I Will Mix Your Blood with Coal

Exploring the post-Soviet landscape of the Ukrainian east in a complex journey of loss, hope, and history

In 2014, the Russian army, with support from local militants, occupied parts of Ukraine's two easternmost regions - once the beating industrial heart of the Soviet Union - where coal extraction has since exhausted both the human population and the natural resources. In late 2016 Oleksandr Mykhed set out on a research trip to explore the deep history and contested present of the area from the perspective of a fellow countryman who'd never been there.

Mykhed brings us on a painful yet hopeful journey across the Ukrainian east, sharing conversations with locals, snippets from archival documents, and the complicated perspectives of prominent cultural figures, such as writer Serhiy Zhadan, historian Olena Stiazhkina, and philosopher Ihor Kozlovsky, who was imprisoned and tortured for nearly two years.

I Will Mix Your Blood with Coal invites us to meet generations of coal miners. To learn about the Belgian and British investors who founded the east's industrial cities. To remember the harrowing events of the First and Second World Wars and the incalculable brutality of Soviet history. To see the activists who are even now working to improve the country. To hear sweet memories of a lost utopia that never existed. Mykhed provides a unique portrait of life in the east during the war, before the full-scale invasion that would change everything.