and in the 15-16 centuries, taking shape respectively into the Zaporozhye Sich and the Don Army. But the future Donbass was far from both rivers and from the road to Crimea, so it remained, in general, a nobody’s place; both a Cossack in trousers and a Don in a beshmet walked along its steppes. There was enough land for everyone, and who was the founder of most of the Cossack villages of the future Donbass is still debated, but more or less en masse people began to move here from Ukraine in the 17th century, to the future Tor (Slavyansk) and Bakhmut. Even then, since 1625, a valuable resource was mined here - but not black coal, but white salt, for which the north of the Donetsk region (Soledar) is still famous. By that time the stone women had been replaced by the same stone crosses:

The first coal near present-day Lisichansk was discovered in 1721 by Grigory Kapustin and Vladimir Ladygin at the head of one of the many expeditions sent by Peter the Great to all ends of the immensity. But for the industry of that time, charcoal was quite enough, and its centers were thousands of miles away from here. The life of the Kalmius palanka - the name given to the eastern periphery of the Zaporozhye nomadic camps with its center in the Domakha fortress near present-day Mariupol - flowed as usual for most of the 18th century, but even now, between the industrial areas, there are still many such patriarchal-looking corners of the "pre-Donbass" era, which have become especially noticeable now that people drive along country roads to bypass cut roads from city to city:

The next turn occurred in the 1770s, with the defeat of the Zaporozhye Sich and the conquest of the Crimean Khanate, when it came to the Wild Field. It was not at all similar to the present one, and its first inspiration in the future Donbass was the numerous settlers - Catherine and Potemkin planned to create in these steppes something like a small America for the Orthodox peoples of the Ottoman Empire, ready to move from under its yoke. Greeks from Crimea settled in the Azov steppes, Mariupol became their new “capital,” but there are several Greek villages on the territory of the DPR, primarily Starobeshevo, where our driver was from, indeed half Greek.

10. Mariupol-2011.

At the other end of the future Donbass, even earlier, in the 1750s (that is, before the defeat of Zaporozhye), on the lands deserted after the Bulavin uprising along Bakhmutka and Lugan, Slavyanoserbia arose - together with New Serbia, near present-day Kirovograd, founded by Orthodox soldiers from the Balkans invited by Elizabeth. As an autonomy, it did not last even ten years, but the city of Slavyanoserbsk, the Slavyanoserbsky district with its center in Lugansk, and numerous abandoned estates of nobles of Serbian origin remained (the founders of the colony were Ivan Shevich and Rajko de Preradovich, but many other noble families came with them) every now and then you come across in the LPR and Lugansk region:

11. satellite city of Lugansk Aleksandrovsk, 2016.

And the year of birth of Donbass itself can be considered 1795 - then, by decree of Catherine II, coal mining began in Lisya Balka, and the first metallurgical plant in the south of the Russian Empire grew up in Lugan - now it is Lisichansk and Lugansk, respectively. This building behind the Dahl monument, now known as the Hydropathic Hospital, has had many uses over its history, but was originally built for the Mining Department - perhaps, if not for the death of the Empress, an industrial area modeled on the Urals would have already begun to be created here.

Separate small mines arose here and there in the following decades, but it is not entirely obvious that the “father” of the second birth of Donbass was the same Novorosssk governor Mikhail Vorontsov, better known from Pushkin’s places of Crimea and Odessa - by his decree in 1841 near the village of Aleksandrovka almost a capital mine was founded in the center of present-day Donetsk. The oldest existing mine, if I’m not mistaken, can be considered the former Sofievsky mine (1858) in the village of Karlo-Marksovo between Gorlovka and Yenakiev:

The mines were then founded in the lands of landowners, and in this case the name goes back to the owner Sofia Raevskaya, and for example, a good half of the current DPR in those days belonged to the glorious Ilovaisky family from the elders of the Don Cossacks, who gave the name to the station Ilovaisk. There is an opinion that the old Donbass was part of the lands of the Don Army Region, but this is not entirely true - in the 1790s its steppes were divided between the Ekaterinoslav province...

14. Potemkin Palace in Dnepropetrovsk (Ekaterinoslav), 2016.

And the region of the Don Army:

15. Novocherkassk, November 2008.

In principle, 2/3 of Donbass belonged to the Yekaterinoslav region, including Lugansk (formerly the center of the county) and Yuzovka (present-day Donetsk) on the Kalmius River that separated the two regions. But look at the outlines of that border on a modern map - doesn’t it remind you of anything? Coal seams stretched mainly along the border of the provinces, protruding towards Ekatrinoslavskaya..

