Gorlovka

Gorlovka

a city in SE Ukraine in the centre of the Donets Basin: a major coal-mining centre. Pop.: 280 000 (2005 est.)

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Gorlovka 

a city in Donetsk Oblast, Ukrainian SSR. It is situated in the central part of the Donbas; on the Severskii Donets-Donbas Canal, 45 kilometers to the northeast of Donetsk. Railway and highway junction. Population, 355,300 (1971; 23,000 in 1926; 181,000 in 1939; 293,000 in 1959). The city is divided into three administrative districts.

Gorlovka is one of the major industrial centers of the Donbas. The leading branches of industry include coal mining (the Kochegarka, V. I. Lenin, M. I. Kalinin, Komsomolets, and Iu. A. Gagarin mines) and machine building (the S. M. Kirov Gorlovka Machine Works). There are two mining equipment repair shops, a motor-vehicle repair shop, and a mechanical repair shop. The chemical industry is represented by the S. Ordzhonikidze Chemical Combine and a byproduct coke plant. There is a food industry, including a meat combine, a brewery, and a dairy. The city has a garment factory and enterprises of the building materials and woodworking industries (alabaster and woodworking combines).

Gorlovka has a number of educational institutions: the Pedagogical Institute for Foreign Languages, a department of the Donetsk Polytechnical Institute, and a correspondence department of the University of Donetsk. There are seven secondary specialized educational institutions, including industrial, machine-building, and motor-transport technicums. In the postwar years (1946–70), Gorlovka has become a well-planned city, with broad, tree-lined streets and avenues. There is a historical museum and a picture gallery.

Gorlovka arose in 1867 in connection with the construction of a number of coal mines. It is a city with glorious revolutionary and labor-movement traditions. Revolutionary actions by workers began here in 1900. In December 1905 the Gorlovka armed uprising took place. The workers of Mine No. 1 and of the machine-building plant, together with workers’ detachments from other cities in the Donbas, formed a workers’ soviet and for several days fought a fierce battle with tsarist government troops. The Gorlovka-Shcherbinovka Strike of 1916 began on Apr. 19, 1916, and was crushed on May 11, 1916. From 1917 to 1920 the workers of Gorlovka played an active role in the struggle against domestic counterrevolution and foreign intervention. In 1932, on the initiative of the Gorlovka coal miner N. A. Izotov, the movement was begun in the USSR to transmit the experience of skilled workers to the younger generation of the working class.

S. M. ANISIMOV