Translated material
We fought
On the one hand, they were always the first in everything. In 1989, they were the first to start mass strikes, which the Soviet people knew about only from history books and foreign reports about decaying capitalism. They were the first to show that strikes can be political. They were the first to create alternative trade unions, free from the “drive belts” of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions and the functions of the “school of communism”. (This incredibly encouraged the Soviet intelligentsia, whose representatives, having come to power by that time and united in the Interregional Deputy Group, saw in the miners’ protests direct evidence of the righteousness of the idea of perestroika.) In August 1991, the miners were the first from the working class to declare that do not recognize the State Emergency Committee. They were among the first to make claims against the reformers. And when the claims were not heard, they waged a “rail war.” In short, the miners constantly kept their own account of the reforms.
But, on the other hand, they did not so much keep score as present bills for consent to reforms. It is unknown whether miners would have become the first strikers if, during Gorbachev’s perestroika, they had remained the highest paid category of workers, as they were throughout the years of Soviet power. It is unknown whether they would have begun to put forward political demands if these demands had not been promptly prompted to them by the “interregionals.” It is unknown how alternative their trade unions would have been if the entrepreneurs had not involved these trade unions in the struggle for the division and then redistribution of property. And it is still unknown what scale the “rail war” could have reached if the reformers had not been forced in the mid-90s to provide miners with such a salary, which, in relation to the cost of production, remains one of the highest in Russia. ( IN The average salary in the country is 10-12% of the cost, for miners it is 25-30, or even 40%.)
And yet the miners remain first. They are perhaps the only ones who have experienced reforms in full. In no other industry has there been such a number of liquidated enterprises and such a number of laid-off workers as in coal mining. Despite this, the miners were able to achieve partnerships with the authorities. Now they have a more difficult task: to achieve partnerships with mine owners, that is, with employers. I would like to believe that this partnership will develop without wars.
Evgeniy YASIN, professor, scientific director of the Higher School of Economics: “ The coal industry is the only area where quite serious results have been achieved in restructuring. In my opinion, to a large extent, the experience of these reforms is useful for other industries, including those where there were initially much fewer problems.
Since the first World Bank loan was taken out in 1995 to restructure the coal industry, which became a kind of “engine” of reform, about 150 mines have been closed, and the number of workers in the industry has decreased significantly.
The coal industry is the only one where labor productivity began to increase even before the 1998 crisis. Of course, this growth was achieved not by increasing productivity itself, but by reducing the number of workers and closing unprofitable mines. But crucially, an industry that has traditionally been unprofitable has, for the most part, become profitable. Privatization is proceeding successfully, and in some cases there is even a serious struggle for coal enterprises. In Kuzbass, as we know, local oligarchs - Kuzbassenergo and Siberian Aluminum - are fighting for coal enterprises.
Separately, it is worth mentioning the social problems that have plagued the industry and society as a whole all this time. Although it is even difficult to determine: when masses of people do not receive wages for months, is this a social problem or a general economic one? But I must say that the restructuring of the industry was largely successful because most of the World Bank's funds were directed towards social programs. One of the main contradictions between the borrowers and the lender was precisely that the coal miners wanted to receive money for production investments, and the World Bank insisted that they should go towards releasing people, transferring the housing stock from enterprise property to municipal property, etc. d. Economic modernization will not be able to move forward until there is social investment. The World Bank had a rather complex social program, and if it had not been implemented (although, of course, we did not do everything that we promised), then today’s results would not have been achieved.”