|
|
|
Welcome
to Donetsk.
|
|
A referral hospital specializing in trauma.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
A monument on a bluff overlooking the city.
The barriers are to keep people away -- it is disintegrating and too
dangerous to get near.
|
|
Typical
private home. There are no home builders -- these have to be
constructed by family and friends, possibly with the help of
moonlighting construction workers. About 25% of urban housing is
private (on land owned by the state) and about 75% of rural housing is
private.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Entrance
to a typical low-rise apartment complex.
|
|
Typical
high-rise. Note the tiles falling off the exterior. The
sidewalk below is littered with them.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Apartment complex on the outskirts of town.
|
|
The nomenklatura (the elite of the Communist Party and
government) live very differently. This is the district they live
in. There are fountains, playgrounds, and luxurious homes.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
One
of the houses of the nomenklatura. It's enormous, perhaps 5,000
square feet.
|
|
Refuse
piles from mines inside the city limits. There were 106 of
these and most were burning from spontaneous combustion, adding to a
serious pollution problem there. |
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
Coal refuse piles.
|
|
A department store.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
The
shoe department in the department store.
|
|
Industry
along the shores of the Black Sea south of Donetsk.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Tennis
court lighting. The Soviets like to do it big.
|
|
You
see women with brooms like this everywhere. When it wears out,
just collect a new bundle of twigs and sweep on!
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
Clay
tennis courts. These are for the nomenklatura. Ordinary
people don't play tennis in the Soviet Union, for the most part.
|
|
Typical
trolley car. This picture could have been taken in any city in
the Soviet Union.
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
Me in a sunflower field. Sunflower seed eating is a
national pastime. Note the ubiquitous power lines. The
Donbas produces a lot of electricity for export to other regions.
|
|
While participating in a conference on coal regions, in 1992, I visited
a vodka factory near Donetsk, one of many producing vodkas for export,
including, you will notice, Stolichnaya.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
A
quality-control inspector. This device upends full bottles of
vodka and she watches for broken glass.
|
|
Not
far from the vodka factory, in a town called Artemovsk, is a champagne
factory located in a former gypsum mine where the conditions are
perfect for bottling and aging champagne. There is an interesting
story having to do with a Nazi atrocity, which you can learn by
clicking on the picture.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
Deep
in the gypsum mine, racks of champagne age. Every few months, a
worker gives each bottle a sharp quarter turn causing sediment to come
loose from the sides of the bottle and fall toward the neck.
After sufficient time, all the sediment has fallen into the neck.
Then, the neck is immersed in liquid nitrogen to freeze the wine in the
neck with the sediment. The cork is then removed and the pressure
inside the bottle blows the frozen plug of sediment out, a new cork is
inserted, and the bottle is shipped out. The colorful lady is the
deputy director of the vodka factory, who is good friends with the
deputy director of the champagne factory.
|
|
The
deputy director of the champagne factory hosting us for a wine
tasting. This was right after our vodka tasting at the vodka
factory. After the wine tasting, we packed up the leftover wine,
a couple cases of vodka, and proceeded to a scenic pond in the country
side where we spent the rest of the afternoon drinking in proper Soviet
style.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
The
deputy director of the vodka factory hosting our vodka tasting.
|
|
The
vodka tasting.
|
|
|
|
 |
|
|
A
Donbas coal mine.
|
|
Reception
at the Donbas coal mine. Two weeks later, this mine blew up
killing 56 miners.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
A
church ruin in a village near Donetsk. Look closely on the roof
above the entrance to the right of the round structure and you will see
a blond boy, maybe twelve or thirteen years old. There were two
other boys playing on the roof, as well. I hope they survived
their growing up years!
|
|
Village
life. These boys are picking apricots.
|