But their real, “shock” development began later, when the railways came here. In 1869, the first train ran along the Kharkov-Taganrog line, which turned into the backbone of Donbass:

And in 1878, the first train reached Lugansk along the Donetsk Coal Railway:

Since the climate then was much harsher, and the steppe was bare, snowy and windy, the footage of the development of Donbass is more reminiscent of neither Dauria nor that:

But it could not have been worth it: now the coal era is behind us, but it is not entirely clear HOW great the importance of combustible stone was in the 19th century. For a century and a half since the invention of Watt's steam engine, coal quickly became the main fuel for literally everything: factories, city apartments, ships, steam locomotives... In those days, oil was already extracted in some places, but the role of oil in the modern world in those days was played by coal, that is, Donbass became a kind of Persian Gulf of the 19th century.

The only difference is that coal mining, compared to oil mining, even now, and even more so then, requires much more hands and much less qualifications of an individual worker. Therefore, coal mines began to attract workers from all over the empire and even from distant Asia - primarily the Chinese and Persians. The Chinese enriched the local toponymy with the term “Shanghaika” - that is, an undeveloped spontaneous area. But the miners lived in huts and dugouts, because " ...four years later, in the fifth, half of the village went to the mines and cities, and half to the forests - there was a crop failure. (...) But this time the drought repeated the following year. The village locked its huts and went out into the highway in two detachments - one detachment went to beg in Kyiv, the other went to Lugansk to earn money"(Andrey Platonov, "Chevengur").

Did you know that the song about the tanker “We will be pulled out from under the rubble...” is just a military rehash, but in the original it was sung about a miner:
Horns buzzed alarmingly, people poured in in a thick crowd
And the young horseman was carried with a broken head... - but I don’t remember whether the refrain was repeated many times in it or not in it " Ah, mine, mine - you are a grave!", and of course, the “grave” here was not at all in the same sense as a few paragraphs above. The miners lit their way with a torch, beat the rock with a pick, dragged the forcing with horses and winches and hardly knew much about how to avoid a rock burst or methane flash. They even had their own protector spirit, the so-called Good Shubin, in the form of a grumpy bearded grandfather in a fur coat, running on his hooves along the ceiling, warning of danger. I heard that the real Shubin was a gas burner - they usually took on dead people for this job, bitter drunkards, and the gas-burner looked like this: a thick fur coat with fur inside, generously poured with water and a torch in front of him on a long stick. Catastrophic collapses and fires, in which hundreds and even thousands of people died, were then not uncommon in mines all over the world, and in Donbass from they suffered even less than the same Ruhr.

The industry also gave birth to the main feature of the Donbass landscapes - waste heaps, that is, dumps of rock from mines that dug hundreds of meters into the ground. Their height reaches up to 80 meters, old waste heaps are mostly flat (their tops are specially rolled out to weaken air draft) with protruding remains of compacted rock:

Operating waste heaps usually rise in regular cones. There is something smoldering inside the waste heaps, they can burn (with smoke like an active mine), very rarely even explode (like small volcanoes), others, they say, glow a little at night... The second element of the mining landscape is a pile driver, a tower with mechanisms shafts, and a metal tower with a wheel that lifts the cage. The unique slang of Donbass was born in the mines, words like “brake”, “drill”, “on-mountain”, “prokhodka”, “empty” and much more were later spread throughout the Russian language.

In addition to coal and cheap labor, the former Wild Field was also rich in iron, known since the 18th century, but its true extent was discovered only in 1866 by entrepreneur Alexander Pol. Coal and iron ore are the two main components needed to make steel, so after the mines and railways, Big Metallurgy came here. In the sultry steppe, Molochs, described in the story of the same name by Alexander Kuprin, began to appear one after another.

