Dear readers of the "Anarcho-Sindikalist",
We apologize for our long silence, which had to do with the force
majeure that plays such a big role in the life of those outside
the power structures, especially "these days" (read: always) in
a country like Ukraine.
Thanks to comradely help from outside we expect to do slightly better in the near future. In 1999 we expect to be able to appear twice. Each issue will report on activities of our organisation and of anarchists in CIS countries in general. We will pay much attention to developments in the world of labour in our country and to economic, social and political developments in Ukraine and CIS countries.
Please react if you liked or disliked certain pieces in our publication and let us know if you feel w should pay more attention to certain subjects or themes, or if you want certain particular information.
-The Editors
After their poor performance during the miners' strikes of May and June the regional NPGU (Independent Trade-Union of Miners in Ukraine) leaders had lost their authority and around the end of August a new regional council was elected.
As the government had not kept its promise to pay the remaining outstanding wages and benefits the new trade-union leadership started preparations for a new strike. Announcing this strike the new regional chairman A.Bakirov said: "It is time for tougher and more drastic actions. The NPGU is to lead the strike movement. We are not going to march with the compromising PRUP" [the pro-government miners' Trade-Union, editors]. Actually, a new strike broke out at the "Pavlogradugol" mining company on the 1st of October, but sofar nothing has come of those "tougher and more drastic actions" supposed to consist of blocking railroads and mine gates. Instead of organizing a march on Donetsk the strike committee sent a delegation to Kiev for new negotiations with the authorities.
Lugansk
On the 16th of July miners of the Barakov and Sukhodolskya-Vostochnaya pits restarted their picket of the building of the regional mine administration. The picketers, 248 by October, demanded payment of outstanding wages and benefits for themselves as picketers (i.e. not for all the workers of their branch or at least of their companies). Representatives of various levels of government bodies including the minister for the coal industry, S.Tulub, have taken part in negotiations with the strikers. Sofar without any other result than that since July 30 million griven have been transferred to the mine administration for current wages and that against the outstanding wages 670 tons of flour have been distributed (at prices higher than usual shop prices). On the 24th of August (Ukrainian Independence Day) the picketers had planned a procession through the streets of Lugansk with torches and a stuffed animal labeled "Parasite". Half an hour before the march army sappers came saying they had information there was a bomb in the "Parasite" and that it should be handed over to them. The miners refused. Thereupon the "Berkut" section of the army of the ministry of the interior tried to grab the "Parasite". In the skirmish that followed several people were wounded, 30 miners and 12 police people according to one source, 9 miners and 18 police people according to another. In spite of this holiday "bonanza" the miners held their procession.
At the initiative of mine administrations several meetings of workers' collectives (in principle all the people working in a certain company) were held during September with 1150 out of the 160,000 miners of the region attending; the meetings disapproved of the "egoistic demands" of the picketers and demanded that these should be excluded from payment of outstanding wages and benefits.
In September a series of lectures was held at the Institute of Social Education in Donetsk under the title "Is There Freedom of Speech in Ukraine?", with participation of members of the RKAS. Contacts made during these lectures led to the creation of the "Independent Trade-Union of Students", which now counts over a hundred members. It is headed by a board consisting of three members, at the moment all members of the RKAS. The trade-union shows certain syndicalist characteristics, e.g. no paid officials are allowed according to the statutes. Efforts are being made to get similar trade-unions founded at the State University of Donetsk and at a business company.
Recent RKAS publications: a pamphlet under the title "In the struggle you get rights" (meant for manual workers), "Under the Black Flag to Freedom" (published for the 110th anniversary of Nestor Makhno's birth) and a poster "Miner, remember that you are a human being, stand up, crush the reptile!". Moreover, on account of new steep price increases, a new print was made of an earlier pamphlet "Anarchists speak to the people of Ukraine" (all titles given in translation). Comrades of the "Revolutionary Anarcho-Communist League" active in Western Ukraine stuck pamphlets made with the help of the RKAS at the "Neftemash" plant at Kalush and at the timber plant "Osmoloda" in the region Ivano-Frankovsk, where wages haven't been paid for over three months. But the pamphlets were soon removed by teams of workers acting at the orders of the plant administrations.
