ÐÓÑÊÈÒÅ ÐÀÁÎÒÍÈÖÈ ÍÅ ÎÑÒÀÂÀÒ ÏÀÑÈÂÍÈ
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MOSCOW - Part of the Russian ``soul'', Western tradition holds,
is a unique bent for sullen but passive suffering. Centuries of
peasant revolts, not to speak of other convulsions, give the lie
to this myth. Nevertheless, it still gets trotted out by
commentators who note with relief the ability of the current
Russian government to force neo-liberal measures on the population
while somehow remaining in office.
In reality, the response of Russians to ``reform'' has been far
from passive. Just how far was illustrated once again in the last
days of January, when a protest picket in a Siberian coal town
erupted into a four-day siege during which a hated mine director
was held captive. The episode ended only when riot police
arrested the director and led him away in handcuffs.
As related by the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta, the
story began on January 27 when workers from the Kuznetskaya mine,
near the city of Polysaevo in the Kuzbass coal region, gathered
outside the mine administration building. They were demanding
unpaid wages from as far back as mid-1995.
The fact that such a protest took place at the Kuznetskaya mine
is an irony in itself. With large reserves of high-quality coking
coal, the mine was the first in Russia to be privatised, in 1991.
The workers and managers kept a 40 per cent stake. The bulk of
the shares were purchased by an Austrian firm and by another
registered in Liechtenstein. In return for receiving their shares
at a barely nominal price, the new majority stakeholders promised
to invest in modern equipment.
Favoured by the new owners with gifts such as television sets,
many of the workers felt their fortunes could only improve.
Instead, output in the mine plunged and wages stopped coming. The
miners remained in their decrepit villages - in recent times,
without running water - living on what they could grow in garden
plots, on gifts from relatives, and on occasional payments in
kind from their employer.
With support from the miners, local authorities sought to have
the mine renationalised. Last year, an arbitration court ruled
the privatisation illegal, reversed it, and ordered mine director
Aleksandr Ternovykh dismissed. This finding, however, was later
overturned on appeal.
Ternovykh maintained that he was not receiving his wages either.
But miners recently told journalists that when the mine director
was approached last year with the demand that money be paid out,
he was able to take a fat wad of notes from his pocket and pay
everyone an immediate bonus.
The wage debts nevertheless continued to mount, and by January
the mine owed individual workers sums ranging from 10,000 to
45,000 rubles (US$1600-$7400). The miners' demands now included
renationalisation of the mine, the bringing of criminal charges
against Ternovykh, and a federal investigation of the reasons why
the local prosecutor's office had not pressed charges against him
already.
During the January 27 picket, Nezavisimaya Gazeta related,
Ternovykh showed up unexpectedly at the mine administration
building, where he was almost never to be seen. He began a
meeting with managerial and technical personnel. When the
picketers demanded that the mine director meet with them, local
news services reported, he declared: ``I'm not going to talk to
this riff-raff without a gun in my hands.''
Some 50 miners then blockaded him in a conference room. More
than 20 managers and technicians who were present were told they
could leave, but most chose to stay. Ternovykh, the miners made
clear, would be released only into the custody of criminal
investigators.
Police surrounded the building, but did not intervene. The local
mayor, no doubt sensing that the blockade was highly popular,
told journalists that the city authorities were refusing to
become involved.
If their demands were not met, the blockaders declared, they
would halt traffic on a busy nearby highway. On January 31 a
detachment of OMON paramilitary police arrived, and as the crowd
in front of the building cheered and clapped, Ternovykh was led
off to detention.
The mine director was formally charged with endangering the
lives of workers. Last March, a fire in the Kuznetskaya pit took
the lives of three miners. Ternovykh is also reportedly being
investigated on two further charges: of tax evasion, and of
abusing his position.
But early in February authorities in Kemerovo Province, which
includes the Kuzbass, launched another criminal investigation
with the aim of identifying and charging the people responsible
for the blockade. The charges that could be brought carry a
prison sentence of three to five years.
From the mine's foreign shareholders, the blockade drew only a
vague promise that wage arrears would be paid when the money was
found. Meanwhile the Austrian part-owner, the company Prosystem
GmbH, has revealed that it wants to sell its stake in the mine. A
Prosystem spokesperson stated early in February that the company
was suing Rosugol, the state firm that manages many of the
Russian government's coal industry assets, for debts amounting to
the equivalent of US$2.9 million.
The blockade at the Kuznetsky mine has not been the only
bitterly-fought struggle to erupt on the Russian labour scene in
recent weeks. No less significant, and in some ways even more
dramatic, was the January 27 blocking by protesting workers of
the Trans-Siberian Railway near Vladivostok in the Russian Far
East. An estimated 2500 people, mostly unpaid coal miners but
including defence industry workers, teachers, medical staff and
municipal service workers, took part in the two-hour action.
On January 29 some 3500 people, mostly unpaid defence industry
workers, demonstrated in President Boris Yeltsin's home city of
Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. And on February 4 coal
transport workers in the northern Kuzbass were in the second day
of a mass hunger strike. A reported 106 workers had joined the
action, aimed at forcing bosses to pay wage arrears dating back
to October 1996.
(11 ôåâðóàðè 1998 ã. - Ðåíôðè Êëàðê å êîðåñïîíäåíò îò Ìîñêâà íà àâñòðàëèéñêèÿ âåñòíèê "Green Left Weekly" )
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