Founding
City in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine, center of Alchevsk Raion
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Alchevsk is a city and the nominal administrative center of Alchevsk Raion in Luhansk Oblast, Ukraine. Situated in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, it has an estimated population of 106,062 (2022 estimate), making it the second-most populous city in Luhansk Oblast and the 38th-most populous city in Ukraine. It is located 45 kilometres (28 miles) from the administrative center of the oblast, Luhansk.
The city originally started off as a workers' settlement built around the Alchevsk Metallurgical Complex in 1895 in Imperial Russia, known briefly as Yuryevka and then as Alchevsk. After the October Revolution, it was claimed by the Soviet Union. In 1931, it was renamed to Voroshylovsk after Kliment Voroshilov. After World War II, it remained a key hub for metallurgy and rapidly grew under the five-year plans implemented. It was renamed to Kommunarsk in 1961 due to the dismantling of personality cults following de-Stalinization, with the name remaining until 1991. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the city became part of Ukraine, and it was then renamed back to Alchevsk in 1991. In 2014, during the War in the Donbas, the city came under the control of pro-Russian separatists, who incorporated it into the self-proclaimed Luhansk People's Republic. After a highly disputed referendum, the region was annexed by Russia in 2022. As of 2026, Russia has full control of the city.
Alchevsk remains one of the largest industrial centres in the Donbas, especially in the metallurgical and chemical sectors. The largest employer is the Alchevsk Metallurgical Complex, a ferrous metallurgy enterprise, alongside the "Alchevsk Coke-Chemical Plant". Cultural landmarks include the Saint Nicholas Cathedral, the Alchevsk Railway Station, and Kino Metalurh. The main museum of the city is the City Historical Museum of Alchevsk. It was also formerly home to FC Stal Alchevsk of the Ukrainian First League, which played its home games at Stal Stadium. However, the club ceased to exist in 2014 due to the war. It is also notably home to the Donbas State Technical University, although the university has remained split between Ukrainian and Russian authorities since 2014.
The original name of the city when it was founded in 1895 was Yuryevka, which means "Yury's village". The name comes from the nearby rail station, which was part of the Catherine Railway and established in 1878, and originally also named Yuryevka. However, just a few years later in 1903, the village was renamed to Alchevsk. Alchevskoye comes from the surname of the founder of the city, Aleksey Alchevsky, who had died two years before in 1901 after jumping under a train at the Vitebsky railway station. The renaming was done at the request of fellow Russian industrialists. The name remained this way for another thirty years, when it was again renamed, this time to Voroshylovsk. Voroshylovsk or Voroshilovsk was chosen by the Soviets in honour of the Soviet statesman and military officer, Kliment Voroshilov, who served as Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1960 and as People's Commissar for Defence from 1925 to 1940. Voroshilov was born in the Luhansk region, and began his labour and revolutionary activities at the DYUMO plant in the city.
After another thirty years, the city was renamed to Kommunarsk in 1961. Kommunarsk means "city of communards", which was a fairly generic Soviet ideological toponym that referred to participants in the Paris Commune, which was a revolutionary government that briefly seized power in France. The name was chosen to replace Voroshylovsk because of Khrushchev's de-Stalinization campaign, which dismantled the personality cults around Stalin-era figures, including Voroshilov, who was seen as close to Stalin. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and the formation of an independent Ukraine in 1991, the name was changed from Kommunarsk to its present name, Alchevsk, which had previously been in use from 1903 to 1931. The vote to change the city's name back to Alchevsk was done on 1 December 1991 by the city's residents in a local city-wide referendum.
The land on which the city was founded prior to 1895 was divided among landowners. The most notable landowners during this time were I.I Hladkov, M.A. Zhillo, the brothers V.N. and Yu. N. Rodakov, and Prince A.S. Dolhorukov. M.A. Zhillo's estate was bought by Zhilovsky Coal Mining Society after his death, which led to the society being named after him, and the serfs from this society settled into the area and created a small settlement named Zhylivka. Zhylivka would eventually become a microdistrict of Alchevsk. I.I. Hladkov also eventually mortgaged his land to the Kharkov Land Bank, and it was then purchased by Alekseyevska Mining Society (which was founded by Oleksiy Alchevsky). The other land that would eventually become Alchevsk was agricultural land, with peasants in Vasyivka and Dolzhyk each having one Desiatina of land after the emancipation of the serfs. However, the agricultural land was poor: of twelve harvests between 1872 and 1875, eight were classified as poor, and in 1880 locusts destroyed all the grain, and then in 1883–84 squirrels destroyed almost all the harvest in the area. Due to this, some of the peasants moved away towards factory work, although a lot would return after Alchevsk's founding in 1895.
By the time of the city's founding, only three existing settlements remained around the area: a village known as Vasylivka, which had 170 households, a small hamlet known as Dolzhyk with 11 households, and then a small number of people who lived around the station itself. By 1895, the area was part of the Vasylivska volost of Slavyanoserbsk uezd.
Simultaneous to this was the founding of the Yuryivka rail station, which opened in 1878 as part of the Catherine Railway, a state railway that was intended for the Ukrainian provinces of the Russian Empire, and was 2 km from Vasilyevka.
Alchevsk was founded in 1895 with the establishment of the Alchevsk Metallurgical Complex under Oleksiy Alchevsky near the Yuryivka rail station, who had founded the Donetsk–Yuryev Metallurgical Society. To help work on the project, a group of specialists from the German Empire arrived, alongside other skilled workers from Yuzovsky (near Donetsk), peasants from Yekaterinoslav and Poltava, and artels from Oryol, Kursk, and Minsk. Workers' barracks known as the "Old Colony" were built for the new inhabitants alongside stone houses known as the "Administrative Colony" for the management which were primarily German foreigners, which marked the start of the workers' settlement that would eventually become the city. On 26 May 1896, construction of the plant finally finished and the first blast furnace is lit, which is why sometimes 1896 is given as the founding year of the city instead.
