When nomadic tribes appeared in the Donbass. Nomadic peoples on the territory of the Donetsk region

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The Bronze Age is a historical period that replaced the Eneolithic (Copper Age) - a transitional period after the Stone Age. It is characterized by the manufacture and use of bronze tools and weapons, the emergence of nomadic cattle breeding, irrigated agriculture, writing, slave-owning states (end of IV - beginning of I millennium BC). It was replaced by the Iron Age in the 1st millennium BC. e. The Bronze Age takes its name from the first artificial alloy of copper and tin, lead, or arsenic mined by humans. Bronze was much stronger than copper. This advantage contributed to the spread and establishment of bronze as the main material for the manufacture of tools, weapons and jewelry, but it did not succeed in completely replacing copper and stone products. The first bronze items made in the Caucasus and the Balkans began to spread to the territory of Ukraine already at the beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. e. Gradually, local production was established: a metallurgy center was formed in the Donetsk basin, and a metalworking center was formed in the Carpathian-Danube region.

With the advent of bronze, the first social division of labor- cattle breeding department

from agriculture. The division of labor between plowmen and pastoralists provided for the need

exchange of products of labor primitive trade, which now included not only cereals (barley, wheat, millet, rye) and meat, but also metal products and salt. Under the influence of radical changes in management in the Bronze Age, cardinal

shifts in the sphere of public relations:

there was a replacement of matriarchy with patriarchy, the pedigree was now conducted along the paternal line;

There is a division of community members into rich and poor (property and class inequality);

There is private property.

catacomb culture (XXVІІ-XX centuries BC): burial at the construction site of the second plant named after Ilyich, mounds "Grandfather", "Vineyards", burial ground "Zirka", a mound near the village. Kamensk - found bronze knives, an awl, the remains of a wheeled transport, the burial of a young man who made arrows,

Babin culture (XX-XVI centuries BC): burial mounds at the site of the Azovstal plant, Samoilovo, Stary Krym - the burials look poorer than the catacombs, the appearance of male belt buckles made of bone and horn, anthropologically - Indo-Iranian tribes with an admixture of the ancient Mediterranean type

log culture (XVI-XII centuries BC): mound "Baba" near the village of Nikolaevka, Volnovakhsky district, near the village of Kamensk, on the site of "Azovstal" - the deceased in the mounds was surrounded by a wooden structure made of logs - a log house, there was a sharp demographic increase in the population,

Belozersky culture (XII-X centuries BC)- associated with some impoverishment of local plant resources, which caused several waves of population migration.

During the Bronze Age on the territory of Donbass there was an independent center of mining and metallurgy. It was a time of complete transition to agriculture and cattle breeding. The productive forms of the economy have supplanted hunting and gathering and left them in place as ancillary means of obtaining food.

Two thousand years before our era, the inhabitants of the region began to pour mounds over the graves of their relatives. This means that they developed certain beliefs about the afterlife, and they took care of their loved ones not only in life, but also after death, which implies a certain level of cultural development. The Russian archaeologist V. A. Gorodtsov, back in tsarist times, carried out large-scale excavations in the Yekaterinoslav province. Based on the difference in burial arrangements, he singled out three archaeological cultures that existed in the Bronze Age in southern Russia. They were named: ancient pit, catacomb and log cultures. Representatives of the first culture buried their dead in simple graves (pits) dug in the ground.

"Catacombs" first dug a deep well, then at its bottom they made a branch to the side and in the resulting room (catacomb) they buried the deceased. In log graves, the body was lowered into a rectangular log cabin, which was sometimes replaced by a stone box.

The Pit-pits were pronounced Caucasoids, and, according to many researchers, it was the bearers of the Pit-pit culture who were the first Indo-Europeans, those same legendary Aryans. The tribes of the Yamnaya culture developed, occupied new places, and gradually the differences between the inhabitants of different regions led to the disintegration of this community into separate tribes, each of which left a trace in the form of some kind of archaeological culture. In the Donbass, the Yamnaya culture was replaced by the Catacomb, and that, in turn, by the Srubnaya culture. The people who are known to us as the bearers of the Srubnaya culture lived in our region from the 16th to the 12th centuries BC. They were mainly pastoralists, but in the floodplains they were engaged in agriculture.

Archaeological studies show that the territory of the Donetsk region has been inhabited since ancient times. Approximately 150 thousand years ago, hunters of elephants and cave bears lived on the spurs of the Donetsk Ridge (this is confirmed by finds near Artemovsk and Makeevka). An Old Stone Age site was discovered not far from Amvrosievka, in the upper reaches of the Kazennaya Balka River, near the villages of Bogorodichnoye, Prishib and Tatyanovka. In terms of its scale and the number of objects found, the Amvrosievskaya site is the largest of the known Late Paleolithic sites in Europe.

A man of the modern type (Amvrosievskoe kosishche, a camp near the city of Mospino, workshops near the villages of Krasnoe and Belaya Gora) managed in the foothills of the Donetsk Ridge in the Mesolithic, Neolithic, Eneolithic and Early Bronze Ages. Known sites on the territory of Artemovsky, Krasnolimansky, Slavyansky districts, on the outskirts of Kramatorsk. In the Vydylykha tract, not far from Svyatogorsk, Neolithic flint tools were found, whose age is estimated at 7 thousand years. Widely known is the Mariupol burial ground ser. VI millennium BC e. It belongs to one of the tribes of the Lower Don archaeological culture, which continuously lived at the mouth of the Kalmius River for two hundred years. People made ceramics, weaving, raised cattle. Even then, people had an artistic taste and a desire for beauty. This is evidenced by the decorations found during excavations made of various materials.
Active settlement of the region and the struggle for territory began in the era of the Great Migration of Peoples. The first of the nomadic tribes that settled the region were the Cimmerians, who roamed near the Kalmius and Seversky Donets rivers in the 10th century. BC e.

In the 7th century BC e. they were pressed by numerous warlike tribes of the Scythians. The large Scythian mounds studied near Mariupol and in other places amaze with the luxury of grave goods. The finds of Perederiyeva Mohyla (Snezhnoye) are unique. A golden pommel of a Scythian royal ceremonial headdress was found, which has no analogues in archeology. The shape of the object is ovoid and resembles a helmet, its weight is about 600 g. The dimensions of the product are: height - 16.7 cm, circumference at the base - 56 cm.

With education in the IV century. BC e. Scythian kingdom of Atea, the territory of the region became part of it and became one of the centers of settlements of agricultural and pastoral tribes.

In the same period, Sarmatian tribes came to the Donetsk steppes from the Trans-Volga region. The Sarmatian culture is represented by materials from the burial of a wealthy Sarmatian woman in a mound near the village. Novo-Ivanovka, Amvrosievsky district; silver neck torcs with gilding, gold pendants and rings, silver and glass bracelets, a bronze mirror, an iron knife, a bronze cauldron, horse harness.

At the beginning of the 1st millennium AD. e. Numerous pastoral tribes of Borans, Roxolans, Alans, Huns, Avars, forced out by the Bulgarians, roamed the territory of the region, who succumbed to the onslaught of the Khazars, who included this territory in their state association - the Khazar Khaganate. Near the Seversky Donets, scientists have found a large settlement from the time of the Khazar Khaganate. Presumably it existed in the VIII-X centuries. Its area was over 120 hectares. During the excavations, archaeologists found the treasures of the ancient Khazars - a set of pincers, tongs, stirrups, buckles.
The beginning of the Slavic colonization of the region dates back to the 8th-9th centuries. The territory was inhabited by tribes of Vyatichi, Radimichi and Chernihiv northerners. During this period, there were several settled settlements on the territory of the region. The largest of them is the Sidorovsky archaeological complex with an area of ​​120 hectares and a population of about 2-3 thousand people. Among the items found in the settlement are silver coins, which indicates active trade off the coast of the Seversky Donets.

In the first half of the ninth century the Turks come to the Donetsk steppes. At the same time, Polovtsy and Pechenegs appeared in the Azov steppes. Kiev princes repeatedly went to them campaigns. According to historians, the famous battle on May 12, 1185 between Prince Igor and the Polovtsy, which became the subject of The Tale of Igor's Campaign, took place on the lands of the Donetsk region.
In the first half of the XI century. after the Pechenegs, Torks came to the Donetsk steppes. The memory of them is preserved in the names of the rivers - Tor, Kazennyy Torets, Krivoy Torets, Dry Torets; as well as settlements - the city of Tor (Slavyansk), the city of Kramatorsk, with. Torsk.

With the invasion of the Tatar-Mongols, the Azov steppes become the scene of battles between the ancient Kiev squads and the Tatar-Mongol conquerors. At the end of the XIII century. in the Golden Horde, two large military-political centers stood out: the Donetsk-Danube and the Sarai (Volga region). During the heyday of the Golden Horde under Khan Uzbek, the Donetsk Tatars converted to Islam. Their main settlements of that time were Azak (Azov), pos. Sedovo, a settlement near the village. Lighthouses of the Slavyansk region. In 1577, to the west of the mouth of the Kalmius River, the Crimean Tatars founded the fortified settlement of White Sarai.

COLONIZATION OF THE LAND OF DONETSK REGION

Active colonization of the territories of the Donetsk Ridge began from the moment the Russian centralized state was formed. By order of the Moscow Tsar, in connection with the need to strengthen the southern borders of the state, Ukrainian Cossacks and peasants were resettled in the Wild Field, measures were taken to build fortresses and prisons.

The first written mention of the settlement of hermit monks in the Cretaceous Mountains on the right bank of the Seversky Donets, in the area of ​​modern Svyatogorsk, as well as information about the Torsk salt pans, date back to the beginning of the 16th century. The “Book of the Big Drawing” noted that from 5 to 10 thousand “eager people” (seasonal workers) from the cities of Belgorod, Oskol, Yelets, Kursk, Liven, Valuyki and Voronezh came to the lakes to cook salt in the warm season.

In May 1571, a system of prisons and fences was created. Kolomatskaya, Obishanskaya, Bakaliyskaya, Izyumskaya, Svyatogorskaya, Bakhmutskaya and Aydarskaya watchmen are being built. In 1645, the first garrison was built - the fortress of Tor. The garrison consisted of Cossacks and servicemen, led by the first commandant Afanasy Karnaukhov. Salt workers settled next to it, so it began to be called Salt or Salt Tor. In 1673, 1679 and 1684 the construction of defense structures of the Mayatsky prison, the Izyum and Torsk defensive lines resumed.

The Zaporizhzhya and Don Cossacks played an important role in the settlement and protection of the Donetsk steppes, having founded their settlements here - winter quarters and farms. The cities of Druzhkovka, Avdeevka, Makeevka and others grew out of them. On April 30, 1747, the government senate of Elizabeth I established the administrative border of the Don Army and the Zaporizhia Army along the Kalmius River.

One of the administrative-territorial units of the Zaporizhian Army was the Kalmius palanka. She had 60 fortified wintering farms and two villages - Yasinovatoe and Makarovo, and the Domakha fortress was also built. The army consisted of about 600-700 Cossacks, who guarded the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and controlled the Salt Road (Kalmius-Mius).

After the liquidation of the Zaporizhzhya Sich, the Cossacks scattered in small groups along the winter roads and yurts in the stone beams of the Donetsk steppe.

At the beginning of the XVIII century. the influx of fugitive peasants, soldiers, archers and townspeople to the Don and Seversky Donets intensified. The tsarist authorities sought to return the fugitives by force. They deprived them of their temper on the land, fishing, forests, salt mines.

In the second half of the XVIII - early XIX centuries. the settlement of the Donetsk steppe becomes the state policy of the Russian Empire. In 1751-1752. in the interfluve of Bakhmut and Lugan large military teams of Serbs and Croats of General I. Horvat-Otkurtich and colonels I. Shevic and R. Preradovich were settled. They were followed by Macedonians, Vlachs, Moldavians, Romanians, Bulgarians, Gypsies, Armenians, as well as Poles and Russian Old Believers hiding in Poland.

The government generously handed out free lands for the so-called "ranking dachas". Large allotments between the rivers Kalmius and Mius were given to the ataman of the Don Army, Prince A. Ilovaisky. In 1785, his son Dmitry received a charter for the possession of 60,000 acres of land. In 1793, he brought 500 peasant families from the Saratov province and founded a new settlement - Dmitrievsk (now the city of Makeevka). In the area of ​​Svyatogorsk, the land was donated to G. Potemkin. 400 thousand acres of land along the rivers Seversky Donets, Samara, Bull and Volchya were left behind the royal court.

