The fifth most populated area of Ukraine. The former city is a millionaire, and now does not reach this status. The capital of Donbass. Donetsk
The beginning of time
Unlike most cities, large and not very large, Donetsk cannot boast a rich history. The territories of the future city were periodically inhabited by 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 Ekaterinoslav province. And at the plant, a village was built for future workers, which in honor of the owner received the name, slightly renamed 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 was growing rapidly, the population gathered from all over the Russian Empire to a new industrial area. If at the time of the founding 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 Yuzovka and not even the city) exceeded thirty thousand. The status of the city was obtained in the year of the October Revolution, when the number of inhabitants exceeded sixty thousand people.
The 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 Stalin. Most see the name of the Soviet leader in this renaming, but some scholars believe that due to the lack of a personality cult in those days, the city was simply called a purely industrial name. Stalin continues to develop rapidly, and by the time he turns into a regional center in 1932, the population is more than two hundred thousand. The region, by the way, was called Donetsk and in 1938 it was divided into two - Donetsk was abandoned and a new one was formed - Voroshilovgrad (future Lugansk). This did not affect the high growth rate of citizens staying in the region. At the beginning of World War II, the population of Donetsk (in those years still Stalin) exceeded five hundred thousand people.
Military Population Reduction and Post-War Industrial Boom
The war significantly reduced the number of inhabitants of the city. Some mobilized for war, some died defending the city, some were stolen to Germany, but most went to evacuate. Therefore, in 1943, the population of the city of Donetsk (the future) was less than two hundred thousand people. But the post-war country demanded huge resources, because the Donetsk region in these years began to be actively settled by immigrants from all over the Soviet Union. The country wanted to get coal and ore, and an increase in mining was achieved by an increase in miners. The population of Donetsk by 1951 already exceeded the pre-war level, having passed the mark of five hundred ten thousand, and by 1956 - six hundred twenty-five thousand people.
Modern name
The city received its present name several years after the death of Stalin, 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 growth rate slowed down, but in quantitative terms the inhabitants of the city became larger. And in 1978, the population of Donetsk reached a solid milestone. Ukraine received a new millionaire city. From that moment on, the growth in numbers slowed down significantly, as if it were restrained by the framework of a millionaire city. The population increased at a very slow pace - the annual growth 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 reached its peak in the number of inhabitants. Ukraine, whose population reached its maximum, got the city in which the largest number of inhabitants in its history lived - more than one million one hundred twenty-one thousand people. From that moment, the population of Donetsk began to decline steadily, but slowly. By the beginning of 2005, the population was already less than one million inhabitants.
Rivalry with the former provincial city
It seems that Donetsk, from the moment of its foundation, 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 prewar 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 more developed mechanical engineering. After the war, first of all, resources were required, which were then put into 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 residents of Dnepropetrovsk during this period led to the fact that the city received its millionth resident two years earlier than Donetsk. Since then, the number parity has been observed - usually fifty to seventy thousand more lived in the machine-building center than in the miner center. Both cities reached a peak at the time Ukraine gained independence: that of Dnepropetrovsk, that of Donetsk. Ukraine population (2014 - 48 million people, 1991 - 52 million people) has been gradually losing its population since then, and the number of residents of both cities has been decreasing at a constant pace.
National issue
Unlike many other cities, Donetsk is multinational, but it is based on Russians and Ukrainians, who are 48 and 47 percent in this locality, respectively. One percent in the population of the city is 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 less inhabitants, the national composition was different. More than 55 percent of the population belonged to the Russians, 25 to the Ukrainians, more than 10 percent to Jews, in addition, there was a significant number of Poles and Germans.
Metropolitan area
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 borders of individual cities are literally erased here. Significant in terms of population, Makeyevka, besides Khartsyzsk, Avdeevka, Yasinovataya and some other smaller city formations are part of a single urban agglomeration. If we count along with nearby cities, the population of Donetsk is almost two million people.
After 2014
Unfortunately, the tragic events in Ukraine that began in 2014 could not but affect the number of Donetsk residents. Representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, whose center Donetsk has now become, claim that the number of residents, if it has decreased, is not significant. And independent observers will surely say that according 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 has already happened after the Great Patriotic War.