There was Bakhmut

How people lived in a city destroyed today: what did they do, how they celebrated the holidays and what plans they made for the future

QUOTE
“Participants in the contest“ Thank you grandfather for the victory ”thanked the organizers for the opportunity to tell about the exploits of their grandfathers and great -grandfathers. More than 100 people announced their participation by drawings, photographs and literary works. Children shared the family stories that their parents told them. And those, in turn, learned about it from the older generation. And the pride of 10-year-old boys and girls for their great-grandfathers, expressed in drawings and works, caused respect for family memory. ”

This is a note on the celebration of Victory Day in Bakhmut in 2016. In the photographs - schoolchildren. For their work dedicated to victory, they are presented with cakes and other prizes.

But the congratulation of the mayor of Bakhmut Alexei Reva Happy Victory Day in 2021:

QUOTE
“Dear residents of the city! With all my heart, I congratulate you on the Day of memory and reconciliation and the 76th anniversary of the victory over Nazism in the Second World War. These days we give memory and respect to those who at the front and in the rear, in partisan detachments, fought with the enemy. Dear veterans, in the Second World War, you protected the world from invaders. In the terrible years, they defended Ukraine and gave their youth so that ours was peaceful and happy today. ”

During the Great Patriotic War of Artemovsk (the so -called Bakhmut under the Soviet regime) for a year and ten months was under the occupation of German Nazis.

Each year, first on May 9, and then on the 8th in Bakhmut, they laid flowers to the monuments dedicated to the victory. They sang songs, gave street concerts, thanked the veterans. And for the first time this day was not celebrated in 2022.

Growing and wayward

A fair is open in the park among tall birches and pines - souvenirs, sugar cotton, paintings of street artists are sold. Here and there they sing songs, dance. Crowded.

At the exit from the park, at the fountain, there is an exhibition of equipment: fire and medical. People take pictures next to her, climb into the cabs.

This is September 11, 2021. City Day. Bakhmut is 450 years old. It was laid in 1571 - as a fortress and a salvation center (nearby were the largest salts in Europe). And then it was called the Bakhmut watchmen. And after two centuries I received the status of the city.

A rich story was also reflected in the appearance of Bakhmut: if you go from the 1878 railway station on Independence Street, and then turn to Gorbatov, you will pass by the modernist building of school No. 11, and from there you can go out to the pre -revolutionary building of the female gymnasium. In the center of the city, next to the fountain square, there are already constructivist houses with rounded features and high windows. Bakhmut was not a gray, faceless or depressed city - on the contrary, in 1920 he even became the center of the Donetsk province. For a short time - for five years, until Donetsk took his own. But still.

So the production here until 2022 were completely not driving into longing: the Artyomovskiye Wine Plant produced up to 25 million sparkling bottles per year. His products were marked with hundreds of awards and delivered to two dozen countries of the world, including Germany, Luxembourg, Canada, Israel, Thailand. And of course, to Russia.

There was generally a warm attitude towards Russia in Bakhmut, and no one interfered with this. The head of the city, Alexander Reva, was in the "Party of Regions", most places in the city parliament were by no means pro -Western deputies, but representatives of the Order and Opposition Platform for Life.

And with this loyalty to the eastern neighbor Bakhmut, no one considered a rogue city. Here they built new houses, tourist infrastructure, invested money in landscaping and at the same time expanded production. In 2019, a survey was conducted among the townspeople that it was in the city that they would like to improve. 20 options were proposed, among which - updating of urban transport, expanding the waste processing program, improving ecology, landscaping of the city. Bakhmuttsy said that they would like new enterprises to open in the city and new jobs were created.

This is not to say that Bakhmut was a trouble -free city. The average salary here was lower than in the country - nine thousand hryvnias against 11.5 thousand. And in this, a resident of Russia can find out the familiar picture, because in the factory Sverdlovsk or Irkutsk regions of the Russian Federation income is also lower than the national average.

By the way, although the most part of the population of the city made up the most part of the city’s population, less than half of them spoke their native language, the city was Russian -speaking. And despite the fact that the Russian language did not have an official status, it was taught in city schools.

In the parliamentary elections in 2014, after the victory of Euromaidan, 59% of the vote in the city gained opposition to the new government of the party. True, with a very low turnout - 29.6%.

What is in your name?

Nevertheless, Bakhmut did not seek to live in the Soviet paradigm, which in Russia in the 2010s was already gaining momentum. When a monument to Fedor Sergeyev was dismantled in 2015 in the city (he was also known as “Revolutionary Artem”, in honor of it, the city was renamed in 1924 in Artemovsk), this did not cause mass protests, and even in a survey of the Union television channel, controlled by the Donetsk People’s Republic, many residents of the city spoke out for installation on the site The sculptures of Taras Shevchenko.

The renaming of the city, which until the same 2015, was of the Soviet name Artemovsk, was a little more disputes. The first attempt to return the historical name was made shortly before Ukraine declare independence in 1991. But then only 25% of the population voted for the return of the Bakhmut name.

Again, the question of renaming arose only after the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2014. The DPR troops entered the city at the very beginning of the confrontation, in April. But under the control of the unrecognized republic, Artemovsk was not long - after three months, the separatists left under the pressure of the Ukrainian army. A year later, during which dozens of residential buildings were destroyed from the artillery storage from the east and several civilians died, a monument to Artem was first demolished in the city, and then the historical name was first demolished in the city. It is characteristic that the Russian official media wrote about this: “The city of Artemovsk in the Donbass returned the historical name of Bakhmut” (this is the title of RIA Novosti). At the same time, today the Russian state press and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation defiantly call the city the Soviet name - Artemovsk.

As for the opinions of the townspeople themselves, then, according to numerous media surveys in 2015, they were divided approximately in equal proportions. There was no referendum, but there were no mass protests.

P.S

Life in Bakhmut was not perfect, just as the local management system was not perfect. But still it was life. In recent years, the city of Bakhmutka and one of the squares in the center have been reconstructed in the city. In Bakhmut, the stadium was functioning at which the Paralympic team of Ukraine trained. And the alley of 6.5 thousand roses bloomed ...

In February 2023, Russian official media showed footage from a quadrocopter: on a 40-second video-the ruins of once residential houses, not a single window.