Hard Life Bashny.Net

Sometimes photos may say more than a lot of articles in the popular news media. Photojournalist Alexander Chekmenev imprinted on your shots representatives of one of the most difficult professions of the world - the miners. A true story of the miners of Donbass, read on.

Ukraine, Maidan, the European choice ...
But there is also another Ukraine, from which turn away in disgust Kiev-Lvov nat-aesthetes, from which of creeps. Yes, it's a dark, no exterior side. They are children of the dungeon, convicts by birth - miners.
It Donbass in the photographs of Alexander Chekmenev. It is terrible and hopeless ...

I lived in the city of Torez. The old flat panel five-story building did not even have central heating. Many of the rooms were the usual stove from sheet metal, which were heated with wood or coal mined in the mines. Sheet metal pipe sticking out of the furnace of the most soot-blackened windows of high-rise buildings. Cold water was given as if on schedule - about 2 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the evening, but there was no hot at all. I remember that I had to sleep dressed next to the stove - so it was cold in the apartment.

My money ran out quickly, so every morning I woke up and walked a few kilometers down the snowy steppes to the illegal mine, where I knew and recognized his own. You could eat breakfast and lunch, and dinner was hot tea in abundance. I'm not surprised at its location, the circumstances in which I had to spend a long time in the mining region. All suits me - I'm used to everything. Only one thing has not ceased to surprise: I could not understand, understand why the people who heat the whole state can not heat their homes.

It was Sunday. In the house, the outside looks like a dilapidated shed, boiling fun - celebrated the birthday of the mistress of the house. Shahterke Lubanie was forty-nine years. Late at night the fun was in full swing, people drank, danced, walked, as best he could. At some point in the midst of this holiday guy sleeping on the bed on the side of all, silently got up, dressed in work clothes and headed for the exit. Shoes boots at the threshold, he threw his jersey on the shoulders, took a helmet, konogonku and left the house. I was struck by this scene, and I asked Luban, where he went? "Yes, in a mine for charcoal, where else?" - She said. "So after all the night in the yard!" - I wondered. Pretty drunk, tired birthday girl looked at me with a smile and said quietly: "Under the ground is always night. At any time of the day ».