Donets Basin

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Oblast Donetsk and Luhansk, in which the Ukrainian part of the Donets Basin is located

The Donets Basin ( Ukrainian басейн Донецький , Donezkyj bassejn ; Russian бассейн Донецкий , Donezki Bassein ), also briefly Donbas (Ukrainian Донбас ) or Donbass (Russian Донбасс ) is a large coal - and the industrial area on both sides of the Russian - Ukrainian border.

geography

The Donets Basin is traversed in the northeast by the eponymous Siwerskyj Donets (Russian Severski Donets , also Donets for short ). The river drains over the Don into the Sea of ​​Azov . Within Ukraine, the northern and central parts of Donetsk Oblast , the southern part of Luhansk Oblast and the extreme east of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast belong to the region, on the Russian side it is the western part of Rostov Oblast . The center of Donbass is Donetsk , the fifth largest city in Ukraine. Larger cities (over 100,000 inhabitants) are also Luhansk , Makijiwka , Horlivka , Kramatorsk and Slovyansk as well as Alchevsk , Sjewjerodonezk and Lysychansk .

history

A 1921 poster praises the Donets Basin as the heart of (Soviet) Russia

The coal deposits were discovered at the beginning of the 18th century and have been exploited since 1770. The deposits were an important prerequisite for the expansion of the Russian railway network towards the end of the 19th century.

Since the beginning of the 1930s, hundreds of German miners have been working in the mines of the Donbass , who had committed to work there in view of their unemployment in the Ruhr area. If they did not return by 1935/36, almost all of them became victims of the Stalinist purges .

At the beginning of the Second World War , large industrial companies in the Donets Basin were dismantled and their skilled workers were relocated to Western Siberia in the Kuzbass to protect them from the German attack. The Kuznetsk Basin was transformed into an armaments factory for the Soviet Army . Omsk , Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk as well as other cities behind the Urals developed into important industrial centers. During the Second World War, the Donets Basin was a main target of the Barbarossa company because of its rich coal mines and their strategic importance . The Wehrmacht conquered it in the early autumn of 1941. When enforcing forced labor , the German occupation resorted to the “tried and tested” Stalinist methods practiced until 1941. Two years later the Red Army managed to retake it in the Donets Basin operation .

From 1944 German prisoners of war were interned in camps in Donbass such as Stalino and used for work in the mines. The number of prisoners of war deployed was estimated at 200,000. In 1944–1945, Romanian Germans from Transylvania and the Banat as well as Hungarian Germans from Hungary were transported here and forced to do similar forced labor ; civilians of German descent from Yugoslavia had a similar experience in a camp near Voroshilovgrad . Accidents at work, malnutrition and diseases such as typhus claimed many victims.

Since April 2014, parts of the Donets Basin have been the scene of the war between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian separatists.

economy

To this day, the Donbass is as important for the heavy industry of Ukraine as the iron ore deposits of the Kryvbass west of the Dnieper . In 1999, 36 million tons of coal were mined annually in the Donets region  . On the Russian side, production has declined; in 1999 it was around 10 million tonnes of coal.

The mines, like the steel production facilities, are now out of date due to a lack of maintenance and investment. According to the Ukrainian statistical office, companies in Donbass recorded losses in the first quarter of 2014 that were 37 percent higher than the national average. In absolute terms, they amounted to the equivalent of 1.8 billion euros, around 50 percent more than in the whole of 2013. Industrial production in Donbass fell by 13 percent compared to the same period in the previous year.

Population, Language and Politics - Ukraine

Proportion of residents who speak Russian as their mother tongue, by region (2001 census)

The residents of Russian descent are mainly concentrated in the larger urban centers. In the larger cities and especially in the Oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk, Russian is the dominant mother tongue, although Russian is also used as a lingua franca by many Ukrainians. The great importance of the Russian language in the cities of eastern Ukraine stems from the fact that in the course of industrialization many Russians immigrated to the newly founded cities in this area (especially from the Kursk Oblast ). For example, at the 1897 census, 63.17% of the population of Kharkiv city ​​were of Russian descent. The extent to which the rural Ukrainian population was subsequently forced to emigrate in the Soviet Union and / or to which their death was accepted as a result of an allegedly systematic famine ( Holodomor ) organized by the Stalin regime is the subject of ongoing research controversy , but it is in these two oblasts mostly completely contested. Almost the entire Jewish population, if not fled, was wiped out during the German occupation in World War II.

