Soviet coal miners polled after their strike victory

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Over 500,000 miners struck the coal fields in the Ukraine and Siberia in July.

[See the July 1989 Socialist Action.] During a 1962 miners' strike, troops opened fire. Today the situation is much different; workers' self-confidence has grown considerably.

In the 1989 coal strike, plodding government and trade-union bureaucrats were paralyzed, stunned by the defiant rejection of President Gorbachev's reforms.

Demands for more pay, more food, and better housing dramatically escalated into political slogans for workers' self-management.

The largest work stoppage in Soviet history was a warning shot to the bureaucracy; working-class political consciousness was growing as the government's authority was deteriorating.

A poll of striking miners conducted in late July by the government's All-Union Center for Studying Public Opinion confirms the worst fears of the ruling elite.

... China (continued from page that both slowdowns and small-scale strikes are ongoing problems. Even the independent worker organizations that sprang up in April and May maintain a precarious clandestine existence.

Seven members of the Beijing Autonomous Workers' Union, which had counted several thousand members before the crackdown, still organize activities. According to a report in The New York Times: "They meet secretly, in considerable danger, and scribble their appeals for change on pieces of paper. They await until twilight before they furtively paste up the messages on lampposts and signboards."

And on July 23, 500 Beijing University students assembled for a mourning ceremony for their comrades massacred in Tiananmen. It was 49 days after June 4, the traditional Chinese mourning period. Defying martial law, the students played tapes from Tiananmen of the singing of the Internationale, the workers' anthem. Then they themselves sang revolutionary songs.

Restoring orthodox thinking

The government, while seeking out the organizers of this action, has not been able to engage in widespread purges of dissident intellectuals. Instead, it has launched a bombastic and futile campaign to restore orthodox thinking against "bourgeois liberalism."

And it has taken further steps to curtail the development of the intellectual stratum. Education is being cut back, especially in social science fields that have historically produced dissidents. Proposals have been made to require a year of military service before college and two years of labor in the countryside after graduation.

Like similar policies during the Cultural Revolution, these measures may intimidate, but they will only make it more difficult for China to generate the skilled personnel needed for modernization.

Economy in crisis

Pundamentally, the repression is solving none of the real problems the regime faces. Before the June crackdown, prospects for the economic reforms were already dimming. Growth rates sagged in 1989; inflation soared to 30 percent. Imports grew five times faster than exports in the first five months of 1989, and a $5 billion trade deficit resulted. The World Bank estimates China's total foreign debt at $42 billion.

China's workers now face unemployment, economic chaos, and unbridled corruption. In the Special Economic Zones, where foreign investment is encouraged, it is often even worse.

Even The New York Times, amidst its glowing reports of economic reform, admits: "Many of the woes of 19th-century laissez-faire capitalism and of feudal China have reemerged in these coastal areas: child labor, prostitution, gambling, income inequities, criminal gangs, and unregulated production of 18 SOCIALIST ACTION [See Moscow News, No. 33, Aug. 1989.] The miners had greatest confidence in the strike committees of their enterprises (43 percent in the Ukraine, 50 percent in Siberia) and in the central strike committee (33 percent in the Ukraine, 40 percent in Siberia). Not a single worker who was polled registered confidence in the administration, government-sanctioned trade unions, or the Communist Party.

Also noteworthy is the fact that none of those polled had confidence in reactionary, chauvinist organizations such as Pamyat (Memory) or Otechestvo (Fatherland). Neither did the pro-capitalist Democratic Union gain one single vote among the workers.

The poll also made a very revealing observation that is quite familiar to anyone who has been on strike but is seldom recognized by the capitalist media. Moscow News reported the mood of the workers following their strike victory: "The psychological atmosphere is characterized by the combination of good feelgoods that are useless or even dangerous."

Some predict an agricultural crisis soon. Since last year, the government has been paying farmers IOUs for their crops.

The crackdown made matters even worse. In its wake, tourist trade has been halved, and billions in international loans have been cancelled. Almost a billion dollars in production was lost in strikes in May and June; the government has cancelled summer vacations to "make up for the losses caused by recent political unrest."

According to the Manchester Guardian Weekly: "Three out of four industrialists [now] plan to leave Hong Kong before it reverts to Chinese rule in 1997. ... Hong Kong companies account for more than half the overseas investment in China."

These problems have not led to a major change of course for the regime, despite the fact that it is discredited in the eyes of China's workers. On the contrary, the government has been at pains to reassure foreign capitalists that political repression does not mean an end to the market reform policies. Instead, it has chosen two campaigns to shore up its image and regiment the people.

Shoring up image

The first is a drive "against corruption." A government spokesperson admits that "the students put forth slogans against corruption and official profiteering that compelled us to take action." The dramatic mass support of the workers for these slogans was especially frightening to the regime. Consequently, the government has trumpeted its intention to cleanse itself from top to bottom.

Bureaucratic privilege is at the core of the government's function, however. Control of ings for one another, with the realization of one's own righteousness and with a feeling of hope (60 percent in the Ukraine, 70 percent in Siberia)."

This solidarity among the workers is perhaps the strike movement's most important achievement. Relying on their own power won them more concessions in a few weeks than they had received in several decades. That's why discussions of forming independent unions and flexing the workers' strike muscle cannot be suppressed with empty government promises for a better future.

"No, a cosmetic overhaul won't do," said Teimuraz Avaliani, a strike leader from Kemerovo in Siberia. "We must start setting up a fundamentally new type of trade union. Maybe, alternative trade unions." (Moscow News, No. 32, Aug. 13-20, 1989.)

Avaliani told the press that the coal miners "realized what a mighty weapon [a strike] is. We don't intend to abuse it, nor do we intend to let it go."

This simple statement sums up the new balance of forces which exists now in the Soviet Union. The government is confronting a population growing in political consciousness and organization. As with the example of the miners, when people break their long silence and finally decide to speak, it's likely they will want to have the last word.

scarce resources and luxuries is the prerogative of the ruling stratum.

As James L. Tyson notes in the Christian Science Monitor: "If similar public campaigns since 1985 are any indication, the anti-corruption drive will fizzle after a few months of strident, official propaganda extolling clean government. Watchdog bodies are notoriously subordinate to the Communist Party and lack the independent power critical to an effort to ensure proper conduct."

The government claims that its new campaign means tightening up equally for all. It has reserved special attention for the workers, though, in its second campaign, for "plain living." Here, the government intends to lower the expectations it raised when it declared "to get rich is glorious." It is also trying to use intimidation against the temptations of modernization, i.e., against a more aware and powerful workers' movement.

In a stern warning, Deng Xiaoping declared:

"Promoting plain living must be a major ob jective of education, and this should be the keynote for the next 60 or 70 years." This campaign combines austerity with rigorous indoctrination, including the memorization of demoralizing quotations like the above.

Significantly, the regime has not made good on the workers' economic losses suffered through inflation nor even (with the "plain living" campaign) cut back on promises. It will be up to the workers themselves to institute the democratic planning that can lead China out of its morass.

With key leader Deng Xiaoping in uncertain health, an ongoing economic crisis, and an awakened and still defiant movement among workers and students, China's future looks explosive. revolutionary