And since a metallurgical plant, compared to a coal mine, required much more qualified personnel, “colonies” began to grow next to the Molochs - later the historical centers of many cities. Their landscape cannot be confused with anything:

Although the rows of public toilets stretching beyond the horizon at the barracks have sunk into oblivion:

And the surviving permanent houses, as I understand it, were more likely for professional workers and engineers, and not for hungry migrant workers, for whom shacks and dugouts would suffice. Colonies usually also had public buildings such as schools and hospitals:

And of course the house of the manager, who looked through the wide windows as his factory smoked, enjoying the stench of emissions, because for him all this scale smelled like money... The patina of centuries-old soot is an integral part of the Donbass colonies:

Of course, there were churches here:

And - churches of other faiths. It is no secret that foreign capital played a key role in the development of Donbass; the Russian Empire at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries resembled in this sense China in the 1990s and 2000s, where European and American bigwigs moved their production, taking advantage of the cheapness of labor and the lack of rights of workers. The largest Russian factory owner in Donbass was Alexey Alchevsky, but in 1901 his shares collapsed, the tsarist government refused support, and he committed suicide. The colonies were truly colonies - French (Makeevka), Belgian (Yenakievo), British (Yuzovka-Donetsk), American (Mariupol)... Here is the Belgian church in Yenakievo:

And here is an English school in Donetsk. On the trip we met a man with the patronymic name Dzhimovich (although he was more likely a Georgian than a descendant of Welsh engineers).

And although other settlements near factories, all these conglomerates of villages, colonies and Shanghais, by the end of the Russian Empire had grown to tens of thousands of inhabitants, officially there were still only five cities listed here - Lugansk, Bakhmut, Mariupol and the provincial Slavyanoserbsk in the Ekaterinoslav province, again ordinary Slavyansk is in Kharkov, but from the side of the Don Army, the entire Donbass fits into the Taganrog district. The actual capital of Donbass was Kharkov, where the offices of the largest coal and metallurgical companies such as Produglya were located, but first of all the Council of the Congress of Miners of the South of Russia - a semi-official body that adjusted the work of the industrial complex scattered across different provinces and the monopoly conspiracies of its owners. I managed not to see his building on Sumskaya Street on that visit, so here is his other, already Soviet successor in gray, stylish Kharkov:

But in general, imagine that in China during the times of Xiaoping or Zemin, there would have been, among other things, one of the largest oil regions in the world, developing with the same methods and pace - and you will understand what the Donbass of that time was like.

In essence, the same “whole world of hungry people and slaves branded with a curse” flocked here, and these were people from different provinces and different nations. For example, in the mines of present-day Africa, hard workers from many different tribes developed their own language of several hundred words... The “blank slate” effect, the lack of influence of the “old” environment, also affected - the Donbass industry, built in the previously sparsely populated steppe, became a “melting pot” not only in the literal, but also in the figurative sense - here, even in the most tsarist times, with the most capitalist methods, that same “new man” was smelted and forged, whose class identity stood above all others. First of all, he was a proletarian, and only then - Russian, Ukrainian, Chinese, Siberian...
Donbass was the only place in Ukraine where mosques were built in many not very large cities:

I think it’s not even worth explaining that the “heart of Russia” was also one of the epicenters of the Civil War... but here, too, everything happened in its own way. Almost the entire East of present-day Ukraine was then part of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic, unlike many other similar short-lived Soviet autonomies, built not on a national, but on a territorial-production principle. It was headed by Bolshevik Comrade Artyom (Fyodor Sergeev), who returned from Australia for the occasion. Perhaps he was a kind of symbol of this principle, and at least in the Donbass he will give Lenin a head start in toponymy, and over Svyatogorsk rises an absolutely stunning constructivist monument, which I nicknamed Artyom the Multifaceted:

Well, the 1920-30s in the country of victorious socialism were, perhaps, the heyday of Donbass. The romance of that era is well conveyed by Dziga Vertov’s film “Enthusiasm. Symphony of Donbass” (1931), such a documentary phantasmagoria with an abundance of colorful faces and fantastic industrial landscapes.

And here is its modern and greatly abbreviated remake:

I have heard more than once from Ukrainians that after the famine of the 1930s (aka the Holodomor), all sorts of declassed elements from Russia, of course, were purposefully brought to the Donbass, that is, the Donetsk people were supposedly not Ukrainians initially, but “criminals from the Urals.” Well, there really were a lot of declassed elements and criminals here, this was facilitated by dangerous and low-skilled mining work, but still, let’s not forget that Stalin’s industrialization occurred in the same years, and the great construction projects of the USSR were conceived as the same “melting pots” peoples In general, a different cultural environment was developing in the Donbass compared to the rest of the Ukrainian SSR: 90% of the population were city dwellers, 50% were Russian by origin, and the majority were newcomers from somewhere in the recent past. In essence, the Soviet experiment in reshaping human identity was a success in Donbass; its first stage was realized - the victory of Class over Nation:

The urban environment of Donbass is very monotonous and very recognizable. The colonies were supplemented by Socialist Cities:

The place of the temples was taken by the Palaces of Culture with their dedications to both heroes and professions:

A separate entity is almost always constructivist Palaces of Science and Technology of locomotive depots, mandatory in railway cities:

Trams rang through the mining villages, still the same one-story, unkempt ones (see Gryphon).

