The Rubizhna ravine, which developed and grew into the city of Rubizhne over the years, endured difficult times. The years of World War II left a significant mark on the history of Luhansk Oblast.
A journalist from the TRIBUN publication interviewed historians and gathered memories from locals about the events of the global armed conflict in Luhansk Oblast.
According to Serhiy Kalenyuk, a member of the Association of Local Historians of Ukraine, writer, and historian, the birth of the city of Rubizhne began in 1896 when a railway line passed through the territory of modern Rubizhne, and Rubizhne railway junction, marked as "Kazarma" on maps, emerged.
"At that time, there was still no permanent population. It would be more accurate to consider June 4, 1915, as the birth date of Rubizhne when the charter of the Russo-Kraske Joint-Stock Company was approved. Until then, the monopoly on the production of synthetic dyes belonged to Germany, with which we were at war. Starting from July 17, 1915, construction of the Russo-Kraske plant and a settlement for workers began half a kilometer from the Rubizhne railway junction. Simultaneously, nearby the KoksoBenzol and Explosives factories were being built. Construction progressed rapidly, and within a year, the settlement was home to about three thousand residents. However, until 1930, this settlement did not have its own name - it was simply known as the settlement of the Russo-Kraske plant. It only became Rubizhne in 1930," wrote Kalenyuk in his blog.
By 1940, the state housing stock in Rubizhne amounted to 48.000 square meters of residential space, and by the year 1940, it reached 120.000 square meters, with 21.900 people living in the city. New streets appeared, and infrastructure improved significantly. Water supply and sewage systems were constructed, with 14.6 kilometers of pavement and 10 kilometers of sidewalks laid down. In 1933, the Palace of Culture was built. In 1940, Rubizhne had a paramedic school, a vocational school, and two vocational schools for factory apprentices. Since 1927, the Rubizhne Chemical-Mechanical Technical School had been operating. With the participation of chemical plant students, a large three-story building for the Chemical-Technological Institute was built. Additionally, the city had 2 hospitals with 195 beds, 2 clinics, a tuberculosis dispensary, a malaria station, 6 paramedic points at enterprises and construction sites, and a night sanatorium for the plant's workers. There was a water station and a stadium in operation, along with the construction of a city park for culture and recreation, and the establishment of 17 squares.
A year later, the development of the city stopped. The events of World War II, which began on September 1, 1939, forced the start of the Great Patriotic War on the territory of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Here's what 96-year-old Halyna Mykytenko, who was born in the territory of modern-day Starobilsk and moved to Rubizhne with her family at the age of 7, remembers about it.
"I was 12 years old when that terrible war began. I remember going out onto the street in the morning to find local children to play with. There wasn't a cloud in the sky yet. The day promised to be pleasant. Closer to noon, my friend's mother found us, tears in her eyes, and told us to go home. I went back home. On the way, I saw people taping up their windows with strips and cutouts from newspapers. When I got home, I saw my father and my brother Ilya getting ready. And my mother was crying, saying that her son's life and youth were lost."
The resident of Kreminna, Hanna Demchenko, also shared the story of her grandmother.
"Her name was Paraska. She often talked about the war and recalled how it started in her life. At that time, they were building a house in Rubizhne with the help of many local men. One Sunday morning, a party leader approached them and told the boys to gather at the military enlistment office. All the men went to war, and the women, including my grandmother, stayed home with the children. At that time, the youth helped a lot, carrying food to the soldiers and searching for the wounded to take them to the hospital."
In the region, divisions and separate brigades began to form, and most of the fighters were volunteers. For example, the 214th Rifle Division, which departed for the front on June 28, 1941, the 72nd Separate Guard Mechanized Brigade, formed in September 1941 near the city of Luhansk, and the 63rd Separate Mechanized Brigade. However, these are just some of the numerous military formations created in the territory of Luhansk during World War II.
"In October 1941, as the front approached, about one and a half thousand residents of Rubizhne joined the people's militia battalion, and 300 joined the reconnaissance units. Overall, the Rubizhne party organization sent 943 people to the ranks of the Red Army - as soldiers, commanders, and political workers," noted historian Anatoliy Pavlenko.
Due to the absence of a significant portion of men, women and adolescents had to engage in physically demanding work. At industrial enterprises, 50 thousand women began working, while 5 thousand sat behind the wheels of tractors. During the war, every, even small, enterprise worked to support the front. The directors of the region's factories were tasked with increasing production rates. As a result, coal production increased, and mass production of weapons, ammunition, and equipment was established. According to Anatoliy Pavlenko, a student at the Rubizhne Chemical-Technological Institute, whose memories are recounted in his book "Rubizhne: Years Scorched by War," the chemists of Rubizhne learned to make grenades for the military.
