Industrial Colonization and Resource Exploitation of the South (1890)
At the end of the 19th century, the Russian Empire turns the Ukrainian lands into a raw-materials colony, exploiting the resources of the Donbas and deliberately importing labor: "42 percent of the 425,413 workers counted in the census were born outside Ukraine," and "in 1892, 80 percent of the workforce at the mines and plants of Yuzivka… had arrived from the Moscow region"[1].
Actors
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| G0009 | Russian Empire | 3 |
Instruments Applied
| ID | Name | Procedures |
|---|---|---|
| S0008 | Government | 3 |
Procedures Carried Out
The Ukrainian regions became the empire's main raw-materials donor: "In 1910 coal extraction amounted to 1 billion poods, and in 1913 – 1.5 billion poods. Over this time the Donbas's share in the empire's coal industry grew from 67% to 74%… Before World War I, Ukrainian metallurgy produced 2/3 of the pig iron smelted in the empire"[2].
The mass importation of labor from the Russian governorates, altering the demographic balance: "in 1892, 80 percent of the workforce at the mines and plants of Yuzivka, one of Ukraine's industrial towns, had arrived from the Moscow region"[1]. "Among the workers and miners of the Donbas, ethnic Russians from Central Russia predominated… The rural population of the Donbas was mostly ethnically Ukrainian"[3].
The use of cheap labor at the mines and plants under conditions of harsh exploitation: "Initially the majority of miners were seasonal workers"[3] – without rights, without settlement, worked to exhaustion.