Monuments to labor heroes here are a little less popular than monuments to war heroes, and on the pedestal you can see not only an old tank, but also a mining machine (here the coal Donbass is reminiscent of oil and gas Yugoria with its monuments to pioneer builders and geologists and all-terrain vehicles on pedestals):

In addition to mines and factories (including chemical and mechanical engineering), an important part of the landscape are the giant state district power plants that dominate the steppe for tens of kilometers - this one, for example, near Starobeshev:

In general, the Heart of Russia became the Heart of the USSR, although its share in the country gradually fell. I would say that if in the 1930s the USSR was first of all Donbass, and only then everything else, then by the end of the Soviet era it was already just the largest industrial complex. The first blow to Donbass was dealt by industrialization itself, which launched, with the help of Donetsk residents, several new coal basins (such as ) and giant metallurgical plants (such as Magnitogorsk). The second blow was the war, when many Donbass enterprises were destroyed or evacuated to the Urals, Siberia or Central Asia. Then the importance of coal began to steadily decline: railways switched to diesel traction, ships and ships switched to diesel power plants, power plants switched to fuel oil and gas. And yet, Yasinovataya near Donetsk remained the largest marshalling station in the entire USSR, and the railway network of the Donetsk region was the densest in the Union:

They say that from a purely economic point of view, the post-Soviet Donbass was doomed - its coal is too deep, the best deposits have been exhausted, and therefore cannot compete with the coal of Kuzbass or. In the Russian part of Donbass, the collapse of the coal industry was no less, although the cities somehow survive. But metallurgy has not gone away, and in Ukraine there was a cunning scheme - the state subsidizes unprofitable mines, coal from them goes to entirely private factories, and as a result, Ukrainian steel was cheaper and therefore more competitive abroad, returning subsidies to the country with export income. A powerful oligarchic clan was formed in Donetsk, led by Rinat Akhmetov, a descendant of the Volga Tatars who came to the local mines in Soviet times... but everyone already knows this story.

In the rest of Ukraine, there is now an opinion that the “Donetsk people” were going crazy, but this is generally not the case - with the easy money of the oligarchy and Donetsk, which blossomed more abruptly than the Russian million-plus population, coexisted with poverty and lawlessness in the outback. For example, one of the phenomena of the post-Soviet Donbass is the diggings, or “holes,” that is, illegal mines under the patronage of bandits. An excavator, however, is nothing - there are also diggings where women (!) work with a pick and a hand winch (and in the magazine at the link, there is really EVERYTHING about them):

And Donbass also stood out for its stunning scale of industrial devastation. Once, a hitchhiker I knew, returning from Chechnya, cautiously said that it was not visible at all that there had been a war. I thought then - and Donbass even in 2011 looked as if the war had already died down here. For example, ruins near Gorlovka - why not “arrive”? But there were 5 years left before the first shots were fired...

In general, behind high fences in squat huts, not very advanced proletarian minds were fermenting:

This also includes the presence of its own elite, which in politics has always relied on pro-Russian and pro-Soviet slogans and sabotaged Ukrainization; This also includes urban identity, which poorly understands the rural cult and rural tragedies of Ukraine; here is the predominance of ethnic Russians and close family ties in Russia; here are all these proletarian values ​​(“We, Donetsk residents, respect work, but you, Dnieper people, have a different mentality, you are traders!”), here is also the resentment towards the capitalists for the collapse of the economy...

This also includes the belief that “Donbass fed the whole of Ukraine” (which is not unfounded - simply its largest industrial center was and remains Mariupol)...

And here is the result - not that inevitable, but under the current circumstances (including the role of Russia and the role of local bandits) - completely logical:

But more about this “result”, that is, about the realities of the DPR and LPR, in the next part.

DONBASS-2016
. Instead of an epigraph.
. Review of the trip and table of contents of the series (including “the other side” of Ukraine).
. Rostov - Uspenka - Amvrosievka - Donetsk.
The torn out heart of the USSR. History and color of Donbass.
DPR and LPR. Realities.
Donetsk
Interior regions of the Donetsk People's Republic
Frontline cities of the DPR
Lugansk People's Republic.