By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — Early on June 11, a train drew into Yaroslavsky Station here, bringing 150 miners from the Pechora coal basin in the Arctic north. Linking arms, the miners marched through central Moscow to the building that houses the parliament. After a brief demonstration, they again headed through the streets to the main federal government office building — the so-called "White House".
Two weeks later they were still there, reinforced by miners from almost all of the country's coal regions. The picket has provided stark evidence that a month after the sharpest clash between miners and the state in post-Soviet history, none of the grievances of coal workers were any closer to being resolved.
This was not the first time miners had come to Moscow, thronging the space before the White House, chanting slogans and beating their helmets rhythmically on the paving stones. But in the past they brought mainly economic demands — above all for the payment of back wages. Now wages were almost an afterthought.
Only one thing would really satisfy the picketers — the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin and his government.
Promises of wage payouts have been made so often — and then been forgotten — that picketers say they have lost all faith in the authorities.
"This government has betrayed us times beyond counting", miners' union leader Aleksandr Sergeev was quoted as saying on June 23, "and we won't back down now until it's gone. We put Yeltsin in his job, and now we'll remove him."
Union sources put the total wage debt owed to coal workers as high as 3.8 billion roubles (more than US$600 million), some workers being owed from as far back as early 1997.
Government's role
Since the picketers arrived here, government spokespeople have insisted that this sum is not owed by the state. "The government doesn't pay wages to miners — managers of coal enterprises do", Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov has been quoted as saying.
But according to Ruben Badalov, deputy chairperson of the main coal industry union, this argument is misleading. The central reason that coal customers are not paying for their fuel is government policies.
"Indirectly, the government is responsible for about 70% of the debt to the miners", Badalov recently said. "If the government says there is no problem, what choice do people have but to man the barricades?"
For close to a week in late May, the barricades kept Russia split in two, as miners and other unpaid workers in Western Siberia blocked key rail arteries and halted traffic. With similar blockades in other coal districts, the miners held hundreds of trains at a standstill.
Lacking effective national coordination, the militants were eventually ground down in talks with government leaders. Most of the blockades were lifted in exchange for unspecific promises that the government would pay part of the wage arrears, and would provide new jobs for miners when pits were closed.
But in the Pechora basin there was no deal. The miners finally unblocked the tracks, but rejected a plan for the region presented by economy minister Yakov Urinson.
As the weeks passed and the government's promises failed to materialise, miners throughout Russia concluded that further efforts to reason with the authorities are futile.
"Continuing to demand that the government solve our economic problems is useless, and it's even more pointless to hold talks with them on political issues", trade union leader Aleksandr Kolosulin told the newspaper Trud.
Current government plans have no place for serious concessions to the miners. Huge sections of today's mine work force have no place at all in these projections except as statistics in a vast program of cutbacks.
World Bank plan
Over the past two years, the government has collaborated with the World Bank to "reform" the coal sector. One of the assumptions is that Russian heavy industry in the next century will be much smaller and weaker than at the end of the Soviet period, and that its need for coal will be dramatically less.
To some degree, the coal output freed by the running-down of heavy industry will be redirected towards exports. A huge coal loading terminal is being built on the Gulf of Finland, and according to Matt Salt of the Institute of Coal in London, Russian coal exports are due to rise from 19-23 million tonnes in 1997 to 32 million by 2000.
However, the government's main response to lower domestic demand for coal will be to reduce output, closing mines and laying workers off. According to Salt, the authorities plan to close 140 of 220 pits currently operating.
Of total government funding for the coal industry in 1998, the news service RFE/RL reports, two-thirds has been assigned for mine closures. Employment in the coal sector is likely to fall by a further 100,000 from a current figure of 359,000. Up to 50,000 miners are reportedly to be laid off this year alone.
To expedite "restructuring", the World Bank has extended loans to the government, US$800 million being approved in 1997. According to RFE/FL, the final US$200 million tranche of this loan is not to be released until half the coal industry is in private hands and operating without state support.
Subsidies to the coal industry, more than halved since 1994, are to end entirely by 2000.
In the plans of the World Bank and Russia's new elites, the coal industry of the future is thus to be small, privately owned and largely export oriented.
Workers cut loose
Whether such a coal sector could provide a basis for eventually rebuilding the country's heavy industries is a moot point. For large numbers of the miners, a more immediate cause of alarm is that the government aims to cut them loose with inadequate social support.
Much of the money lent by the World Bank is to be spent on severance entitlements for laid-off miners. But as a rule, these sums are not enough to allow former miners to buy new homes in areas where employment prospects are less straitened. Russia's notorious housing shortage anchors coal workers in the decrepit settlements where they at least have a roof over their heads.
The interest of the World Bank in the miners stops once they are paid out; according to RFE/RL, the bank has given little funding or thought to helping redundant coal workers find new jobs. For that matter, the idea that there are plenty of jobs for workers who are prepared to relocate or undertake retraining is a myth.
With the government ready to let them starve in the wilderness, it is not surprising that miners see their only chance in a sweeping ouster of the present authorities. This prospect is not as remote as might be thought.
On June 18 Trud reported survey findings that during May the number of citizens who disapproved of Yeltsin's actions as president stood at 80%. The number prepared to support "tough anti-presidential demonstrations, meetings and strikes" had risen in 12 months from 30 to 44%.
The call for mass action to force the regime out of office vividly communicates the miners' anger, and has broad popular appeal. It would be much more effective as a mobilising demand if it were backed up by a clear program of measures indicating how a government loyal to working people would set about solving the miners' problems.
Such a program needs to make clear that the coal industry is the government's responsibility — private capital is neither capable of solving the miners' dilemma nor interested in doing so. There are now almost no investors willing to put money into Russia's coal mines, and the demand for the renationalisation of assets that have been sold off in the past is a popular one among the picketers at the White House.
Relocation and retraining are not a viable approach for most miners; coal industry workers need jobs and wages where they are now. That requires reviving the industry through restoring demand for its products. A significant step toward this goal would be to begin phasing out nuclear power stations. The crucial need, however, is for the deliberately planned reconstruction of heavy industry, a major coal consumer.
A program such as this would articulate key interests of much broader layers of workers than simply the miners. It would thus provide an impulse for a really extensive struggle for a government in the interests of the mass of the population.