Interviews with the Strike Leaders

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, “We’ll Remain in this Cesspool for a Long Time:” The Miners of the Donbass Speak Out. May 26, 1991

With Daniel J. Walkowitz

This interview was conducted on May 26-27, 1991 in Donetsk, a city of over one million people and the coal capital of the Ukraine. This was our second trip to Donetsk, the first having been in July-August 1989. Both visits occurred in the wake of massive strikes that had each raised the political temperature of the city and indeed the entire country. But, as we soon discovered, the two strikes differed in many important respects. The strike of July 1989 was spontaneous, centered on miners’ living and working conditions, lasted less than a week, and resulted in the government’s capitulation to all forty-nine demands. The strike of March-April 1991 was called by the Donetsk city strike committee (in conjunction with similar bodies throughout the coalfields of the USSR), contained political demands including the resignation of Gorbachev and full sovereignty for the Ukraine, lasted for two months, and had an ambiguous outcome. Moreover, whereas the first strike involved virtually all of the city’s twenty-eight mines, support for the more recent strike was far from unanimous. The interview was conducted with three leaders of the Donetsk city strike committee. While admitting to the existence of serious divisions among miners, they contended that the strike enjoyed the support of other workers and that they had begun to build bridges with the peasantry. At the same time, it was interesting to hear how their ties with the American trade union movement had shaped their perspectlves We talked at the committee’s headquarters, located on Artem Street, the main thoroughfare of the city.

Q: Before we begin with questions, could you please introduce yourselves?

Nikolai Volynko

Before the 1989 strike, I worked as a tunnel cutter at the Zaperevalnaia mine. I’ve been a strike committee member for two years and am a deputy to the city soviet.

Mikhail Krylov

Before the 1989 strike, I was a tunnel cutter at the October mine. I’ve been at the strike committee for two years and am now its deputy head.

Yuri Makarov

Before the 1989 strike, I was a foreman at the Pravda mine, and now am head of the strike committee.

Q: OK, can you please tell us what the city strike committee does, what its main functions are?

Yuri Makarov

During the first strike, the strike committee was concerned with drawing up a set of demands. During this strike, it was concerned with organizing the strike and carrying it out.

Mikhail Krylov

Previous strikes, which were purely economic in nature, showed us that economics alone can’t solve the problem and that was why we put forward political demands. It was because everybody realized that without changing the system we won’t achieve changes or attain our economic demands. As to the demands, they are the same as workers’ demands anywhere else, be it here in the Soviet Union or the United States, or Canada, namely higher wages and social protection.

In other countries these demands are put to the owners. In this country the owner is the state and this is why we’re putting them to the state. We’re now most concerned with the Ukrainian government, since we believe that the Ukraine should be sovereign and become an independent state. In this case the people of the Ukraine, and of other republics if they attain sovereignty, will find it easier to address all economic and social issues.

Yuri Makarov

The recent strike ended a few days ago, or rather was suspended for awhile. It was not just the miners who struck but other industries joined in. In Donetsk, we had workers from the textile industry joining us, in Makeevka, workers from the pipe plant.

Q: But we understand that not all mines in Donetsk participated in the strike. Why was that so?

Nikolai Volynko

At the mines that didn’t go on strike, the miners immediately got a raise. Everything was done to split our movement. Those mines that supported us but went on working had the following attitude: We’ll wait and see how it turns out. If you win, it will be a victory for everyone. If you lose, then we win, since punishment will fall on you, not on us. We will try to make those mines understand us and return to the fold so that we are united once more.

Mikhail Krylov

There is another reason for it. It is also the fault of the strike committee that not all mines lent us their active support. The big problem here is also that our region is rather vast and far flung. For us to provide information to all miners, we simply have neither time nor resources. We’re cut off from means of communication.

The mass media, the press and television, constantly provide false information. Very often, they have tried to discredit both the leaders of the workers’ movement and the movement itself. Many enterprises didn’t even know why the miners and other enterprises, the pipe plant for instance, were striking. To go to just our own twenty-eight mines would take more than a month. Because of this, the authorities were able to get to workers in time and we were not. Without information, we were even late in organizing this strike. This isn’t to say that the strike was lost. It achieved some economic and political goals. We believe that with this strike we forced the government, the supreme soviet and the parliament, to think about our demands, and even now we pushed ahead the timetable for the approval of the independent Ukrainian constitution.

