Donbass: Yesterday, today, tomorrow

Owain Glyndwr argues that the distinct history of the war-torn region means it has the right to choose its own future. Donbass and its people have long deserved to be better known. Now it is a place that has become well known for reasons that no people deserve.

It was nearly so different. Less than three years ago the Donbass Arena in Donetsk was one of the major venues of Euro 2012 football finals. The whole region was shown in a new and positive light and its people enjoyed the experience of being the centre of events.

Today, Donbass is a war zone, though it must be hoped that a fragile peace will hold and the people of the region can rebuild their lives and look forward to the future.

If the future is what is fought over, the origins of the conflict lie in history. The people’s republics that have been proclaimed in Donetsk and Lugansk are on territory that has long had a distinct identity.

The rival Ukrainian and Russian versions of their shared history are not the most important factors, not the disputed heritage of the medieval Kievian Rus nor the affiliations of Cossack tribes that later thinly populated what is now Donbass.

In those days, the region was chiefly remarkable for its emptiness. It was known as Dikoe Pole (Wild Field) where few people lived. Russian settlement began as early as 1600 but it was in the nineteenth century that today’s Donbass began to take place.

By then it was firmly part of Russian Empire and in 1868 the Tsar invited the Welsh industrialist John Hughes to form the New Russia Company to exploit the coal and iron ore of Donbass. Hughes founded the town of Hughesovka, now called Donetsk.

Like other new industrial centres across Europe and in the Americas, it drew people from far and wide but inevitably most of the people were Russians and Russian was the dominant language.

The conflicts that followed the abdication of the Tsar in 1917 were settled as much by force of arms as popular will. However, it is worth noting that the Ukrainian National Republic proclaimed in 1918 failed to enforce its claim to Donbass, where a Bolshevik Dontesk-Krivoi Rog republic was proclaimed.

The Bolsheviks went on to make Ukraine a founder member of the Soviet Union, with a generously drawn eastern border, which at first included territory now part of the Rostov-on-Don oblast of the Russian Federation. (The very name Donbass refers to the basin of the river Don and its tributary the Donets).

It is hard to overstate the transformative effect of the seven decades of Soviet rule. An attempt at ‘Ukrainianisation’ in the 1920s was followed by ‘Russification’ in the 1930s.

Donbass was not spared the hunger in the countryside either. In 1930, the journalist Gareth Jones made a sentimental visit to Donetsk, where his mother had worked for the Hughes family. It was his first insight into Soviet life outside Moscow. He left Donetsk after only a few hours, largely because he found it impossible to obtain anything to eat there. He observed that many people were too weak to work but faced execution or deportation to Siberia if they did not.

Such hardships were dwarfed by the Nazi occupation. The impact of the Great Patriotic War on people’s sense of identity and belonging are again difficult to overstate. Certainly the reconstruction and growth following the war were a period when the citizens of Donbass felt a genuine sense of pride in a region that was seen as the powerhouse not just of Ukraine but of the entire Soviet Union.

Arguably, it is more remarkable that the people of western Ukraine, traditionally ruled from Vienna or Warsaw, clung to their strong sense of national identity during the decades when they were part of the Soviet Union.

It is their vision of Ukraine that has now prevailed in Kiev. There are of course no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers to questions of national identity. People are entitled to their beliefs about who they are, even to their national myths. However, it should come as no surprise that the people of Donbass have proved unwilling to change what they believe about themselves.

They would not have wished for war and all the misery and destruction that has befallen them. But for the foreseeable future, the bitter conflict of the last year will weigh heavily on their feelings about who are their friends and who are their foes, who their fellow-countrymen and who their enemies.

The task of the international community is now surely to allow the people of Donbass the time and space let the wounds heal and for them to work out for themselves where their future lies.

It was only the prospect of an escalating war that drove Angela Merkel and François Hollande to embark on their joint mission but world leaders need to avoid the trap of thinking that peace is enough.

It is too easy to forget about a conflict once the shooting has stopped but Donbass will continue to deserve our attention. The people of Donbass need support, both in reconstruction and in making their own choice about their future relationship with Ukraine, Russia and the wider world.

Share this article: