The fifth largest settlement in Ukraine. Former city-millionaire, and now not up to this status. Capital of Donbass. Donetsk.
Start started
Unlike most cities, large and small, Donetsk cannot boast of a rich history. The territories of the future city were periodically inhabited by the Cossacks since the seventeenth century, but there were no permanent settlements. The year of foundation is considered to be 1869, when a resident of Wales, John James Hughes, began to build a metallurgical plant on the territory of the then Yekaterinoslav province. And at the plant, a village was built for future workers, which in honor of the owner received the name, slightly renamed in the local way, - Yuzovka. The surroundings of the village were chosen by other breeders who built machine-building, iron foundries, nitrogen, coke and other plants. And the territory of Yuzovka grew rapidly, the population came from all over the Russian Empire to a new industrial area. If at the time of the foundation of the village there were less than two hundred people, after fifteen years - five and a half thousand, then at the turn of the twentieth century the population of Donetsk (then still Yuzovka and not even a city) exceeded thirty thousand. City status was obtained inthe year of the October Revolution, when the number of inhabitants exceeded sixty thousand people.
City in the Soviet pre-war period
A little later, the city receives the status of an administrative (district) center and in 1923 changes its name to Stalino. Most see the name of the Soviet leader in this renaming, but some scholars believe that due to the absence of a personality cult in those days, the city was simply named with a purely industrial name. Stalino continues to develop rapidly, and by the time it becomes a regional center in 1932, the population is more than two hundred thousand. The region, by the way, was called Donetsk and in 1938 was divided into two - Donetsk was left and a new one was formed - Voroshilovgrad (future Luhansk). This did not affect the high growth rate of citizens staying in the region. At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the population of Donetsk (Stalin in those years) exceeded five hundred thousand people.
War population decline and post-war industrial boom
The war has significantly reduced the number of inhabitants of the city. Some mobilized for the war, some died defending the city, some were driven to Germany, but the majority went to the evacuation. Therefore, in 1943, the population of the city of Donetsk (the future) was less than two hundred thousand people. But the post-war country required huge resources, because the Donetsk region in these years began to be actively populated by immigrants from all over the Soviet Union. The country wanted to receive coal and ore, and an increasemining was achieved by an increase in miners. By 1951, the population of Donetsk already exceeded the pre-war level, passing the mark of five hundred and ten thousand, and by 1956 - six hundred and twenty-five thousand people.
Modern name
The city received its current name a few years after Stalin's death, in 1961. At that time, the population of Donetsk was approaching the mark of seven hundred and fifty thousand people and continued to grow. The rate of increase slowed down, but in quantitative terms, the city's inhabitants became larger. And in 1978, the population of Donetsk reached a solid milestone. Ukraine has received a new millionaire city. From that moment on, population growth slowed down significantly, as if it were held back by the boundaries of a millionaire city. The population increased at a very small pace - the annual increase averaged ten thousand new residents. However, a slow but steady increase led to the fact that at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Donetsk also reached its peak in the number of inhabitants. Ukraine, whose population has reached its maximum, received the city in which the largest number of inhabitants lived in its entire history - more than one million one hundred twenty-one thousand people. Since then, the population of Donetsk has been steadily, but slowly declining. By the beginning of 2005, the population was already less than one million inhabitants.
Rivalry with the former provincial city
Creatingthe impression that since its foundation Donetsk has been trying to argue with Dnepropetrovsk for the right to be the industrial center of Ukraine. Rapidly developing, the capital of Donbass in terms of population in the pre-war years literally caught up with its former provincial city. If in Donetsk and the region the emphasis was on coal mining and metallurgy, then Dnepropetrovsk developed machine building more. After the war, first of all, resources were required, which were then already used for development. Therefore, the rapid post-war growth of the mining region led to the fact that the population of Donetsk in the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century exceeded the population of the neighboring regional center. But with the beginning of the 1970s, the situation changed in the opposite direction. The increase in the number of inhabitants of Dnepropetrovsk during this period led to the fact that the city received its millionth inhabitant two years earlier than Donetsk. Since then, the parity of numbers has been observed - usually fifty to seventy thousand more people lived in the machine-building center than in the mining center. Both cities reached their peak at the time Ukraine gained independence: both Dnepropetrovsk and Donetsk. Ukraine's population (number of 2014 - 48 million people, 1991 - 52 million people) has been gradually losing its population since then, and the number of inhabitants of both cities has decreased at an equal pace.
National question
Unlike many other cities, although Donetsk is multinational, it is based on Russians and Ukrainians, of whom there are 48 in this settlementand 47 percent, respectively. One percent of the population of the city are representatives of Belarusians and Greeks. The remaining three percent of the population are residents of other nationalities, among which are Jews, Tatars, Armenians, Azerbaijanis and Georgians. Interestingly, in the mid-twenties of the last century, although there were almost ten times fewer inhabitants, the national composition was different. More than 55 percent of the inhabitants identified themselves as Russians, 25 percent as Ukrainians, more than 10 percent were Jews, in addition, there were a significant number of Poles and Germans.
Urban agglomeration
For the convenience of management, Donetsk is divided into nine districts, each of which is home to about one hundred thousand people. But the Donbass region has such a high population density that the boundaries of individual cities are literally erased here. Makeevka, which is significant in terms of population, besides it Khartsyzsk, Avdeevka, Yasinovataya and some other smaller urban formations are part of a single urban agglomeration. If counted together with nearby cities, the population of Donetsk is almost two million people.
After 2014
Unfortunately, the tragic events in Ukraine, which began in 2014, could not but affect the number of Donetsk residents. Representatives of the Donetsk People's Republic, of which Donetsk has now become the center, argue that the number of inhabitants, if it has decreased, is insignificant. And independent observers will surely say that according toAccording to estimates, the population of the city has decreased significantly and today is less than seven hundred thousand people. But it should be understood that the population of Donetsk and the entire region will recover, as happened after the Great Patriotic War.
