Ostap Slyvynsky / Donbas coal industry: between a difficult past and an unknown future

Photo: Valentyn Kuzan

Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, which has been ongoing since 2014 and took the form of an open armed invasion in 2022, was from the very beginning centered around the region called Donbas. In Russian (and often also in foreign pro-Russian) media, this region is considered as “having the right to self-determination”, “debatable” or – in line with Putin’s pseudo-history – even “historically Russian”. Russian ideological and political manipulation around Donbas is often compared with the situation around the Georgian regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which also gained pseudo-independence due to military support of the Russian Federation and have remained in their status of unrecognized states under Russian political and military control to the present day. However, the independence aspirations of the peoples of Abkhazia and Ossetia were based on the obvious ethnic identity, cultural and linguistic specificity, which determined the distinctiveness of these groups against the background of the cultural landscape of the region. We cannot see anything like that in Donbas.

What, if any, are the separateness and unity of this region based on? Are there at least minimal reasons for talking about the «people of Donbas», as Russian propaganda is willing to do? In this text, we will try to examine how large-scale industry, primarily fossil-fuel industry, by creating entire regions with largely unstable identity, can influence cultural and political processes, sometimes with global consequences.

For centuries, the territory of modern Donbas was a steppe space open on three sides, limited only to the south by the coast of the Sea of Azov. Waves of nomadic tribes moved through these territories, only some of which (such as the Bulgars or Khazars) managed to create more or less stable state formations here. In the 16th–18th centuries, the steppes of the Azov region were a territory of freedom, where the social «nonconformists» of that time often found refuge – former peasants who escaped from slavery, impoverished aristocracy, and the most anarchic part of the Cossacks, who did not recognize any authority. It was a real «no man’s land», where punitive expeditions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire were carried out only from time to time.

Сoal deposits were first discovered here in 1721. Soon, the first mining village appeared here, where workers from Russian factories were brought to work. It was not about their choice to settle in this territory, because the vast majority of these workers were serfs (at that time, slave labor was still used in the Russian Empire).

Small-scale coal mining with limited volumes of extraction and primitive technologies persisted until the mid-19th century. After that, the real «coal fever» began. Hundreds of mines had emerged, and their equipment had been improved. In particular, this was a consequence of the large railway network construction (the region had the best railway infrastructure in all of Eastern Europe). Accordingly, the dynamics of the population was increasing.

It was a real «no man’s land», where punitive expeditions of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire were carried out only from time to time.

On the eve of the First World War, about 1,200 mines with an average capacity of over 21 thousand tons per year operated in Donbas. The coal industry was financed mostly by French and Belgian capital. To ensure such a rate of production, since the 1870s, the industry of the region required a huge number of workers, which are provided mostly by migrant workers. At that time, local people made up about 11 percent of the population. Migrants come from different parts of the Russian Empire.

The first wave of social problems, which are characteristic of almost all mining regions, begins. Those who went to Donbas belonged mainly to landless peasants – the most socially unstable stratum of the population. As noted by the historian Oksana Mikheyeva[1], they experienced two traumas: moving from the village to the city (that is, a change of the usual social environment), as well as the transition from surface to underground work (a radical change in occupation, which required exceptional psychological stability, because, as Mikheeva describes it, people «descended from the earth to hell»). Unable to cope with these psychological challenges, separated from their families, migrant miners often resort to drinking, extreme violence, etc.

Oksana Mikheyeva states an interesting fact: according to the documents in Yuzivka (now Donetsk; the old name comes from the surname of the founder of the local metallurgical enterprise, the Welsh mining engineer John Hughes), there was allegedly a monument to the Russian tsar Alexander II. But there is no visual evidence of this fact: obviously, the monument existed only «on paper». This is important because the monument is an element of the urban space. However, Yuzivka was neither a town nor a village. It belonged to the type of settlement that is still widespread on the territory of the former Soviet Union, mainly in industrialized regions: in Ukrainian it is called «selyshche», in Russian – «posyolok». In fact, such a settlement is an agglomeration of a rather large population without adequate infrastructure and social security. «Posyolok» can be considered a symbol of the utilitarian approach to human being in the system of large-scale industrial production.

In the West, many of these problems began to be solved by moving away from the early type of capitalism. But it was different in the Soviet Union. The social landscape of «posyolok» corresponded to the policy of the Soviet authorities regarding the «working class». Thus began the second wave of social problems, which since then deepened and became irreversible.

