Soviet Miners Strike Against Party : Thousands Demand Government Quit; Quality of Life at Issue

Hundreds of thousands of coal miners laid down their drills and picks today to demand that the Communist Party get out of their lives and the Soviet government resign.

“We should kick the party not only out of the Ukraine, but everywhere,” mine construction worker Viktor Kitenko declared, speaking at a rally in Donetsk, the center of the eastern Ukraine’s Don River coal basin.

Miners walked away from their jobs for 24 hours despite appeals from the Soviet government and party.

In Donetsk, a rally passed a resolution demanding that the government of Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov resign, that party cells be removed from mines, economic enterprises, the KGB, army and police, and that party property be nationalized.

The miners held aloft two large banners saying: “U.S.S.R. Government Resign!” and “Down with Party Committees at Businesses.”

The walkout was a repetition of a long and bitter strike coal miners conducted last summer to press the government for better supplies of basic consumer goods, better pay and working conditions. The government acceded to their demands but has been unable to fulfill its promises.

In the meantime, miners’ demands have become increasingly political.

According to information compiled from strike leaders in Donetsk, the Kuznets Basin of western Siberia and Vorkuta in the far north, miners at about 200 shafts were on strike throughout the country.

No figures were available on the number of miners who walked off their jobs. But judging from the number of mines on strike in the Donetsk region, it appeared that about 100,000 miners stayed away. Strike organizers claimed that about 300,000 miners would halt work in western Siberia alone.

Andrei Slivka of the Donetsk Workers Strike Committee said 141 mines, slightly more than half the region’s total, were on strike.

The Soviet government newspaper Izvestia reported scattered participation elsewhere. Miners in the Novosibirsk region of Siberia and in Uzbekistan did not go along with the strike, but miners in the far east struck for the first time, it said.

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told the Communist Party’s 28th congress in Moscow that the strike was not of a general nature.

He said participation in western Siberia was minimal. “We feel more understanding from the side of the miners,” he said.

But the mood was angry among the several thousand people who gathered in the hot sun in front of Communist Party and government headquarters in Donetsk to voice their grievances.

One woman screamed: “Let them give back the 9-10 billion rubles they stole from our work!”

It was not clear exactly what she was referring to, but the party last week set a value on its property at 4.9 billion rubles, $8.2 billion at the official exchange rate.

One widow of a miner who died of black lung disease, a black scarf around her head and her voice cracking, addressed the crowd. “Miners, you all have these lungs,” she said. “You breathe what no human being should breathe.”