According to information received from Nestor Makhno's grandson Yalanski, a memorial plate has been placed and a Makhno monument is under preparation in Makhno's birth place Gulyai Polye.
1. The noise made around Makhno's name by local authorities and some official mass media in Makhno's birth place reminds us, followers and heirs of the ideas of the Makhno movement, of words of another revolutionary but perfectly fitting this case: "When the great revolutionaries were still alive the oppressor classes persecuted them relentlessly, dealt with their ideas in the most malicious way, with the most rabid hatred and the most shameless lies and slander. But after their death they try to turn them into harmless icons, to sanctify them so to say, to offer already established honour to their names in order to "comfort" and to fool the oppressed classes emasculating and debasing the ideas of those revolutionaries removing their sharp edges" (V.I.Lenin, State and Revolution)
2. The noise made around Makhno's name by local authorities and some official mass media in Makhno's birthplace reminds us, heirs and followers of the ideas of the Makhno movement, of words of the reformist renegade Boris Borel, with whom, unfortunately, we have to agree in this case: "While alive opponents of current policies are often debased and slandered maliciously by those in power and by their lackeys of the press, but when, after their death - often under torture and in squalid prisons - the opponents' ideas gain acceptance those same power wielders and their lackeys are the first to hail their former opponents' virtues naming streets and cultural and educational institutions for them etc., with the sole purpose to fool the common man and to soften the sharp edges of the claims once made by those opponents. Examples: Reverend Martin Luther King, bishops Romero and Gerardi, etc." (Selected Writings, Vol.VI, page 715)
Comrades of "Dikoe Pole", anarchist publishers at Zaporozhye, had invited us to contribute a paper. We sent one by fax, but owing to the sloppy way the comrades in Zaporozhye handled the matter, it was not included in the conference bundle. Owing to the same sloppiness we arrived a day late at Zaporozhye, from where the participants and guests were taken to Gulyai-Polye, and so, missed the conference. It seems we missed nothing important, however.
We arrived in the evening of the first day and found the participants in a fine restaurant, anarchists (from Russia and Ukraine) and "scholars" duly separated. Among the anarchists our RKAS comrades from Dnepropetrovsk.
The anarchists were also in two groups: on the one hand the "hard core" anarchosyndicalists of the RKAS with their friends, on the other the "chaotic" radical ecologists who, for incomprehensible reasons, called themselves "anarchogreens". On the whole the two groups got reasonably well on with each other.
After the long supper followed a long ceremony of allocation of rooms in the hotel. When that was over I suggested that we of the RKAS sit together with the "greens" for a tea in order to learn to know each other and to exchange views. All agreed and the ecologists too.
Later the RKAS delegation sat together separately for an extraordinary expanded plenum of the Bureau of the organisation (founded in 1994) and adopted at last its Programme: a well used end of a hard day.
On the next morning awaited us the "people's party" organized by the local authorities. In excited expectation we went to bed in order to be fresh and awake for that great event.
A great day...
In the morning we took our flags and went to the square in front of the Palace of Culture in the centre of the city. When we arrived the square was already full of people, music played: the "people's party" was on. Loudspeakers made it impossible not to hear the results of concentrated efforts of members of the local guild of poetry makers to paraphrase the word of the day: "Makhno is our Tsar, Makhno is our God". On the flagpost before the square flew the yellow-and-blue of the State.
Our bewilderment became indignation when cossacks from Zaporozhye appeared with their banners duly decorated with christian symbols. Their high command - the atamans - arrived in ostentatious foreign cars. The square became the square of the war mob and the war mob together with the local authorities the centre of the "people's party".
Against this background the arrival of a delegation of local teachers and schoolchildren carrying yellow-and-blue flags looked almost pastoral.
Ten of us anarchists sat together on our own with our anarchist flags. People came to see us and some voiced their agreement: "Well done! Makhno flags: well done!". Some wanted to know what anarchism was about and took literature. A few young cossacks came too: "What are you doing here?". A good question, to which we answered: "And what are you doing here?". Discussion and they went.