The proportion of Russian native speakers is higher than that of ethnic Russians, as there are also ethnic Ukrainians and members of other nationalities who state Russian as their mother tongue. The proportion in Donetsk is 74.9% and in Luhansk 68.8%. In 2001 there were large Russian minorities in the Ukrainian regions of 39% in Luhansk and 38.2% in Donetsk .

In Ukrainian politics, the pro-Russian Party of Regions was the strongest party with over 50% of the vote until the outbreak of war in 2014 . This party did not participate in the 2014 parliamentary elections .

literature

  • Kléber Legay: A French miner with the Soviets. Paris 1937.
  • Anatolij M. Mychnenko: Istorija Donbasu (1861-1945 rr). Donec'k 1999.
  • Wilhelm Mensing: From the Ruhr to the GULag. Victims of Stalin's mass terror from the Ruhr area. Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2001, ISBN 3-88474-788-6 .
  • Tanja Penter : The local society in Donbass under German occupation 1941–1943. In: Babette Quinkert, Christoph Dieckmann , Tatjana Tönsmeyer (eds.): Cooperation and crime. Forms of »collaboration« in Eastern Europe 1939–1945. Wallstein, Göttingen 2003, ISBN 3-89244-690-3 .
  • Tanja Penter: Coal for Stalin and Hitler. Working and living in Donbass from 1929 to 1953 (= publications by the Institute for Social Movements. Series C: Labor and Forced Labor in Mining. Volume 8). Klartext-Verlag, Essen 2010, ISBN 978-3-8375-0019-6 .
  • Lyudmila Belkin: Donbass. To the multiplicity in Ukraine . In: Faust culture . January 10, 2015 ( faustkultur.de [accessed on January 13, 2015] Essay (Part I)).
  • Andrew Wilson : The Donbas between Ukraine and Russia. The Use of History in Political Disputes. In: Journal of Contemporary History. Vol. 30. 1995, pp. 265-289.
  • Florian Rainer, Jutta Sommerbauer: Gray Zone - A journey between the fronts in Donbass . Bahoe Books , Vienna 2018, ISBN 978-3-903022-83-6 .

Web links

Commons : Donbass  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Tanja Penter: Working in the Donbass under Stalin and Hitler. Perspectives of a story of experience. In: Babette Quinkert, Jörg Morré (ed.): German occupation in the Soviet Union 1941–1944. War of extermination, reactions, memory. Schöningh, Paderborn 2014, pp. 229–246.
  2. ↑ Hans Horn: As long as the wings carry. Norderstedt 2005, p. 207.
  3. ↑ Report on the page kriegsgefangen.de ( Memento from March 1, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Heinz Schenk: Mining in the Donets Basin - The lot of the German forced laborers - Primitive working conditions underground . In: The time . No. 4 , January 27, 1949, p. 10 ( pdfarchiv.zeit.de [accessed on April 11, 2014]).
  5. ^ Berthold Neff: The moving fate of 165,000 Germans abducted from Southeastern Europe. Only skin and bones left, they staggered through the camp. In: Contributions to the history of the Banat: Abduction. Retrieved April 11, 2014 .
  6. ^ Pavel Polian : The Deportations of German Civilians from Eastern and Southeastern Europe to the Soviet Union. Retrieved April 11, 2014 .
  7. ↑ mbendi.com ( Memento from October 17, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
  8. ↑ Kurakov, Samofalov / Malikov / Kolomiets: Coal mining in the Russian Donetsk Basin. In: Coke and Chemistry. Vol. 53, issue April 2010, pp. 121–123 (English).
  9. ↑ Andreas Kappeler : The children of Soviet communism feel betrayed. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. June 25, 2014.
  10. ↑ 2001 Census: Languages
  11. ↑ 2001 Census: Nationalities
  12. ↑ Ukraine's Party of Regions Refuses to Participate in Rada Elections , September 14, 2014, Sputnik News

Coordinates: 48 ° 0 '  N , 37 ° 48'  E