Instead of giving the citizens the opportunity to satisfy their cultural needs, to express themselves in a spirit of respect for cultural, linguistic, and religious differences – which were obvious given the different origins of the residents – the Soviet authorities took the opposite path, the path of complete unification. They regarded the population of Donbas, already partially torn away from its roots, as excellent «material» for a communist social experiment. It can be said that what the authorities called the «Soviet people» (a denationalized, unified, largely depersonalized social mass acting according to a collective program imposed from above) began to be born exactly in the mining industrial regions, the largest of which was Donbas. To unite the motley population of such regions (and make it even more productive), the communists decided not to develop a policy of openness and acceptance, but simply to eliminate ethnic and religious differences, introducing internationalism and atheism.

The fact that both criminal and political prisoners were often brought to the region also did not contribute to social crystallization. This was common practice in the Soviet Union, where labor shortages in industrial areas were solved by convicts. The social landscape of Donbas as an «exemplary» communist region was also supposed to contribute to the «re-education» of politically unreliable persons, so family members of «enemies of the Soviet regime» were often sent here to work. As a result, Donbas was often perceived as a place of punishment, as a big labor camp.

The resettlement of persons with a criminal past to Donbas also had the reason that it was often one of the few chances for such people to find a job, moreover, a well-paid one. It was, in particular, about industries harmful to health, where no documents were required for employment.

To unite the motley population of such regions the communists decided to eliminate ethnic and religious differences, introducing internationalism and atheism.

Despite the social and political amorphousness of the Donetsk coal basin, in 1918, a short-term political entity arose here – the Soviet Republic of Donetsk and Kryvyi Rih. Its history turned out to be short-lived, as soon the Soviet political leadership made a clear decision: to leave the region within the Ukrainian Soviet Republic. This is easy to explain. Without Donbas, Ukraine would remain mainly agrarian. The conservative culture of the peasants, their local patriotism, which grew out of close connection with the land on which they worked for generations, was a threat to the communist idea of a “new”, cosmopolitan, depersonalized, functional society. Through Donbas, the authorities received a powerful lever of control over the entire Ukrainian republic, which did not correspond too well to the idea of a great socialist construction. Unfortunately, nowadays the former metropolis is still trying to use Donbas as a tool to tame and dominate Ukraine, which it considers its «lost historical territory».

During the times of the USSR, there was an identification of humanitarian and cultural issues with the processes of mineral extraction and industrial production; man himself (the «new», «communist» man) was seen as a specific product of the «cultural industry». Soviet People’s Commissar of Education Anatoliy Lunacharsky wrote: «We are facing the extremely important process of production of a new person in parallel with the production of new equipment that follows the economic line.»

Of course, with such an attitude towards human being, there could be no question of any concern for nature. During the decades of the Soviet economy, the ecological consequences of coal mining became a huge problem: the accumulation of waste, air and soil pollution, depletion and poisoning of water resources turned Donbas into a region of ecological crisis. Unreclaimed coal mines began to cause dangerous cavities, the landscape, covered with spoil tips, changed.

According to the theory of Marion King Hubbert, the fossil fuel industry, wherever it develops, goes through a cycle: after the peak of development, there is an inevitable decline in the volume of extraction. Recognizing this decline as inevitable, and the damage caused by the fossil fuel industry to nature as incompatible with the future, the governments of the developed industrialized countries of the West have begun to restructure the fossil fuel industry since the 1980s. In the USSR, this, as one might expect, did not happen.

Increasing energy efficiency and the transition of industry and transport to more environmentally friendly technologies required a large means that the weakened Soviet economy could not afford; there was also no understanding of the necessity of these reforms. Nothing changed even with the collapse of the USSR: having inherited from the Soviet empire the outdated and largely inefficient coal mining complex of Donbas, the government of the young independent Ukrainian state is unwilling and unable to do anything with it. Donbas is turning into a powder keg, in which dangerous social and, therefore, political problems are growing. The protest movement of Donbas miners was a process that accompanied the collapse of the USSR and continued in sovereign Ukraine.

In 1993, against the background of dissatisfaction with the policy of the Ukrainian government towards the region, for the first time since 1918, the idea of granting autonomy to Donbas was publicly voiced. In 1998, during one of the miners’ demonstrations, force was used against protesters for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine. In the same year, protesting against the economic policy of the state, one of the miners, Oleksandr Mykhalevych, committed self-immolation.

According to the authors of a study carried out by the Eastern Ukrainian Center for Public Initiatives[2], 83 mines were closed in late 1990s, which had not only bad social consequences (unemployment), but also environmental ones. Mine closures were not accompanied by reclamation, therefore entire areas were flooded with mine waters, and the soils began to subside.

