BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
Striking Russian coal miners in Siberia and the North
Caucasus lifted their blockade of the Trans-Siberian railway
May 24 after government officials promised to pay overdue
wages. Miners in Inta, near the Polar Circle, who have been
on strike since the first week of May continued blocking the
railway there. The miners' battle boosted actions by
hundreds of thousands of workers who are responding to the
deepening economic crisis that is gripping the country.
Shipyard workers in Murmansk joined the miners' protests with a blockade of the road to the Northern Fleet's main base. Other unpaid workers joined the strike action, including teachers and steelworkers, as well as professionals such as doctors, scientists, and engineers.
The deputy head of the Federation of Russian Independent Trade Unions, Aleksei Surikov, threatened to call a nationwide strike if the $1.45 billion owed in back wages to the miners was not paid in full by July 1.
The miners blocked key railways, cutting the country in half and paralyzing the transportation network by stopping more than 600 trains in their tracks. The strike brought an estimated $30 million in losses for the Russian railway system and other industries, the Russian railway ministry reported.
Mikhail Shmakov, the leader of one of Russia's main trade unions, warned that "railway tracks will be dismantled the very next day" if the government tried to use troops against the miners to end the blockade. According to United Press International, Shmakov said May 21 that "an Indonesian scenario could not be excluded in Russia if Moscow decides to ignore the miners' demands or uses force to break up the blockade." A large rally of workers in western Siberia called for Russian president Boris Yeltsin to step down.
Yeltsin attacked the miners, some of whom have not been paid for as long as three years. The miners "want to resolve their problems right away... at the expense of others," he exclaimed during his May 22 national radio address. "They have brought sufferings to thousands upon thousands of absolutely innocent people."
Meanwhile, Moscow has cut government subsidies to the mines and other industries as part of pressing for brutal "market reforms." While Yeltsin raged about the miners "breaching acceptable limits," workers at the Kuznetskaya mine in Siberia are living without telephones, running water, and reliable heating. Their children have been dropping out of school because they could not afford the nine-mile trek to get there.
One bitter cold morning in January when the mining boss showed up at his office in the Kuznetskaya mine, a group of miners and their wives took him hostage.
"We had no money!" explained miner Alexandra Burmatova. "As of this coming May it will be three years that we have not been paid. So, we said: `Pay our wages!' and we held him hostage for five days."
Russian gov't retreats on job cuts
Facing increasing resistance by working people, the
Kremlin has been forced to retreat on its austerity
measures. When Deputy Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin
proclaimed plans to fire 208,000 teachers and medical
workers on March 26, the next day Yeltsin denied the
announcement.
According to London's Financial Times, Yeltsin's "formal justification" for dismissing his entire cabinet on March 23 was in response to simmering outrage among working people over back wages. "We cannot allow wage arrears to accumulate," he asserted the day after his cabinet reshuffle.
Moscow has been unable to impose other "reforms" on working people such as the deep assault on the social security system that Washington and other imperialist powers would like to see.
"Russia's retirement system has created an immense army of pensioners," complained New York Times reporter Michael Gordon in a March 15 dispatch from Moscow. Some 38 million people in the country receive pensions - about one for every two people in the workforce. In the United States the ratio is about one pensioner for every four workers.
The Times article criticized the "early retirement age" in Russia and the "minuscule" 1 percent of their income working people pay toward the pension program. Male workers in Russia retire at 60 years and women workers retire at 55, years before workers retire in most capitalist countries.
Meanwhile, the Yeltsin administration received another rude shock to its "market reform" drive when it put a state- owned oil company on the auction block and no one bid. Nervous about falling oil prices and spreading financial turmoil in Asia - including the upheaval in Indonesia - none of the foreign capitalist companies - such as Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum - that had been expected to compete for the Rosneft oil company submitted an offer.
Yeltsin convened a meeting of his security council May 26 to discuss the $10 billion in back wages owed to miners and other workers as well the political crisis in the Caucasus region plaguing his regime. "The deterioration of the situation posed a threat to political stability in the country," Yeltsin's press spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembsky, announced that day. The most recent flare up in the Caucasus is the war being waged by Abkhazians fighting for independence from Georgia.
The social polarization has been evident in a recent wave of attacks by fascist-like and other rightist elements. A Black U.S. GI was severely beaten by a gang of Russian skinheads in broad daylight May 2 and a Jewish synagogue was bombed May 13.
More than 1,000 Azeris living in Moscow organized a demonstration in early May after an Azeri merchant was stabbed to death at a large open-air market. Russian cops have harassed immigrants and people of oppressed nationalities, particularly those from the Caucasus.
Ultranationalist Alexander Lebed, who was elected governor in the Siberian region of Krasnoyarsk May 17, has tapped into rising discontent among workers and peasants using demagogy and scapegoating immigrants. During his campaign Lebed labeled Nigerians as drug dealers. In late March he visited the village of Tyukhtyet, which has no running water and where workers have not been paid in three years. "How much more can we let our country be robbed and deceived," he told an audience. "If you're sick and tired of being unemployed, then I suggest you work with me."