Q: Is it possible that some mines did not participate because of their geological situation, for instance, the Kuibyshev mine?

Nikolai Volynko

I would say that this is not such an old mine. It has been in operation since just before the war. We have mines that have been in operation since last century.

Mikhail Krylov

One of the problems, as I’ve said, is information. The main reason is that we were late providing information to those very mines, including the Kuibyshev mine. At that time, they were given a raise. For the same work that people earned R500-600 they got up to R1,500 the next month during the strike. Their wages were raised two- or threefold.

Since the 1989 strike, they have started to recover and conditions at our mines, including the Kuibyshev mine, are the same more or less. There are many tunnels and if they stand idle even for a single day, they simply cave in and people lose their jobs. To take such a decisive step, the enterprise must have a leader who would be able to explain why a strike is necessary. There was no such leader at that enterprise.

Q: Against what or whom was the strike?

Yuri Makarov

The strike was not against something or someone. It was called to provide normal living and working conditions for workers. This is the main reason why the strike was called. Since our Ukrainian government puts off addressing those questions, people simply don’t see any other choice in solving them.

Mikhail Krylov

I disagree somewhat. The strike was against the system. It is the system that made us so deaf-mute and long-suffering. When after the 1989 strike we raised our heads a little, we saw that it was possible to live differently and found a way how to achieve normal, human living conditions.

Q: The old system still exists?

Mikhail Krylov

Yes, that bureaucratic dictatorial system that exists here, created by our great and vanguard communist party. Everyone has long understood that it is dangerous, that it destroys the people and the country. Someone should start fighting against this system that throttles everything. We should start building a new, civilized system where people live as well as they work.

Q: In the US much is written about the transition to a market system in the Soviet Union. What is your attitude towards this movement?

Nikolai Volynko

Positive. Our attitude is positive. The problem is that we have no law on property and what they are trying to introduce Dew a regulated market, is simply the same system trying to save itself, survive, remain at the top and continue to distribute everything. They don’t allow a normal existence even to cooperatives that could provide healthy competition to state enterprises. They fear very much that if we actually shift to a market economy, we won’t need them any longer. They are doing everything to promote chaos and disorder in the country. And then they say, “You wanted democracy, well, here is democracy for you.” In other words, they are preparing the people for the restoration of dictatorship by popular demand. This is what we are fighting against.

Yuri Makarov

Well, the system is so strong it doesn’t allow any new manifestations of the market economy. Back seventy years ago it was declared that land belongs to the peasants and factories to the workers. But it all remained on paper. This is why we demand that the Ukrainian government become sovereign not just on paper but in reality, because declaring sovereignty doesn’t mean that the Ukraine will become sovereign. It remains on paper. What we need is that the Ukraine achieves sovereignty in deed, a functioning sovereignty.

Q: So, in your view, workers’ aspirations will be fulfilled through sovereignty of the republics?

Yuri Makarov

Sure. It’s my opinion that in such a big state as ours it is I’mpossible to administer all regions from one place, from Moscow, and to Issue laws that would be acceptable to everyone. Laws should be passed regionally and then generalized. Then it would make sense. In the end, I think that if the Ukraine were independent, it would be better able to fix the economy and everything else on its territory.

Nikolai Volynko

Coming back to the issue of peasants, back in 1917 it was proclaimed that land belongs to them. Now, Gorbachev has sent letters and cables demanding that the transfer of the land to peasants be accelerated. Peasants have come to our strike committee many times asking us to help in taking ownership of land. Last year when I went to the countryside, the peasants were hostile towards us. “You take care of yourselves and make life difficult for us,” they said. But this time, when I went, early this month, their attitude was different. They have started to understand what we’re fighting for. I asked them why there was such a change and they started to explain that they saw on TV and in the papers that Gorbachev had sent those letters to accelerate the transfer of land. So they went to ask for land, not much, just two hectares each, in order to till it. But they got nothing. And they began to understand, even the peasants have started to understand, that this system won’t let them live normally.

