In 1870 the Welsh ironmaster John James Hughes left his successful
career in England and settled in the barren and underpopulated Donbass
region of the Ukrainian steppe to found the town of Iuzovka and build a
large steel plant and coal mine. Theodore Friedgut tells the remarkable
story of the subsequent economic and social development of the Donbass,
an area that grew to supply seventy percent of the Russian Empire's coal
and iron by World War I. The first volume of this two-volume study
focused on the social and economic development of the Donbass, while the
second volume is devoted to political analysis. While revealing the
grand and tragic sweep of revolutionary events in this region, Friedgut
also offers a fascinating picture of the heterogeneous population of
these frontier settlements. He analyzes the instability of the
revolutionary movement, and in particular the absence of a significant
stratum of "worker-intelligentsia," and the inhibiting effect that this
had on the development of an indigenous workers' movement. In addition,
he reinforces the theory that World War I intensified existing social
tensions in the Russian Empire, cutting short the slow but steady
modernization of Russia's society and politics and creating the social
crisis that led to the collapse of the old regime.
Originally published in 1994.
The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand
technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from
the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions
preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting
them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the
Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich
scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by
Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.
