Small towns in Donbas, particularly in Luhansk oblast, have acquired the unenviable reputation of being depressive areas. The main cause is that this region’s erstwhile industrial clout is more and more of no need today. Young people are unwilling to work in the industry because they see this as neither romantic nor promising, and where can they go if factories either grind to a halt or cut staff? In this case small towns find themselves where, to quote Serhii Zhadan, “death begins and literature ends.” Is there a way out of this situation?
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One of the sore points in the oblast today is the town of Stakhanov. A total of 1,595 ferroalloy workers may lose their jobs and everything by the end of this year. It is not so difficult to guess what Stakhanov residents themselves think of all this. Some are blaming the authorities, some the owner, and some the existing system. But that this will bring about colossal changes in society is an almost undeniable fact.
“It is not the only production facility in Stakhanov. But in a city like this the shutdown of any facility is a very heavy blow to the city as a whole. And it is one more reason why the state should keep in touch with economic processes. Ukraine may just lose this segment of the economy. It is, naturally, worthwhile in principle to do conversion – for example, to information technologies. But, in the view of Illia KONONOV, Doctor of Sciences (Sociology), Professor, Head of the Philosophy and Sociology Department at Luhansk National Taras Shevchenko Pedagogical University, this does not absolutely mean that other, especially potentially competitive, industries, should be done away with.
Stakhanov has a population of 95,855. According to the state employment service, the number of the registered unemployed was 17,400 as of August 1, 2012, 1.8 percent fewer than on July 1, 2012. Women and young people aged up to 35 accounted for two thirds (65.2 percent) and almost a third of this number, respectively. However, the Stakhanov City Council’s official website puts this number of the unemployed down to a large number of migrants and graduates of secondary and higher educational institutions. “With due account of migration, retirement, development of small-scale entrepreneurship, and self-employment, we can presume that there is a shortage of over 10,000 jobs in the city. Therefore, it is possible to create 10,000 jobs in Stakhanov within five years,” the website sgs.gov.ua says.
In the view of Illia Kononov, there are occasional, rather than mass-scale, staff cuts in Luhansk oblast now. “As for conversion, these changes have already occurred. We, sociologists, studied this in 2010. Studying the structure of workforce in the city, we found that the most typical directions of conversion were retail trade, service, and self-employment. Some people think it is transition to a postindustrial society. Although this really coincides with general worldwide trends, this conversion is not caused in Ukraine by the impact of a big sector that brings forth new professions associated with producing and processing information. The developed countries are also undergoing conversion to service-related professions, but they have formed a leading group of specialties. In this country, however, the real cause is, in all probability, the fringe capitalism,” the sociologist says.
The new Law of Ukraine “On Employment of the Population,” which comes into force in 2013, sets out additional measures to protect the over-45s. For example, if the insurable seniority of these individuals is at least 15 years, they are entitled to one-time receipt of a retraining voucher. We were told this at the Donetsk Job Center. “This measure is aimed at maintaining the competitiveness of this category of individuals on the labor market by way of retraining, professional upgrading, and advanced studies in the professions and specialties that are on a top-priority list in the current economic conditions. This list has been approved by the Cabinet of Ministers. An unemployed person has the right to choose a profession or occupation from this list, as well as the form and place of training. The cost of a voucher is to be within the limits of the course fee, but it should not exceed more than ten times the subsistence level set by the law for able-bodied individuals. The voucher is paid for at the expense of the Mandatory Unemployment Social Insurance Fund,” says Olha KOSARYCH, Public Relations Chief at the Donetsk Regional Employment Center. But while the abovementioned category of people will have at least some protective mechanism, what do young people have to do?