Donbas is turning into a powder keg, in which dangerous social and, therefore, political problems are growing.

Although the autonomy of Donbas had not been officially approved, the processes of distancing the region from the centers of state administration and spontaneous autonomization took place in practice. The trust of the miners, who have not received wages for months and years, in the central authorities in Kyiv has been significantly shaken; the loyalty of a large part of the local residents to the Ukrainian government was not helped by the predominant Russian-speakingness of this region inherited from the times of the USSR. It went along with nostalgia for the Soviet times that were the only common point of reference for the locals in the past, and criminal customs that replaced the law itself. The dream of many residents of Donbas was to «bring their people to power in Kyiv» – people who «would hear the voice of the region».

This was done in 2010, when the most pro-Russian president in the history of Ukraine, a native of Donbas, Viktor Yanukovych, came to power. However, his attempt to impose the extremely corrupt and criminal style of government characteristic of the local elites of Donbas on the whole of Ukraine failed. After four years in power due to large-scale protests known as Euromaidan, Yanukovych was forced to abdicate and fled to Russia.

In this context, the attitude of Donbas remained special: despite the active pro-European and pro-democratic position of a thin layer of the local intellectual elite, a significant majority of the population either openly supported Yanukovych or took a wait-and-see position. Taking into account the clear change in the political course in Ukraine, which turned towards Europe, Russia decided to immediately take advantage of this: it began to organizationally, financially, and militarily strengthen pro-Russian (and, accordingly, anti-Ukrainian and anti-European) sentiments in Donbas. As it was previously done in Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Moldovan Transnistria, Russian-backed pseudo-state formations – the so-called «People’s Republics» – were declared on the territory of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Since 2014, Russia has stubbornly tried to impose federalization on Ukraine, and recognition of the so-called puppet «republics» as equal partners in political negotiations. There was nothing new in this: it was just a repetition of Soviet policy from 1918, when Donbas was first used as a tool to influence Ukrainian domestic and foreign policy. The failure of this strategy was a factor that led to open Russian military aggression in 2022.

What is Donbas, a former coal-mining region today, in a time of full-scale war?

As the journalist Yevhenii Popov wrote, the Donbas coal industry is currently in a state of «slow death»[3]. The Russian occupation authorities are deliberately destroying the region’s coal industry – just destroying, not restructuring or reforming, with corresponding consequences for the environment. According to the report of the organization Truth Hounds[4], currently 39 mines are in the process of flooding, 70 mines are at the stage of liquidation. The cause of the flooding is often a power outage from the pumps designed to pump out the water. Among the flooded mines is the Yunkom mine, where nuclear tests were carried out in Soviet times. If the water washes away the radioactive rocks, it can cause an ecological disaster. According to Yehenii Popov, in 2017 Israeli specialists tried to gain access to the mine to eliminate radiation pollution, but the local «authorities» refused. Rivers flowing into the Sea of Azov are in the zone of potential radiation damage.

The fate of the Donbas coal industry is marked by a sad irony: what should have disappeared as a result of rational reforms is being destroyed by the war. Unfortunately, war “operates” as usual – with fatal consequences for people and nature. What will be the social and economic structure of these territories, what will be the political future of the region, which continues to be the subject of blackmail and manipulation by the aggressive Russian regime, is currently impossible to predict.

[1] See: https://www.istpravda.com.ua/articles/2014/12/11/146063/

[2] See: https://ua.boell.org/sites/default/files/real_price_of_coal_in_war_time_donbas.pdf

[3] See: https://www.jfp.org.ua/blog/blog/blog_articles/35

[4] See: https://truth-hounds.org/ekologichna-sytuacziya-na-terytoriyi-doneczkoyi-ta-luganskoyi-oblastej/

Ostap Slyvynsky is a Ukrainian poet, translator, essayist and scholar. He authored five books of poetry and “A War Vocabulary”, a documentary book about the Russian aggression against Ukraine. His books have been published in Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Macedonia. Ostap Slyvynsky was the first program director of the International Literary Festival in Lviv in 2006–2007. In 2016–2018, he organized the public discussion platform Stories of Otherness (the series of public interviews with writers, intellectualists and civic activists who suffered from different kinds of social exclusion). Since 2021, he organizes PEN Ukraine’s festival Propysy (The Writings) aimed at novice authors. He was elected the Vice President of PEN Ukraine in 2022.

Ostap Slyvynsky’s main fields of research are intercultural communication, comparative history of the literatures of East Central Europe, the role of literature and popular culture in the construction of historical memory. In 2007, he earned a PhD degree in Humanities.

Published with funding from the Fritt Ord Foundation.