[page 10]
the Ukraine strikes Strikers read Militant's sister paper, Raboyocha Democratica. The June strike wave, argues Elizabeth Clarke, represents the awakening of a working class, a class feeling its power. Lessons of OR NEARLY TWO weeks in June the centra square of Donetsk was thronged day and night by striking miners, engineers and textile workers, demanding the resignation of Ukraine's president, Leonid Kravchuk, the government and the soviets at all levels. They were joined by teachers, shop workers, students, even theatre and ballet workers. As the strike spread to Lugansk and Dnieperpetrovsk, delegations and telegrams of support arrived from cities throughout Ukraine and beyond its borders. Even the Crimea was reported to be in a 'pre-strike' situation.
Ukraine • 9
[page 11]
On June 16, Kravchuk declared, "the situation has become an emergency not only on the economic but on the political level. Production is grinding to a halt" . The speeches of the president himself and the stormy debates in the supreme soviet were relayed live to the crowd in October Square from the steps of the local soviet building, nicknamed the White House'. On June 17 a government commission flew in to parley with what had become an inter-regional strike committee. Not one commission member appeared in the square to address the crowd. A panicked Kravchuk reshuffled his cabinet. He promoted Donetsk mayor and former director of the Zasyadka pit, where the strike started, to the post of first vicepremier, with responsibility for resolving the crisis.
Russia's president, Boris Yeltsin, has been locked in battle with the Ukrainian leadership over control of the Black Sea Fleet and the nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. There are continual arguments over Ukraine's long-standing debts for subsidised Russian energy supplies. But seeing the danger of a general strike in the Donbas escalating and 'infecting the mighty and discontented Russian working class, in talks on June 17, Yeltsin promised Kravchuk a waiver on energy debts worth £250bn roubles (nearly half the total) and a further £250bn credit to be paid back in three years.
He also hastily retreated on the issue of immediate world prices for Russian oil and gas. It was this measure which was behind the very price rises that had sparked the strike wave. Now the prices would not reach world levels immediately but go up in stages before 1 January, 1994. (By August, however, Russia again closed down the pipelines to the Ukraine because of arrears on hard currency payments.)
The announcement on June 5 that prices on a whole range of basic necessities would be immediately increased between three and five times, struck the hard-pressed population of the Ukraine like a thunderbolt. In the context of a 20% annual fall in industrial output and a budget deficit of nearly 40% of GDP, so-called 'independence' from Moscow has brought no visible advantages. Factories, like the Donetsk Cotton Fabric Combine with an 8,000 workforce, are standing idle due to a lack of raw materials - in this case from November 1992 until April this year.
The miners warned of
of further price
had already action in the
event of further price rises.
Subsidies to the mining industry amount to more than three trillion Karbovonets ('coupons') a year or one third of the state budget, but they are regularly delayed and only partially paid up. The miners had already warned of action in the
10 • Ukraine
event of any further price rises and had threatened to stop supplying coal from July 1. The new price rises reduced their monthly wage to the equivalent of ten kilogrammes of sausage (the traditional measure of value!), compared to 22 in pre-perestroika days.
Special grievances had accumulated in the Donetsk region. With 10% of the population of the Ukraine it contributes 48% of coal and 42% of steel. Its agriculture is one and a half times more efficient than the Ukraine average. It contributes nearly 89bn Karbovonets to the state budget and retains just 6bn. Yet average investment per head in the non-industrial sphere, ie services, welfare and so on, is 104.5 roubles in the Don region, while in the Ukraine as a whole it is 173.4 roubles. An added irritation, where a majority of the population is Russian, had been the imposition of Ukrainian as the only state language. Frequently the Ukrainian national flag is taken down from above the White House' and replaced by the red flag. (The miners columns entering October Square bore red flags and no others.)
While the majority of Russian-speaking workers in the eastern Ukraine voted for independence in 1991, many now blame the breaking of the links with Moscow for the economic and social crisis in the region: 80% of its industry was tied to Russia. One of the demands of the miners was for the re-establisment of cultural as well as economic links with the Russian Federation and for two equal state languages, Russian and Ukrainian.
