The Donetsk region — a conglomeration of industrial cities that grew out of small settlements founded in the 17th-18th centuries. How did they come into being, what has survived, and what is life like now in one such settlement — Novoekonomichne in the Pokrovsk district?
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| Novoekonomichne (Karakove). Pokrovsk district, Donetsk region. |
The main landmark, the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, can be seen from afar as you drive along the highway from Pokrovsk to Kostiantynivka.
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| Novoekonomichne. Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. 1905-1911. |
The site for the majestic church was not chosen by chance. According to legend, an angel appeared to a peasant who was walking along the path where the church courtyard now stands, commanding him to build a house of God on this spot.
As often happens, a church with a rich history becomes a spiritual centre, and residents of the nearest and the most distant towns and villages come to it for a blessing and for saving truth.
By the early 20th century the wooden church could no longer hold all the parishioners, and the faithful petitioned the diocese for permission to build a stone church. After receiving the charter in 1905, the villagers set about building the new church. The finest design was chosen, one in which the vaults of the sacred building resembled those of the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
The craftsmen invited from Kursk Governorate were helped free of charge by the village's own skilled hands. Stone and clay were brought from the quarries, and the bricks were made at the village works. Egg white was used to mix the mortar, and the eggs were gathered in great baskets from all around the district.
In 1911 the church, raised in the pseudo-Byzantine style, was consecrated in the name of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary.
The old predecessor was taken apart and sold to the village of Koptieve. In 1937, at Easter, Komsomol members burst into the church and staged a bacchanalia, dancing on the icons they had thrown down. Despite the prayers and the weeping of the faithful, the young God-fighters tore down the bell tower, broke the fence, and carted the church's utensils off on a one-and-a-half-tonne truck in an unknown direction. When the bells fell, the din could be heard twenty versts away. A club was set up in the house of worship, and later a grain store.
During the years of the fascist occupation the church was turned into a stable. In 1942 the Nazis allowed it to reopen, and people sheltered inside it during the bombing.
The history of the churches is closely bound up with the history of the places where they stand. The settlement, founded in the 18th century by Zaporozhian Cossacks, was named Nove. With the building of the church in 1801 and the arrival in 1831 of economic peasants, the name became a double one — Novo-Ekonomichne.
The people lived by farming and by fishing in the Kazennyi Torets. Even today the remains of the farmers' stone tools can be seen by the roadside.
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| Novoekonomichne. Millstones on Parkhomenka Street |
Twice a year fairs were held in the village — the Christmas fair and the Kazan fair. The population was made up of descendants of Zaporozhian and Don Cossacks, Poles exiled after the 1831 uprising, German Mennonites, Greek settlers, and peasants from Oryol Governorate.
Novoekonomichne has kept dialects found in this place alone, and a second, unofficial name — Karakove. Its residential districts are named according to where they lie: Zabitok, Sinna, Aul, Nyzhnia Street, Tsentr, Zarichka, Prychepylivka.
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| Novoekonomichne (Karakove). Hoholia Street |
The Greeks brought their own architectural touches to the building of the houses.
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| The centre of the settlement |
A former merchant's house, built at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries in the Katerynoslav style, is now home to the post office.
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| Post office. A former merchant's house |
The old building belongs to the parish of the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. There were plans to set up a shelter for the poor in it. What once filled this building, now sagging into the ground with the years? Warehouses? A government house?
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| Myru Avenue. The old building, 19th-20th c. |
At the end of the 19th century coal was found in the Hruzka gully, after which peasant pits and small mines began to spring up. With the opening of the coal enterprises, the miner's trade became the settlement's mainstay. A monument has been raised to the miners who perished in the underground seams.
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| Myru Avenue. Monument to the miners who perished |
There are several more monuments in the settlement bound up with the history of Novoekonomichne.
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| Myru Avenue. Monument to the soldiers who fell in Afghanistan and to the liquidators of the Chornobyl disaster |
The people lived under Hitlerite occupation from October 1941 to 7 September 1943. There are two memorials in the settlement honouring the liberating soldiers.
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| Myru Avenue. War memorial |
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| The centre of the settlement. Memorial sign to the fallen soldiers |
The centre of Novoekonomichne — the settlement council, the school, the kindergarten, the shops.
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| Novoekonomichne settlement council |
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| The outpatient clinic |
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| A mosaic panel in the shop has been pasted over with advertising |
At the beginning of the 20th century a zemstvo school was built. With the opening in 1974 of a new school for 250 pupils, the old schools in neighbouring Mykolaivka and Novoekonomichne were closed and gradually crumbled into ruin.
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| The school |
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| The school sports ground |
That same year, 1974, the culture and leisure centre opened its doors; on its stage the amateur performers give solo and group concerts. A library operates too, delivering to readers' homes on request.
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| The culture and leisure centre |
On the outskirts of Novoekonomichne lie the landscape reserves
«Prytorskyi
» and
«Halyna Hirka
», which were granted the status of a protected natural area in 2018 thanks to the efforts of local historians and ecologists.
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| "Prytorskyi" reserve |
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| "Halyna Hirka" reserve |
In the 1930s a dam was built on the bed of the Sinna River in the south-east of the settlement, creating the Synianske reservoir, 20 hectares in area, to supply the mining settlements with water. The water of the Synianka was clean and sweet until the waste of the ore-dressing plant began to be dumped into it.
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| The Synianske reservoir |
Like the Kazennyi Torets, once rich in fish, the artificial reservoir too is growing over with reeds, which gives the owners of the adjoining vegetable plots no end of trouble.
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| The bed of the Kazennyi Torets River |
Sadly, abandoned houses are no rarity in Novoekonomichne.
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| An abandoned home on Parkhomenka Street |
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| Myru Avenue. An abandoned home |
In 1908 the settlement counted 5,521 residents, but a century on the population had shrunk by more than 2,000. With the dissolution of the collective farms, the tractor brigade, the greenhouses, and other farming units vanished. The demographic picture was greatly affected by the many years of stagnation in the coal mines.
Coordinates: 48°19'40"N 37°19'31"E
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