Ukraine's third-largest city offers sights for those seeking a peek at industrial dinosaurs
DNIPROPETROVSK – Eco-tourism can be big business, with wealthy adventurers paying huge amounts of money to visit the last untouched places on earth. Hard-to-reach natural phenomena, such as Kamchatka’s volcanoes and Brazil’s rainforests, attract hardy backpackers looking to see things that their peers couldn’t even imagine. Much of the appeal comes from the sense of pioneering that is inherent in exploring unruffled lands and leaving footprints where perhaps no person has ever tred before. Physical discomfort is ignored because complaining would take away from the extremeness of it all.
But why do such tourists only seek out natural phenomena? For all their rhetoric about preservation, we all know that they are just out to prove that they are hardcore. Once you take away the politically correct conservation propaganda, eco-tourism is simply about finding places unspoiled by obnoxious tourists.
And Dnipropetrovsk is nothing if not unspoiled by tourists. Currently, nobody goes there if they don’t have to. Were it to realize its potential by starting a trend toward ‘industrial tourism’ – the logical inverse of eco-tourism – it may yet become a hotspot. Ukraine’s second-largest economy in terms of industrial output could capitalize on the romantic images of industrial blight popularized by industrial music and films such as Batman and Bladerunner.
Gotham City – almost
Arriving by train is the beginning of a bizarre journey into industrial hell. Giant pipes bind the tracks on either side, frequently crisscrossing overhead. Factory chimneys create an ominous skyline, as their rust-red smoke obscures the sun. While these relics from the Soviet military industrial complex only work at a fraction of their potential, they are active enough to create the impression of extreme toxicity.
From the train, the city appears to be a single coordinated, corroded factory. As the train pushes into its heart, metaphor takes over; the train becomes just another pipe, with the passengers molecules of fuel pumping through the factory’s veins. Seeing the sheer size of the endless rows of factories is the equivalent to viewing some giant, scenic mountain – you have no illusions about how insignificant one individual is in the scheme of things.
History was never kind to Dnipropetrovsk. Founded as Yekaterynoslav in 1787 by Russian Tsarina Catherine the Great, it had about three minutes of hope. She meant for it to become a Ukrainian Petersburg and even commissioned the construction of a giant cathedral modeled on the northern capital’s grand St. Isaac’s Cathedral. However, she died before her dreams came to fruition, and only the foundations were built.
Where the snow is crimson
Over the next century, it emerged as an industrial powerhouse, though it never managed to capture even a fraction of the glamour Catherine had dreamt of. Indeed, she would have been pleased when, after the revolution, the Bolsheviks stripped the city of its imperialist name and changed it to a fusion of the river Dnipro and radical activist Grigory Petrovsky.
For most of its Soviet history, foreigners weren’t allowed to enter Dnipropetrovsk. Of course, that was a largely symbolic law; few would have wanted to visit, even if it were legal. Giant factories focused on metallurgy, machine building, pipe rolling and other such quaint throwbacks to the era of heavy industry. When the factories were working at capacity, churning out red smoke, large portions of the city would be blanketed by crimson snow. Apparently, even nature was ideologically in line.
Now, even though the snow has returned to white, the amazing infrastructure of these factories remains. From an economic perspective, many are obsolete, with bloated work forces and antiquated machinery. But to an industrial tourist, these dinosaurs are the jewels of Dnipropetrovsk. They lie in a ring around the city, and virtually any road from the center will lead to a massive factory that
| Molten metal still flows at Petrovsky Metallurgical Plant. |
could easily be the backdrop for a post-apocalyptic film. A common joke among reformers goes that only Hollywood studios would have an interest in privatizing some of the outdated behemoths.
Take Petrovsky Factory. Locals claim that it is Europe’s largest factory. It certainly has to be a contender with a workforce in the tens of thousands. It works around the clock, every day of the year. Legions of smoke stacks send plumes of the trademark red into the atmosphere, which are complemented by bursts of fire regularly launched into the air. The maze of pipes that spring from the brick factory’s insides seem like guts exposed to the elements. Much of the machinery here dates back almost 150 years, to the time of the founding of the factory. Nonetheless, it has an eerie resemblance to science fiction’s vision of the industrial future that will never come.
Each factory’s main gates are treats for those who enjoy Soviet kitsch. Mosaics depicting Sputnik or the nobility of the working man are scattered around, as are countless disembodied heads of Lenin. They serve as reminders of one of the central reasons for the current shockingly inefficient industrial sector. The ideological goals of factories – supremacy of workers, glorification of production, association of industry with progress – subjugated any practical considerations about demand or efficiency.
Tours of industrial relics
Surprisingly, access to the factories is relatively easy. In spite of being off limits for decades, managers are willing to provide tours of the factory works. According to the administrators I talked with at several factories, on weekdays they can provide tours to the curious, although they thought I was slightly nuts to be asking. Unfortunately, I couldn’t test the veracity of their claims, as I visited the factories on a weekend. No doubt a small present would help facilitate entrance.
Still, there is plenty to see even without gaining access to the factory grounds. Showing a remarkable degree of contrasts even for Ukraine, little huts where factory workers live are nestled up against the factory walls. That is, in the midst of industrial hell, shacks similar to any Ukrainian village stand in a sea of vegetation. The environmental dangers of living in the shadow of a factory, even after
| Relics of industry cut through Ukraine’s third-largest city. |
the massive cutbacks of the last decade, must be innumerable. The stench these factories give off is unclassifiable, but clearly not a beneficial substance.
Other treasures await hardy adventurers. On the grounds of Petrovsky, there is a lake of raw sewage. Entire factories are coated with inches of red dust, giving them Martian auras. The confluence of pipes, smoke stacks and burning discharges is at times overwhelming.
But perhaps the most amazing thing about the entire city is the devotion people feel toward these monsters of the military industrial complex. While an outsider is struck by the impersonality of the vast factories, many locals feel strong ties to them. Hanging around the gates of a mid-sized factory, I saw an entire wedding parade saunter by, complete with photo-snapped in front of a red Lenin mosaic. Fathers hand down their trade to their sons with pride and school kids take tours of the massive works.
These decaying symbols of the industrial era still maintain an aura of power – pouring molten steel, billows of smoke, deafening noises, extreme temperatures. And perhaps these workers, who are little more than cogs in a process far beyond their control, idolize the factory for lack of any other symbol.
However, intrepid industrial tourists won’t be concerned with that. They will want to check out the city simply to go to the threshold and then return, thankful to live in the post-industrial world. Even the tourists searching for natural phenomena will be pleased: Thanks to the pollutants, Dnipropetrovsk’s sunsets are unbeatable.
