Shakhty (Russia)
Approximately 3,500 km as the crow flies separate Gelsenkirchen from its Russian twin town of Shakhty. Home to 260,000 people, Shakhty lies around 70 km north-east of Rostov-on-Don in the Donets basin, not far from the Sea of Azov, an offshoot of the Black Sea.
Tsar Peter I is thought to have discovered coal in the ground where the city now stands as early as 1696. The miners' village of Grushevski was established in 1867, at the same time as coal mining was getting underway in the area, and this became the town of Aleksandrov-Grushevski in 1883. The October Revolution of 1917 delivered further momentum to the town's development, and it was renamed Shakhty in 1920.
The new name in effect set the agenda for the town, since the word Shakhty, or IIIAXTbl in Russian, means "mine", and the town lies in one of the world's largest coalmining regions. Up until 1989, people here were proud to say that they mined seven million tonnes of coal each year. The changes wrought by the Perestroika revolution mean it is no longer possible to reach this level of production, a problem also being experienced by the largest textile combine in the country, which used to produce 100 million metres of material a year. However, the numerous private businesses that have sprung up bear witness to the spirit of enterprise awakened in the townspeople. Moreover, virtually all the previously state-run companies have now been privatised.
The people of Shakhty are served by nine hospitals and ten outpatient health centres. The number of music schools and libraries and the abundance of clubs and palaces of the arts are testimony to the town's cultural aspirations. Promoting sports has long been considered very important here - the double Olympic weightlifting champion Vasily Alexeyev, for example, hails from Shakhty. Today, you can keep track of sporting events at three stadiums and 52 sports halls.
Everyday life in Shakhty, just like everywhere else in Russia, is still shaped by the pitfalls encountered along the road to democracy. But by working together, the people of Shakhty have already made visible progress towards their goal of achieving a standard of living modelled first and foremost on the western way of life.
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