Shakhty

Town in Rostov oblast (province), oblast subordination, 96 km north-east of Rostov-on-Don. Located on south-east spurs of the Donets Ridge. Railway station (Shakhtnaya) in the Likhaya - Rostov-on-Don line. Motor road junction (near the town, there is an arterial road connecting Moscow, Voronezh and Rostov-on-Don). Population (1992 est.) 227.5 thousand, (1897 est.) 16.3 thousand, (1926 est.) 49 thousand, (1939 est.) 135 thousand, (1959 est.) 196 thousand, (1970 est.) 205 thousand, (1979 est.) 209 thousand).

The settlement on the Grushevka, a steppe river, at the site of present Shakhty was founded at the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th centuries by the Don Cossacks. Near the settlement, outcrops of mineral coal used for local needs began to be mined. Later, underground mining appeared, and production output increased. In 1790, the Cossack Dvukhzhennov contracted to deliver up to 3 thousand poods of coal a year to Taganrog Port. By the middle of the 19th century, 57 mines had been working around the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Grushevskaya. In 1867, the stanitsa received rights of a town referred to as Gornoye Grushevskoye settlement. In 1881, the town was given a new name of Aleksandrovsk-Grushevsky. By the end of the 19th century, it was a large centre of coal industry in the south of Russia. In 1920, the town was given the name of Shakhty. The town included a lot of neighbouring mining settlements. During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, Shakhty was occupied by Nazi troops (from June 21, 1942 to February 12., 1943), who blew up and flooded collieries and destroyed a lot of public buildings when retreating.

Present Shakhty is the main industrial, organisational and economic centre of the Eastern Donets Basin. Production of mineral coal goes on. The town has machine industry and metal working (an electrotransport machine works, a machine-building plant, etc.), building-material production (a precast concrete plant, a stoneware works). By the beginning of the 1990s, the town had light industry (a cotton integrated works, 2 shoe factories, a linen factory, a cloths factory, etc.) and flavouring industry (a meat-processing plant, a milk-processing factory, etc.). Shakhty is the site of a branch of Giprougleavtomatizatsiya Rostov Design Institute, Technological Institute of Household Service, a branch of Novocherkassk Polytechnic Institute. There are the Drama Theatre and the Museum of Local Lore.

The majority of multi-storey public buildings are in the central part of the town. Blocks of multi-storeyed residential buildings are in the north and in the south of the town; the majority of other areas are built up with one-storeyed irregular buildings. The residential blocks are intersected by railway and tram lines and access roads in various directions. Large areas have been taken up by mine sections and refuse heaps; in the outskirts of the town, by quarries producing building materials.