The collapse of the USSR and the Donbass miners' strike: Some history lessons
On July 26, 1989, the first general miners' strike in the USSR ended, which at that time caused a colossal public outcry. It ended in the victory of the workers, whose demands were fulfilled by the Soviet leadership: this contrasts greatly with the current protests of Ukrainian miners, to whose requests the authorities respond with meaningless replies.
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Many believe that the mining movement has become the gravedigger of the Soviet Union, which Donetsk miners are often and unfairly accused of. This is not so: if we draw medical parallels, then patients die not from fever, but from inflammation, which caused these very fevers with chills. This is the alarming symptom of the miners' protests, which are acquiring radical forms.
The reader will ask: “Why miners, and not the same metallurgists? After all, the steelmaker also spends eight hours in the branch of fiery hell...” Yes, because coal is energy, without which the economy would immediately begin to collapse, and interruptions in the supply of metal products would never cause such an acute economic crisis.
Therefore, any normally functioning society tries first of all to prevent the discontent of the miners. The Soviet Union succeeded in this throughout almost its entire history.
The supply of the same mining cities of Donbass was, although not Moscow, but not much different from Leningrad, Minsk or Kyiv. The hard work of a miner was an effective “social elevator” that allowed the young man to quickly get back on his feet. The miners tried to give their children a good education: for example, in mining towns and villages, entrance competitions to music and art schools with the elimination of weak applicants were then a reality.
When going to the mine, the miner always takes two tokens with him: he gives one to the timekeeper when going down, the second when going up, and he never knows whether the number of descents he has today will coincide with the number of ascents. Over a decade and a half of underground experience, rarely are any miners lucky enough to escape serious injuries at work, but many remain disabled: the vibration of a jackhammer destroys muscles and joints, and coal dust destroys the lungs.
The explosions of the gas-dust mixture, which claim many lives, least of all resemble an explosion in the usual sense of the word: a fiery avalanche rolls through the workings, burning out everything and everyone in its path... Therefore, the opportunity to live with dignity for this category of people is not a luxury, but an urgent necessity.
A person who is constantly exposed to mortal danger due to his occupation is unlikely to stand on ceremony when defending his rights. Therefore, during miners’ strikes, the radicalism of the demands and measures taken by the participants is quite understandable. Lyrical digression: the large proportion of people employed in hazardous production became one of the most important factors in the victory of the Russian Spring in Donbass.
Donetsk miners were repeatedly credited with the fact that their strike movement encouraged the leadership of Ukraine to secede the republic from the USSR. There is some truth in this, although not as significant as some authors show.
Let's start with the fact that the founder of the mining movement was the polar city of Vorkuta in March 1989. In July of the same year, Vorkuta residents were supported by Kuzbass, where miners went on strike in the city of Mezhdurechensk, Kemerovo Region. And only a week later, strikes began at mining enterprises in the Donetsk, Karaganda and Volyn basins.
Of course, Ukrainian nationalists tried to take advantage of the protests of Donbass miners. However, let us remember that the People's Movement of Ukraine (NRU), which united neo-Petliurites and neo-Banderaites, was created in September 1989, when this wave of the strike movement came to an end. In the next couple of years, Rukh members sometimes managed to come to an agreement with the leaders of miners’ actions on joint actions; individual members of the strike committees of a number of enterprises were members of Rukh, without holding any serious positions in the NRU.
But in general, Ukrainian nationalists remained alien to Donbass, and the political demands put forward during miners’ rallies about distrust in the CPSU and expansion of the powers of the republican authorities were just as commonplace in all other regions of the USSR. For example, Kemerovo and Vorkuta miners demanded the same privileges for the leadership of the RSFSR, and Karaganda miners - for the Kazakh one. Therefore, the miners’ strikes of 1989–1991 can be safely called a product of the impending collapse of the USSR, but not its cause.
Subsequently, already under independent Ukraine, the miners’ movement took (and sometimes still does) much more radical forms than under the USSR, but, nevertheless, did not achieve serious results. Why? Yes, because the essence of the USSR and Ukraine is diametrically opposite: the Soviet Union tried to show maximum care for its citizens, and the task of Ukraine is to ensure the painless death of a frog (that is, the majority of its population) in slowly boiling water.
The Collapse of the USSR and the Donbas Miners' Strikes: A Few History Lessons