The Donbass Miners and The 1989 Coal Strike

Abstract

The decline of Ukrainian industry is perhaps typified by the serious problems in the coal basins, and in particular by the systemic and deep-rooted dilemmas associated with the Don River Basin (or Donbass). In addition, the situation in the Ukrainian coal mines has provided another example of a public response to an intolerable situation, this time in the shape of the first major strike in Soviet history, which took place in July 1989. An interesting facet of the coal strike—in its Ukrainian manifestation, for it actually began in the coal mines of Siberia—was that militant action was being undertaken by the least nationally conscious group of people in the republic. Here, there was no tradition of nationalism or revolt. Quite the contrary. East Ukrainian workers have been almost notoriously passive, kept in check by an extremely repressive party organization which rendered negligible any valid trade unions that might work to support the workers’ interests. The coal miner, it was always felt, lay steeped in the Stakhanovite tradition, virtually unaffected by perestroika, and certainly unlikely to offer an overt protest. Such an attitude toward the miner could hardly have been more misguided.