"At the foundry of the repair and mechanical plant, they cast the bodies of lemon-type grenades. And the explosive was available. It was necessary to develop the design of the fuse. Here, as always, the ingenuity of the workers helped - the fuse was made. Recalling the stages of our journey, we can now share the secret of making incendiary grenades to combat enemy tanks. These were ordinary bottles into which a little water was poured, and the rest of the volume was filled with gas. A thin-walled tube, into which a piece of metallic sodium was dropped, served as the fuse. The tube was soldered - and the fuse was ready. It was placed in a bottle with a combustible mixture. The bottle was tightly sealed with a cork - and the incendiary grenade was ready. I must say that the employees of the central plant laboratory actively participated in the development of the design."
The evacuation of industry began, and by the end of 1941, equipment from 150 industrial enterprises had been transported. A total of 1900 railway cars with equipment were sent. 1850 workers, over 4.5 thousand members of their families, 45 teachers, and 35 professors and lecturers of the Chemical-Technological Institute were evacuated. In October 1941, the German advance on the Donbas was partially halted, but occupation reached some settlements in the Lysychansk, Popasna, Kadiyivka, Krasnodon, Bokovo-Antratsytivsky, Rovenky, and Sverdlovsk districts. By the summer of 1942, due to a new German offensive, the region was completely occupied by the enemy.
With the arrival of Germans in the Luhansk region, moral and physical terror began. The enemy seized enterprises, material assets, and people, committing genocide.
"For being resistant to the German occupiers, people in Luhansk were taken out and shot, mass murders were committed. They took people to the ravine, turned them facing the pit, and shot them in the back. There were also torture rooms. I heard many stories from there. It's horrifying even to remember... Enemies forced children to clear forests of mines. Just so the kids would run across the territory. If all was well – there were no mines. Then many children died in the region... The Germans used the people of Luhansk as slaves. If you didn't do the work – you were shot. German occupiers also confiscated food, leading to a high mortality rate among the population," recalls Halyna Mykytenko.
Every family during World War II tried to survive with what they already had. Because buying food was extremely difficult.
"My grandmother Paraska had only one cow, and they lived off the milk it provided. They also made soup from tree bark and gathered edible roots in the forests. The children helped a lot. During the war, they quickly grew up and became independent. My mother went to sell the milk to buy bread or a bottle of oil. It was very lucky if you could eat something in a day. There was a great famine at that time," says Hanna Demchenko.
The woman also recalls from her grandmother's memories how the Germans drove prisoners of war to take them to work in Germany.
"I remember as if it were yesterday, how my grandmother told us about it, tears in her eyes, remembering how they brought a piece of bread and water to the exhausted prisoners, everyone helped as they could. But both the residents and the military were harshly beaten."
The memories of the war from Rubizhne residents, a resident of the Southern district, Maria Valkovska, for Anatoliy Pavlenko's book "Rubizhne: Years Scorched by War".
"We had a big family: five children and a mother. Father went to the front, and we had nowhere to go, and it was scary to leave our home. We went to the Donets River to the market, and exchanged things for food. That's how we lived. At that time, I had a braid, which had to be cut short, almost to the root, because my hair accidentally caught fire from the candle. During the occupation, the Germans drove young people for the exchange to send them to Germany. They also brought my mother, sister, and me to the commissariat. I took off my scarf, and immediately some German said disgustingly: "Vek, vek!" - go away from here, he meant. Wherever I went – I was driven out from everywhere. Then good people explained to me and my mother that the Germans thought I had typhus and were afraid of getting infected. That's how I stayed at home, and my sister was taken to Germany. And after our soldiers came and liberated the territory, we helped the liberating soldiers to rebuild the bridge over the Siversky Donets River. Standing knee-deep in cold water, we emptied the boats, which quickly filled up with water, while the builders, who were in them, hammered stakes."
The Donbas Offensive Operation – this is what the operation was called, which marked the beginning of the liberation from the Germans by the forces of the Soviet Union in the Luhansk region and Ukraine, during which Rubizhne was also liberated. The first to enter the battle were the soldiers of the 573rd Regiment of the 195th Rifle Division of the 1st Guards Army. On January 16, 1943, they liberated the first district center – Milove. And Luhansk became the first regional center in Ukraine to be liberated from German occupiers. On January 31, 1943, units of the 124th Guards Rifle Regiment of the 41st Guards Rifle Division under the command of Major General N. Ivanov, overcoming the resistance of the Germans, drove them out of Rubizhne. The fight for the freedom of our region lasted for 18 months, involving about 200 large military units, 13 armies, and about 120 thousand servicemen lost their lives.
