Siberian tunnel workers strike

By Renfrey Clarke MOSCOW — For large numbers of Russians who grew up during the 1970s, the tunnel at Severomuysk, east of Lake Baikal in Siberia, remains an icon of their youth. The Severomuysk project was vigorously propagandised during the later Brezhnev years as one of the great challenges facing the young enthusiasts who were building the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) — the heroic railway construction scheme that was to traverse the northern wilderness between Central Siberia and the Pacific, opening vast new resources of timber and minerals for the Soviet people. It was therefore a numbing experience for many Russians to learn on January 22 that more than 200 workers on the still-uncompleted Severomuysk tunnel had declared an indefinite strike, demanding that the government make money available for wages that had not been paid in full since August. If the authorities failed to respond, the workers threatened, they would tighten the stoppage to include shutting down the pumps that keep the workings from being flooded. If this action were taken, trains would not run through the tunnel for decades, if ever. Without the tunnel, many of the remaining hopes held for BAM would expire as well. Trains began running on the line in the mid-1980s, making a tortuous 56-kilometre switchback detour past the tunnel site. Over the years since, the railway has fared poorly. Even when the Soviet system was still in existence, few of the development projects planned for the region went ahead. As a result, traffic on the railway has remained minimal. For liberal opponents of the Soviet regime, BAM stood as the supreme example of much that was wrong with Soviet economic strategies — centred, very often, on gigantic prestige schemes whose costs and potential benefits were poorly thought out. Environmentalists were also critical, stressing the problems and dangers of resource development in this ecologically fragile zone. When the clamps were put on state spending during the early 1990s, BAM was an obvious target. The Ministry of Communications faced a series of strategic questions as it sought to reduce outlays on the line. Should BAM be abandoned altogether? Or "put in mothballs"? And what about the remaining infrastructure works, above all the tunnel? Should they be completed? Little effort has been made to address these questions in a consistent way, on the basis of proper studies. BAM has been kept running, but maintenance has been skimped. In the remote railway settlements, now middle-aged tamers of the wilderness have been left for months without provisions or pay packets. Very often, funding cutbacks have been made but not announced, to be discovered by the people affected only when money fails to arrive. Within the general history of BAM, there are few elements that sum up the scheme's heroism and tragedy as well as the story of the Severomuysk tunnel. Planned hastily on the basis of inadequate geological data, the tunnel turned into a technological nightmare. In order to keep drilling in an area that is both seismically and geothermally active, Soviet engineers had to make dramatic advances in the science of tunnel excavation. The obstacles to be overcome included underground streams of near-boiling water. Only about 630 metres of the 15-kilometre length now remains to be excavated. Nevertheless, progress in the past few years has come almost to a halt. Rather than symbolising the recklessness of Soviet leaders, the tunnel's fate now serves to damn the irresponsibility of the new Russian rulers. Experts have calculated that the cost of "mothballing" the Severomuysk tunnel would be some three times the price of completing it. Normally, that would be an argument for assigning the money, finishing the work relatively quickly and reaping the benefits. But instead, the ministerial officials have chosen a third option that rules out any short-term benefits, and that is unlikely to save money in the long term either. The tunnellers have been kept at work, but denied their wages. Funding for equipment and materials has been cut to levels that rule out completion of the project until well into the next century. Liberals who deride the backwardness of Soviet technology might ponder the degree of sophistication that the tunnelling equipment at Severomuysk has reached under capitalism. The newspaper Izvestia reported on January 20 that the tunnellers were using "only such 'marvels' of technology as, for example, the Shch-22 tunnelling shield from 1936, or the shaft-reinforcing complex demonstrated so successfully ... in 1953." Funding for the spare parts needed to keep more modern equipment functioning has been promised, but not delivered. The workers who have stayed in their isolated, ill-supplied settlements near the tunnel site have done so partly from a sense of commitment — a desire one day to "drive the golden spike" — and partly because they have little choice. If they quit their jobs and their poorly heated plywood huts, there is small likelihood of them finding housing elsewhere in Russia. For workers who stay, there is at least the chance that wages will some day be paid, and that cars ordered and paid for as much as a decade ago will at last be delivered. Stoic endurance, however, has now been replaced by active protest. The tunnellers staged two hunger strikes during the second half of 1995. Late in December they decided that the next stage in their struggle, an indefinite strike with the possible shutdown of the pumps, should begin in January. Russia would have to decide whether it wanted BAM or not, since without the tunnel, large-scale transport along the line would never be a fully economic proposition. Once the strike began, ministerial officials responded quickly. A payments schedule was drawn up, providing for the back wages to be handed over in full by April. After four days, the strikers returned to work. However, they pledged that if the payments schedule was not adhered to, the strike would resume on February 15. The question of whether to shut down the pumps would again be on the agenda. For the present, the Russian government has evidently decided in favour of BAM. The choice is a correct one. Whether the original decision to launch the project was justified or not, the investments have now almost all been made. The region's resource wealth is genuine, and the challenges of preserving the environment can be met if the will is present. Meanwhile, there are lessons to be drawn from the circumstances in which the decision to save BAM was made. After 20 years of construction, workers had to compel the government to take the measures without which most of this effort and investment would have been wasted. The force driving Russia's development forward, it seems, is not the newly restored capitalist system, but the organised working class.