OSTILITY TOWARDS KIEV has arisen from
the inability of the national bureaucracy-
'turning-bourgeois to solve any of the basic economic and social problems. "They are continually squabbling over the division of power, while we starve", commented strikers in the square. As in Russia, a struggle has been taking place over the pace of 'reform', with prime minister Kuchma calling for special powers to push through the 'shock therapy of rapid privatisation. Former Communist Party ideologue president Kravchuk has opposed him, but has never voiced opposition in principle to the transition to market relations.
But little progress if any has been made along this road. Privatisation of land has gone further in the Ukraine than in Russia but the process in industry has hardly begun. A voucher scheme has been talked of but so far shelved. The idea consisted of lodging 30,000 roubles in banks for every citizen to use for the purchase of state property. What seemed like a vast sum only months ago, in the context of inflation at the beginning of the year running at 13,000% (50% per month), it arouses little enthusiasm amongst the population.
As in Russia, the failure of the tops to come up with solutions is accompanied by a deep resentment amongst the population. They are bitter about the widespread corruption, speculation and
[page 12]
Miners march into October Square.
from petty theft to 'prikhvatization' - the crime, seizure of industry by members of the old nomenklatura and the rising bourgeoisie (often one and layer).
They have the politicians - especially those who have come from their ranks and gone over into the pampered world of local and national parliaments. Zvyagilski Kravchuk government.
The morning after the strike leaders had signed a deal, miners listening to speeches at the White House' were angry. What had they got but promises Why was the agreement signed in the middle of the night? Why were the strikers themselves not consulted? Having heard that satisfied them and being told the speeches were over, they started up an ominous rhythmical beating of their helmets on the steps which only stopped when the president of the strike committee came out to explain himself. Even on the following night, miners from the Zasyadka pit kept the braziers burning and vowed they would fight to the end. What we needed was another Lenin', commented one young miner. Why should hack and hew at seams 50cms high, just to see others get rich?
The lives of those who work underground in the Donbas, as in Vorkuta and Russia and Karaganda in Kazakhstan, are increasingly at risk due to shortages of basic equipment, wooden pit props etc. Above ground whole communities are threatened. The cold wind market forces finds the overwhelming majority of pits unviable without enormous amounts of state assistance.
the early enthusiasm of In this context, miners for 'market reforms' and world prices for coal etc, has waned. In June, the Kuzbas miners rainian or Russian grown cynical of are horrifying.
the Kuzbas in of months, if not weeks.
picketted the Russian parliament. Apart from backdemanding money due to them they were also objecting to the 'freeing of prices on coal. They fear on this basis the collapse of demand for their product. The deaimed through abolishing subsidies to industry (part of the IMF and dictated World Bank policies) would be more than cancelled out by the massive inflation caused by the effects of the prices of oil, coal and gas reaching world levels. When the average wage of a Ukworker amounts to no more than £25 a month - at current exchange rates - the consequences for the mass of the population Without a huge shift in policy - a return to planning but with genuine workers'
control and management in all the countries of what was nightmare. We the USSR - life will become a only want to feed our children, pleaded the Donetsk strikers. Some women workers speaking in the square finished in tears of despair. This is a pointer of what is to come.
Huge concessions were made which only a movement with a revolutionary dimension could have won.
Balso give a glimpse of ern never that workers! UT THE EVENTS in the Ukraine in June have to bring a government to its knees. Huge concessions were made on wages, income tax, pensions, 'indexation', payment for days on strike and so on, which only a movement with a revolutionary dimension could have won. But on a capitalist basis, implementing this agreement will quadruple the existing government budget deficit. Inflation will wipe out the gains within A referendum has been promised for September 26. But this is far from the 'removal' of the government demanded by the strikers. Removal itself would be meaningless without alternative Ukraine • 11
[page 13]
workers' representatives being ready to take their place and without a policy to end the anarchy of capitalism.