In 1898, soon after the city's founding a social-democratic group from Rostov distributed Marxist literature to the plant and sent the worker Ivan Galushka to the plant in order to found a social-democratic circle in the area under his leadership. Among its earliest members was Kliment Voroshilov, who would eventually become People's Commissar for Defense of the Soviet Union. Meetings were held at the factory school and at apartments of teachers. In 1899, the group led a strike of crane operators in the city working at the plant, and although the strike succeeded, it ended in the blacklisting of Voroshilov and other members. By 1900, the settlement grew rapidly. In addition to the original Old and Administrative Colonies, the New Colony appeared, and the settlement of Zhylovsky also grew around the city. The pre-existing village of Vasylyivka also grew into a large workers' settlement. Gradually, over the years, all of these distinct settlements would merge into a singular one. Technically, there was no formal name for the city that would eventually merge into being modern-day Alchevsk, but informally it was called Yuryivka after the nearby railway stations, and this gradually became used in official documents.
However, the new city was described as "wretched and gloomy", with the Old Colony having no running water or sewage system and everything was covered in soot, with the barracks being unsanitary. In 1901, Alchevsky died by suicide in St. Petersburg, and so in his honour the new city was renamed to "Alchevsk" in 1903. In 1903, the social-democratic group was restarted, and in 1905 the workers of the city were among the first to strike in response to Bloody Sunday. During the failed Russian Revolution of 1905, the city briefly had a Workers' Soviet established, which was chaired by the Bolshevik D.K. Paranich, and a self-defense militia was formed in the city to prevent the ensuing pogroms in the city by the Black Hundred. Briefly, the revolutionaries became the de facto authorities until the empire reinstalled power. Nevertheless, the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party under Stanisław Kosior continued to operate underground, but by 1908 there were crushed. After the start of World War I in 1914, most men in the city were mobilised, leading to three times the amount of women in the city to replace them.
In early March 1917, news of the February Revolution reached the city, leading to the re-establishment of a Soviet, and during the subsequent October Revolution a workers' militia disbanded representatives of the Provisional Government in the city. During this time, a Red Guard detachment was also started in the city. However, after the signing of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, it was agreed upon that the German Empire was invited into the Ukrainian People's Republic territory in order to help the UNR against the Bolsheviks. Thus, in April 1918, German forces entered Alchevsk and started occupying the city, although some of the residents had already left with the retreating Soviet forces, and in May the metallurgical complex was shut down. In November 1918, a group of partisans, together with residents from Bakhmut, raided the police headquarters and took control of the telegraph, telephone, and railway station. Kurylin Fyodor was appointed as the temporary partisan mayor. In early January 1919, the Red Army returned to the city and took over control from the partisans. However, this would only remain for a brief time. In April 1919, the White movement under Anton Denikin began advancing into the Donbas, and so the 1st Lozovo-Pavlivsky Workers' Communist Battalion was formed to fight back. This failed, as in early June Denikin's forces captured the city, forcing the communists to go back underground, led by Kosior. The city was again recaptured by the Soviets a few months later in December by the 1st Cavalry Army under Semyon Budyonny. For the rest of the Russian Civil War, the Soviets controlled the city.
In 1920, the city's boundaries were defined by the Soviets. During the 1921–1923 famine in Ukraine, the city was hit hard as the metallurgical complex was temporarily mothballed alongside other businesses. A local newspaper is published in the city since 1930. In 1931, Alchevsk was renamed Voroshylovsk, after Kliment Voroshilov, a Soviet military and party figure.
On 22 June 1941, at the start of Operation Barbarossa, a mass rally was held at the central square by Secretary P.S. Laktionov and conscription to the Soviet Armed Forces started while 9,768 residents joined the people's militia. At the start of October 1941 until July 1942, the city was routinely subject to a German bombing campaign, which at first targeted the rolling shop to disable shell production. During this time, mass evacuations began, starting with a State Defense Committee order from October 1941, and post and telegraph services to the city were cut. Some were evacuated to Chelyabinsk Oblast, and others to Magnitogorsk and Uzbekistan. By January 1942, most equipment had been evacuated and only 400 workers remained of the around 10,750 prior. From June to July 1942, the second wave of evacuation began; this time, most equipment and the city's power station were partially destroyed. This occurred because the front line had mostly stabilised around 20–30 km from the city, while some workers remained behind to resume blast-furnace production to repair Soviet tanks and vehicles.
The city was then occupied from 12 July 1942 to 2 September 1943 by German forces. A VETs engineer known as Pivovarov was elected as civilian mayor by the German Ortskommandantur. During the time of occupation, around 1,231 civilians were deported to do forced labour in Germany, while 1,100 civilians and prisoners of war were shot within the city. This was on the directive from Heinrich Himmler and Erich Koch. During 1942–1943, the German occupiers operated a Gestapo prison in the city. From July 1942 to August 1943, the German occupying authorities used a former stone quarry in the city as an execution site for Soviets who were deemed patriots. It is the site where 83 residents were reportedly burned alive. Nevertheless, an underground resistance still operated in the city that was left to conduct intelligence and guerrilla warfare. On 2 September 1943, the city was liberated with minimal resistance as German forces had mostly withdrawn. Only around 53 soldiers were killed when approaching through Perevalsk, who were all members of the 315th Rifle Division. Other units involved in the liberation were the 51st Army and parts of the 91st Rifle Division.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Alchevsk”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.