© Leonid Klimov
The new Education Agenda project by dekoder is titled Stalino – der Donbas unter deutscher Besatzung [Stalino – the Donbas under German occupation]: Where does the name Stalino come from?
The city now known as Donetsk in the Donbas region was called Stalino from the 1920s onwards. Founded in 1869 as a workers’ settlement, it was originally named Yuzivka, after the Welsh entrepreneur John James Hughes, who established a metalworks and several mines there.
Like many towns in the region, the future Donetsk developed rapidly – but its growth was extraordinary even by Donbas standards. Within just 70 years, the city grew from 200 inhabitants to nearly 500,000. It was also during this period that it was named after the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. It was not renamed Donetsk until 1961.
The project consists of two closely interconnected elements: a five-part podcast and a scrolling documentary. What stories does the podcast tell?
The Stalino podcast recounts the stories of five people who experienced the German occupation in very different ways. Among the protagonists is a nine-year-old lad who roams the city with a group of boys and survives the occupation largely through luck. The second episode tells the story of a train driver who seizes the opportunity for his own social advancement. Working on behalf of the German authorities, he helps establish the municipal administration and eventually becomes mayor of Stalino.
Another episode focuses on a Jewish girl who is rescued by her Ukrainian housemaid, surviving the Holocaust in Stalino. Another girl supports Soviet partisans, risking everything through her actions. The final protagonist is a ballet dancer who begins her career in Stalino in 1941 and is forced to perform for the German occupiers.
All stories are based on original sources – archival files, criminal proceedings, and oral history accounts. What particularly interested us were the choices people made: how they found options in their lives even under the extreme circumstances of military occupation.
The Ukrainian region of Donbas has now been at war for 12 years and is currently occupied by Russian troops. Were you able to collaborate with partners on this project?
Since the war began in eastern Ukraine in 2014, the Donbas region has become something of a black box for both journalists and researchers. This affects not only research on the current situation but also historical investigation. Many archives that were open in independent Ukraine were closed again in the Donbas and in some cases transported to Russia. What is more, it is virtually impossible to maintain partnerships with local historians in wartime. World War II plays a central role in Russian propaganda: among other things it is used to justify the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. As a result, independent research in Russia or in currently occupied Ukrainian territories is no longer possible.
However, the project benefits from the fact that historians conducted extensive research on the region in previous years. Both the podcast and the scrolling documentary were created in cooperation with Professor Tanja Penter and her team at Heidelberg University. The two formats draw on years of research, archival materials, and interviews with historical eyewitnesses conducted by Tanja Penter and Donetsk historian Dmytro Tytarenko between 2000 and 2015. This body of research is a true treasure that we have now translated into a multimedia format.