What a day: those selfsatisfied faces, those golden shoulder straps, those Petlyura and Gaidamac uniforms, those flags of the enemies of Nestor Makhno! All that had cost the lives of so many in the Makhno movement had surfaced again to smear, foul and debase the memory of Makhno-the-anarchist. Whereas we, a miserable total of ten anarchists, were sitting on the side, too weak and too few to take over the platform and the microphones and denounce those unbridled lies and proclaim Makhno's historical truth and anarchist ideals.
After all the representatives of the local authorites and of the cossacks had cheerfully spelled out Nestor Makhno's merits as fighter for the independence of the State of Ukraine with not a single word about his role as anarchist and revolutionary, the cossacks in formation and the civilians in groups and on their own went to the regional museum for the opening ceremony of an exhibition.
It was a very good exhibition and the introduction by a staff member of the museum was excellent but too little time was left for us to look at all of it. We had quickly ourselves photographed against the background of one of those famous tachanka's of Makhno's army and off we were to the station. What a disgrace: a day that should have been an A day turned into a State day.
- Sergey Shevchenko, FAD-RKAS "Nestor Makhno", Donetsk.
- the real value of the Ukrainian currency is down 80% but by administrative measures the interior effects of this fall have been kept within a 50% limit;
- prices of imported goods including mass consumption products such as tea and citrus fruits have increased sharply (the price of petrol has even doubled); prices of Ukrainian products have remained relatively stable sofar, but due to the price increases for fuel the prices of Ukrainian goods are bound to go up too;
- reduced declared trade turnovers will result in lower tax revenues for the government and, so, in reductions in social programmes.
Sofar, non-payments and reductions in wages as well as mass lay-offs have not become significantly worse than previously. According to official figures, on September 1st there were 838.000 unemployed in Ukraine, i.e. 3.1% of the available work force.
To substantiate its claim that the Ukrainian economy is in better shape than the economy of Russia the Ukrainian government points to the following factors:
- while at the end of 1997 the Russian exterior debt amounted to
123 billion dollars the Ukrainian debt amounted to 9 billion (182%
as compared with 49% of the respective exports for that year);
- for that same year 1997 the Russian interior debt amounted to 83
billion dollars against 7.3 billion for Ukraine, i.e. 26.5% and
13.5% of the gross national products respectively;
- an important part of the Russian government bonds are in the
hands of commercial banks and foreign investors while in Ukraine
60% of those bonds are in the hands of the national [= State?]
bank of Ukraine;
- Russian commercial banks owe 18 billion dollars to foreign
lenders, Ukrainian commercial banks less than 1 billion;
- finally, the Ukrainian politicians announce almost proudly that
they have managed to cut the State budget, i.e. the government's
social expenses, far more than Russia.
We dare add our following prognosis:
- unemployment figures will soon rise steeply; even the government
expects that by the end of 1999 unemployment will be no less than
6% (on Sept 1st 1998: 3.1%);
- inflation and cost of living will continue to rise, the more so
since the limits within which the rate of exchange of the
Ukrainian currency will be allowed to float will be widened from
January 1st 1999 onwards; the government will use this increased
inflation to pay outstanding wages (even now already 1.5 - 2 times
less worth in purchasing power than when they became due) at lower
cost;
- no longer accustomed to receive their wages in time the workers
are desoriented and won't protest massively against this new
reduction of their standard of living;
- should the parliamentary opposition of pseudo-leftists and
liberals obtain the stepping down of president Kuchma and the
dissolution of the Supreme Rada (the national parliament), so that
new elections will be held, the disorientation of the workers will
become even worse and what little activity can still be expected
from them will entirely go into the election campaigns;
- it remains possible, however, that certain groups of workers,
definitely not large numbers, will have understood from experience
that they have to fight, not to obtain satisfaction of immediate
personal demands but for a fundamental change in the
socio-economic system. In that case the subjective factor, i.e.
the activities of revolutionary organizations and clear and
precise agitation and propaganda by these organizations, will
prove important.