In the spring of 1778, about 18 thousand Greeks moved to the territory of the region from the Crimea. On the coast of the Sea of ​​Azov and on the right bank of the Kalmius River, they founded the city of Mariupol and 24 settlements.
At the end of the XVIII century. Three settlements had city status: Bakhmut with a population of 8 thousand people, Slavyansk - 6 thousand people and Mariupol - 4.5 thousand people. Salt was boiled in Bakhmut and Slavyansk. Fishing developed in Mariupol.

During this period, the lands in the lower reaches of the Dnieper and the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov were divided into provinces. The territory of the modern Donetsk region west of the Kalmius River in 1803 became part of the Yekaterinoslav province, and the lands east of Kalmius became part of the Don Cossack Region.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NATURAL RESOURCES OF DONBASS

The beginning of the industrial development of Donbass is primarily associated with the extraction of salt. Since ancient times, the brine of the Torsk salt lakes has been used to produce salt. This process intensified at the end of the 16th century, when hundreds of residents of the Left-bank Ukraine and the southern districts of Russia began to come to Tor for salt. By the 70s. 17th century Up to 10,000 Chumaks came to the fisheries annually, who mined and exported up to 600,000 poods of salt. In the summer of 1664, three state-owned breweries were created on the Torsk salt lakes. In 1740, M. V. Lomonosov, on behalf of the government, studied the salt mines in Bakhmut.

Cossack settlers, in addition to salt, found deposits of coal and iron ores in ravines and gullies, and determined their place of occurrence by the cuts of the soil. The Cossacks also successfully organized the search for lead ores in the Nagolny Ridge area, and then smelted metal from them in ladles.

By decree of the Russian Emperor Peter I, the geologist G. Kapustin in 1721 discovered coal deposits near the Kurdyuchya River, a tributary of the Seversky Donets, and proved the suitability of its use in forging and metallurgical industries.

In 1827-1828. expedition of mining engineer A.Olivieri in the area of ​​the village. Starobeshevo discovered several coal seams. In 1832, the expedition of the mining engineer A. Ivanitsky began prospecting work in the area of ​​the Kalmius River. The famous scientist and mining engineer E. Kovalevsky in 1827 compiled the first geological map of the Donbass, on which he plotted 25 mineral deposits known to him. It was Kovalevsky who first introduced the concept of "Donetsk mountain basin", "Donetsk basin" or Donbass. The Mining Journal for 1829 reported that there were 23 coal mines in the Donbass. At that time, the largest deposits were considered to be Lisichanskoye, Zaitsevskoye (or Nikitovskoye), Belyanskoye and Uspenskoye, discovered in the beginning. 19th century

In 1842, by order of the Novorossiysk governor M. Vorontsov, to organize the supply of fuel to the steam ships of the Azov-Black Sea flotilla, the engineer A. V. Guryev commissioned the Guryevskaya mine, then the Mikhailovskaya and Elizavetinskaya mines. Since then, the Donetsk coal basin, equal in area to all coal deposits. Western Europe, gained worldwide fame.

INDUSTRIALIZATION OF DONBASS

By 1913, more than 1.5 billion poods of coal were mined in the Donbass. The share of the Donets Basin in the Russian coal industry was 74%. Almost all of the coking coal in Russia was mined in the Donbass.

The growth of the coal industry contributed to the development of ferrous metallurgy. In 1858, on the territory of the modern city of Enakievo, the Petrovsky blast furnace plant was founded. In 1869, the Englishman John Hughes (Huz) acquired a concession for the production of iron and rails and built the first large-scale metallurgical production on the banks of the Kalmius River.

By 1900, Russian Providence, Yuzovsky, Druzhkovsky, Petrovsky, Donetsko-Yuryevsky, Nikopol-Mariupolsky, Konstantinovsky, Olkhovsky, Makeevsky, Kramatorsk, Toretsky metallurgical plants were producing products in the Donbass, which had the largest blast furnaces in Russia, at which the method of hot blast blast was used. In total, there were about 300 enterprises of the metalworking, chemical and food industries. The construction of factories was mainly due to American, British, French, Belgian and German foreign investments. By the end of the 19th century, the boards of 19 Donetsk joint-stock companies were located in Brussels, Paris. London and Berlin.

In 1901, at the XXVI Congress of the Miners of the South of Russia, a program was formulated to create syndicates in the field of the "iron-making" industry. As a result, in 1902, the Joint-Stock Company with a capital of 900 thousand rubles In 1906, the Produgol trust arose, which controlled the extraction of 75% of coal in the Donets Basin.

The intensive development of industry served as a stimulus for the growth of railway construction. In 1870-1890. traffic was opened along Konstantinovskaya (Nikitovskaya). Donetsk coal and Ekaterininsky railways, which connected the hinterland of Donbass, as well as Donetsk coal with Krivoy Rog iron ore and Nikopol manganese ore basins. In 1870, the Novorossiysk Governor-General P. Kotzebue proposed to establish a seaport at the mouth of the Kalmius River, capable of receiving large-capacity vessels. On August 29, 1889, in the area of ​​the former Zintsevskaya gully near Mariupol, the Medveditsa steamer took on board almost 1000 tons of coal and metal for deliveries to the markets of Constantinople and St. Petersburg.

With the development of industry, a rapid increase in the population began, factory settlements were formed. According to the 1897 census, more than 333 thousand people lived in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav province, and more than 254 thousand people lived in Mariupol.

At the beginning of the XX century. Gorlovka - 30 thousand, Bakhmut (Artemovsk) - more than 30 thousand, Makeevka - 20 thousand, Enakievo - 16 thousand, Kramatorsk - 12 thousand, Druzhkovka - more than 13 thousand inhabitants became large industrial centers of the Donetsk region.

SOCIALIST MODERNIZATION OF THE TERRITORY

On November 7, 1917, power in Petrograd passed into the hands of the Soviets of Workers' and Peasants' Deputies under the leadership of the RSDLP(b). The workers of Donbass supported the Petrograd events. On December 25, 1917, the First All-Ukrainian Congress of Soviets proclaimed Ukraine a Soviet Socialist Republic. On February 9-14, 1918, the IV Regional Congress of Soviets proclaimed the creation of the Soviet Republic of the Donetsk and Krivoy Rog basins. F. A. Artem was elected Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic.

The events of the civil war and foreign intervention (1919-1920) are a tragic page in the history of the country. In October 1918-January 1919, during the Donbass operation, the Red Army expelled Denikin from the region. In September-October 1920, she defended the region from the Wrangelites. On March 23, 1920, the Council of People's Commissars of the RSFSR approved the separation of Donbass into an independent province within the Ukrainian Soviet Republic.

By the end of the civil war in Donbass, out of 3,500 operating mines, only 893 remained in working order. 2,376 coal enterprises needed major repairs, 1.8 billion poods of coal turned out to be under the rubble, 3.3 billion were flooded. At the beginning of 1921, coal production decreased by 1.5 times compared to the pre-war level. In 1921, 46% of industrial enterprises did not work in the region. The population of the region has decreased by two thirds. In 1921-1922. in Ukraine, including in the Donbass, a famine broke out, 500 thousand were starving in the region. Human. Along with the restoration of the region's economy, the tasks of building new mines, metallurgical and machine-building plants, and power plants were set.

In the late 20's - early 30's. Donbass has turned into a huge construction site. The Kramatorsk heavy engineering plant (1933), the Mariupol metallurgical plant "Azovstal" (1934) were launched. In 1929, the largest blast furnace in the USSR was put into operation at the Makeevka plant. The Zuevskaya power station began its work (1931) with a capacity of 150 thousand kW, Kurakhovskaya and Kramatorsk thermal power plants were built.

Significant progress has been made in the chemical industry. New highly mechanized chemical plants have been built - the Gorlovsky State Chemical Plant and the Donetsk State Chemical Products Plant.

During this period, Donbass becomes one of the largest centers of engineering. In 1929, the solemn laying of the Novokramatorsk Machine-Building Plant took place.

In 1932, Europe's largest iron foundry and model shops, as well as an oxygen station, were built at the plant. The leading specialized enterprise in the USSR for the production of machinery and equipment for the coke-chemical industry was the Slavyansk plant of heavy engineering.

At the end of 1932, a new form of socialist competition emerged—the Izotov movement. It was initiated by Nikita Izotov, a coal miner at Kochegarka Mine No. 1 in the Gorlovsky District, who achieved unprecedented output by completing the coal production plan in January by 562%, in May by 558%, and in June by 2000% (607 tons in 6 hours).

In August 1935, the Stakhanov movement unfolded. Among the best Donetsk Stakhanovites was the steelmaker of the Mariupol plant named after. Ilyich Makar Mazai. In October 1936, he set several world records for removing steel from a square meter of the furnace hearth with a maximum result of 15 tons in 6 hours and 30 minutes. In 1935, Pyotr Krivonos, the engineer of the steam locomotive of the Slavyansk depot, was the first in transport when driving freight trains to increase the boost of the steam locomotive boiler, due to which the technical speed was doubled - up to 46-47 km / h.

By the beginning of 1940, Donbass produced 85.5 million tons of coal - 60% of the all-Union production. About 60% of the enterprises of metallurgy and railway transport, about 50% of the power plants of the USSR worked in the Padonets coal. The metallurgists of the region provided 30% of the all-Union iron smelting, 20% of steel, and 22% of rolled products.

In the 20-30s. the recovery period begins in the field of education and culture. If in 1922 15% of children studied in schools, then by 1924 there were already more than 80% of students. The network of vocational schools also grew. In May 1921, a mining and mechanical college was opened in Yuzovka, and in 1923 the Kramatorsk Machine-Building College began its work. In the cities, workers' clubs became centers of mass cultural work, the number of which reached 216 by 1925. In the villages, 246 clubs and 187 reading rooms were opened.

On May 1, 1925, palaces of culture were founded in 13 cities and mining towns. In 1928, the Stalin Mining College was reorganized into a mining institute, the metallurgical and coal-chemical institutes began to operate, which in 1935 were merged into the Stalin Industrial Institute. In 1930, the Stalin State Medical Institute was established in Stalino.

In 1940, 6.4 thousand students studied in 7 universities of the region, 16.7 thousand students in technical schools, and about 570 thousand children in schools.

On the eve of the Great Patriotic War, the Opera and Ballet Theatre, 6 drama theatres, the Musical Comedy Theatre, and the Philharmonic were operating in the region. One of the leaders was the State Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater named after. Artem.

3.5 million books were collected in 1190 regional libraries.

The population was served by 514 cinema installations.

In the pre-war years, several music colleges and schools were created in the Donetsk region, well-known musical figures worked.

THE YEARS OF DIFFICULT

On June 22, 1941, Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union. The capture of Donbass was a top priority for the Germans. In their plans, the German command prepared for him the role of the "Eastern Ruhr". Already in the first months of the war, the Donetsk region gave the Red Army more than 175 thousand soldiers. The formation of the people's militia was actively going on, in which a total of 220 thousand people joined.

Despite the heroic resistance of the soldiers of the Red Army, Donbass was captured by the enemy. On October 21, 1941, the city of Stalino (now Donetsk) was occupied. The German administration made great efforts to resume coal mining in the Donets Basin. Nevertheless, by November 1942, the Germans managed to get only 2.3% of the coal output from the Donetsk mines compared to the same pre-war period.

The local population was inhumanly exterminated. For the period from November 1941 to September 1943 at the mine 4-4-bis pos. Kalinovka was shot and thrown into the pit about 75 thousand people. With a total depth of the mine of 360 m, 305 m were littered with the bodies of the dead. Soldiers of the Red Army who were taken prisoner were subjected to mass extermination. In January 1942, on the territory of the club. Lenin of the Donetsk Metallurgical Plant, a central prisoner of war camp was organized, where more than 3 thousand people were killed.

