Torez

Chystyakove
Чистякове

City of regional significance

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Chystyakove

Coordinates: 48°1′19″N 38°37′35″E / 48.02194°N 38.62639°ECoordinates: 48°1′19″N 38°37′35″E / 48.02194°N 38.62639°E

Country

Ukraine

Oblast

Donetsk

Founded

1778

Area

• Total

105.8 km² (40.8 sq mi)

Population (2013)

• Total

57,998

Climate

Dfb

Website

http://torez.dn.ua/

Torez (Ukrainian: Торез, is a city of regional significance in Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine. Much of the city's economy relies on mining industries, despite a recent drop in the number of employed miners. In 2012, the city's population was 81,761, down from a 1970 peak of about 120,000.

Pro-Russian separatists took control of Torez in June 2014. On July 17, 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crashed near the city.

Torez was renamed from Chystyakove (Ukrainian: Чистякове) in 1964 in honor of French Communist Party leader Maurice Thorez, who died that year. The Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s parliament), which has no control over the city, renamed it back to Chystyakove in May 2016 due to Ukrainian decommunization laws.

The region was settled in 1778 at the confluence of the Sevostyanivka and Orlova Rivers (which drain into the Mius River) by runaway serfs from southern Russia and Ukraine. By 1800 the settlement, with 225 residents, was known as Sloboda Alekseevka after a son of landowner and founder S. Leonov.

By the 1860s the town, now known as Chystyakove for a merchant and owner of a local manor, was a coal-mining hub. In 1875, two mining companies were founded: Chystyakovs'ke (which operated two coal mines) and Oleksiivs'ke, which was renamed Nadiya in 1907. The Chystyakove mines produced 4.7 million pounds of coal in 1909, and 76.8 million pounds by 1916.

In 1924 the Chystyakove mining industry had 142 settlements, with a total of 44,679 residents. Eight years later the settlements became a town, and the town's ten coal-mining quarries were incorporated into the Chystyakovugol Industrial Trust a year after that.

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Wikipedia