Soviet Miners Fulfill Threat, Kick Out Party

In a brash move of rebellion against the Communist Party’s 73-year-old dominance of the workplace, dozens of state enterprises in this grimy working-class city in the Ukraine are kicking party committees out of mines, plants and offices.

“The party has discredited itself because for all these years it has thought only about its own pocket. It has not cared about the people,” said Dima Ustinov, 28, who had just emerged from a shaft at Kalinin Mine and was covered from head to toe with a thick layer of black coal dust.

“Party committees should close at all enterprises, not just at the mines,” added Viktor Terasinko, 39, another miner at Kalinin. “Let them exist independently from us, so they do not influence the way mines are run.”

Ustinov and Terasinko were among the majority when miners at Kalinin voted a week ago to toss the party committees out of their rent-free offices at the mine. The coal miners’ defiance will continue today when, despite a plea from President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, workers at more than 120 mines in the Donbass area of the Ukraine plan to stop work for 24 hours to demand the resignation of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov and an end to the Communist Party’s grip on power.

Miners in Siberia’s Kuzbass region and at Vorkuta beyond the Arctic Circle also plan to halt work for a day to protest what they say is the Kremlin’s failure to deliver on promises made last summer, when miners across the country struck over largely economic demands and cost the Soviet economy billions of rubles.

For decades, Communist Party committees had great influence over the administration of most Soviet enterprises. Their role has diminished as Gorbachev’s reforms give businesses more independence, but they are still commonplace across the country and a major source of the party’s influence and power.

The bold steps to banish the committees from enterprises in this eastern Ukrainian city of more than 1 million people, now brightened by summertime greenery but defaced by huge mounds of mine tailings, show how the party has lost the confidence of Soviet workers.

“It is no secret that trust in the party has dropped greatly,” said Yuri Belyaev, first secretary of the Kalinin district of Donetsk and a career party functionary.

In a recent poll of 500 workers at five large coal mining enterprises in Donetsk, only 6% said they could rely on Communist Party organizations to defend their interests.

During a citywide conference Sunday, representatives from 54 large local businesses supported a decision to remove the party committees, said Alexander Tupikin, 44, a member of the staff of the Miners Working Committee, a group organized to press miners’ political and economic demands.

The representatives were sent back to their workplaces with instructions to urge workers to decide the fates of resident Communist Party committees. A similar decision was made last month by representatives of every major coal mine in the country at the first congress of Soviet miners.

There is no official count on how many enterprises have already expelled their Communist Party committees, but at least several of the 21 mines located in the city of Donetsk have already moved to evict their resident party officials.

At the Kalinin mine, the party committee has already resigned itself to its fate and located new office space about a mile away.

“Life as we know it is changing,” said the mine’s second party secretary, Alexander Chulsky. “Switching my place of work is not a horrible thing for me.”

Not all Communists were so understanding.

“Before, we could just stop in here,” Anatoly Ugayev, 35, a miner and rank-and-file party member, said at the party committee’s on-site offices. “Now we will have to go a mile to talk to our party leaders.”

After so many years of unchallenged power, many Communist functionaries are not willing to give up their often cushy offices in enterprises and are trying hard to stay put.

“Party officials at my mine said they are ready to pay rent to avoid being kicked out,” said Tupikin, a veteran of the Ponfilov mine. “But we don’t want that. We want them out.”

Although the deadline for moving out has not expired yet for most party committees, it is already clear that some might have to be bodily evicted.

“The party committee at our mine said it will not leave,” said Alexander Kolomeitsev, from a mine that carries the name of the newspaper Socialist Donbass.

One of the justifications for giving the boot to the Communists is that with the development of the country’s new multi-party system, enterprises would be obliged to give space in their building to any new party.

“They say we will have a multi-party system. Why should the Communist Party be here at the mine? If people want to build communism, let them rent office space and do it there,” said Vladimir Verchenko, a miner and party member.

Some Donetsk miners speculated that kicking out the party committees could be opposed at the highest levels because Gorbachev and his allies have stood up for preserving party cells at the workplace, the traditional backbone of Communist Party organization.

On Monday, the national party congress now meeting in Moscow voted to maintain party organizations in the armed forces, police and KGB and to work to strengthen them.

“Gorbachev knows the people do not support the Communist Party,” Ustinov commented. “This is why he is afraid of a multi-party system.”

Among the demands listed by strike leaders in both the Donbass and the Kuzbass are the withdrawal of party committees from the job site and the nationalization of all property belonging to the party.

In addition to those mines in the Donetsk area where work will be suspended today, 109 others will stage rallies of support but not actually halt production, said Andrei Slivka, a miners committee spokesman.

In a report from Donetsk, the youth newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda said Tuesday that miners here had understood that unless existing political structures are destroyed, Gorbachev’s economic and social reforms will be meaningless.