The terror carried out by the Germans strengthened the resistance movement. 180 partisan detachments and reconnaissance groups with a total number of 4.2 thousand people operated on the territory of the region. During the period from October 1941 to September 1943, more than 600 combat operations were carried out by partisan detachments. Thousands of Nazis were destroyed, 14 echelons with military cargo were derailed, 131 km of railway lines were dismantled, 23 German garrisons and 18 police stations were destroyed. The Slavic partisan detachment, commanded by M. I. Karnaukhov, became famous for its military exploits. In the city of Slavyansk itself, during the period of occupation, the Komsomol organization Forpost carried out underground work, which issued over 2 thousand leaflets. The Yamsky, Artemovsky, Krasnolimansky and other partisan detachments successfully fought. The partisan detachment "For the Motherland" coordinated the actions created in the vicinity of the village. Yampol partisan groups. In Stalino, near the village. Rutchenkovo, four Komsomol members - A. Vasilyeva, K. Kostrykina, Z. Polonchukova and K. Barannikova - handed water and clothes to Soviet prisoners of war in the concentration camp, helped them escape. The brave girls were captured by the Nazis and shot. In with. An underground pioneer group operated in Pokrovsky, Artemovsky district, whose members wrote leaflets, hid Soviet soldiers, girls and boys who were supposed to be driven into slavery. For their courage and heroism, 642 underground partisans of the Donetsk region were awarded orders and medals, many of them posthumously.

On September 8, 1943, the troops of the Red Army of the Southern and Southwestern fronts liberated the Donetsk coal basin. In almost 40 days of continuous offensive in August-September 1943, the troops advanced from the Seversky Donets and Mius rivers to a depth of more than 300 km along the entire front. In fierce battles, they defeated 11 infantry and 2 tank divisions of the enemy. On the occasion of this major military operation, Moscow saluted the liberators with twenty artillery volleys from 224 guns.

Many soldiers of the Red Army died heroically in the battles for the liberation of Donbass. Among them - a member of the Military Council of the Southern Front, Lieutenant General K. A. Gurov and the commander of the 3rd Guards Tank Brigade of the Guards, Colonel F. A. Grinkevich. To perpetuate their memory in February 1944, Bolnichny Avenue in the city of Stalino was renamed into Prospekt im. Grinkevich, and Metallistov Avenue - to the prospect. Gurov.

About 150 thousand soldiers of the Red Army, about 1200 partisans and underground fighters died in the liberation battles for the Donbass.

During the occupation, more than 174 thousand civilians, 149 thousand prisoners of war were killed and tortured on the territory of the Stalin region, 252 thousand citizens were driven to Germany, material damage was inflicted in the amount of 30 billion rubles, By 1944, 48 remained in the region, 8% of the pre-war population, more than 1 million square meters were destroyed. m of living space. In fact, the coal and chemical industries ceased to exist, most of the power plants were put out of action. Railway transport and agriculture were destroyed. In total, 314 main mines and 30 mines-new buildings were blown up and flooded, more than 2100 km of underground workings were damaged, 280 metal pile drivers, 515 lifting machines, 570 main ventilation devices were blown up. The volume of water that filled the mine workings was over 800 million cubic meters. m.

In the region, 22 blast and 43 open-hearth furnaces, 34 rolling mills, 3 blooming plants were blown up. Coke plants were completely destroyed. The engineering industry was in ruins. Huge damage was caused to the railway lines. 8,000 km of railway tracks, 1,500 bridges, 27 locomotive depots, 28 car depots and car repair points, 400 railway stations and station buildings, over 250 thousand square meters were destroyed. m of housing for railroad workers. The mechanized slides of Yasinovataya, Debaltseve, and Krasny Liman stations were completely put out of action. In Yasinovataya, out of 147 km of tracks, only 2 km remained serviceable. The railway junctions of the stations Nikitovka, Ilovaisk,
Krasnoarmeysk, Volnovakha, Slavyansk. The three largest thermal power plants - Zuevskaya, Kurakhovskaya and Shterovskaya were turned into ruins.

For the period from 1941 to 1945. almost 300,000 Donbas soldiers died or went missing. For the exemplary performance of the combat mission of the command, the courage and heroism shown at the same time, 80 soldiers were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. K. Moskalenko, commander of the rifle and cavalry corps, and N. Semeyko, squadron commander of the aviation regiment, twice. 22 divisions and regiments were awarded the honorary titles of Stalin (from the name of the regional center - Stalino), Gorlovsky, Makeevsky, Kramatorsk, Chistyakovsky, Ilovaisky.

REVIVAL AND FLOWERING

On October 26, 1943, the State Defense Committee adopted a resolution "On priority measures to restore the coal industry of the Donetsk basin." The selfless work of Donbass miners and the help of other regions made it possible to fulfill the tasks set. By the end of the war, Donbass again became the country's leading coal basin in terms of coal production. Its share on an all-Union scale, which in 1943 was 4.8%, rose to 26.7%. Metallurgical enterprises revived at an accelerated pace. On October 10, 1943, exactly one month after the liberation of the city, the Mariupol steelworkers produced the first heat. By the beginning of 1945, 8 blast furnaces and 24 open-hearth furnaces, 2 Bessemer converters, 15 rolling mills, 60 coke batteries and almost all refractory materials plants were operating in the Stalin region. In 1957, the construction of a domain began at Azovstal and the Enakievsky Metallurgical Plant. Zuevskaya GRES was restored in a short time. The first turbine was commissioned on January 9, the second on May 13, 1944.

In the 50s. 37 new mines were built. In 1961, the Pioneer D-2 hydromine, the first in the region, was put into operation. A team of workers at the stope of the Oktyabrskaya mine using a 1K-52M coal combine for 31 working days extracted 122.34 million tons of coal from one longwall, which was a new world record. The largest new building of this period was the mine "Ukraine" of the trust "Selidovugol". Its design capacity is 6,000 tons of coal per day.

In the 60s. the metallurgists of the region were given the task of increasing the production of pig iron by 41.5%, steel - by 26.5%, and the production of rolled products - by 26.7% compared with 1958. The metallurgists adequately coped with them. In 1960, the Donetsk Metallurgical Plant switched to a progressive, fully mechanized method of pouring steel without molds. January 26, 1962 in the city of Zhdanov (now Mariupol) at the plant. Ilyich gave the first production of the slab giant, the thin-sheet mill was modernized. The world's largest coke oven batteries at the Avdeevka Coke and Chemical Plant were put into operation.

In 1960, the Druzhkovsky Machine-Building Plant mastered the mass production of inertial gyro-carrier tractors. Donetsk region becomes a region of developed chemistry. At the beginning of the 80s. chemical enterprises of Donbass provided 1/8 of the republican output of mineral fertilizers and soda ash, 1/4 of sulfuric acid, almost 1/5 of synthetic detergents.

The largest new buildings of the 70s. - Uglegorsk State District Power Plant, highly mechanized coal mines. Lenin Komsomol of Ukraine, them. L. G. Stakhanov and Mariupol Capital, as well as an oxygen converter shop at the Azovstal plant, coke oven batteries at the Avdeevsky coke plant, ammonia production complexes in the city of Gorlovka, Gorlovka plant of rubber products.

Serious changes have taken place in agriculture. For 1954-1958 the annual gross grain harvest averaged 1,308,000 tons in the region. Milk production increased by 200,000 tons in five years, and meat production increased significantly. February 26, 1958 for great success in the development of agriculture, Donetsk region was awarded the Order of Demin. Over 2 thousand workers were awarded government awards, 15 of them - the high title of Hero of Socialist Labor. In the 70s - 80s. at the collective and state farms of the region, through reconstruction and new construction, mechanized farms and complexes for keeping cattle for 581.5 thousand heads, pigs - for more than 200 thousand heads were put into operation, areas for keeping other animals and poultry were expanded. From 1965 to 1980 the number of tractors and trucks increased by 1.5 times.

By the beginning of 1976, more than 15,000 specialists with higher and secondary specialized education and more than 38,000 machine operators worked in the villages of the region.

During this period, the Donetsk region became a large construction site. From 1958 to 1985 12 thousand enterprises were built. The intensive industrial development of Donbass turned it by the mid-80s into one of the most urbanized regions of Ukraine - 90% of the inhabitants of the entire region lived in cities.

An important role in the activation of scientific life in the region was played by the creation in 1965 in Donetsk of the Scientific Center of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR.

It included the Institute of Physics and Technology, the Department of Economic and Industrial Research of the Institute of Economics of the Academy of Sciences of the Ukrainian SSR, a computer center and a botanical garden.

The Donbass coal combine was created by the Donetsk branch of Giprouglemash, for which the designers and engineers A.D. Sukach, V. N. Khorin, A. N. Bashkov and S. M. Harutyunyan were awarded the title of laureates of the State Prize. The All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Mine Rescue (Donetsk) has become a major scientific center of the region. It is the only specialized institution of its kind in the world. The center of university science in Donbass was the Donetsk Polytechnic Institute, which developed promising topics.

During the years of Ukraine's independence, the Donetsk region not only retained its leading position in the industrial development of the country, but also became the center of its cultural, social and political life.

The territory between the Dnieper and the Don, bounded from the south by the Sea of ​​Azov, and from the north by a conditional line of forests, is called the Donbass, from the abbreviation DONETSK coal basin. In a broad sense, the Donbass (Greater Donbass) is a vast region that includes the territories of the modern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, certain districts of the Dnepropetrovsk region, and a small strip along the Ukrainian border of the Rostov region of the Russian Federation with the cities of Shakhty and Millerovo. But usually under the Donbass they mean the territory of two Ukrainian regions with a population of 8 million people (Small Donbass).

At present, the northern half of the Donetsk and the southern half of the Luhansk regions, which are closely connected with each other, represent one continuous seven-million metropolis - one of the largest in Europe. Megapolis, stretching for 250 km. from west to east and 200 km. from south to north, with extensive suburbs, agricultural and recreational areas, a developed network of communications, including a large seaport and several airports. The third part of the large cities of Ukraine with a population of more than 100,000 people. is part of this metropolis. In total, the metropolis consists of about 70 cities with a population of more than ten thousand people in each.

In the ethnic, as well as in the economic and political life of historical Russia, Donbass occupies a special place.

The main wealth of the region is coal. It was coal, which until the middle of the 20th century was called the "bread of industry", radically changed this region, turning it into one of the most important industrial centers of Russia. But it was coal, when it lost its importance to a certain extent, that caused the economic depression of Donbass.

This region was formed at the junction of Slobozhanshchina and Novorossia in the historical sense relatively recently - at the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although this region has been inhabited since ancient times, and became part of Russia in the 17th century, it acquired a truly all-Russian and world economic significance much later. Feather-grass and wormwood grasses scorched by the sun and dried up by east winds, dry winds, bare areas of devoid of moisture and cracked earth, rocky outcrops of limestones and sandstones, occasionally supplemented by thickets of shrubs, and even less often by small forests - such was the landscape of the Donetsk region in the recent past. For many peoples living in the region, the Donetsk steppes were only a place for grazing livestock with separate centers of agriculture. The Donetsk steppes stood in the way of migrations of peoples and were open to all winds. It is not surprising that the Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Goths, Alans, Khazars, Pechenegs and Polovtsy passed through the steppes, leaving considerable traces of their material culture here.

From the 8th century, the Slavs began to dominate in the region, especially the tribe of the northerners. The northerners left the names of the river Seversky Donets, the city of Novgorod-Seversky (where Igor, sung in the Tale of Igor's Campaign, reigned). The Slavs did not hold out for long in these steppes. Already at the end of the 11th century, the Polovtsian onslaught threw them to the north and west, under the saving canopy of forests, and the Donetsk steppes again became the "Wild Field". The headquarters of Khan Konchak was located in the area of ​​​​the present city of Slavyansk. It was on the territory of the present Donetsk region that the battle on the Kayala River took place in 1185, when Prince Igor was defeated and captured by the Polovtsians. On the Kalka River, now Kalchik, a tributary of the Kalmius, in 1223 the first battle of the Russian princes with the Mongols took place.

From that time until the epoch of the 17th century, the Tatars were the masters of the region. The remains of some Golden Horde settlements have survived to this day. With the decline of the Golden Horde and the transformation of the Tatar population of the region, subordinate to the Crimean Khan, into professionals for raids on Russia, the Tatar cities disappeared, and the steppes again took on a primitive desert look. Politically, the Donetsk region turned out to be a "no man's land" between the Crimean Khanate, the Moscow kingdom, the Commonwealth and the Zaporozhian Sich. In the 17th century, the border of the Russian state and the lands of the Don Army with the Crimean Khanate passed along the Seversky Donets. Above the Svyatogorsk monastery, it was guarded by Sloboda Cossacks, and below, along the Donets, there were fortified towns of the Donets.

