Work, Exhaustion and Success: Industrial Monocities of Donbas

This book is an attempt to present the history of Donbas in the 19th-21st centuries. through the prism of the lives of residents and creators of industrial monocities. It is the hard work of not only workers, but also managers and businessmen that leads to success, which, however, also has its price – the depletion of human and natural resources. The book tells about who the inhabitants of monocities were, what their everyday life, work, and recreation were like, and how relationships between people and different social groups were built. Special attention is paid to the natural, built-up and social landscapes of Donbas – how they changed in the process of industrialization and urbanization, as well as how their perception and cultural understanding changed – both from the point of view of the residents themselves and newcomers. Photographic sources became an important material for the analysis of these changes – they appear in the book not only as illustrations, but also as material for thinking about the strategies of visual representation of the industrial city of the 19th-21st centuries.

Introduction to the Book