These leftists see "unmistakable signs of a revolutionary situation" in the strikes and other acts of civil disobedience all over the place, in the demands for the government to step down, in the powerlessness of the authorities confronted with the developing crisis: "those at the top are unable to continue as before, those at the bottom don't want to".
Looking closer, however, we have difficulty to see a revolutionary situation developing: especially in Ukraine the proletariat is divided and disorganized; genuinely independent trade-unions, strike committees etc. hardly exist, the few that exist are almost exclusively weak and their demands go rarely beyond narrow group interests. And not only organisationally but also psychologically the broad masses are not ready to fight, not even for their own most obvious economic interests such as timely payment of wages. Nothing of a chain reaction has followed the few radical actions of certain groups of workers. Obstinate mass strikes of miners haven't even led to first stirrings for a general strike in any Ukrainian city. The masses don't have the beginning of an answer to the usual "what to do". One can only hope that in the course of the current crisis the proletariat will succeed in organizing itself, prepare some practical programme of action and start implementing it. Otherwise we will at best be witnesses (and, perhaps, participants) in some other spontaneous revolt with very limited possibilities to play a role in it. The recent example of Albania has shown once more what can be the outcome of such a revolt: a dictatorship or the reintroduction of monarchy are more likely than the triumph of such a "revolution".
Then there are the mixed private-State companies. These are stable firms for that reason taken under the control of groups who have created all kinds of AO, ZAO, OOO etc. that allow them to channel money into their personal pockets. Classical examples are the AO "Krasny Vostok" and numerous producers of alcoholic beverages. As the order position of these firms is satisfactory wages can be paid regularly but the work load with 10-11 working hours per day 6-7 days a week is heavy and the management avoids giving permanent jobs while maintaining a tight grip on the trade union in the company [In Russia trade unions are often formed for a particular company, although they may adhere to a trade-union organisation comprising several such company trade-unions. This is the case, i.a. for the syndicalist Sibirskaya Konfederacia Truda, Translator] For the near future open social conflicts are unlikely here too.
Richest in conflicts is the State sector of industry. As a rule, the order position is bad or there is no work at all. Customers are mostly insolvent other State companies. Companies of this sector with some income try to reduce tension by giving credit booklets to their employees with which these can buy mostly overpriced low quality products in company stores. Suggestions by trade-unions to sell State shares in companies so as to be able to pay outstanding wages have been rejected by the government. Strikes and other protest actions in this sector are mostly waged by workers of important subsections believing that their demands will be met at least in part. A clear example were the preparations for a strike by workers of the boiler factory "Savinovo" in Kazan. In the city services of Kazan such threats are the order of the day. The road workers of the city are also in a strong position. The city administration has tried to respond by the creation of alternative commercial services to which they transferred equipment and workers but the united resistance of the workers has forced them to change their mind.
Some work collectives (staffs and workers of companies together, transl.) try to get their wages paid through the court. At the factory for electrical equipment "Elektropribor" 2500 workers have gone this way and at "Tatenergo" workers have decided to do this too. Indicators of the worsening economic situation in the republic are the continued standstill of the truck factory "KAMAZ" and the plunge of the value of its shares below $1 as well as the continuing problems with the development of the production of "Chevrolet" cars at the "ELAZ" factory.
At the companies that have come to a complete standstill the situation is slightly different. People there have lost all hope. Social tension and absence of perspectives result in spontaneous protest actions which the participants themselves consider meaningless. At the "Terminal" factory two workers have committed suicide. There have been street blockades in protest. The factory is insolvent. Its possessions have been transferred to other companies. An outside manager sees as The only solution seen by an outside manager is for the government to grant the factory a credit to pay outstanding debts and to dismiss a large number of workers. Dismission doesn't guarantee payment of outstanding wages. 200 former workers of the "Elekon" factory have already been waiting over six months for the wages allocated to them when they were dismissed. Hardly any improvement of the situation can be expected from the planned privatization of a second group of arms factories.