In 1571, after the next Tatar raid, on the orders of Ivan the Terrible, Prince Tyufyakin and the clerk Rzhevsky visited here on an inspection trip, who installed a border sign in the form of a cross at the source of the Mius. In 1579, the government formed special mobile cavalry units to patrol the steppe paths from the Mius River to the Samara River.

However, already in the 16th, and especially in the 17th centuries, Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks were active in the Donetsk steppes. Moving along the Kalmius River to the Sea of ​​Azov, the Cossacks began to create fortified winter quarters along the banks of the river. At the beginning of the 17th century, Russian service people of the Izyum line, as well as Cherkasy (Little Russians who left the Polish domination from the territory of Polish possessions in Ukraine) began to settle here. In 1600, Alekseyevka, Chernukhino, the settlement of Staraya Belaya (now Luhansk region) arose, in 1637 - Aspen prison, in 1644 the prison Tor (named after the river of the same name) was built to protect the salt mines from the raids of the Crimeans. The Don Cossacks did not lag behind: in 1607, after the defeat of Bolotnikov's uprising, his comrade-in-arms Shulgeiko went to the Wild Field and founded Shul-gin-town on Aidar. In 1640, Borovskoye town arose on the Borovoe River, in 1642 - Old Aidar, then Trekhizbyanka, Lugansk, and other Cossack towns.

In the second half of the 17th century, a large-scale migration of Little Russians began to the east, to Sloboda Ukraine. The northern part of the present Donbass became at that time part of the Slobozhanschina. Mayatsky (1663), Solyanoy (1676), Raygorodok (1684), and a number of other settlements grew on the Torsk lakes, which testified to the rapid growth of the population. Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks, fugitive peasants from the Left-Bank Ukraine and South Russia settled here mixed. In 1668, for example, 100 Russian Moscow "people" and 37 "Cherkasy" (Ukrainians) lived in Mayaki.

In the northern part of the region, in the area of ​​​​the present city of Slavyansk, as early as 1625, Russian settlers began to extract salt. In the Cossack settlements and towns along the Seversky Donets and the Don, metallurgical, mining and forging production was established. The Izyum and Don Cossacks began to cook salt not only in Slavyansk, but also on Bakhmutka, a tributary of the Seversky Donets. Near the new salt mines, the town of Bakhmut grew up (known since 1663). In addition to salt, the Cossacks were well aware of the coal, which was used to kindle fires. In addition, the Cossacks learned how to extract lead ores by smelting metal in special ladles. Nevertheless, proximity to the Crimean Khanate, which turned the conditional steppe border between Russia and Crimea into a permanent battlefield, did not contribute to the development of the region.

However, the development of the region did not stop. In 1703, the Bakhmut district was created (as part of the Azov, later Voronezh province), which included almost all the settlements of the modern Donbass that existed at that time.

In 1730, a new fortified Ukrainian line was created, connecting the middle reaches of the Dnieper with the Seversky Donets with a chain of fortified places. Under Catherine II, the Dnieper line of fortifications was drawn along the southern border of the Yekaterinoslav province. As a result, vast desert territories, covered by fortified lines, became available for settlement.

According to the first revision of 1719, 8,747 souls lived in the county (6,994 Great Russians and 1,753 Little Russians). In 1738 there were 8,809 of them (6,223 Russians and 2,586 Ukrainians). As you can see, the pace of settlement was weak, which caused some concern in St. Petersburg. It was in this region that for the first time in Russia attempts were made to create settlements of foreign colonists.

In the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, the resettlement of the southern Slavs took on large proportions. Since 1752, Serbian settlers began to arrive in the region. They founded a number of military-agricultural settlements, which were divided into regiments, companies and trenches and made up Slavic Serbia in the northeastern part of the Yekaterinoslav province (Slavyanoserbsky district).

The number of Serbs among the settlers was not large, by 1762 the entire population of Slavic Serbia was 10,076 people. (2,627 Moldavians, 378 Serbs, the rest of the population consisted of Bulgarians, Great Russians - Old Believers, Little Russians and Poles). Subsequently, this motley and multilingual mass assimilated with the indigenous Little Russian population and adopted its language and appearance.

After the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-74. The coast of the Sea of ​​Azov became part of Russia. Now the region could develop in peaceful conditions. As in all of Novorossia, the rapid emergence of new cities began. So, in 1795, a settlement appeared at the factory, which soon became the city of Lugansk.

The systematic settlement of the region by foreigners continued: back in 1771-73, in the context of the ongoing war with the Turks, 3,595 Moldavians and Volokhovs were settled here, who surrendered during the next Russian-Turkish war (they founded the village of Yasinovataya, now railway center).

Already in 1778, as already mentioned, Greeks brought out of Crimea, numbering 31 thousand people, settled on the territory from the Berda River to the Kalmius River, settled on the southern coast. The city of Mariupol became the center of Greek settlements. However, in the future, Greeks from Anatolia and Thrace began to be added to the Crimean Greeks, who founded a number of settlements.

In 1788 German colonists began to settle. The first group of Mennonite migrants (the so-called pacifist Protestant sect) from 228 families (910 people) settled on the river. Konke and near Yekaterinoslav. In 1790-96 another 117 families moved to the Mariupol district. Each colonist was allocated 60 acres of land. In addition to the Mennonites, more than 900 Lutherans and Catholics arrived in Russia. By 1823, 17 German colonies had appeared in the Sea of ​​Azov, the center of which was Ostheim (now Telmanovo).

In 1804 the government allowed 340,000 Jews to leave Belarus. Some of them settled on these lands, forming 3 colonies here in 1823-25. A new wave of Jewish settlement dates back to 1817, when the Society of Israelite Christians was formed to "convert Jews to Christianity and agricultural pursuits." Several hundred Jews from Odessa took advantage of this call and settled between Kalchik and Mariupol on lands not occupied by the Greeks.

Finally, in the 60s of the 19th century, the Nogais who had previously roamed here left the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and moved to Turkey (together with part of the Crimean Tatars), but settlements of Bessarabian Bulgarians appeared, who left southern Bessarabia, which in 1856 seceded from Russia to the Moldavian principality.

So, by the middle of the 19th century, Donbass was developing along with the rest of the regions of Novorossiya. The beginning of the industrial production of Donetsk coal, as well as the development of ferrous metallurgy, changed everything dramatically.

In 1696, returning from the Azov campaign, Peter I got acquainted with Donetsk coal. While resting on the banks of the Kalmius, the king was shown a piece of a black, well-burning mineral. “This mineral, if not for us, then for our descendants, will be very useful,” said Peter. During his reign, coal mining begins to acquire a fairly large scale. In 1721, Russian serf explorer Grigory Kapustin discovered coal near the tributaries of the Seversky Donets and proved its suitability for use in blacksmithing and ironworks. In December 1722, by personal decree, Peter sent Kapustin for samples of coal, and then it was ordered to equip special expeditions for the exploration of coal and ore. It would seem that this discovery would serve as an impetus for the development of the coal and metallurgical industries, but after Peter's death, Donetsk coal was forgotten in St. Petersburg for a long time.

Interest in Donetsk coal revived in the 19th century. In 1827, under the leadership of E. P. Kovalevsky, a prominent scientist and organizer of industry, who later became the Minister of Finance of Russia, three geological expeditions were organized. Based on the results of the expeditions, E. P. Kovalevsky published an article in which he first mentioned the name "Donetsk basin", which in an abbreviated form became the name of the region.

In the middle of the 19th century, rapid railway construction began in Russia. It requires metal and coal. All this was in the Donetsk steppes, which, moreover, were located near the Black Sea and Azov port cities.

In 1841, to organize the supply of fuel to the steam ships of the Azov-Black Sea flotilla, the first technically equipped Donetsk mine was put into operation. In 1858, on the territory of modern Yenakiyevo, a blast-furnace plant was founded, named after Peter I Petrovsky. In 1869, the Englishman John Hughes, who was called Yuz in Russia, acquired a concession for iron and rail production in the South of Russia, built the first large metallurgical enterprise on the banks of the Kalmius River, around which the village of Yuzovka soon grew.

In total, by 1900 there were up to 300 various enterprises and institutions in the Donbass of the metalworking, chemical, local processing and food and flavor industries.

Railways connected Donetsk coal with Kryvyi Rih ore, creating favorable conditions for the rapid development of heavy industry in the region. Coal mining increased from 295.6 million poods in 1894 to 671.1 million in 1900, i.e. 2.5 times. By 1913, more than 1.5 billion poods of coal were mined in the Donbass. The share of the Donetsk basin in the country's coal industry increased to 74%, and almost all coking coal was mined in the Donbass.

The rapid growth of industry also caused a rapid increase in population. By the end of the XVIII century. the population of the Donetsk region was 250 thousand people. By the middle of the 19th century, the majority (about 500) of modern settlements with a population of about 400 thousand people already existed in the Donbass. In the second half of the nineteenth century. the population of the territory of modern Donbass increased 5 times faster than in other regions of the Russian Empire. According to the 1897 census, 333,478 people already lived in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav province, and 254,056 people lived in Mariupol. At the beginning of the 20th century, Gorlovka - 30 thousand inhabitants, Bakhmut (now Artemovsk) - more than 30 thousand, Makeevka - 20 thousand, Enakievo -16 thousand, Kramatorsk -12 thousand, Druzhkovka - more 13 thousand. Only from 1900 to 1914 the number of working population of the Donetsk region doubled.

The growth of Yuzovka, which arose in 1869, is indicative. In 1884, 6 thousand inhabitants lived in it, in 1897 - 28 thousand, in 1914 - 70 thousand. Moreover, only in 1917 Yuzovka received the status of a city!

Donbass, which from the beginning was distinguished by its multinationality, during the period of rapid development at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. hosted hundreds of thousands of immigrants of various nationalities.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the size and national composition of the population of Donbass (Bakhmut district, Mariupol district, Slavyanoserbsky district, Starobelsky district, Slavyansk), according to the All-Russian census of 1897, were as follows:

Russians 985,887 - 86.7% (Little Russians 710,613 - 62.5%, Great Russians 275,274 - 24.2%, Belarusians 11,061 - 1.0%), Greeks 48,452 - 4.2%, Germans 33,774 - 3.0%, Jews 22,416 - 2.0%, Tatars 15,992 - 1.4%. Total 1,136,361 people

In Yuzovka in 1884, according to the city census, out of 6 thousand inhabitants: 32.6% were "local" - residents of Bakhmut and other districts of the Yekaterinoslav province; 26% - residents of the central provinces (Oryol, Vladimir, Kaluga, Smolensk, Ryazan, Tambov, etc.); 19% - people from the southern and southwestern provinces (Don region, Voronezh, Kursk, Kiev, Chernigov, Tauride, Kharkov, Poltava, etc.); 17.4% - residents of other provinces; 5% - foreigners (English, Italians, Germans, Romanians, etc.). By the beginning of the 20th century, Yuzovka had not changed its international character: “The ethnic composition of the population of the village, and then the city of Yuzovka, by the beginning of the 20th century was motley: Russians - 31,952, Jews - 9,934, Ukrainians - 7,086, Poles - 2,120, Belarusians - 1465".

It was at that time that the main proportions of the ethnic structure of the Donbass were formed, with relatively minor changes that have survived to this day. The result was the formation of a multi-ethnic community of representatives of about 130 ethnic groups with an absolute predominance of Russians and very Russified Ukrainians (more correctly, Little Russians) who are Ukrainians by passport.

Gradually, under the influence of a number of factors (environment, working conditions, etc.), the population of Donbass began to transform into a stable regional community with a single value base, worldview, culture, way of life. The language factor played and continues to play a particularly important role in the formation of a single regional community of Donbass. Its characteristic features were formed during the period of dynamic qualitative and quantitative changes in the population of Donbass in recent centuries. The result was the dominance of the Russian language, despite the large number of Surzhik-speaking Little Russians who settled in the region in the first half of the 20th century, and the policy of Ukrainization, which was carried out starting from the 20s by various authorities.

So, in some 30-40 years, between the 1860s and 1900s, due to the flexible protectionist policy of the government, due to the efforts of Russian and foreign entrepreneurs, the vast area from the Seversky Donets to the Azov region turned into the largest industrial center in Europe, sometimes called the "Russian Rur."

It was at this time that the Donbass formed into a single interconnected economic region, covering Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, and partly Kherson provinces and the Don Cossack Region.

At the beginning of the last century, Alexander Blok visited the Donbass and called it New America - for the unprecedented dynamism of development, the entrepreneurial spirit of managers and the mixing of nationalities in a single "melting pot".

