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About :: Lugansk
Ukraine.
A little
history, economy, population, culture and territory. |
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Lugansk is the city where I was born, grew up and live all my life. I don't say
it's the best in the world, but as any other city, you can find nice places around
here. In this article I will try to tell you about the city, so you can understand
a little better people who live here and if somebody asks you what you know about
Lugansk, you can always answer without hesitation. Local people will treat you with
more respect since you show interest to their environment and life style. Check my
website from time to time in future, I am keeping it up to date and add new information
that may be helpful to you. The picture on the left is the official symbol of the
city. |
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City name. Everything starts with the name. And here is the 1st
confusion about the city. If you check the Internet you will see that some people
spell it as Lugansk and some people spell it as Luhansk.
This is very easy to explain. It is the closest Ukrainian city to Russia and majority
speak Russian language. And the name of the city sounds Lugansk and that is natural
for local people to say it like that. But when Ukraine got independent in 1991 the
government started to change everything into Ukrainian language including names of
the
streets, towns and cities. So in Ukrainian pronunciation it became Luhansk. For me as for the person who has a diploma in languages that is not right. Names
must sound same in all languages. If your name Michael, you don't turn into Misha
as soon as you cross Russian border. |
How it all started. As you have noticed Russia always was in some
sort of war with somebody. The land where the city is located now was rich for iron
and that is the material you need to produce weapons. Coal was also here and that
made the perfect combination to build a factory and start the production of canons
and other type of weapons. Plus the location of the city was very convenient to supply
the army. The official history of Lugansk starts in 1775. Before
they started to build the factory there were some settlements around that nowadays
became part of the city. The factory was build on a river called Lugan. So
they started to call in Lugansk factory. -sk is
a suffix that is used in words construction to show relevancy to something, and
that gave the name for the city. Couple of times during Soviet Union era the name
of the city was changed to Voroshilovgrad. Voroshilov
was a hero of WWII, grad means city in old Russian language. Some
people still call the city Voroshilovgrad as they associate it with the times when
they were young and everything seemed to be bright and moving to the great future
of communism. |
What is Lugansk now? Right now Lugansk is the administrative center.
It means that it is the capital of the territory called oblast. Oblast is like a
state in USA. All taxes from other cities and towns go to Lugank. The regional government
is located in a nice building in the center and it is also known as White House
of Lugansk. It is the most Eastern city in Ukraine very close to Russia. Russian
border is about 40 minutes drive. So if you plan a trip across the county you should
start in Lugansk and finish in Lviv. The population of the city is close to half
a million. Lugansk is ranked #11 in Ukraine, it is smaller than Mariupol and bigger
than Sevastopol. The total population of Lugansk Oblast with smaller cities, towns
and villages is a little over 2 million people. The center of Lugansk is the nicest
part of town with parks and fountains. But fountains do not always work even if
it's hot as hell, city is trying to save some money on electricity and water. You
can always find a place to hide in the shade of the trees, they make Lugansk very
beautiful in summer time and the city is known to be one of the greenest in the country.
Many cafes and restaurants compete with each other fighting for the clients, so
the food is really nice and cheap. Still not all of the places have their menus
translated into English, so choose wise if you don't want to get soup for breakfast. |
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