15:55, 6 May 2003

Donetsk

City in Rostov oblast (province), oblast subordination, 171 km north of Rostov-on-Don. Located at the north-east spurs of the Donets Ridge, on the Seversky Donets River (the right tributary of the Don), 8 km of the railway station of Izvarino in the Likhaya - Rodanovo line, on the Volgograd - Kishinev highway. Population (1992 est.) 49 thousand, (1979 est.) 44,5 thousand.

Founded by the Don Cossacks in 1681 as the stanitsa (Cossack village) of Gundorovskaya. The mining settlement of Gundorovka since the late 19th century. City since 1951; got the name of Donetsk in 1955. Present Donetsk is an industrial centre of the Eastern Donbass. At the beginning of the 1990s, the city had an excavator factory, a cotton spinning mill and a knitting mill. Mineral coal is produced in the vicinities of Donetsk.