The difficult situation in industry has also consequences for other sectors. For schools and teaching institutes reductions in staff and increase of the workload are under way. Even so teaching staff work unofficially more than they have to officially and are paid 83% of what is due to them. Higher up they understand that the situation is absurd and suggest to introduce a further reduction in staff: 3 instead of 4 teachers for each two groups and to increase the minimum number of students per class to 35. Wages are received at least 3-4 months late.
In order to ease its financial problems the city government of Kazan introduced a 3% sales and service tax on January 1st 1998 but because of social unrest it had to stop levying this tax after a week.
Social security doesn't work. Food tickets issued to low income people are not accepted by shops because the shops' suppliers don't accept them. The government has tried to force the business world to accept them but with little success.
There are no forces in the republic able to organize and to direct social protests. The official trade union movement is controlled by the government and sides with the government. Unofficial trade unions are inexistent. Political parties have little influence. Existing independent mass media are weak.
AN ENCOURAGING STRIKE AGAINST NON-PAYMENT OF WAGES
In May 1997 workers of one of the mines in the town Pervomaisk in the oblast Lugansk (Eastern Ukraine) started a strike because they hadn't been paid their wages since nine months. It was led by the local NPGU (the more radical miners' union of Ukraine) and its president Yuri Arkhipchuk. The strikers formed a RevKom (Revolutionary Committee) and underlined the seriousness of their action with a two weeks' hunger strike. They further occupied the building of the town administration and marched to the oblast centre Lugansk at three walking days' distance. Unfortunately, when thereupon most of the strikers got their outstanding wages paid the strike action was interrupted and the RevKom was dissolved. Encouraging about the action, however, were its radical moments.
A few months after the strike a court action was opened against strike leader Yuri Arkhipchuk for purchasing furniture with trade union money and he was sentenced to four years in prison. Also in this case the RKAS supported the actions and when things turned sour helped find a lawyer for the strike leader and with contacts between this lawyer and Yuri Arkhipchuk's relatives.
UNEMPLOYMENT
On the 1st of January 1998 Ukraine counted officially 678,000 unemployed (around 3% of the available work force). To this figure have to be added 6% of the work force laid off without payment of wages for an undetermined time and 4,5% having only part time jobs. On that date the average number of applicants per job amounted to 19 against 12 on June 1st 1997 and 14 on October 1st 1997.
[In Northwestern Europe the unemployment figures are higher but the unemployment benefits too, and not proportionately - moreover, the base wages are a number of times higher than the Ukrainian average of less than $100/month and normally paid on time: in a word: incomparable worlds, translator]
As in the West women are touched most. In the oblast Dnepropetrovsk 72% of the unemployed are women, 26.7% are younger than 28, 48.8% are industrial workers. Average women's wages in 1997 124 griven (then 124 DM, now 62), men's 173 griven.
ANARCHO-SINDIKALIST NO 20
WHY THEY GO ON STRIKE - WHAT THE CLASS ENEMY FOUND OUT
From a report by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs for 1997 During 1997 the conflicting parties, employed workers and their representatives on the one hand and employers and their representatives on the other hand, tried to achieve a social partnership and to settle their class conflicts through negotiations and conciliatory procedures. The parties in the class struggle arrived in large part at the conclusion that "extreme means such as strikes" were harmful for the Ukrainian economy. The report sees this development confirmed by the fact that in 1997 the number of companies touched by one or more strikes was 8.6% less than in 1996 and the loss in production as a result of strikes 33.3%. In 34 (85%) out of 40 companies where strikes took place, the demands were formulated at general meetings or conferences and considered by representatives of the employers within fixed time limits. In three companies the conflict was settled at an early stage by full or part satisfaction of the demands. In 16 companies negotiations were of no avail initially but during the strike efforts to find a compromise continued and further concessions by the management resulted in a settlement in 13 cases. In three cases the management made no concessions and the strikes failed. In seven cases the conflict developed in what the report called an "illegal" way. E.g. workers of a sugar factory refused to recognize a conciliatory commission or to accept arbitration when no satisfaction was given to their demand that their outstanding wages be paid out and that the manager be fired, and went on strike. Six strikes were considered "spontaneous" by the report, i.e. there was no general meeting where the demands were formulated, no strike committees (at least none formed in conformity with the legal norms) and no "conciliatory procedures". On the other hand, in none of these cases the management went to court to get the strike declared illegal. In some other cases (the report doesn't say how many) the researchers came across the concept "self-organisation of the class", which is not in conformity with the legislation in force, it also happened that strike committees continued to operate after a strike had been ended. According to the report the main reason for strikes was non-payment of wages for as long as 3-21 months. In cases where strikers' demands had been partly met the situation had remained tense. The report ends with recommendations on how to put an end to the strike movement.
