Locking 90s: how the miners rebelled against slavery

In June 1989, the miners in Mezhdurechensk stopped working - for six months they had demanded to adjust the payment of work at night and return the soap that has become a shortage. Soon, the requirements against slave conditions were replaced by political conditions - they asked to cancel the Constitution about the "leading and guiding role of the party." In 1990, thanks to the support of miners, deputy Boris Yeltsin was elected chairman of the Supreme Council of Russia. The all -Union strike began under the slogan “Boris - Miners with you!” Nine years later, on May 1, 1998, the employees of the Anzero-Sugene mines announced a hunger strike with a demand to pay many years of salary. A little later, in solidarity with living, like slaves, “rail wars” began. The miners put tents on the railway canvas and demanded the resignation of President Yeltsin. In the book that grew out of the same name, the book “She fell apart. The daily history of the USSR and Russia in 1985-1999 ” two materials are devoted to the miners - the analysis of newspaper cutouts and the conversation of journalist Dmitry Tsrest with a professor of political science of the University of Quebec in Montreal David Mandeli, who has been exploring the labor movement of Russia since the seventies. Samizdat “Batenka, you are a transformer” publishes one of the chapters of the book in reduction.

In 1976, I trained in Leningrad. People were closed, the provincials were afraid of me - for them I was like an alien. Then I worked on a dissertation dedicated to the working movement in 1917-1918. I wanted to understand why the revolution did not develop contrary to the expectations of its participants, and everything degenerated into Stalinism. He began to dig the history of the Civil War and realized that the root causes should be sought in earlier years.

The next time I visited the USSR in 1985, but I did not see much difference in people, although the fault process became more noticeable. In 1987, he interviewed the participants of the Novocherkassky events of 1962. Then, during the dispersal of the demonstration of workers of the electric locomotive factory, at least twenty -six people were killed. They listened to us, and I was arrested, since I did not have the right to leave Moscow - as a result, I was forbidden to enter the country. A few years later I wrote a letter to the Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, later to the Georgian president. I was forgiven and allowed to visit the USSR again. Gradually, I switched to the study of a modern working class. When the authorities had nomenclature, it was impossible to study workers. I traveled a lot around the country: Peter, Yaroslavl, Ufa, Sverdlovsk, Minsk.

Taran for the elite

In 1989, the miners of Donbass, Vorkuta, Kuzbass and Karaganda organized together. At that time, all the mines had one owner - power. It seemed strong: the KGB, the army, censorship - but in fact it was very fragile. She could not tolerate another opinion, but the first successful demonstration of disagreement showed the weakness of the system. The actions of the striking were impressive - in fact, they shook the system. Along the way, the “Independent Trade Union of the Pitmen” acting in Vorkuta was concluded by an alliance with Yeltsin. In Moscow, I was at the congress of labor collectives that put forward the program that it was workers who should manage factories. In response, Yeltsin said that he would definitely follow their recommendations.

The miners were not afraid to lose their places, they were not afraid of the closure of the mines. They believed that having normal working conditions is their right, because they seem to be even a ruling class. This powerful grassroots movement was so bold, since no one simply knew what unemployment was - for sixty years, absolutely everyone had work. At the same time, the miners, due to hard and dangerous labor, received quite a lot by Soviet standards. With the collapse of the USSR, it seemed that the people themselves did not know what they wanted.

During the general strike, I spent a week in the Donbass, where I talked with delegates from all over the Union. I remember then many Donetsks wanted to stay with Russia, because it was tightly tied to a local economy. For a long time, the workers remembered their position under the Soviet regime, and partly in this one can look for the reason that twenty years later, pro -Russian trends appeared in the region after long years of poverty and economic instability.

The fact that the new government was anti -people understood everything almost immediately. When Yeltsin signed measures to “shock therapy” in 1992, he argued that in the spring there would be a slight decline, and even in the fall there was a certain growth. As the miners told me, this is the struggle for survival, there is no time to be disappointed with the results of the struggle. People wanted freedom and democracy, but did not think that they would lose social benefits. At the same time, people did not support the Supreme Council - in fact, the workers did not have any reaction to the bombardment of the White House.

Humpbacked bridge

When Yeltsin shot the White House, a train of supporters was sent from Kuzbass. Now they themselves were near these walls. Something the camp resembled OcCupy Wall Street: a bunch of tents, long disputes in the evenings with the approached citizens. The then music of the camp was a monotonous rod of helmets, which I remember for those six times that I went to visit them. The campaign at the hunchbacked bridge was a symbolic gesture, which was supposed to provoke the people on the rise and have a moral impact on the authorities.

Employers without problems released their employees to the hunchback bridge. However, then the leadership of the “independent trade union of the miners” after prolonged trading, tritely betrayed its own. The miners themselves later told how surprised that without any struggle they were kicked out and sent on trains. At the same time, the idea of ​​closing, as they called, was born in Yaroslavl, a fiery ring around Moscow. Workers of automotive and motor plants rose. The Communist Party all the time promised support, but when the day of shares came, it merged - in the end, only women blocked the main street for an hour. Despite the combat enthusiasm of ordinary activists, the Communist Party became loyal and provided only imaginary resistance.

I am not at all surprised that sociological surveys have recorded the opinions that miners are egoists who blackmail the authorities only for their interests. According to surveys, many were convinced that the shares were not spontaneous, but planned. Of course, if the leaders released his subordinates for the sake of participating in protests, then not everything is so simple here. Red directors, of course, had their own interests, but it cannot be said that this is exclusively their initiative.

The Russians always just do not happen anything-here they are always looking for someone's insidious plan in everything and are not content with simple explanations. But when I asked in Tutaev how people live without six months of money, they answered me: "Pash in the garden, we copy parental pensions and eat less." Obviously, why these people are ready to strike. In Canada, if there is no salary, then people rebel or leave. But where to go if there is not a single workplace throughout the region?

The default in the summer of the same year exacerbated the situation, squinting 30-50 % of the income. Nobody reacted to such a failure of state policy, which surprised me. After all, creeps were stolen from people, and everyone was silent. Western politicians and IMF even encouraged such theft. They put Yeltsin a plus that he developed democratic institutions, but when you do not pay money for six months, what kind of democracy is this?