However, the rapid development of the region was carried out due to the merciless exploitation of local miners. Unlike the "old-fashioned" entrepreneurs in the Urals or the "calico belt" around Moscow, who retained paternalistic attitudes towards their workers, Donetsk entrepreneurs did not differ in any sentimental feelings towards the workforce. At the same time, the Donetsk workers, for the most part literate, almost detached from the village, despite the rather high wages, were distinguished by a very fighting spirit and organization. It is no coincidence that Donbass became one of the centers of the strike movement in the Russian Empire. The Bolshevik Party enjoyed significant influence in the region as early as 1905. After the February Revolution, the influence of the Bolsheviks grew especially significantly, which made Donbass one of the strongholds of Bolshevism in the country. By May 1917, most of the local soviets had gone over to the side of the Bolsheviks, leaving the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the minority. At the same time, the bourgeois parties and Ukrainian separatists did not have any success at all. The results of the municipal elections testified to the influence of the local Bolsheviks. Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov was elected chairman of the Luhansk City Duma in August 1917. Thus, the Bolsheviks took power in Lugansk even before the October coup in Petrograd. However, in the countryside, the anarchists enjoyed great success, led by Nestor Makhno, who already at the end of March 1917 headed the council in Gulyai-Pole. In the region of the Great Don Army, on whose lands a number of mining towns existed, the monarchists enjoyed success, which turned the Don into a stronghold of the white movement.

During the years of the Civil War, Donbass became the scene of fierce battles, as all the opposing forces sought to seize this industrial region. From February to May 1918, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic existed here as part of the RSFSR, ruled by the Bolsheviks. Then there was a period of German occupation, and a chaotic change of the most diverse authorities. The fighting in the region ended only in 1921 after the defeat of the Makhnovist movement. The restoration of Soviet power, however, led to the fact that the Donbass was part of Soviet Ukraine.

As a result, Ukrainianization began in the Donbass, as well as throughout the republic. The Ukrainian language became in the region dominated by the Russian population, and where the majority of people who consider themselves Ukrainians spoke Surzhik, became the language of office work and printing by the beginning of 1925. If in 1923 there were 7 Ukrainian schools, in 1924 there were 129, then in 1928 there were already 181 schools. In 1932, not a single Russian school class remained in Mariupol.

A modern researcher of the history of the region, Yu. Nosko, counted 54 different commissions for Ukrainization in Artemovsk alone. Here, not only documents, signs, newspapers were translated into another language, but even speaking in institutions was forbidden in Russian. And they were no longer limited to layoffs. In July 1930, the Presidium of the Stalin Okrug Executive Committee decided to “prosecute the leaders of organizations formally related to Ukrainization, who did not find ways to Ukrainize subordinates who violate the current legislation in the matter of Ukrainization,” while the prosecutor’s office was instructed to conduct show trials of “criminals”. In those days, "bringing to account" could lead to the most severe penalties.

In the Donbass, Ukrainization caused general rejection. Even in the countryside, residents preferred to teach their children the Russian language, rather than the “ready move”.

Resistance to Ukrainization, regarded as "counter-revolutionary", could only be passive. It looked Soviet: critical speeches at party meetings, letters to national newspapers. Thus, a teacher from Slavyansk, N. Tarasova, wrote to the newspaper: “There is a double waste of time at school in connection with Ukrainization - the teacher talks first with the students in Ukrainian, and then in Russian, so that the children understand better.” But more often people went to a dull protest: they did not attend compulsory Ukrainian language courses, did not listen to Ukrainian radio, did not subscribe to imposed newspapers. Many Donetsk newspapers were forced to go to the trick, printing all the headlines in Ukrainian, and articles in Russian. It is not surprising that with the slightest relaxation in the system of repressive measures, the numbers of “Ukrainized” schools, newspapers, and institutions in the region plummeted. As a result of general rejection, Ukrainization in the Donbass was largely curtailed in the late 1930s.

However, the history of the Soviet Donbass is not limited to Ukrainization. Donbass has retained, or rather, even increased its importance as one of the most important industrial centers of the country. During the years of the pre-war five-year plans, large-scale industrial construction continued in the Donbass, new coal mines were put into operation, and metallurgical plants were built using Krivoy Rog ore. Mechanical engineering and the chemical industry, which were previously absent in the region, appeared.

In 1940, the Donbass produced more than half of all pig iron produced in the country (6 million tons), about a quarter of the Union's production of steel and rolled products (respectively - 4.5 and 3 million tons). Many enterprises of Donbass have gained worldwide fame. Only one giant of heavy engineering - Novo-Kramatorsk plant annually sent more than 200 railway echelons of various machines and equipment to all parts of the country.

The population continued to grow rapidly, reaching 5 million by 1940, of which 3.5 million lived in cities. In general, Donbass became the most urbanized region in the USSR.

An indicator can be the growth of the population of the former Yuzovka, renamed in 1924 in Stalino. From 106 thousand people in 1926, Stalino grew to 507 thousand inhabitants by the beginning of 1941! Over the same years, the population of Mariupol (which became known as Zhdanov) increased by 4.5 times. A similar growth was typical for most of the settlements of the region. Migration was facilitated by the famine of 1932-33, when many starving Ukrainian peasants moved to the construction sites of Donbass. As a result, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Ukrainians, according to official statistics, began to predominate in the population.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the education system was formed in the Donetsk region as a whole. The system of higher education begins to develop. In 1939, there were already 7 universities. True, the policy of Ukrainization brought significant harm to the development of higher education in the Donbass (as well as throughout the republic), since for quite a long time teaching went on “movie”. Since there was no developed scientific Ukrainian terminology, instead of the international geological terms “gneiss” and “shales”, students learned the terms “lupaks” and “losnyaks” in Ukrainian.

During the Great Patriotic War, all the enterprises of Donbass were completely destroyed. It was with great difficulty that the structure of the national economy of the region was restored. This process was greatly complicated by the severe drought that swept the Donbass, the famine of 1946-1947. But thanks to the hard work of the Donbass, the economy of the region was quickly restored. In the future, the industrial growth of the region continued.

The size of the industrialization of Donbass was evidenced by the fact that 90% of the population lived in the cities of Donetsk by the end of the Soviet era, and 88% in Luhansk. At the same time, the actual urbanization of the region was even more significant, since many rural residents worked in cities. However, Donbass agriculture was also highly efficient, the yield was twice the national average, Donbass was fully self-sufficient in bread and other agricultural products. By the end of the 20th century, Donbass provided over a quarter of Ukraine's industrial production.

In general, the population of Donbass by 1989 reached 8,196 thousand inhabitants (in Donetsk region - 5,334 thousand, Lugansk - 2,862 thousand). About one million more people also lived in the mining districts of the Rostov region.

Cities grew rapidly. Donetsk (as Stalino began to be called in 1961, the former Yuzovka), in 1959 already had 700 thousand inhabitants, in 1979 - 1,020 thousand, in 1989 - 1,109 thousand. In Makeyevka, one of the cities of the Donetsk agglomeration, in 1989 there were 432,000 inhabitants. Lugansk has reached 524 thousand inhabitants.

The Soviet period in the history of Donbass completed the process of creating a special regional community within its framework. As V. Yu. Darensky, a researcher from Lugansk, notes, “The statistical fact of the numerical dominance of “Ukrainians” (Southern Russians) and Great Russians among the population of Donbass, in the presence of very large non-Slavic ethnic groups, took place until about the middle of the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, intensive processes of ethnogenesis took place in the Donbass, caused by the last “wave” of urbanization and the development of mass communications... There are no real sociocultural differences, for example, between the descendants of Ukrainians and Russians in the Donbass, who already at least in the second generation speak the same language and those who have mastered the same mental and behavioral models of life practically do not exist ... Traditional ethnic identifications in the Donbass have a relic and marginal character. Ethnic Ukrainians and Great Russians, who have retained their linguistic, mental and behavioral characteristics, currently do not outnumber representatives of other “national minorities” (Caucasian peoples, Greeks, Jews, Gypsies, etc.) ... Donbass is a completely monolingual region in which the number of real speakers of the Ukrainian language does not exceed the number of representatives of the Caucasian diasporas.

It is thanks to the influence of the stabilizing Russian ethnic component in the Donbass, where more than a hundred nationalities live, that there have never been serious ethnic conflicts.

Donbass gave many outstanding sons to the Russian people. These are composer Sergei Prokofiev, philologist Vladimir Dal, writer Vsevolod Garshin, military and political figure Kliment Voroshilov, politician Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Ukrainian politician Nikolai Skrypnik, actor Vasily Bykov, singers Yuri Gulyaev and Yuri Bogatikov, polar explorer Georgy Sedov, Russian cinema pioneer Alexander Khanzhonkov, Heroes of Socialist Labor Praskovya (Pasha) Angelina, Alexei Stakhanov and Nikita Izotov, weightlifter four-time world champion and writer Yuri Vlasov, Ukrainian poet Vladimir Sosyura and hundreds of thousands of other worthy people.

In the 60-80s. Donbass had a reputation as one of the most developed regions of the USSR with a very prosperous population. People from the Donbass were abundantly represented in the Soviet economic and political elite. Gradually, however, problems became more and more aggravated in the Donbass. Mineral reserves began to be depleted, which made it increasingly difficult and at the same time unprofitable to extract a significant part of coal. Coal itself gradually gave way to oil as the "bread of industry." Finally, environmental problems that were previously ignored have become incredibly acute. Annual emissions of harmful substances in metallurgical centers reach 200-300 thousand tons. For each inhabitant in Makiivka, for example, there are 1,420 kg of polluted and toxic substances, Mariupol-691, Donetsk - 661 kg. The concentration of dust in the air exceeds the maximum allowable standards by 6-15 times, sulfur dioxide - by 6-9 times, phenols - by 10-20 times. Quarry excavations and dumps have been turned into lifeless territories with altered hydrogeology and soil structure. The Sea of ​​Azov began to turn into a zone of ecological disaster. All this made Donbass one of the most environmentally "dirty" places in the USSR.

With such a load of achievements and problems, Donbass entered the troubled era of the collapse of the USSR and the proclamation of the "independence" of Ukraine.

In few places on the territory of historical Russia, the crisis of the 1990s. caused such dire consequences. The rupture of economic ties with enterprises that remained in the Russian Federation, the deliberate policy of de-industrialization pursued by the Ukrainian authorities at the request of Western prompters, criminal seizures and redistribution of property - all this caused the deepest economic crisis in the Donbass. At the same time, local regional politicians, despite the continued economic importance of Donbass, remained on the periphery of Ukrainian politics for a long time. The following facts speak about the Donbass "wild 90s" - the total number of people killed in the region numbered in the thousands. Only in the book of Sergei Kuzin "Donetsk mafia", published in 2006, the names and dates of death of more than 60 representatives of the criminal world, businessmen and journalists who died in the period from 1992 to 2002 in Donetsk alone are listed. The brother of the governor of the Donetsk region, who made no secret of his presidential ambitions, was killed. Only in the first years of the 21st century, after the region was headed by Viktor Yanukovych (yes, he was once distinguished by toughness and determination), Donbass ceased to be the "wild east of Ukraine."

In general, the years of "independence" led to a severe demographic crisis. The population of Donbass as of January 1, 2009 was 6,832.3 thousand people. (Donetsk region - 4,500.5 thousand people; Lugansk region - 2,331.8 thousand people). The analysis of the demographic situation in the Donetsk region showed that the population for 1995 - 2009. decreased by 1,261.7 thousand people. or by 15.6%.

There was a decrease in the population of almost all cities of Donbass. Thus, Donetsk has ceased to be a millionaire city.

Correction of the demographic situation is unlikely. The coefficient of natural growth of the Donetsk region is minus 8.3%. In 2008, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births by 1.8 times. In 2010 alone, the population of the Donetsk region decreased by almost 9.5 thousand people (it became 4 million 423 thousand). The migration outflow from the region has increased.

The region holds one of the first places in Ukraine in terms of the infant mortality rate (12 per 1,000 births). The percentage of the population older than working age in cities is almost 25%, and in villages - 28%. The region's able-bodied population averages more than 53%, young people - 21%, pensioners - 26%. In the gender structure of the population, women quantitatively predominate. Thus, there are 846 men per 1000 women, while in Ukraine as a whole this figure reaches 862.

