I have translated some materials published in the last bulletin (July 16) of the Independent Miners' Union published by the Headquarters of the Miners' Picket on the Gorbaty Bridge in Moscow.
I believe these materials give a fairly true picture of the peresent ferment within the nascent labor movement of Russia. Personally, I am specially fascinated by the resurgence of the tradition of Russian plebeian democracy and grass-roots activism, reminiscent of 1905 and 1917, which seemed to have been long lost.
The picket mans about 300 people. In the beginning, they were all miners; now it includes representatives of workers organizations from all over the country.
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Speaks Viacheslav Revuzov, the head of a delegation from the city of Tula, the home of the Kalashnikov machine gun and a traditional center of arms production.
-I am a Chairman of the City Soviet of Workers, Specialists and State Servants. The Soviet includes the representatives of nine largest enterprises of Tula. Now we incorporate in our soviet regional representatives as well. Mainly, these are strike committees. We make major efforts to attract on our side the miners of Tula and hope they will join us.
-Who are the members of the Soviet, military-industrial plants?
-Any large enterprises: steel mills and military plants. We are trying to integrate district strike committees, like the one of the Yasnogorsk machine plant, for example. They have a really powerful strike committee which on its own developed a plan to cut off the Tula railroad. Next Saturday I will take part in the meeting of city strike committee in Mekhanichesky and will ask them to help in blocking the rail and highway system. On Monday I'll be back in Tula, will dispatch to the Gorbaty bridge another team of people and take care of our concrete tasks there. Our delegation here has 13 people.
-You have women among them. Does it make it more difficult?
-On the contrary, you have no idea what kind of women they are. Some of them I would not exchange for any man. One of these women is Yevmenenko. She is the chairwoman of the strike committee of the military plant "Shtamp." I would go on any dangerous mission with her. They could not find a single man to lead labor movement there. So she took the burden on herself and they have accomplished a lot: fired one director, appointed another. De facto, they completely control the plant which presently has about three thousand workers. They summon to the committee their chief engineer, the mechanic, the energy manager and ask them: why production is stalled? They can fire them any moment and appoint other specialists. This is what workers' power on enterprise is all about.
-Tula is in a very hard situation, because we have mostly military plants. The so-called conversion is nothing else but their destruction. It means that tens of thousands of highly skilled specialists have to do whatever work they can find to feed their families.
-Why the miners of Tula are so passive?
-They have too many obedient union bosses, obedient to the administration that is. And they've been stifling labor movement for many years. When last May the rail war cut Moscow's blood arteries in the south, north and east, only the west remained open--Tula. The regime kept breathing through Tula. I realized that this passage had to be cut. I talked to men but they all looked up at their leaders who did not show any interest. I called to "Tulaugol" (the union headquarters), to Popov, Mishin: "What are you waiting for?" Their answer was: questions like this have to decided by labor collectives rather than by us. This is wrong. It is their responsibility to organize and to lead workers! I come to the Beltsevsky mine and they tell me: "Please organize and conduct a meeting for us. We don't have a union and a leader." And I am telling them that they have to organize themselves and to elect a respected person who would lead them. They have such people.
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And here is a short communique that gives an insight into the ideology and political affinities of the union bureaucracy who has organized and is presiding over the action on the Gorbaty bridge. Victor Semenov, a chairman of the Independent Miners' Union of the Komi Republic and a leader of the miners' picket on the Gorbaty bridge spoke at the extraordinary conference of the all-Russian political movement "For the Defense of the Army, Military Industry, and Military Science" (DPA) The leaders of more than 40 regional chapters of this "movement" were present at the meeting, representing the Far East, Siberia and Central Russia. (The social provenance of these "leaders" remains any one's guess-- V.B.).
Semenov declared that it was time to unite into one mighty force, representing the will of the people, in order to make the President and the government resign and to change the disastrous economic policy. He said that the "miners' headquarters continues to gather forces in the created Coordination Committee of Solidarity and that the DPA is spreading its influence among the military, continuing the cause of General Lev Rokhlin" (a recently murdered MP who broke with the "party of power" a year ago and started the DPA).
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Here is an interview with a delegation from the Ivanovo Region, the center of textile industry, now in deep depression and, of course, the cradle of soviets.
-My name is Alexander Alekseenko. I am from ? textile region, the town of Furmanovo, a deputy of the city council, and a member of the regional strike committee. I work as ? mechanic in the medical emergency care station. My friends and I came to this picket in order to stop the looting of our Motherland and to give dignified life to the working people who, after all, built the strongest state in the world. The guys who came with me are Roman Morozov and Gennady Ivashkov. They are textile workers. Now this industry is in complete collapse. Another member of our group is Vladimir Mikhailovich. He is a retired police officer. Pensioners in Ivanovo have not received yet 50% of their pensions for May. Textile workers have not been paid for four months. After all, should not we have some order in our country.
-What is the average wage in your region?
-400-450 rubles in factories (about $70 per month)
-My name is Gennady Ivashkov. I repair weaving machines. I can't say what is our average pay. We haven't been paid anything for the last three months. When we worked from 5 am to 7 pm we got about 1,400 rubles (about $220). Others did not make even 400. Production interrupts all the time.
-I am Roman Morozov. I work as electrician in the same factory. I confirm everything that was said here.
-I am Vladimir Dmitriev, a former police officer, now retired. I came here to support miners because the rumor has it in Ivanovo that miners brought Yeltsin to power, on their own hands did. My friends and I are trying to convince people that we all were deceived back then, that we need to understand miners and support them. Why did we come to support miners? Because if we don't support them today then tomorrow they will not support our wives, our relatives, our women-weavers and spinners. Miners and our women-weavers have the same enemy and same tasks. We must struggle together.
