Travel in Donetsk - Ukraine - Europe - History

Donetsk - History

During the period of German Nazi occupation (from October 21st, 1941 up to September 8th, 1943) the city lost more than half of its inhabitants. Only 175 thousand people survived. The capital of industrial Donbass was utterly destroyed. Losses inflicted by the enemy exceeded 4 billion roubles.

First post-war years were times of rapid economic development. Though damages to the city were enormous, already by 1949 the prewar coal output was re-established, and by 1950 the rest of industry was brought up to pre-war standard.

In November 1961 Stalino was renamed Donetsk.

In April 1978 the number of city inhabitants crossed the million mark.

In June 1979 by Decree of the Presidium of USSR Supreme Soviet Donetsk received the Order of Lenin for its great attainments in materializing the industrialization programme.

The year 1869 is traditionally referred to as the date of founding Donetsk (former Hughsofka).

In contrast to many other large cities which were born of the advantages provided by geography and transportation, Donetsk sprang up and developed from a mining and metallurgical industry thanks to rich stores of minerals. In the upper regions of Kalmius river, where the city is located, there were large deposits of coal, and around the settlement of Alexandrovka, founded in 1779, the first coal mines appeared. The residents of other nearby settlements Semyonovka, Lyubimovka (Zakop), Nikolaevka, Ekaterinovka, Grigorievka (Georgievka), and Larinka also provided the labour force to work in the mines.

In 1866 Russian engineer A. Mevius proved the necessity of building iron works on the right bank of Kalmius, not far from Alexandrovka settlement. This site had everything that was necessary; in upper Kalmius there was coal; not far away in Karakuba (today the city of Komsomolsk, in Starobeshevskiy Region) there was iron ore; in the nearby village Elenovka there was lime; and right at hand was river water.

The Tsarist government was unable to deal properly with the land riches. And having estimated all possibilities for making huge profits on cheap coal by cheap labour, foreign concessionaires poured into Donbass.
One of them was the English technician-metallurgist John James Hughes, a manager of a small plant near London.

Having bought or leased the land at profitable terms, he made an agreement with the Committee of Russian Ministers to establish Novorossiysk Coal, Iron and Railway Society, and the Society of the Railway branch of Kharkov-Azov line. In April 1869 the Tsarist government sanctioned an agreement of starting coal mining and building a metallurgy plant. Novorossiysk Society constitutors nominated John Hughes as the manager.

In summer 1869 he settled down on Kalmius bank and built a smithy that became the first production line of the future metallurgical plant.

Materials and equipment arrived to Taganrog and Mariupol from far-away England, to the building site being delivered by carting.

Close to the construction site local people built wooden barracks or huts of sandstone for workers. The English colony of engineers and masters was set up separately. The growing settlement was named Hughsofka, after the manager's name. Later, Hughsofka merged with the mining settlement of Alexandrovka.

Hughsofka plant (today Donetsk Metallurgical plant) was the first to apply a large scale metal processing enterprise in the southern industrial region. By 1874 Hughsofka metallurgic works ranked first in iron-casting among Russian metallurgical enterprises, thus putting the South of the country on the map as a major industrial region. Apart from iron- and steel-production, machine-building and coal-mining were significantly boosted.

Opening railway lines Konstantinovka-Yasinovataya-Hughsofka-Elenovka and Elenovka-Mariupol made possible the further development of metallurgical industry and coal production. In 1899 Hughsofka plant smelted almost 17.7 million poods
(1 pood=16.38kg) of pig iron. On the territory of the settlement there were already nine coal mines that produced 99.2 million pood of coal per year. The same year, a machine building and pig-iron casting plant (today - Donetsk machine building plant named after Lenin's Komsomol of the Ukraine) was built to produce mining equipment.

Today mining and metallurgy are a thriving business and the plant is undergoing a period of rapid modernization changes. For more info please click HERE. Unfortunately the site is only in Russian, but an automated translation available through various software (e.g. Altavista's Babelfish) gives a very close approach to a fully correct translation in English, (a quite understandable one anyway)

Coming back to our historical facts, it might be of interest to know that at that time Hughsofka population was steadily increasing. In 1894 there were 5,494 inhabitants, and by 1897 - already 29,000. The settlement was divided into two parts: in the south was plant with industrial buildings, a train depot, a telegraph, a hospital, a school and cosy houses of English masters; while in the north were workers' houses, a market, taverns and pubs.

In May of 1917, with about 70,000 inhabitants, Hughsofka was given the status of "city.'

In 1924 Hughsofka was renamed Stalino, the number of its inhabitants nearly reaching pre-war value - 63,708. In this year the construction of metallurgical housing 'Standard' was begun along with two- and three-storey houses for miners. Schools, shops, hospitals, culture and other institutions also began to appear.

In 1932 the city became the capital of Donetsk region (since 1938 - Stalin region). Industry developed very rapidly. By 1941 in Stalino there were 223 enterprises under Union and State control, 54 local and cooperative industries. Mines gave 7% of all-Union coal, plants - 5% of steel and 11% of core. City population was 507 thousand people.

click to go back