A battle on the scale of a general strike brings into sharp relief all the basic conflicts of interest in society. Welling up from below amongst the ranks of the miners and broadening to encompass layers never before involved in strike struggle, it is an absolutely inevitable stage in the development towards revolutionary change. It poses the question of who runs society, who is the strongest power? And here the question is not just of numbers and industrial might but of expressed aims and of a conscious struggle for control. In the Ukraine, as in so many similar situations, the tops of society were paralysed or vacillated between making concessions and establishing repressive measures. The middle layers begin kick out at their masters and look to the workers for help in striking blows at their common enemy. The heavy battalions of the workers enter the fray and declare we are not prepared to continue in the old way and new and more timorous layers join their ranks. As Trotsky commented in 1931, in relation to the first movements of the Spanish workers after the fall of the de Riveria dictatorship, "the semi-spontaneous spread of strikes ...is an absolutely unavoidable stage of the revolution, the stage of the awakening of the masses, their mobilisation, and their entry into struggle... The veterans stretch their limbs, the new recruits learn. Through the medium of these strikes, the class begins to feel itself a class". voice, without But without a party, without a a political leadership conscious of what needs to be done, without even a hint of an alternative to the old way of doing things, to the old leadership in government and in the workers' committees themselves, compromise on the economic front and defeat in terms of power are inevitable. HE RANKS OF the strikers swelled. Two Thundred and thirty out of the 250 pits stood idle. Forty mine construction sites and 70 processing plants came to a halt and more than 400 factories and workplaces in other industries joined the strike. The participants felt that victory must be theirs. Their leaders, mindful of the empty promises that ended the miners' strikes of 1989 and 1991, declared in the early days of the strike that agreement on the economic demands would not be sufficient on its of the workers The political demands must also be own.
fulfilled.
The masses were convinced that the old rulers had proved incapable of satisfying their demands - unable to control inflation, guarantee the supply of raw materials, cheap food or even wages. The 'politicians' at all levels could not deal with the 'mafia', the black marketeers and speculators: they were themselves up to their eyes in the so-called 'commercial structures, receiving bribes and living easy.
12 • Ukraine Genuine representatives of workers, having looked at reality and learning a little from history, would have been able to convince the aroused to place no trust in the 'higher-ups' but to find independent solutions, to have confidence in their own ability to root out corruption, to call to account all public representatives, to eliminate middlemen and speculators, and to control production, distribution and exchange through their own organisations, as they had begun to do in the course of the strike in 1989. This was not talk of what was meant by the much-publicised 'self-management, or 'self-rule. The workers in the square at Donetsk thought their leaders or management must have tagged on these demands to their list. The strikers were in favour of more local 'control' if it meant less bureaucratism, less privilege and more say for workers. But no one had indicated how such control could be exercised.
'Separation' from Russia had already proved to be a backward step. Nothing would be solved by separation from Kiev. The main concern was how to get everything working again. Markets? Capitalism? We don't know what these mean. But we don't know any more what socialism means either".
Workers in all countries rarely imagine that they themselves can run society.
Workers in all countries rarely imagine that they themselves can run society. They have been 'conditioned' all their lives to think otherwise. Coming to this conclusion represents one of the last stages before a revolutionary takeover. The first stage is that of deep discontent and also of illusions. As strikes and general strikes develop, defeats as well as successes are not only inevitable but are a necessary part of the development of workers' consciousness of the need for political struggle. What we have seen in the Ukraine and will see repeated in Russia, Byelorussia, Kazakhstan and elsewhere, is the awakening of a working class, a working class feeling its power. The last disconsolate miners in the Donetsk square sensed a deep disappointment - a feeling that something much more could have been achieved if their leaders had not let them down, but unsure yet as to what all the implications would be. They will search for a way out, draw conclusions on the need for organisation, for parties, The next few years will hold more hard lessons for them and the tens of millions of workers in the countries of the former USSR. But the steeled and battle-hardened army of proletarians which comes out of this period will be a mighty force for revolutionary change.
[page 14]
bolling
OL USA