Donetsk at first sight

Close to the centre of Donetsk stands a huge steelworks, Donetsk Metallur- gical Plant, known locally as Donet- skstal. In a brave attempt to make this industrial behemoth less of an outrage to the senses the plant’s own- ers have built a small pleasure gar- den at the entrance, complete with a pond on which live two swans. Te swans’ plumage is black. Te local humorists enjoy telling credulous visitors that the birds were snowy white when they arrived, but quickly changed colour as the dust and pollu- tion of the plant enveloped them. In fact they are Australian black swans, designed that way by nature. But eve- ryone agrees it would be a shame to spoil a good story.

Te city of Donetsk has a long pedi- gree. It began life as a Cossack village late in the 17th century, and by 1820 small-scale coal mining had start- ed. Te city proper was originally called Yuzovka, aſter John Hughes, the Welshman who is credited with founding it in 1869. In time more skilled workers and technicians ar- rived from Britain to expand the mines and build a steel mill.

6 Warsaw Brest

P O L A N D Lublin

Rzeszow Lviv Ternopil Frankivsk Uzhhorod Chernivtsi Debrecen Baia Mare Oradea Cluj-Napoca

R O M A N I A Sibiu

Brasov

Drobeta-Turnu Severin

Craiova

Te Soviet Union later developed the steel industry enormously. In the sec- ond world war the city (then known as Stalino) suffered grievously, the

C r i m e a Pitesti Bucharest Constanta Sevastopol Yalta B l a c k

population falling from 507,000 to 175,000 as the Nazi invaders came close to destroying it entirely. Col- lective responsibility in those grim

S e a

years meant that for every German soldier killed 100 inhabitants were put to death, and one for every po- liceman killed.

Simferopol Novorossiysk u Suceava Iasi Bacau Balti M O L D O V A

Chisinau Tiraspol

Mykolaiv Kherson Odesa S e a o f A z o v Kerch K Krasnodar Kirovohrad Dnipropetrovsk Kryvyy Rih Kakhovka Res.

Zaporizhzhia Melitopol

Ivano- Khmelnytsky

U K R Vinnitsia

A Cherkasy

IKremenchuk Res. N

E Kremenchuk Slovyansk Donetsk Luhansk

Donetsk Oblast D o n b a s

Rostov-on-Don Mariupol Berdyansk Kovel Kyiv Res. Rivne Zhytomyr Kyiv Kharkiv Pinsk i Soligorsk

B E L A R U S y

p Mozyr Chernihiv Sumy Belgorod Rossosh Gomel

R U S S I A Kursk

Voronezh

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