Naturally, the conversion of a region is a very painful process. People will use any opportunity to establish a family economy, but what is also needed is a well-thought-out economy of small towns and social clusters. For, originally, it was not a coal-mining region. For example, another city in Luhansk oblast, Sverdlovsk, was populated by Cossacks in the early 17th century, when it was still in the making. In the 17th century, one of the local hamlets was a center of pottery. Several families were engaged in this business, and this hamlet was soon popularly called Honcharivka (Ukrainian “honchar” for “potter”). It was not until 1870 that the first coal mines began to come up. Now Sverdlovsk is one of the cities that have no big industrial enterprises, and pottery is not developed here as much as it was a century ago. How to develop Sverdlovsk today is a matter of debate.
A positive example of conversion was found in a different region – it is the village of Ostriv Obyrok in Chernihiv oblast, which could have turned into a waste ground very recently. But the situation changed when Leonid Kanter, a Kyiv-based film director and traveler, and his family moved there. He breathed new life into the village. He turned a run-of the-mill settlement into an “art hamlet” now famous for its ecological festival, Khlib (“bread”), in which anyone can take part. Giving second wind to a village like this was the main point in the speech of Iryna SOLOVEI and Oleksandr SUPRUNETS, authors of the Great Idea project, at the recent conference TEDx City 2.0 in Kyiv. In their opinion, contemporary society has dropped the old principle of its existence – “I can.” Now society lives by the formula “I care.” This principle brings about such movements as Open Hands – hanging coffee or tea cups as a gift to cafe customers – and crowd-funding (joint funding of new business projects). It is a new principle of fundraising by organizations and establishments. “To revitalize the economy, you must reconsider it. Every gift is a show of reciprocal affection and trust. Crowd-funding is only possible if there is trust,” Solovei and Suprunets say confidently.
To form a common vision of how small towns should live on, one should not only study the problem of public unemployment, but also take a comprehensive approach. In this connection The Day invites experts – sociologists, philosophers, historians – as well as readers to a debate on whether or not the conversion of Ukraine’s small towns and villages is possible and on how new life can be breathed into the declining industrial cities.
Here follow the first opinions.
“CONVERSION IS POSSIBLE…”
Serhii STUKANOV, historic, philosopher, Donetsk:
“The chief problem with small industrial cities, where mines and factories have ground to a halt, is that they cannot offer other jobs. But, undoubtedly, we should take a broader approach in this case: all people can do in such towns is (let us face it) to become drunkards. At present, these towns are unable to offer a quality of life that could satisfy the people who work in the industry and education and are capable of bringing about economic success. In search of self-realization, such people, naturally, move to big cities. This creates sort of a vicious circle which you can only break if you have enough willpower and, what is more, try to do so before the local authorities do.
“To tell the truth, Germany’s Ruhr, Britain’s Sheffield, etc. used to face similar problems. Sheffield got out of the ‘cesspit’ by converting its economy from steelmaking into the digital industry. Adequate investments were made in universities and innovations, which attracted specialists. The Ruhr revived itself by transforming industrial facilities into cultural objects (museums, galleries, concert grounds). They have laid out a 200-km-long cultural route and hold festivals. A rather similar project, Isolation, was launched in Donetsk. Therefore, conversion is possible, but it depends on the wishes and will of the elites. We usually see a purely consumerist approach: to extract all the coal, leave the mine (and, hence, the town) neglected, and do something else. For this reason, economic successes depend on intentions. Yet there is one more danger – the authorities may put up a few ‘Potemkin villages’ and quietly rest on their laurels.”
“FIRST CLEAN UP THE STREETS”
Oleksii CHUPA, writer, employee at the Yasynovsky By-Product Coke Plant, Makiivka:
“There is nothing impossible. But, to breathe new life into the declining industrial cities, it would be a good idea to stamp out the very word combination ‘declining industrial’ from their residents’ minds. It should be, first of all, the city – your home, your homeland, a place where you live in peace and joy. What are we to do for this? Firstly, clean up the streets, plant trees, and lay out gardens. If we manage to pull the people out of decay and horror film settings, they will show a respectful attitude to themselves and their city. Changes will only be possible if they see that they can live differently.”
