Soviet Strikers Returning to Mines Empty-Handed

Many of the tens of thousands of Soviet coal miners who left their pits almost two months ago, defiantly demanding the resignation of President Mikhail S. Gorbachev, have given up on a strike that has made their families a bit poorer but achieved little.

“In the Donbass there’s a wave of mines going back to work,” said Viktor Osovsky, a member of the strike committee in the Donetsk Basin of the Ukraine. “We all expected much more to come out of the strike.”

Across the country, strikes have been called off at more than 60 mines in the last two weeks, according to strike organizers. Just in the Donetsk Basin--the coal-rich Donbass--20 mines have gone back to work in the last few days.

Even in the Kuznetsk Basin of Siberia, where the strike has been strongest, workers in five of 51 striking mines have suspended their work stoppages.

The strike began March 1 in the mines of the Donetsk Basin and Karaganda coal fields of Central Asia and spread across the country. At its peak, it was supported by as many as 400,000 miners at 180 of the country’s 567 mines.

After eight weeks without pay, enthusiasm for the protest dwindled, especially since the government refused to even discuss the miners’ political demands calling for Gorbachev to resign and the national Parliament to be dissolved.

“We never had enough power to influence the government’s policies,” Osovsky said. “I think it’s a good idea to end the strike because continuing it means only more difficulties for our families. After two months on strike, we have no money to buy food for our families.”

But in some areas, especially Siberia’s Kuzbass, most miners have remained firm in their demands, although they appeared to have lost the support of one of their most powerful allies.

Boris N. Yeltsin, populist leader of the vast Russian Federation, had backed the miners. Then last week he endorsed a Gorbachev plan to stabilize the economy that bans strikes and establishes a special regime in key economic sectors.

“Yeltsin’s conspiracy with Gorbachev has stabbed us in the back,” Nikolai Kharchenko, a member of the strike committee in the Vorkuta coal fields of the Arctic north, said in a telephone interview. “He cheated us.”

As soon as they learned of Yeltsin’s pact with Gorbachev, the Kuzbass strike committee demanded that he explain his motives for abandoning them. Yeltsin is scheduled to travel today to Novokuznetsk, the heart of the Siberian coal region, to meet with the miners.

“We have no illusions about Yeltsin,” said Yegor Zorkin, a member of the strike committee in Novokuznetsk. “Our relations with him as a man are good, but he also knows that, if his policy does not satisfy us, we will fight against him as we are now fighting against Gorbachev.”

The miners expect Yeltsin to propose a concrete plan to end the strike, Zorkin said. The Russian leader is scheduled to stay in Novokuznetsk to celebrate May Day, the Soviet version of Labor Day.

“Future relations between the president of Russia and the miners will be determined during this visit,” Zorkin added. “This will be vital for Yeltsin. Miners’ attitudes toward Yeltsin will be a yardstick of the attitude of the whole working class toward him.”

Yeltsin may try to make a deal with the miners to get them back to work by promising to end Communist Party influence over the coal industry and transferring the mines from central government control to that of the Russian Federation.

Workers’ support will be vital to Yeltsin, who faces an election in June for a powerful new post as president of the Russian Federation.

The miners said they were not intimidated by Gorbachev’s warnings that he will use “the toughest measures” necessary to introduce, immediately after May 1, “a special, stringent regime of work and control” in vital industries.

“We will never stop our strike because Gorbachev tells us to,” said Alexander Smirnov, another member of the strike committee in Novokuznetsk. “What he says doesn’t go any further than Red Square. We live far away in Siberia. This is the land of the gulags--the place where prisoners have been sent since czarist times. We have rebel blood.”

Although Gorbachev did not specify what measures would be used, Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov has suggested that the government use troops to keep order in strike-torn industries. The miners have also ignored orders from Pavlov and the national legislature to end their strike.

“What should we be scared of?” asked one miner from Vorkuta. “Think of where we work. We are scared every time we go down into the mines. We are used to this feeling of fear.”