Moscow Gives Yeltsin Control of Coal Mines

The Kremlin on Monday signed over control of Russia’s coal mines to the Russian Federation in an attempt to end a crippling two-month strike and agreed to give the largest Soviet republic its own state security agency.

The two moves signaled a watershed for the Russian Federation’s leader, Boris N. Yeltsin, who has been pressing Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev to transfer to the republics authority over their own economic resources and political affairs.

Previously, all coal mines in the country were under the command of the state Ministry of Coal Mining, and security issues were governed by the KGB state police and espionage agency.

Yeltsin told the Russian legislature, the Supreme Soviet, that he and KGB chief Vladimir A. Kryuchkov signed a protocol Monday establishing a Russian security agency as another step toward greater autonomy for the federation.

In a speech at a meeting of the Russian legislature, Yeltsin said that a statement signed at the end of last month by Gorbachev and the leaders of nine of the 15 constituent republics had set the stage for the transfer of economic and political power to the republics.

“If the intentions expressed during the meeting and set out in the signed statement are in earnest,” he said, “it can be said that the first big political step has been taken toward getting out of the deep crisis in which the country has found itself.”

In moving toward a solution to the coal miners’ strike--which has severely weakened the already faltering Soviet economy--Yeltsin has one-upped Gorbachev, who had been unable to end the strike.

During a trip last week to the Kuzbass mining region of Siberia, Yeltsin declared his intention to transfer jurisdiction over his republic’s mines from the national to the Russian government. He guaranteed miners that under Russian jurisdiction, they would be given complete independence to decide their own form of ownership and management. His pledge appears to have placated the miners enough to persuade them to return to work.

“The majority of the Kuzbass mines will probably stop striking,” said Alexander Kolesnikov, a member of the strike committee in the Kuzbass fields. “For one thing, it’s hard on the mines for them to be idle for so long.”

As many as 400,000 miners participated in the strike, which started March 1 and spread to all the country’s main coal regions. At its peak, 180 mines--64 of them in Siberia--were on strike. Mines in the Donetsk basin of the Ukraine returned to work over the weekend, and 10 of the 42 Siberian mines on strike when Yeltsin visited also returned to work.

Although some miners seemed content to return to the pits, others were frustrated because many of their demands, including their call for Gorbachev’s resignation, had not been met.

“Several members of our strike committee are not satisfied with the results of the strike,” Kolesnikov said.

The strike committee of the Kuzbass region is scheduled to meet today to decide whether the miners support an end to the strike. Workers at each mine will then vote whether to stop the strike.

Alexander Smirnov, another member of the strike committee in Novokuznetsk, said he was skeptical about the intentions of both Yeltsin and the Kremlin.

“Until the agreement is sitting on our table, we will continue the strike,” Smirnov said. “We have been deceived so many times that we cannot believe anyone anymore.”

Kolesnikov stressed that if by early July, the miners are not permitted to choose their own form of mine ownership, as Yeltsin has promised them, then there will be another wave of strikes.

“If people don’t see real results of the transfer of jurisdiction over the mines to Russia,” Kolesnikov said, “there will be a much greater strike.”

Miners in the Arctic region of Vorkuta were also likely to return to work.

“I expect we will suspend our strike in a day or two if this transfer to Russian jurisdiction is serious,” said Gennady I. Rizhkin, a member of the Vorkuta strike committee. “But we will not drop our demands for the resignations of Gorbachev and the national Parliament. We’ve been striking for two months; this alone shows how much our government procrastinates instead of solving important problems. But we are very, very tired of striking. We’re sick of being idle.”