We had a meeting of pensioners. We went to protest in the City Hall against the systematic non-payment of our pensions and it was then that we decided to send a delegation to support the miners' picket in Moscow. BTW, similar decision was made labor collectives in our factories. In Furmanovo pensioners is the most active and conscious part of the population. By their initiative we organized t hree pickets at once on June 22 (the date of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941)--at the Governor's Office, the regional legislature and in Furmanovo. The actions went very well and raised a lot of emotions. We began to get our pensions but not the entire amount. Pensioners are determined to continue their struggle.
-A. Alekseenko: Pickets in Ivanovo region do exist and the strike movement grows. On June 17 medical doctors of the entire region held a picket in front of the Regional Administration. They demanded Yeltsin's resignation, payment of wages, and a change of economic policy. Since their demands have not been satisfied they plan to blockade highways on July 17. The day before, July 16 at 2 pm they will have a meeting of solidarity with miners and demand the resignation of the president and the government.
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On July 11 a special meeting was held on the Gorbaty bridge to celebrate one month since the inception of the picket. By then the picket included a number of "delegations" from different enterprises all over the country, usually groups of 10-12 workers who stay their "shifts" on the bridge and go home after their comrades come for another shift. Here is some of the speeches made by the representatives of these delegations at the meeting.
Vladimir Rodiuk, Cheliabinsk region (concentrations of heavy industry, with plants up to 40, 000 workers):
-Today 12 workers from Cheliabinsk arrived to replace their comrades. we'll continue to use this shift method. During this time here, on the Bridge, we have formed a real brotherhood: we know on whom we can rely, whom we can trust. We need to hold on: it's getting harder every day, but let's us not get discouraged. Some people ask us: where are the results of your standing here? We have some results already: Russia is rising, we cut through the informational blockade. All those who come back from the bridge should spread the truth about our struggle. Then people in other regions will give us more support. I wish you all luck and victory!
Petr Zolotarev, Auto Works, city of Togliatti:
-Friends! Comrades! Brothers! I am happy that we, the workers of Togliatti, are here together with you. I am happy not only because we have been united by the same demands, to which we have come through suffering, but also because, looking at you, miners, speaking to you, one realizes that together we can do really big things, that our brotherhood can overcome all obstacles in the defense of our rights and interests.
Nikolai Kovalchuk, plant "Radioelectronics," city of Kaluga:
Dear comrades! I congratulate you with this holiday, the Day of July 11 and wish you successful struggle. You, miners, are today the vanguard of labor movement which has risen against the regime, the powers to be. Your alarm bell sounds today all over our Russia. And we are grateful to you because you are not indifferent, not calm, because you raising the Russian people, the working class for struggle. And however different we might be, we have to stick together, shoulder to shoulder, as our slogan says: ' While together--we're invincible."
Vladimir Potishny, a chairman of the society of disabled miners "Mutual Help," city of Vorkuta:
Today's celebration is an occasion to review things. Only the date should be changed because the first who voiced our anger and our protest against the universal, total enslavement were the workers of the mine "Northern." ?his happened as early as in February, five months before the strike in Mezhdurechensk on July 11. Here in our picket there are two participants of the very first miners' strike in the Soviet Union: Victor Semenov, the head of our picket, and Roman Gashigullin . . . These are historical people, the dinosaurs of our labor movement . . .
The disabled miners whom I represent here is no less active part of labor movement. Who cut the railroad in the Rostov region? (This is the southern direction that connects central Russia with the Caucuses and has enormous strategic significance. The regime can survive a blockade of the Trans-Siberian railway, but not the cutting off this southern artery). The miners-invalids did it, 200 disabled workers from the mine "Maiskaya". . . Every miner suffers from some professional illness--this is inhumanely hard labor. But though it is harder for us than for others to carry our bodies on this earth--our spirit remains unbroken. We are together with you in struggle!
-Grigory Isayev, Stachkom of Samara:
Miners! If not for you I don't know how our working people would manage, how we'd live . . . Our labor movement develops very hard, very difficult, but it develops. We take example from you. Since 1990 we have most close ties with Kuzbass, Vorkuta, with Donbass . . . Today we sit here saying: 'We have come and won't leave! we have come and won't leave!" What does it mean? Life itself has brought us to the edge. And finally we are followed by factories, cities and villages. This is a step of colossal importance. Like gladiators, you stood alone for nine years. Everyone looked at you with interest, curiously, but--from the sides. Now--it's different. Samara is one of the first cities that joined you. Thank you for taking us in. Health and luck to you. . . Long live miners, long live our workers' cause!
Victor Semenov, a head of the picket, a chairman of the Independent Miners Union of the city of Vorkuta and the republic of Komi:
Well, men . . . We have gathered here on one important occasion . . . Today we threaten those who turned state governance into a kindergarten, this is a serious threat. Perhaps not all of you fully realize what we are facing now . . .What they can do to us every one could see on the videos shown here, the documentary about the massacre in October of 1993 at the Supreme Soviet. This is serious, very serious. Those in this building (the Soviet of Ministers located now in the former Supreme Soviet building) can do anything because we threaten their loot, what they steal from each of us, from workers . . .
These rulers consider the Kremlin to be the whole of Russia. All the rest is not Russia, that's what they have decided. And we must defend from these bastards ourselves, our families, the people. We have no place to retreat. This is the general opinion of all those who spoke today. Our picket receives letters, telegrams. Everybody knows about us. Everybody relies on us. Yesterday the president, while praising his newly-baked generals, openly threatened us. But I think he is not a match against the whole of Russia.u
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The headquarters of miners' picket
Russia
121910, Moscow, ul. Novy Arbat, 15-2401, NPG
Tel. (095) 202-6120
Email: minetr at dol.ru
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