In the Service of Resources: Extractive Company Towns in Donbas across Twentieth-Century Political Regimes

• In Event: Nature and Politics

Abstract

Company towns are a historical phenomenon that particularly thrived during the era of industrial capitalism. These towns were typically established to ensure a sufficient workforce for extracting and processing natural resources. While predatory extraction of natural resources is often associated with capitalist enterprises, in terms of appetite for natural resources, socialist enterprises were comparable to their capitalist counterparts. The focus of this paper is on coal company towns in Eastern Ukraine since 1870, with additional examples from the United States and China to offer a comparative perspective. This paper will be a chapter in “The Routledge Handbook on the Economic History of Natural Resources.” It explains how power dynamics, technology, and capital were instrumental in forming communities that effectively supported resource extraction. I call these communities “extractive company towns,” emphasizing that their primary purpose was resource extraction, which profoundly influenced their political and social dynamics and often had broader political implications. The paper explores how perceptions of abundant or limitless natural resources influenced business strategies and their political consequences. It also examines the transformation of humans into a resource and how technology facilitated the extraction of both natural and human resources. Additionally, the paper investigates the legacy of extractive sites, focusing on the issues that arise post-extraction and how the resulting burdens often fall on people other than those who initially benefited from the extraction.

Author

• Volodymyr Kulikov, U of Texas at Austin