THE UKRAINIAN MINERS' STRIKE MOVEMENT OF MAY-JUNE 1998
The movement started spontaneously at a mine in Pavlograd, oblast Dnepropetrovsk, and in a few days spread to the whole of the Western Donbass. According to a new law imposing a long waiting period before a strike could be started that action was illegal but neither the government nor the mine management bothered to take the matter to court.
Under the leadership of the NPGU the strikers formed a strike committee of 36 people with the worker A.Korolev as president. Main demands: full payment of the 9 months of outstanding wages and disability benefits and guarantees for future timely payment of wages and benefits, increase of real wages to the level of 1990, declaration of the coal industry a priority industry and no more purchases of coal abroad.
The strikers developed dramatic activities to underline the
seriousness of their demands:
- on the 15th of May 5 to 6000 of them went on a 165km march from
Pavlograd to the regional centre Dnepropetrovsk; bad health, heat
and difficult conditions made that more than 200 marchers ended up
in hospital;
- on the 23rd of May more than 1200 miners went on a 600km march
from Dnepropetrovsk to the capital of Ukraine Kiev.
By this departure of the most radical elements the picketing of
the administration of the oblast in Dnepropetrovsk became much
quieter. Tiredness and boredom and the absence of results weighed
also plus the delaying tactics of the mine management. These also
pushed up tension by threats to fire strikers not returning to
work. Slowly people started leaving and by the end of June only
3-4000 remained. The initially daylong meetings with beating of
helmets and bottles became also shorter. Lack of initiatives from
the strike leadership to keep the picketers busy did also not help
to keep optimism up.
Meanwhile, when the miners' column from Dnepropetrovsk arrived at the outskirts of Kiev on the 11th of June they were met by Mr Derzhak, president of the PRUP, the miners' union that enjoys the confidence of the government. Mr Derzhak told the miners to go home because the government had promised to transfer 18 million griven for settlement of outstanding wages in the next few days. As a result participating PRUP members left this union and joined the more radical NPGU. Mr Derzhak has long considered himself the most likely candidate for the post of minister for the coal mining industry. He is one of the initiators and president of the recently founded State coal mining company "Ugol Ukrainy". Nobody in her or his right mind can deny that this is a most useful combination for a president of a miners' union.
Entering the city on the 12th the marchers had first their action blessed in a church, then started picketing government buildings. As a result of the actions the mine combination "Pavlograd Ugol" got 47 million griven for part settlement of the outstanding wages together with promises to get the rest before the end of the year. In addition the government agreed to follow up a recommendation the parliament made on June 4th to increase the subsidy to the coal mining industry from 400 million to 1 billion griven and to increase the State orders for coal by 6 million tons.
THE RKAS AND THE MAY-JUNE STRIKE MOVEMENT
From the moment strikers from Pavlograd started arriving in Dnepropetrovsk local RKAS members joined them. They distributed their own literature and leaflets and offered to print and to distribute leaflets for the strike committee so as to broaden the protest actions and the support. The strike committee wasn't interested, however. An offer made by RKAS members from Donetsk to spread an appeal for solidarity among miners in their area was also turned down. So, for the rest of the action the RKAS activists limited their contacts to rank and file strikers. One local anarchist, not of the RKAS, who had spoken at a strikers' meeting was denounced for agitation and got a report from the police for it.
