This exhibition traces the rise of Hughesovka—later Stalino and today Donetsk—from a windswept site on the Ukrainian steppe to a major industrial city with lasting Welsh fingerprints. In the 1860s, Imperial Russia wanted coal, iron and steel to accelerate railway building. In Wales, John Hughes had the know‑how, capital, and confidence to deliver. Within a generation the works he founded grew into a company town and then a city supplying rails, steel and coal across the empire.
Our story follows a clear arc: Hughes’ Welsh beginnings; the agreement he struck with ministers in St Petersburg; the hazardous build and rapid scaling of the New Russia Company Limited; the skilled workers who left South Wales to start again; the town that grew in the furnaces’ shadow; the strains of disease, accidents and unrest; vivid women’s accounts; and finally war, revolution and the dispersal of a distinctive British community.
A view of the Hughesovka SteelworksIn 1917 the British interest ends amid revolution. By 1919 Bolshevik authorities control the works; the town is renamed Stalino in 1924 and Donetsk in 1961. The New Russia Company is finally liquidated in 1970. With Ukrainian independence in 1991, local interest in Welsh origins re‑emerges; in Donetsk, 83.90% voted for independence that year. Whatever later politics, Hughesovka remains a striking example of nineteenth‑century skills transfer: Welsh metallurgy meeting Donbas resources to make a new city on the steppe.