ETHNIC HISTORY OF DONBASS. WHY FOR DONBASS "RUSSIA IS A MOTHER, AND UKRAINE IS WORSE THAN A STEPMOM"

“Mother Russia, and Ukraine is worse than a stepmother. Here...
That's all sentiment. Even with this situation

Gennady Moskal

Sergei Viktorovich Lebedev,
Doctor of Philosophy, Professor, political scientist

The territory between the Dnieper and the Don, bounded from the south by the Sea of ​​Azov, and from the north by a conditional line of forests, is called the Donbass, from the abbreviation DONETSK coal basin. The Greater Donbass is a vast region that includes the territories of the modern Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine, certain districts of the Dnepropetrovsk region, and a small strip along the Ukrainian border of the Rostov region of the Russian Federation with the cities of Shakhty and Millerovo. But usually under the Donbass (Small Donbass) they mean the territory of two regions - Donetsk and Lugansk with a population of 8 million people.

The northern half of the Donetsk and the southern half of the Lugansk regions, which are closely connected with each other, are one continuous seven-million metropolis - one of the largest in Europe. Megapolis, stretching for 250 km. from west to east and 200 km. from south to north, with extensive suburbs, agricultural and recreational areas, a developed network of communications, including a large seaport and several airports. The third part of the large cities of Ukraine with a population of more than 100,000 people. is part of this metropolis. In total, the metropolis consists of about 70 cities with a population of more than ten thousand people in each.

In the ethnic, as well as in the economic and political life of historical Russia, Donbass occupies a special place.

The main wealth of the region is coal. It was coal, which until the middle of the 20th century was called the "bread of industry", radically changed this region, turning it into one of the most important industrial centers of Russia. But it was coal, when it lost its importance to a certain extent, that caused the economic depression of Donbass.

This region was formed at the junction of Slobozhanshchina and Novorossia in the historical sense relatively recently - at the turn of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Although this region has been inhabited since ancient times, and became part of Russia in the 17th century, it acquired a truly all-Russian and world economic significance much later.

Feather-grass and wormwood grasses scorched by the sun and dried up by east winds, dry winds, bare areas of devoid of moisture and cracked earth, rocky outcrops of limestones and sandstones, occasionally supplemented by thickets of shrubs, and even less often by small forests - such was the landscape of the Donetsk region in the recent past. For many peoples living in the region, the Donetsk steppes were only a place for grazing livestock with separate centers of agriculture. The Donetsk steppes stood in the way of migrations of peoples and were open to all winds. It is not surprising that the Scythians, Sarmatians, Huns, Goths, Alans, Khazars, Pechenegs and Polovtsy passed through the steppes, leaving considerable traces of their material culture here.


From the 8th century, the Slavs began to dominate in the region, especially the tribe of the northerners. The northerners left the names of the river Seversky Donets, the city of Novgorod-Seversky, where Igor, sung in the "Tale of Igor's Campaign", reigned. The Slavs did not hold out for long in these steppes. Already at the end of the 11th century, the Polovtsian onslaught threw them to the north and west, under the saving canopy of forests, and the Donetsk steppes again became the "Wild Field". The headquarters of Khan Konchak was located in the area of ​​​​the present city of Slavyansk. It was on the territory of the present Donetsk region that the battle on the Kayala River took place in 1185, when Prince Igor was defeated and captured by the Polovtsians. On the Kalka River, now Kalchik, a tributary of the Kalmius, in 1223 the first battle of the Russian princes with the Mongols took place.

From that time until the epoch of the 17th century, the Tatars were the masters of the region. The remains of some Golden Horde settlements have survived to this day. With the decline of the Golden Horde and the transformation of the Tatar population of the region, subordinate to the Crimean Khan, into professionals for raids on Russia, the Tatar cities disappeared, and the steppes again took on a primitive desert look. Politically, the Donetsk region turned out to be a "no man's land" between the Crimean Khanate, the Moscow kingdom, the Commonwealth and the Zaporozhian Sich. In the 17th century, the border of the Russian state and the lands of the Don Army with the Crimean Khanate passed along the Seversky Donets. Above the Svyatogorsk monastery, it was guarded by Sloboda Cossacks, and below, along the Donets, there were fortified towns of the Donets.

In 1571, after the next Tatar raid, on the orders of Ivan the Terrible, Prince Tyufyakin and the clerk Rzhevsky visited here on an inspection trip, who installed a border sign in the form of a cross at the source of the Mius. In 1579, the government formed special mobile cavalry units to patrol the steppe paths from the Mius River to the Samara River.

However, already in the 16th, and especially in the 17th centuries, Zaporozhye and Don Cossacks were active in the Donetsk steppes. Moving along the Kalmius River to the Sea of ​​Azov, the Cossacks began to create fortified winter quarters along the banks of the river. At the beginning of the 17th century, Russian service people of the Izyum line, as well as Cherkasy (Little Russians who left the Polish domination from the territory of Polish possessions in Ukraine) began to settle here. In 1600, Alekseyevka, Chernukhino, the settlement of Staraya Belaya (now Luhansk region) arose, in 1637 - Aspen prison, in 1644 the prison Tor (named after the river of the same name) was built to protect the salt mines from the raids of the Crimeans. The Don Cossacks did not lag behind: in 1607, after the defeat of Bolotnikov's uprising, his comrade-in-arms Shulgeiko went to the Wild Field and founded Shul-gin-town on Aidar. In 1640, Borovskoye town arose on the Borovoe River, in 1642 - Old Aidar, then Trekhizbyanka, Lugansk, and other Cossack towns.

In the second half of the 17th century, a large-scale migration of Little Russians began to the east, to Sloboda Ukraine. The northern part of the present Donbass became at that time part of the Slobozhanschina. Mayatsky (1663), Solyanoy (1676), Raygorodok (1684), and a number of other settlements grew on the Torsk lakes, which testified to the rapid growth of the population. Don and Zaporozhye Cossacks, fugitive peasants from the Left-Bank Ukraine and South Russia settled here mixed. In 1668, for example, 100 Russian Moscow "people" and 37 "Cherkasy" (Ukrainians) lived in Mayaki.

In the northern part of the region, in the area of ​​​​the present city of Slavyansk, as early as 1625, Russian settlers began to extract salt. In the Cossack settlements and towns along the Seversky Donets and the Don, metallurgical, mining and forging production was established. The Izyum and Don Cossacks began to cook salt not only in Slavyansk, but also on Bakhmutka, a tributary of the Seversky Donets. Near the new salt mines, the town of Bakhmut grew up (known since 1663). In addition to salt, the Cossacks were well aware of the coal, which was used to kindle fires. In addition, the Cossacks learned how to extract lead ores by smelting metal in special ladles. Nevertheless, proximity to the Crimean Khanate, which turned the conditional steppe border between Russia and Crimea into a permanent battlefield, did not contribute to the development of the region.

However, the development of the region did not stop. In 1703, the Bakhmut district was created (as part of the Azov, later Voronezh province), which included almost all the settlements of the modern Donbass that existed at that time.

In 1730, a new fortified Ukrainian line was created, connecting the middle reaches of the Dnieper with the Seversky Donets with a chain of fortified places. Under Catherine II, the Dnieper line of fortifications was drawn along the southern border of the Yekaterinoslav province. As a result, vast desert territories, covered by fortified lines, became available for settlement.

According to the first revision of 1719, 8,747 souls lived in the county (6,994 Great Russians and 1,753 Little Russians). In 1738 there were 8,809 of them (6,223 Russians and 2,586 Ukrainians). As you can see, the pace of settlement was weak, which caused some concern in St. Petersburg. It was in this region that for the first time in Russia attempts were made to create settlements of foreign colonists.

In the reign of Elizabeth Petrovna, the resettlement of the southern Slavs took on large proportions. Since 1752, Serbian settlers began to arrive in the region. They founded a number of military-agricultural settlements, which were divided into regiments, companies and trenches and made up Slavic Serbia in the northeastern part of the Yekaterinoslav province (Slavyanoserbsky district).

The number of Serbs among the settlers was not large, by 1762 the entire population of Slavic Serbia was 10,076 people. (2,627 Moldavians, 378 Serbs, the rest of the population consisted of Bulgarians, Great Russians - Old Believers, Little Russians and Poles). Subsequently, this motley and multilingual mass assimilated with the indigenous Little Russian population and adopted its language and appearance.

After the Russian-Turkish war of 1768-74. The coast of the Sea of ​​Azov became part of Russia. Now the region could develop in peaceful conditions. As in all of Novorossia, the rapid emergence of new cities began. So, in 1795, a settlement appeared at the factory, which soon became the city of Lugansk.

The systematic settlement of the region by foreigners continued: back in 1771-73, in the context of the ongoing war with the Turks, 3,595 Moldavians and Volokhovs were settled here, who surrendered during the next Russian-Turkish war (they founded the village of Yasinovataya, now railway center).

Already in 1778, as already mentioned, Greeks brought out of Crimea, numbering 31 thousand people, settled on the territory from the Berda River to the Kalmius River, settled on the southern coast. The city of Mariupol became the center of Greek settlements. However, in the future, Greeks from Anatolia and Thrace began to be added to the Crimean Greeks, who founded a number of settlements.

In 1788 German colonists began to settle. The first group of Mennonite migrants (the so-called pacifist Protestant sect) from 228 families (910 people) settled on the river. Konke and near Yekaterinoslav. In 1790-96 another 117 families moved to the Mariupol district. Each colonist was allocated 60 acres of land. In addition to the Mennonites, more than 900 Lutherans and Catholics arrived in Russia. By 1823, 17 German colonies had appeared in the Sea of ​​Azov, the center of which was Ostheim (now Telmanovo).

In 1804 the government allowed 340,000 Jews to leave Belarus. Some of them settled on these lands, forming 3 colonies here in 1823-25. A new wave of Jewish settlement dates back to 1817, when the Society of Israelite Christians was formed to "convert Jews to Christianity and agricultural pursuits." Several hundred Jews from Odessa took advantage of this call and settled between Kalchik and Mariupol on lands not occupied by the Greeks.

Finally, in the 60s of the 19th century, the Nogais who had previously roamed here left the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov and moved to Turkey (together with part of the Crimean Tatars), but settlements of Bessarabian Bulgarians appeared, who left southern Bessarabia, which in 1856 seceded from Russia to the Moldavian principality.

So, by the middle of the 19th century, Donbass was developing along with the rest of the regions of Novorossiya. The beginning of the industrial production of Donetsk coal, as well as the development of ferrous metallurgy, changed everything dramatically.

In 1696, returning from the Azov campaign, Peter I got acquainted with Donetsk coal. While resting on the banks of the Kalmius, the king was shown a piece of a black, well-burning mineral. “This mineral, if not for us, then for our descendants, will be very useful,” said Peter. During his reign, coal mining begins to acquire a fairly large scale. In 1721, Russian serf explorer Grigory Kapustin discovered coal near the tributaries of the Seversky Donets and proved its suitability for use in blacksmithing and ironworks. In December 1722, by personal decree, Peter sent Kapustin for samples of coal, and then it was ordered to equip special expeditions for the exploration of coal and ore. It would seem that this discovery would serve as an impetus for the development of the coal and metallurgical industries, but after Peter's death, Donetsk coal was forgotten in St. Petersburg for a long time.

Interest in Donetsk coal revived in the 19th century. In 1827, under the leadership of E. P. Kovalevsky, a prominent scientist and organizer of industry, who later became the Minister of Finance of Russia, three geological expeditions were organized. Based on the results of the expeditions, E. P. Kovalevsky published an article in which he first mentioned the name "Donetsk basin", which in an abbreviated form became the name of the region.

In the middle of the 19th century, rapid railway construction began in Russia. It requires metal and coal. All this was in the Donetsk steppes, which, moreover, were located near the Black Sea and Azov port cities.

In 1841, to organize the supply of fuel to the steam ships of the Azov-Black Sea flotilla, the first technically equipped Donetsk mine was put into operation. In 1858, on the territory of modern Yenakiyevo, a blast-furnace plant was founded, named after Peter I Petrovsky. In 1869, the Englishman John Hughes, who was called Yuz in Russia, acquired a concession for iron and rail production in the South of Russia, built the first large metallurgical enterprise on the banks of the Kalmius River, around which the village of Yuzovka soon grew.

In total, by 1900 there were up to 300 various enterprises and institutions in the Donbass of the metalworking, chemical, local processing and food and flavor industries.