Appeals from Dnepropetrovsk anarchists to comrades abroad (the sections of the anarchosyndicalist international AIT/IWA/IAA in Spain, France and Germany) to send telegrams in support of the strikers to government and mining companies fell apparently on deaf ears - not for the first time. For anarcho-syndicalists in Russia the case of the Ukrainian miners apparently did no longer mean much either, contrary to 1993, when during the general strike in the Donbass Russian comrades called every day, and to 1996, when they sent at least telegrams of support to arrested strike leaders. KRAS-activist Vadim Damier (Moscow) was right in saying at the East-West meeting in Lvov in 1997 that there is no anarchist or anarcho-syndicalist movement in the CIS countries.
POLITICAL PARTIES AND THE MAY-JUNE STRIKE MOVEMENT
As could be expected all kinds of political groups tried to get something out of the miners' strike.
In the first place, of course, various stalinist communist parties. They made active propaganda among the strikers, and the Communist Party of Ukraine (KPU) had supporters in the strike committees. Nevertheless, miners turned KPU members carrying red flags away from their meetings remembering the many attacks of stalinists on the miners as "guilty of the disintegration of the Soviet Union in the years 1989-1991".
The bourgeois party "Gromada" of former prime minister Pavel Lazarenko was very visible at the march from Pavlograd to Dnepropetrovsk. Members of that party supplied the marchers with food and tents and were always around speaking on mobile telephones. At some point the Pavlograd strike committee even considered asking Pavel Lazarenko to defend their interests in parliament.
MINERS' STRIKES IN RUSSIA
Russian miners started strike actions practically at the same time as their Ukrainian colleagues. On the 21st of May miners all over the country stopped moving mined coal. At the same time railway lines were blocked in the Kuzbass, Vorkuta and Eastern (= Russian) Donbass areas as well as in various cities in and East of the Urals. Miners in the Far East also occupied the building of the mine administration and took the manager hostage. The demands were the usual ones: payment of outstanding wages.
Little is known of Russian anarchist support for this strike movement except that members of KRAS Moscow who had gone to Vorkuta to see whether they could be of any help were turned away at the orders of trade union bosses.
THE REASONS FOR THE NON-PAYMENT OF WAGES
The non-payment of wages, nowadays a typical CIS phenomenon, is one of the newest forms of exploitation of the proletariat. It happens in all the spheres depending on State budgets: mining, not yet privatized industries, education, medical services, etc. One of the causes of the unability for companies to pay wages is the limited use of money: in industry 73% of transactions happen as barter. This is also a way to hide profits and to avoid having to pay taxes, of which the victims are those who depend on the State budget for their wages.
Another way to hide profits and to avoid having to pay taxes is for companies to charge each other unrealistic prices (lower or higher depending on the case) through intermediary companies. The coal mining industry presents a particular case of unability to pay wages. The government claims that the production cost of a ton of coal mined in Ukraine is 73 griven, of which 24 griven are subsidized. Of the 211 pits in Ukraine 187 are said to work at a loss. So, under IMF pressure, the government wants to get pits closed down and to buy coal abroad, e.g. in Czechia and Poland, where the cost of production is lower. Never the exhaustion of reserves is given as a reason. Depending on the way of calculation these are estimated to be enough for the next 180-350 years. Things would be totally different if new technologies were introduced but nothing. No new pits. Mining equipment is produced as little possible. Only 42% of the work in the mines is mechanized. The rest is done by hand and even the maintenance of hand tools is below standard.
Possibilities of coal quality improvement and of commercializaton of slags are neglected.
The politics of authorities and managements prove simply criminal when we look at the safety at work. Year after year tens of miners die in mine explosions that could have been prevented by the application of technologies that have been known for years. As late as last spring more than 70 miners died in a mine explosion in Donetsk. Only 30% of miners are equipped with the old individual air filters. The mine dispensaries are ill equipped, often even lacking bandage materials.
