DNIEPER-DON AREA

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume 76, 23 September 1941, Page 3

DNIEPER-DON AREA

BIG RUSSIAN INDUSTRIES I \< 'TORIES AND MINES Some interesting informal inn about j that, part of the Ukraine between the rivers Dnieper and Don about, twice as large as llt.it occupied by the Ger I mans west of the Dnieper is given in an article in "The Times. " Very roughly, the river marks the frontier between the third of the Ukraine that is mainly agricultural and the rest the two-thirds -that is mainly industrial, although still wealthy in its corn fields and its beet fields. To the west, of the river is tin* sickle: to the j cast, the hammer and sickle entwined. The Russians have lost Krivoi Bog, the iron ore field which was important even m Tsarist, times. They have lost manganese deposits and the shipbuilding yards at Kherson and Nikolaiev. The Odessa faclories arc imperilled. But the Germans' chief* gain so far has been in the black earth belt, stripped ol it; harvest or burned by the retreating Russians, yet still one of the most bountiful territories in the world. “THEIR OWN AIM ERIC A?” If they could get the rest of the Ukraine they would get the factories and tlu* mines which last year produced three -fifths of all the Soviet pigiron, three tilths of all the iron ore. three fifths of the coal, three-quarters of the aluminium, nearly half tin* rolled metal. They would have they swell their chests already at the thought their own America at their own backdoor. No one can have travelled in recent years in this land between the Dnieper and the Don without marvelling at its riches or without being struck by the iron determination with which the Russians—first with American, German, and British help, and more lately by their own efforts—have been developing and exploiting it. The immediate Dnieper region was planned mainly for tlu* future. More power was at hand than could be used for many years. A hundred miles further east there begins the far greater and far older-established industrial area, based upon the Donbas coalfields which still provide well over half of ill Russia’s coal. One of the towns in ih ; area is entirely new— Kramatorsk with several thousand inhabitants, inti with what is claimed to be the largest metallurgical equipment in the ivorld. But industry has mainly been leveloped in the older towns, swollen WORKS AND FACTORIES Kharkov, for some years the capital if the Ukraine, has now over 800.000 inhabitants; it looks like any other , r reat industrial centre, grey and drab, tnd it produces large numbers of locomotives and tractors, together with teavy industrial and electric equipment of all kinds. Voroshilovgrad, formerly Lugansk, is another great locomotive building centre*. Kiev, also of 100,000 inhabitants, has its factories for machine tools i Russia’s most urgent iced), and other important heavy ?quipment. Kamenskoye has its vagon-building works, Tokmak its • hints for turbines and other electric •quipment, Gorlovka its machine-tool actory. Just outside the Ukrainian rontier are Rostov on-the-Don, with ts locomotive works, and its great igricultural machinery factory, and Stalingrad, with its tractor and autonobile works. The towns seem crowded together • n a small map, but the traveller can [o for the greater part of each day, ven in eastern Ukraine, without seeing me of them. He finds himself in ountry very similar to the western Jkraine —a flat plain with rich earth ,nd with pleasant villages, spacious ind green in the traditional Cossack ashion, each whitewashed house set part from its neighbours. In the owns the people wear workaday

•lothos, usually with flat caps for the men and berets for the women. In the country they still wear the old Ukrainian dress, mainly white. The men have the Russian shirts, brightly embroidered round the neck and down he front, with a gaily coloured narrow The women have white dresses, ilso embroidered, with red or white cerchiefs round their heads. It is against this region—second in ndustrial strength only to the Moscow •cgion—that the Germans are driving it the moment.