Rare Photos Capture Donbas Reconstruction After World War II

A building undergoes reconstruction in the city known today as Donetsk, soon after the Soviet Red Army recaptured the Donbas region from Nazi-led forces during World War II. Donetsk was known as Stalino from 1924 until 1961. 

This photo is one of several held in the Harvard Library image archive that shows the postwar rebuilding of Ukraine's eastern Donbas region through the 1940s. 

 

An image titled Donbas Heals Its Wounds shows workers repairing equipment at the Dzerzinsky coal mine.  

The Donbas was occupied by Nazi and Italian forces from 1941 until 1943. Most photos in this gallery were taken between 1944 and 1949. 

 

Buildings in a coal mine building that was "wrecked by the Hiterites" as German forces retreated, according to the caption writer. 

From 2014 onward, the Donbas region has once more been roiled by conflict amid Kremlin-backed separatism that preceded the war that continues today. 
 

A memorial alongside an unidentified mine shaft. The inscription says, "Here lie Soviet people cruelly tortured to death by the German-Fascist fiends during the occupation of Stalino, 1941-1943."

Millions of Ukrainians died at the hands of occupying Nazi-led forces during World War II, which came shortly after Soviet Ukraine's populace was decimated by the Kremlin-engineered famine known as the Holodomor. 

A miner repairs a a machine in a photo from the series titled by the photographer Reactivation Of Donbas Coal Mining.

A photo, which has the feel of a staged propaganda image, shows reconstruction work taking place in the iron and steel plant of today’s Donetsk. 

At the time these photos were taken, there was an influx of ethnic Russians moving to the Donbas region to take part in its rebuilding. 

An image whose caption read, “Thousands of of tortured civilians were thrown down the shaft shown above, which is situated in the Kalinovka Colliery not far from Stalino, the capital of Donbas."

Donetsk was previously named Yuzovka, after its Welsh founder John Hughes, before being named after Stalin. 





 

A mechanic checks on the assembly of heavy equipment during restoration work at the Stalin Machine Building Plant in Kramatorsk in the late 1940s.

According to a declassified CIA report from 1952, the factory was "80 percent damaged during the war" and resumed full operation in May 1949.

Reconstruction takes place on an administrative building on Artema Street, in the center of Donetsk. The building was heavily damaged during the war then rebuilt in the style of "Socialist Classicism."
 

A summer scene in today's Donetsk. The cinema in the background was opened in 1939 and named after Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko. The cinema continues operation today in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian city.
 

A view over Sherbakova Park in Donetsk shows a bridge that was initially built by Soviet sappers during fighting for the city and later made permanent.

The park was first named after Pavlo Postyshev, a communist who played a key roles in the destruction of Ukraine’s religious heritage and in the Holodomor. After Postyshev was executed in 1938 for being a part of a "right-wing Trotskyite organization," the park was renamed after communist functionary Oleksandr Shcherbakov.
 

A machine building plant in operation in Kramatorsk. The factory was built in the 1890s then taken over and expanded by the Soviet government.

Coal is loaded onto a rail wagon in a Donbas mine that had recently been restored.  

A tram passes the Donetsk Theater, known at the time as the Stalino Drama Theater. The theatre’s activities received international attention in 2014 for pressing on with scheduled performances amid Russian-backed unrest that engulfed Donetsk that year. 

Molten iron flows in the Stalino iron and steelworks after its restoration following World War II.