Mariupol
Ilyich plant
Kornii Hrytsyuk: «Mariupol Metallurgical Plant named after Ilyich» - such a name is quite typical for the industrial brainchild of the USSR. The Soviet glorification of industrialization has taken root so strongly that few people even from Mariupol know that this giant has European and American roots. Moreover, without them, Mariupol, as a large industrial center on the coast of the Sea of Azov, would not exist at all. The plant «named after Ilyich» is the result not of Soviet industrialization, but of the illegal nationalization of the American metallurgical plant Nikopol and the Belgian Providence. The first was launched in 1897, almost immediately after it was brought by sea from distant Seattle. The Belgian plant started operating a year later and one of its largest shareholders was the Ukrainian entrepreneur and philanthropist Oleksiy Alchevskyi.
Both businesses were extremely profitable due to cheap labor, large mineral reserves, and convenient maritime logistics. Nikopol and Providance were one of the most modern factories in all of Europe, therefore they became the center of progress of the entire East of Ukraine. Because of this, the Combine was interesting for our film.
«Opening» it for filming in the spring of 2021 was not easy, because it is a strategic object. Covid and the traditional «what do you want to shoot here?» still reigned everywhere. it didn't go anywhere. And only the persistence of our producer Anna Palenchuk, who seems to have listened to almost all of Metinvest, which owns the Combine, allowed us to be there.
We went through a safety briefing, received overalls, safety helmets and even name passes. I definitely can't say that this location is convenient for filming when you have limited time — we drove from one part of the Combine to another for 20-25 minutes. Time during filming is always golden, and here you are already on location, the timing flies, but you keep going, you see huge premises, you miss the trains that pass through the territory of the enterprise, you go again, because the territory is simply huge, a real city within a city. Something is still constantly smoking and exploding. And although two years ago we were less sensitive to loud sounds, our sound engineer Vadik was not very happy about these circumstances.
Our guide was a man who had worked at the Combine all his life. Such women and men in Mariupol are proud to call themselves «Illichians». Among them are families who have worked only there for generations. In these working dynasties, there is a tradition to combine the seniority of different family members into a common family seniority. In some families, it counts hundreds of years that they gave to the metallurgical giant. Our guide, who I could tell more about, came from the same family, with a huge experience, but this person is still in Mariupol...
We looked for traces of Belgians and Americans on the territory of «Ilyich». And despite two world wars, a revolution and other cataclysms that Mariupol experienced until the terrible year 2022, we managed to find something really interesting. If you pay attention, the history here lies right under your feet. Among the garbage, bushes and industrial waste, near the former workshops, there is always something old — some objects and elements of past eras... But we were struck by something else.
Neat and cozy houses built by the American administration of Nikopol still stood right on the territory of the plant. The engineering elite of the enterprise mostly lived in them both in the «Western times», and in the Soviet times, and in the times of independent Ukraine. That is, the red directors and successful managers of our time — far from poor people — loved and preserved this heritage, and, despite all the «delights» of life right on the territory of a working factory, they lived here or sometimes visited, as if in a country house.
This residential part gives an understanding that the Combine is Mariupol, its iron heart. After all, despite the checkpoint, the constant industrial noise, the regime status, sometimes it was difficult for us to understand where the border between the City and the Combine is and whether it even exists? It was thanks to the metallurgical achievements of foreigners that Mariupol became developed and wealthy. It was because of the transportation of metallurgical products that the port developed here. It was because of the need to expand production that, already under the Soviet government, the residents of Illich built another metallurgical enterprise — «Azovstal». «Azovmash» was created by the people of Ilychiv precisely because of the need to have their own equipment, again at the facilities of the Combine.
This list can be continued for a long time. That is why the huge Combine, today destroyed and occupied by miners who are already sawing it for scrap metal, is Mariupol, also, unfortunately, destroyed and occupied.
The Ilyich plant after the full-scale invasion of the Russian Federation:
War: After the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Mariupol was completely surrounded by Russian troops. Along with another famous place of resistance, the Azovstal plant, the Ilyich plant became the site of intense fighting. After the Russian aerial bombing of the military hospital, the injured and the wounded were transferred to this very territory. Towards the end of the first month of the war, the defense was held by the 36th separate marine infantry brigade named after Rear Admiral Mykhailo Bilinskyi. Part of the military was able to unite with the forces of Azov in Azovstal, part was captured, the third group was able to leave the besieged Mariupol on foot.
Archival materials from filming:
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