Railways connected Donetsk coal with Kryvyi Rih ore, creating favorable conditions for the rapid development of heavy industry in the region. Coal mining increased from 295.6 million poods in 1894 to 671.1 million in 1900, i.e. 2.5 times. By 1913, more than 1.5 billion poods of coal were mined in the Donbass. The share of the Donetsk basin in the country's coal industry increased to 74%, and almost all coking coal was mined in the Donbass.

The rapid growth of industry also caused a rapid increase in population. By the end of the XVIII century. the population of the Donetsk region was 250 thousand people. By the middle of the 19th century, the majority (about 500) of modern settlements with a population of about 400 thousand people already existed in the Donbass. In the second half of the nineteenth century. the population of the territory of modern Donbass increased 5 times faster than in other regions of the Russian Empire. According to the 1897 census, 333,478 people already lived in the Bakhmut district of the Yekaterinoslav province, and 254,056 people lived in Mariupol. At the beginning of the 20th century, Gorlovka - 30 thousand inhabitants, Bakhmut (now Artemovsk) - more than 30 thousand, Makeevka - 20 thousand, Enakievo -16 thousand, Kramatorsk -12 thousand, Druzhkovka - more 13 thousand. Only from 1900 to 1914 the number of working population of the Donetsk region doubled.

The growth of Yuzovka, which arose in 1869, is indicative. In 1884, 6 thousand inhabitants lived in it, in 1897 - 28 thousand, in 1914 - 70 thousand. Moreover, only in 1917 Yuzovka received the status of a city!

Donbass, which from the beginning was distinguished by its multinationality, during the period of rapid development at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. hosted hundreds of thousands of immigrants of various nationalities.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the size and national composition of the population of Donbass (Bakhmut district, Mariupol district, Slavyanoserbsky district, Starobelsky district, Slavyansk), according to the All-Russian census of 1897, were as follows:

Russians 985,887 - 86.7% (Little Russians 710,613 - 62.5%, Great Russians 275,274 - 24.2%, Belarusians 11,061 - 1.0%), Greeks 48,452 - 4.2%, Germans 33,774 - 3.0%, Jews 22,416 - 2.0%, Tatars 15,992 - 1.4%. Total 1,136,361 people

In Yuzovka in 1884, according to the city census, out of 6 thousand inhabitants: 32.6% were "local" - residents of Bakhmut and other districts of the Yekaterinoslav province; 26% - residents of the central provinces (Oryol, Vladimir, Kaluga, Smolensk, Ryazan, Tambov, etc.); 19% - people from the southern and southwestern provinces (Don region, Voronezh, Kursk, Kiev, Chernigov, Tauride, Kharkov, Poltava, etc.); 17.4% - residents of other provinces; 5% - foreigners (English, Italians, Germans, Romanians, etc.). By the beginning of the 20th century, Yuzovka had not changed its international character: “The ethnic composition of the population of the village, and then the city of Yuzovka, by the beginning of the 20th century was motley: Russians - 31,952, Jews - 9,934, Ukrainians - 7,086, Poles - 2,120, Belarusians - 1465".

It was at that time that the main proportions of the ethnic structure of the Donbass were formed, with relatively minor changes that have survived to this day. The result was the formation of a multi-ethnic community of representatives of about 130 ethnic groups with an absolute predominance of Russians and very Russified Ukrainians (more correctly, Little Russians) who are Ukrainians by passport.

Gradually, under the influence of a number of factors (environment, working conditions, etc.), the population of Donbass began to transform into a stable regional community with a single value base, worldview, culture, way of life. The language factor played and continues to play a particularly important role in the formation of a single regional community of Donbass. Its characteristic features were formed during the period of dynamic qualitative and quantitative changes in the population of Donbass in recent centuries. The result was the dominance of the Russian language, despite the large number of Surzhik-speaking Little Russians who settled in the region in the first half of the 20th century, and the policy of Ukrainization, which was carried out starting from the 20s by various authorities.

So, in some 30-40 years, between the 1860s and 1900s, due to the flexible protectionist policy of the government, due to the efforts of Russian and foreign entrepreneurs, the vast area from the Seversky Donets to the Azov region turned into the largest industrial center in Europe, sometimes called the "Russian Rur."

It was at this time that the Donbass formed into a single interconnected economic region, covering Yekaterinoslav, Kharkov, and partly Kherson provinces and the Don Cossack Region.

At the beginning of the last century, Alexander Blok visited the Donbass and called it New America - for the unprecedented dynamism of development, the entrepreneurial spirit of managers and the mixing of nationalities in a single "melting pot".

However, the rapid development of the region was carried out due to the merciless exploitation of local miners. Unlike the "old-fashioned" entrepreneurs in the Urals or the "calico belt" around Moscow, who retained paternalistic attitudes towards their workers, Donetsk entrepreneurs did not differ in any sentimental feelings towards the workforce. At the same time, the Donetsk workers, for the most part literate, almost detached from the village, despite the rather high wages, were distinguished by a very fighting spirit and organization. It is no coincidence that Donbass became one of the centers of the strike movement in the Russian Empire. The Bolshevik Party enjoyed significant influence in the region as early as 1905. After the February Revolution, the influence of the Bolsheviks grew especially significantly, which made Donbass one of the strongholds of Bolshevism in the country. By May 1917, most of the local soviets had gone over to the side of the Bolsheviks, leaving the Socialist-Revolutionaries and Mensheviks in the minority. At the same time, the bourgeois parties and Ukrainian separatists did not have any success at all. The results of the municipal elections testified to the influence of the local Bolsheviks. Bolshevik Kliment Voroshilov was elected chairman of the Luhansk City Duma in August 1917. Thus, the Bolsheviks took power in Lugansk even before the October coup in Petrograd. However, in the countryside, the anarchists enjoyed great success, led by Nestor Makhno, who already at the end of March 1917 headed the council in Gulyai-Pole. In the region of the Great Don Army, on whose lands a number of mining towns existed, the monarchists enjoyed success, which turned the Don into a stronghold of the white movement.

During the years of the Civil War, Donbass became the scene of fierce battles, as all the opposing forces sought to seize this industrial region. From February to May 1918, the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic existed here as part of the RSFSR, ruled by the Bolsheviks. Then there was a period of German occupation, and a chaotic change of the most diverse authorities. The fighting in the region ended only in 1921 after the defeat of the Makhnovist movement. The restoration of Soviet power, however, led to the fact that the Donbass was part of Soviet Ukraine.

As a result, Ukrainianization began in the Donbass, as well as throughout the republic. The Ukrainian language became in the region dominated by the Russian population, and where the majority of people who consider themselves Ukrainians spoke Surzhik, became the language of office work and printing by the beginning of 1925. If in 1923 there were 7 Ukrainian schools, in 1924 there were 129, then in 1928 there were already 181 schools. In 1932, not a single Russian school class remained in Mariupol.

A modern researcher of the history of the region, Yu. Nosko, counted 54 different commissions for Ukrainization in Artemovsk alone. Here, not only documents, signs, newspapers were translated into another language, but even speaking in institutions was forbidden in Russian. And they were no longer limited to layoffs. In July 1930, the Presidium of the Stalin Okrug Executive Committee decided to “prosecute the leaders of organizations formally related to Ukrainization, who did not find ways to Ukrainize subordinates who violate the current legislation in the matter of Ukrainization,” while the prosecutor’s office was instructed to conduct show trials of “criminals”. In those days, "bringing to account" could lead to the most severe penalties.

In the Donbass, Ukrainization caused general rejection. Even in the countryside, residents preferred to teach their children the Russian language, rather than the “ready move”.

Resistance to Ukrainization, regarded as "counter-revolutionary", could only be passive. It looked Soviet: critical speeches at party meetings, letters to national newspapers. Thus, a teacher from Slavyansk, N. Tarasova, wrote to the newspaper: “There is a double waste of time at school in connection with Ukrainization - the teacher talks first with the students in Ukrainian, and then in Russian, so that the children understand better.” But more often people went to a dull protest: they did not attend compulsory Ukrainian language courses, did not listen to Ukrainian radio, did not subscribe to imposed newspapers. Many Donetsk newspapers were forced to go to the trick, printing all the headlines in Ukrainian, and articles in Russian. It is not surprising that with the slightest relaxation in the system of repressive measures, the numbers of “Ukrainized” schools, newspapers, and institutions in the region plummeted. As a result of general rejection, Ukrainization in the Donbass was largely curtailed in the late 1930s.

However, the history of the Soviet Donbass is not limited to Ukrainization. Donbass has retained, or rather, even increased its importance as one of the most important industrial centers of the country. During the years of the pre-war five-year plans, large-scale industrial construction continued in the Donbass, new coal mines were put into operation, and metallurgical plants were built using Krivoy Rog ore. Mechanical engineering and the chemical industry, which were previously absent in the region, appeared.

In 1940, the Donbass produced more than half of all pig iron produced in the country (6 million tons), about a quarter of the Union's production of steel and rolled products (respectively - 4.5 and 3 million tons). Many enterprises of Donbass have gained worldwide fame. Only one giant of heavy engineering - Novo-Kramatorsk plant annually sent more than 200 railway echelons of various machines and equipment to all parts of the country.

The population continued to grow rapidly, reaching 5 million by 1940, of which 3.5 million lived in cities. In general, Donbass became the most urbanized region in the USSR.

An indicator can be the growth of the population of the former Yuzovka, renamed in 1924 in Stalino. From 106 thousand people in 1926, Stalino grew to 507 thousand inhabitants by the beginning of 1941! Over the same years, the population of Mariupol (which became known as Zhdanov) increased by 4.5 times. A similar growth was typical for most of the settlements of the region. Migration was facilitated by the famine of 1932-33, when many starving Ukrainian peasants moved to the construction sites of Donbass. As a result, by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Ukrainians, according to official statistics, began to predominate in the population.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the education system was formed in the Donetsk region as a whole. The system of higher education begins to develop. In 1939, there were already 7 universities. True, the policy of Ukrainization brought significant harm to the development of higher education in the Donbass (as well as throughout the republic), since for quite a long time teaching went on “movie”. Since there was no developed scientific Ukrainian terminology, instead of the international geological terms “gneiss” and “shales”, students learned the terms “lupaks” and “losnyaks” in Ukrainian.

During the Great Patriotic War, all the enterprises of Donbass were completely destroyed. It was with great difficulty that the structure of the national economy of the region was restored. This process was greatly complicated by the severe drought that swept the Donbass, the famine of 1946-1947. But thanks to the hard work of the Donbass, the economy of the region was quickly restored. In the future, the industrial growth of the region continued.

The size of the industrialization of Donbass was evidenced by the fact that 90% of the population lived in the cities of Donetsk by the end of the Soviet era, and 88% in Luhansk. At the same time, the actual urbanization of the region was even more significant, since many rural residents worked in cities. However, Donbass agriculture was also highly efficient, the yield was twice the national average, Donbass was fully self-sufficient in bread and other agricultural products. By the end of the 20th century, Donbass provided over a quarter of Ukraine's industrial production.

In general, the population of Donbass by 1989 reached 8,196 thousand inhabitants (in Donetsk region - 5,334 thousand, Lugansk - 2,862 thousand). About one million more people also lived in the mining districts of the Rostov region.

Cities grew rapidly. Donetsk (as Stalino began to be called in 1961, the former Yuzovka), in 1959 already had 700 thousand inhabitants, in 1979 - 1,020 thousand, in 1989 - 1,109 thousand. In Makeyevka, one of the cities of the Donetsk agglomeration, in 1989 there were 432,000 inhabitants. Lugansk has reached 524 thousand inhabitants.

The Soviet period in the history of Donbass completed the process of creating a special regional community within its framework. As V. Yu. Darensky, a researcher from Lugansk, notes, “The statistical fact of the numerical dominance of “Ukrainians” (Southern Russians) and Great Russians among the population of Donbass, in the presence of very large non-Slavic ethnic groups, took place until about the middle of the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, intensive processes of ethnogenesis took place in the Donbass, caused by the last “wave” of urbanization and the development of mass communications... There are no real sociocultural differences, for example, between the descendants of Ukrainians and Russians in the Donbass, who already at least in the second generation speak the same language and those who have mastered the same mental and behavioral models of life practically do not exist ... Traditional ethnic identifications in the Donbass have a relic and marginal character. Ethnic Ukrainians and Great Russians, who have retained their linguistic, mental and behavioral characteristics, currently do not outnumber representatives of other “national minorities” (Caucasian peoples, Greeks, Jews, Gypsies, etc.) ... Donbass is a completely monolingual region in which the number of real speakers of the Ukrainian language does not exceed the number of representatives of the Caucasian diasporas.”

