Aftermath and Modern Donetsk

After 1919 the works continued under the new Bolshevik management. In 1924 the town was renamed Stalino, and in 1961 it became Donetsk. The Second World War devastated the city; population losses were severe, but reconstruction under Soviet rule restored the industrial base. In 1970, a century after the first furnaces were lit, the New Russia Company Limited was liquidated in Britain.

For the families who left, the aftermath was mixed. Some settled where British steel and engineering prospered—Sheffield, Manchester—others returned to South Wales. Many had lost savings and property in the scramble to escape. Thomas Jones, once a high‑ranking businessman in Hughesovka and recipient of a Tsarist medal for rescuing men in a colliery disaster, found work as a labourer in the Taff Vale Railway Repair Shop. Yet the memory of Hughesovka remained strong, surfacing in letters, photographs and memoirs across decades.

With Ukrainian independence in 1991 the Welsh contribution to Donetsk’s origins became easier to acknowledge locally; newspapers and museums began to revisit the story. Whatever later politics, the industrial city that grew from Welsh enterprise and Donbas resources remains a testament to practical internationalism: a partnership of geology, engineering and grit that made a new place on the steppe—and left a lasting imprint on both Ukraine and Wales.