It's not only the low respect their bosses and the authorities have been showing them in their wages and working conditions that have made the miners the most combative among the workers of Ukraine and of all the CIS countries. Most of all it's their daily dependence on each other for their work, their safety and their mere survival, and the mutual confidence that has grown in the process, that have made them a force their employers and the authorities have to count with.
While all the workers depending on the State budget for their wages do regularly receive them with long delays or not, no group has a record of such long and hard actions. No group either has joined the Ukrainian miners in this instance, although many indiviuals applauded their initiatives, e.g. at their marches to Dnepropetrovsk and Kiev.
The May-June movement was the first opportunity for the RKAS to make itself more widely known in the Western Donbass scale and to broaden its contacts there.
RKAS CHRONICLE
The 25,000 copy paper of one of the biggest steel companies in Ukraine published an article about the 1st of May celebrations written by a RKAS member. The paper plans also to publish an interview with FAD members.
In 1998 the RKAS published, under the imprint "Golos Truda", three issues of its general propaganda paper "Anarchia" and two brochures: a shortened translation of Donald Raooms "What is Anarchism?" and three articles by Mikhail A. Bakunin introduced by late Bakunin specialist Natalya Pirumova. Under its own name the RKAS published two issues of its more or less interior organ "Anarcho-Sindikalist", from which most of the materials of this English-language edition have been drawn.
To work in the first place among manual workers along the
following lines:
- daily propaganda particularly among workers employed in heavy
industries: mining, metallurgy, mechanical engineering, chemical
industry, etc.
- participation in industrial conflicts offering concrete forms of
help and pushing towards revolutionary radicalization;
- help in case of juridical problems.
2. In the trade-union movement
RKAS members are allowed to join existing trade-unions if they see
possibilities to have an influence among the rank and file
membership. At the moment the RKAS is active in the miners'
trade-unions NPGU (more radical) and PRUP (more employer-friendly)
aiming to
- make anarcho-syndicalist propaganda among the rank and file
- build anarcho-syndicalist fractions within those trade-unions
- pushing the progressive organizations within those trade-unions
towards self-organization and revolutionary anarcho-syndicalism.
To achieve this it is necessary have regular publishing
possibilities and to have a trade-union group within the RKAS.
3. Among youth
Work among students, young workers and unorganised youth is very
important. Ways to do this are propaganda for revolutionary
anarchism and creating clubs for active young people, so that an
anarchist youth movement can grow and possibly a radical strike
force within the RKAS.
In addition to study and propaganda groups it would be good to
have sports and self-defence groups that could become a defence
body for the organization. Concerts, seminars, etc. as a means to
draw attention to our ideas and as an opportunity for members to
develop their practical skills seem rather things for the future
but serious opportunities to organize or to be involved in such
events are not to be lost.
4. Within the anarchist movement of the CIS countries.
The RKAS sees itself as a revolutionary-socialist anarchist class organisation in the tradition of constructive classical anarchism. Vulgar views of anarchism deserve to be fought. Anarchist ideas and the anarchist movement are serious matters, not play things or playgrounds.
5. Within the wider international anarchist movement
The RKAS sees itself as part of the worldwide anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist movement. To know about revolutionary struggles in other countries, to analyse them and to inform Ukrainian workers' organisations about them is absolutely necessary. We greet all international structures doing real revolutionary-anarchist and anarcho-syndicalist work.
6. Attitude towards political parties and movements
We reject all contacts and collaboration with rightist and
bourgeois-democratic parties since they aim at preserving the
existing state order, which we reject. We are inconditional
enemies of the radical right and of fascist and militarist-nationalist organisations.
The pseudo-leftist stalinist communist parties belong to the
bourgeois camp as can be seen from their attitudes in
socio-political questions, towards workers' struggles and from
their history.
It is desirable to maintain contacts and to exchange information
with organisations genuinely fighting the existing capitalist
order of things, such as various revolutionary-marxist and
neonarodni-socialist currents. We don't like, however, their
authoritarian-statist theories, which in the past have led to
catastrophic defeats and to the rebirth of one-time socialists as
new ruling class, and we won't keep silent about that. In this way
we hope to get the most revolutionary elements in such
organisations over to our side.
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