[PEN-L:366] More on the Russian Miners

[Gregory Schwartz <grishas@xxxxxxxx>]

SIBERIAN WORKERS STAY ON TRACK

By Renfrey Clarke

MOSCOW -- According to Kemerovo province governor Aman Tuleyev in a
broadcast on July 14, everyone in the city of Yurga condemned the local
workers who were blocking the tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway.
Furthermore, Tuleyev charged, the Yurga strike committee had no
authority with the blockaders, and was powerless to direct their
actions.



Next day, the contingent of 300 workers out on the tracks in Yurga
swelled to more than 3000. This episode suggests the combativeness among

the 3 million-strong population of the Kuzbass district, the devastated
heartland of Siberia's coal, metallurgical and engineering industries.

In May, Kemerovo province, which includes the Kuzbass, was a key
battleground in the two-week ?rail war?, during which coalminers blocked

transport routes in protest at wage arrears stretching back for many
months.

Since the first days of July, the ?war? in the Kuzbass has been on
again. Workers argue that the government has failed to meet the terms of

the agreements, reached in late May in talks with Deputy Prime Minister
Oleg Sysuyev, that ended the first round of blockades.

?Trade unions claim that the region has received only 65% of the 1
billion roubles (US$160 million) promised by the federal government?,
the news service RFE/RL reported early in July.

The tactics used by the workers this month have not had the same flavour

of all-out confrontation as in May. This time, the blocking of the
?Transsib? has not been total; many trains are able to avoid the
barriers by taking a lengthy detour.

But the struggle is unfolding in a social climate that grows stormier by

the week. The chances are increasing that the fight in the Kuzbass will
result in the rise of a working-class political movement with a level of

organisation and programmatic consciousness quite new for post-Soviet
Russia.

The rail blockades in May were not the work of miners alone, but a
feature of the July protests has been the range of workers going onto
the tracks.

When a picket was set up alongside the Transsib in the city of
Anzhero-Sudzhensk on July 1 (the line was finally blocked there
following a meeting on July 3), workers from 37 local enterprises
reportedly took part. Many of the people now blocking the tracks at
Anzhero-Sudzhensk are teachers, and health and municipal service
workers.

Yurga, where the Transsib is also blocked, is not a coalmining centre;
the people on the tracks there are largely unpaid engineering workers
from the local machine-building plant.

?Rail attacks? have proliferated. From July 7 to 13, miners at Osinniki
in the southern Kuzbass blocked a strategic rail line used for
transporting iron ore to the Novokuznetsk steelworks. As of July 14,
four trains were being blocked by miners in the Krasnoyarsk district,
which adjoins the Kuzbass.

On July 16, miners were reported to have blocked the main internal
Kuzbass rail line, running from Novokuznetsk to Kemerovo.

Then on July 17, RFE/RL reported that industrial workers in three cities

in Kemerovo province had sent an ultimatum to the railways ministry
demanding that trains cease to use the detour around the blockades.

At first, the authorities met the renewed blockades with efforts to
divide the protesters from other workers in the region, and with threats

of legal reprisals. Reports on July 7 had leaders of metallurgical and
chemical workers' unions appealing for the blockades to be lifted so
that plant shutdowns could be avoided.

Meanwhile, the prosecutor-general, Yury Skuratov, had told journalists
that his office was collecting evidence against alleged instigators of
the protests, and the Kemerovo province prosecutor's office had
announced it was preparing three criminal cases.

In Russia, statements by trade union officials often reveal more about
the calculations of enterprise directors and local administrators --
with whom union leaders are apt to have close ties -- than about the
feelings of workers.

Rank and file sentiment in the Kuzbass labour movement, it quickly
became clear, lay overwhelmingly with the blockaders. Anatoly Chekis,
chairperson of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of the
Kuzbass, was obliged to send a telegram to Skuratov declaring that if
protesters were prosecuted, the trade unions would ?have to stand up for

them?.

Instead of the workers, it was the authorities who finished up divided.

After his attempt to discredit the blockaders had fallen flat, Tuleyev
sought to cash in on their popularity. On July 16 he threatened to file
a suit against the federal government for failing to meet its
commitments to the region's coalminers and public sector employees.

By this time, the federal government was also having to backtrack.

During the first week of the blockades, Sysuyev had insisted that the
government would negotiate with the protesters only when the rails were
cleared. But frantic lobbying by Siberian provincial officials, worried
about the costs of further turmoil, forced the authorities in Moscow to
retreat.

On July 16, with the protesters still on the tracks, President Yeltsin
ordered Sysuyev to travel to the Kuzbass and begin talks.

There is no reason to think that negotiations can quieten the Kuzbass
for any prolonged period. The region's heavy industries are largely
unneeded by the new capitalist Russia, with its semi-developed economy
centred on resource exports. To come up with real solutions to the
problems of the Kuzbass workers, the government would have to pursue
radically different economic strategies, aimed at benefiting quite
different elements of the population.

In practice, that could only be done by a government of quite different
people.

Masses of workers in the Kuzbass have already grasped these points. As
well as demanding their wages, the rail blockaders are calling on
Yeltsin to resign and demanding that the ?course of the reforms? be
changed.

Increasingly, labour activists in the region are coming to see these
political demands as the essence of their struggle.

Implicitly, the Kuzbass militants have set themselves the goal of
constructing a political movement that fights for the interests of the
working population, instead of defending business oligarchs and the
holders of state short-term debt.

The practical and conceptual challenges facing the militants are
daunting. Changes are needed to the state's social and economic
strategies, but what changes? Workers in the Kuzbass have set up city
strike committees which represent them in a particularly direct and
democratic way, but can these organs lead political campaigns? And how
are workers' struggles to be coordinated?

While finding answers to such questions, the Kuzbass militants will have

to defend themselves against state authorities alarmed by developments
in the region.

However, the workers in the Kuzbass will be campaigning from a position
of considerable strength. Any use of force against the rail blockades,
in particular, will be very unpopular with the public.

The Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta on July 18 reported a Russia-wide
survey in which 36% of respondents gave ?essentially unconditional
support? to the blockades, while only 15% thought such actions wrong.
Around 80% rejected the use of force against the blockaders ?in any
circumstances?.

No fewer than 42% indicated that if left without wages for a prolonged
period, they too would take part in ?rail wars? and other mass protest
actions. Combativeness may not be a trait of workers in the Kuzbass
alone.

--
Gregory Schwartz
Department of Political Science
York University
4700 Keele St.
Toronto, Ontario
M3J 1P3
Canada

Tel: (416) 736-5265
Fax: (416) 736-5686
Web: http://www.yorku.ca/dept/polisci