With England kicking off their Euro 2012 campaign at the Donbass arena in Donetsk against France on Monday a few will realise that the host city was originally called Hughesovka and was created by Welsh capitalist John Hughes and his team of seventy Welsh miners and steelworkers. Its transition from Hughesovka in Russia, to Stalino in the Soviet Union, and then to Donetsk in the newly-independe nt Ukrainian nation, is a story of Russia, Ukraine and the Soviet Union in microcosm.

Welsh publishers Y Lolfa recently released a book Dreaming a City: The Story of Hughesovks/Stalino/Donetsk that traces the towns growth from patriarchal beginnings through the Russian revolutions, Bolshevism, Stalinism, Nazi occupation and the collapse of Communism, Nineties rising Ukraine nationalism, to Ukraine post-independence in the present market economy. Partly a revisiting of the making of the television series Hughesovka and the New Russia , this book is Russian and Welsh social and political history; travel journalism, and a tribute to Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams. Above all, though, it explores the tensions between a belief in social change and the danger implicit in utopian visions. Probing important themes such as capitalism and communism; internationalism and nationalism, in addition to freedom and exploitation, the author uses the city as a metaphor to explore a retreat from political idealism, and the nature of hope and disillusion. It also includes a DVD of the award winning documentary.

Dreaming a City  is available on www.ylolfa.com for 9.95

A preview of the documentary can be seen here:-

"The name of Colin Thomas...a guarantee of intelligence and scrupulous integrity" (The Financial Times)