Mikhail Krylov

We also want to express our sincere appreciation and gratitude to American trade unionists. When we were in America [January 1990], the guys who were there signed an agreement stating that this June American specialists would come to the principal coal producing regions of our country, the Donbass and Kuzbas, and help us draft plans how to shift this most complicated industry to a market economy, not a false but a true market economy, the one which will provide an impetus to develop our poor country.

Q: But perhaps you know that in our market economy, in the United States, the unions represent only 20 percent of the workforce. What will be the role of trade unions in your country if you achieve a “normal” life?

Yuri Makarov

If a union indeed defends workers, it will be an entity we haven’t seen for seventy-five years. Our old state trade unions never defended the interests of workers as long as they existed and during the previous strike managed to sign agreements on the side of the state and not on the side of workers.

Mikhail Krylov

We feel that trade unions are one of the main engines of progress. You will have to admit that even in Western countries it is the same way. By fighting for the rights of their workers, even when they demand wage hikes, trade unions force engineers to improve production technologies, as a result of which the nation grows and becomes richer. This isn’t happening here yet. Here we stress laborintensive technologies and not technological progress. Our activity as a miners’ union is moving in the same direction and in the future we hope to prosper the same way developed countries do.

Q: Isn’t there a paradox? In the West, market economies pay workers like miners less than engineers. Yet you press for such a system.

Mikhail Krylov

There is no paradox here. The point is that in the US miners earn $40,000-$50,000 a year, which is a good living, not just an existence. Engineers make more money because they design technologies and create better conditions for miners so that they work with buttons, not a shovel. Here, engineers have lost all desire to do their own work. Their function is to work as overseers who compel miners to work. This is why there is no technological improvement. The state is forced to pay miners for their hard physical labor and since our leaders have little foresight, no incentives are provided for engineers to develop new work methods. If, as in other countries, engineers worked to improve technology and created similar conditions to those in which miners work in the West, we wouldn’t be opposed to it. On the contrary, we would be glad if engineers earned more, but for their engineering work, not for supervision.

I want to add something that may be important for you in the West. At the moment, in Donetsk and throughout the Donbas, the average life expectancy for the main occupations, tunnel cutters, machinists, coal cutters and other miners, is about thirty-eight years. People live to be just thirtyeight years old. Mortality is enormous, four or five people per million tons. I think that this explains everything, why miners demand such big pay hikes. There is no engineering input here; it’s just plain physical labor.

Yuri Makarov

It isn’t that we have bad engineers, but because the system itself has taught them to do mundane, petty work … We have several research institutes serving the coal industry, but we get little help from them. Even though engineers and scientists who work at research institutes earn good salaries, there is almost no return from them. People still work thin coal seams with shovels and picks. In this country, technology exists only on paper, at the institutes …

Q: Lastly, we want to ask you about your children. We understand that you, Nikolai, have a daughter and several sons. What are your aspirations for them? Would you want your daughter to marry a miner or your sons to become miners?

Nikolai Volynko

My daughter will choose herself whom to marry, but if it’s a miner, I wouldn’t want him to be working in the same conditions as we do. This is why we have fought and will continue to fight, so that our kids have better lives.

Mikhail Krylov

People’s dreams are different. My kids dream of being able to live in an apartment, in normal conditions. As to the future, we know that what we are fighting for here at the strike committee, as we attempt to build an independent trade union, will be a long struggle. We want our kids to live like human beings. We don’t want luxuries or excesses. Just to have some certainty about tomorrow, We want people to lead normal lives, to have acceptable, normal working conditions. This is all we are striving for. We don’t need anything else.

I have a grown daughter. She’s a college graduate, but after she started working, she no longer thinks much of college education. As a college graduate, she is earning a mere R120-140 [per month]. My son is in the ninth grade. I don’t want him to be a miner, but he’ll decide for himself. It’s enough that I spent twentyfive years working at the mine.

Source: Oral History Review, 20/1&2 (Spring-Fall 1992), pp. 79-86.

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