SECTORAL SPECIFICITY OF MONO-PROFILE CITIES IN DONBAS IN 1940–1980s: POLITICAL AND STRATEGIC ASPECT OF FORMATION
Authors:   Горлівський інститут іноземних мов ДВНЗ «Донбаський державний педагогічний університет», Богуненко Валерій 
Published: April 2024

The aim of the study is to identify and characterize the main features of the political strategy, determine the formation of the sectoral specificity of the industrial base of the monotowns of Donbas in the 1940s-1980s. The methodology of the study is based on the principles of historicism, objectivity, integrity and systemic character. The methods used are: retrospective, problematic-chronological, historical-genetic, historical-typological ones. The novelty of the study lies in the attempt to identify and characterize the main features of the political strategy of economic development, which led to the formation of the sectoral specificity of production of city-forming importance in Donbas in the 1940s-1980s period. Conclusions. The formation of the sectoral specificity of the Donbas mono-profile cities from the mid-1940s to the late 1980s period was the result of the low level of political and strategic thinking of the country's party and government leadership in organizing industrial and urbanization processes. As in the previous period (the years of forced industrialization in the 1920s-1930s), the country long-term economic development was based on an extensive model. The main priorities were to ensure the country's defense capability and rapidly demonstrate the benefits of socialist planned economy. This led to increasing use of raw materials from Donbas, construction of numerous city-forming enterprises in the region, mainly in the coal industry, as well as in the fire-resistant, chemical ones. During the period under study, the number of mono-profile cities in the region doubled, compared to the previous one: out of a total of eighty-seven cities in Donbas at the end of the Soviet Union period, about 80% were mono-profile. The genesis of the majority of single-industry cities in this period is associated with the "economic breakthrough" of the mid-1950s - mid-1960s period, planned to quickly reach the levels of highly developed countries. The attempts to improve the economic development strategy and move away from the extensive economic model by the party and government leadership in the second half of the 1960s and at the late stage of the USSR's existence period were not consistent and effective. There was neither diversification nor intensification of city-forming production in the mono-profile cities of Donbas. The narrow sectoral specificity determined negative scenarios for the development of these cities in the following decades. They are mainly related to the reduction of city-forming production due to the depletion of the region's resource potential, structural and economic changes. Developing new strategies for the economic development of the country and the regions, it is necessary to take into account the peculiarities of formation of the industrial and urban sphere of Donbas, to answer fundamental questions, connected to the reasonability of rebuilding and the possibility of re-profiling such cities.