It is thanks to the influence of the stabilizing Russian ethnic component in the Donbass, where more than a hundred nationalities live, that there have never been serious ethnic conflicts.

Donbass gave many outstanding sons to the Russian people. These are composer Sergei Prokofiev, philologist Vladimir Dal, writer Vsevolod Garshin, military and political figure Kliment Voroshilov, politician Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Ukrainian politician Nikolai Skrypnik, actor Vasily Bykov, singers Yuri Gulyaev and Yuri Bogatikov, polar explorer Georgy Sedov, Russian cinema pioneer Alexander Khanzhonkov, Heroes of Socialist Labor Praskovya (Pasha) Angelina, Alexei Stakhanov and Nikita Izotov, weightlifter four-time world champion and writer Yuri Vlasov, Ukrainian poet Vladimir Sosyura and hundreds of thousands of other worthy people.

In the 60-80s. Donbass had a reputation as one of the most developed regions of the USSR with a very prosperous population. People from the Donbass were abundantly represented in the Soviet economic and political elite. Gradually, however, problems became more and more aggravated in the Donbass. Mineral reserves began to be depleted, which made it increasingly difficult and at the same time unprofitable to extract a significant part of coal. Coal itself gradually gave way to oil as the "bread of industry." Finally, environmental problems that were previously ignored have become incredibly acute. Annual emissions of harmful substances in metallurgical centers reach 200-300 thousand tons. For each inhabitant in Makiivka, for example, there are 1,420 kg of polluted and toxic substances, Mariupol-691, Donetsk - 661 kg. The concentration of dust in the air exceeds the maximum allowable standards by 6-15 times, sulfur dioxide - by 6-9 times, phenols - by 10-20 times. Quarry excavations and dumps have been turned into lifeless territories with altered hydrogeology and soil structure. The Sea of ​​Azov began to turn into a zone of ecological disaster. All this made Donbass one of the most environmentally "dirty" places in the USSR.

With such a load of achievements and problems, Donbass entered the troubled era of the collapse of the USSR and the proclamation of the "independence" of Ukraine.

In few places on the territory of historical Russia, the crisis of the 1990s. caused such dire consequences. The rupture of economic ties with enterprises that remained in the Russian Federation, the deliberate policy of de-industrialization pursued by the Ukrainian authorities at the request of Western prompters, criminal seizures and redistribution of property - all this caused the deepest economic crisis in the Donbass. At the same time, local regional politicians, despite the continued economic importance of Donbass, remained on the periphery of Ukrainian politics for a long time. The following facts speak about the Donbass "wild 90s" - the total number of people killed in the region numbered in the thousands. Only in the book of Sergei Kuzin "Donetsk mafia", published in 2006, the names and dates of death of more than 60 representatives of the criminal world, businessmen and journalists who died in the period from 1992 to 2002 in Donetsk alone are listed. The brother of the governor of the Donetsk region, who made no secret of his presidential ambitions, was killed. Only in the first years of the 21st century, after the region was headed by Viktor Yanukovych (yes, he was once distinguished by toughness and determination), Donbass ceased to be the "wild east of Ukraine."

In general, the years of "independence" led to a severe demographic crisis. The population of Donbass as of January 1, 2009 was 6,832.3 thousand people. (Donetsk region - 4,500.5 thousand people; Lugansk region - 2,331.8 thousand people). The analysis of the demographic situation in the Donetsk region showed that the population for 1995 - 2009. decreased by 1,261.7 thousand people. or by 15.6%.

There was a decrease in the population of almost all cities of Donbass. Thus, Donetsk has ceased to be a millionaire city.

Correction of the demographic situation is unlikely. The coefficient of natural growth of the Donetsk region is minus 8.3%. In 2008, the number of deaths exceeded the number of births by 1.8 times. In 2010 alone, the population of the Donetsk region decreased by almost 9.5 thousand people (it became 4 million 423 thousand). The migration outflow from the region has increased.

The region holds one of the first places in Ukraine in terms of the infant mortality rate (12 per 1,000 births). The percentage of the population older than working age in cities is almost 25%, and in villages - 28%. The region's able-bodied population averages more than 53%, young people - 21%, pensioners - 26%. In the sexual structure, women quantitatively predominate. Thus, there are 846 men per 1,000 women, while in Ukraine as a whole this figure reaches 862. Official Kiev has been busy only with regular Ukrainization during all the years of “independence”. education "Ukraine"?

The tribes of Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Huns, Bulgars, Pechenegs, Polovtsy, and Torks roamed the Donetsk steppes.

The main occupation of nomadic tribes is cattle breeding and military raids. Some of the nomadic peoples were engaged in primitive agriculture. Nomads - several times a year they moved from place to place, because the animals constantly needed new pastures. Therefore, the most common type of dwelling among nomads was collapsible, easily portable structures covered with wool or leather (yurt, tent or tent). Household utensils and dishes were most often made of unbreakable materials (wood, leather, metal). Clothes and shoes were sewn, as a rule, from leather, wool and fur.

The nomads traveled on horseback and were excellent riders. In all nomadic tribes, all men were warriors and mastered the art of war from early childhood. Some tribes also had women warriors. The core of the army was the cavalry. The nomads used their traditional tactics of surprise attacks, feigned retreats and ambushes. The weapons of the riders were spears, bows and darts. , as well as daggers, swords and axes. The Scythians have already mastered some siege machines, primarily a ram. The Polovtsians had heavily armed cavalry, as well as heavy crossbows and "liquid fire".

All nomads were pagans. The burials of the dead were most often carried out in mounds. Clothes, weapons, jewelry, utensils were placed in the grave, often the remains of a horse were left on the grave or in the grave.

1. Huns (Xiongnu)- Turkic-speaking tribes who came from the East from Central Asia. A large number of gold and silver jewelry, belt sets, diadems, saddles, horse harness, weapons, headdresses, buckles, pendants, falars (falar is a large convex round plaque with a relief ornament) and overlays were placed in the graves of noble Huns. A stone stele from the Novoazovsky region dates back to the Hun times.

2. Bulgars- Turkic and Finno-Ugric tribes that inhabited the Black Sea and Azov steppes in the 7th century. In the Sea of ​​\u200b\u200bAzov, they created their own state Great Bulgaria (Bulgaria) with its capital in the city of Phanagoria. Part of the population was engaged in agriculture, and the traditional occupation of the steppes - cattle breeding was also developing. As a result of pressure from Khazaria, part of the Bulgars went to Asia Minor, to Arabia, where over time they assimilated among the local population, part moved to the Caucasus (in particular, to Armenia), part of the Bulgars went to Europe and created a new state - Bulgaria on the Danube, part of the Bulgars remained on their lands and became part of the Khazar Khaganate.



3. Khazars- Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes. The Khazars conquered the Azov Bulgarians and created a strong, prosperous state - the Khazar Khaganate, headed by the ruler - the Khagan and the capital in the city of Itil. For a long time, both Byzantium and Russia paid tribute to the Khazars for maintaining peaceful relations. Before the founding of the state, they were nomads, and then began to lead a semi-nomadic lifestyle, staying in the cities for the winter. They were actively engaged in trade, although the Khazars did not have their own coin. The army of the Khazars was numerous and consisted of a permanent detachment and a militia. The Kiev prince Svyatoslav dealt a decisive blow to the kaganate. After that, the Khazar Khaganate could never recover and soon ceased to exist. Near the Seversky Donets, scientists discovered a large settlement from the time of the Khazar Khaganate. A set of jewelry, a mirror and coins were found in the burial of a Khazar woman in Mariupol. During the excavations, archaeologists found a set of pincers, tongs, stirrups, buckles, weapons, as well as the remains of the Khazar camps, in which traces of round dwellings - yurts are preserved.

4. Torquay- tribes of Turkic-speaking nomads related to the Pechenegs. The main nomad camps of the Torks were located in the Donetsk region in the basin of the Kazenny Torets River. From them comes a whole series hydronyms(names of rivers) - Kazennyy Torets, Krivoy Torets, Dry Torets, Torsk Lakes

and toponyms(names of the locality) - Bolshoy Tor, Toretskoye settlement and the city of Tor (modern Slavyansk), the villages of Toretskoye and Torskoye in Konstantinovsky and Krasnolimansky districts, Kramatorovka (modern Kramatorsk). It was in this steppe microdistrict that a few burials of Torks were found: near the village of Torskoye in the Krasnolimansky district and the city of Yasinovataya, Donetsk region. In many ways, they are similar to the Pechenegs. Torquay, like the Pechenegs, buried their relatives in mounds in pits with wooden flooring. On top of the flooring lay the head and legs of the horse. The horse itself was eaten by relatives during the feast (feast - commemoration). The horse was an obligatory element of burial. The nomads believed that the dead entered paradise on horseback.

5. Pechenegs - nomadic Turkic-speaking peoples. The Pechenegs were in constant motion and moved across the steppe with their herds. The basis of the herd were horses and sheep. They did not have long-term camps; light yurts served as dwellings. A yurt is a round dwelling made of felt and animal skins on a frame of wooden poles. An open hearth was always arranged in the center of the yurt. Predatory wars were an important way to get rich. The Pechenegs constantly attacked their neighbors, captured people for the purpose of ransom, and took their cattle away. Neighboring states sought to make peace with them and pay off tribute. The Pechenegs first appeared on the borders of the Russian principalities in 915. Prince Igor immediately concluded a peace treaty with them. Later, a long bloody struggle between Russia and the Pechenegs began, and only in 1036 Yaroslav the Wise managed to defeat a large Pecheneg army near Kiev and put an end to their raids.

6. Polovtsy - another name for Komans (or Cumans), Kipchaks (or Kypchaks). The whole Polovtsian land was called Desht-i-Kipchak. The center of the Polovtsian land was in the Northern Azov region. Russian chronicles call these lands Lukomorye. A large center of the Polovtsians from the Don were fortified settlements on the Seversky Donets near the villages of Bogorodichnoe, Sidorov and Mayaki in the Slavyansk region of the Donetsk region, the cities of Sharukan, Sugrov, Cheshuev are mentioned in their lands.

The Kipchaks were typical nomadic pastoralists. They bred horses, camels, goats and sheep, buffaloes and cows; in the warm season, the Polovtsians roamed the steppe. In cold weather, they arranged winter quarters. They consisted of yurts and wagons. An insignificant part of the Polovtsy settled on the ground and was engaged in primitive agriculture. The main foodstuffs were animal meat and cow's milk, koumiss (processed horse's milk), millet and wheat porridges. The clothes were well adapted for riding.

The life of the Polovtsy, like all nomads, was inextricably linked with the horse. All from young to old were excellent riders. after death, as a rule, a whole horse, a bridle set, stirrups, and sometimes a saddle were placed in the graves of men and women. Weapons were placed on the men, jewelry on the women. The dead were buried in pre-existing burial mounds or a new earth mound was raised over their graves.

The Kipchaks had a custom to set stone (very rarely wooden) images of dead ancestors on barrows and high places. These sculptures are called "stone women". The sculptures are made of gray sandstone and are 1 to 4 meters high. "Baba" is a distorted "balbal", "babay" (in Turkic - a strong, respected, warrior-hero). Polovtsian stone sculpture (Polovtsian woman) is a statue symbolizing an ancestor. Gifts were brought to stone "women", they were asked for protection and patronage.

Polovtsian warriors were considered excellent warriors.

1. All men capable of carrying weapons were required to serve in the Polovtsian army. Polovtsian warriors fought with bows, darts and curved sabers, lassoes and spears. The main force of the nomads, like any steppe dwellers, were detachments of light cavalry armed with bows. Later, squads with heavy weapons appeared in the troops of the Polovtsian khans. Heavily armed warriors wore chain mail, armor and helmets with iron or bronze masks.

2. It is also known about the use of heavy crossbows and "liquid fire" by the Polovtsians, borrowed, perhaps from China or from the Byzantines (Greek fire). Using this technique, the Polovtsy were able to take well-fortified cities.

3. The Polovtsian troops were distinguished by their maneuverability. Some carts were equipped with crossbows and were suitable for protection during enemy attacks. During sudden attacks by the enemy, the Polovtsy knew how to defend themselves stubbornly, surrounding their camp with wagons.

4. The Polovtsy used the tactics of surprise attacks, false retreats and ambushes, traditional for nomads.