Yeltsin Victory: Siberian Miners to End Strike : Soviet Union: Workers are satisfied that the pits will be run by the federation, not the Kremlin.

In a dramatic victory for Russian Federation leader Boris N. Yeltsin, workers in the coal fields of western Siberia and above the Arctic Circle--some of the last holdouts in a two-month strike--decided Wednesday to return to their jobs.

Leaders of strike committees in the coal-rich Kuznetsk basin of Siberia that Yeltsin visited last week voted overwhelmingly to suspend their strike as of Saturday. It will be up to miners at each shaft and pit to decide whether to heed the wishes of their leadership, but they are virtually certain to do so.

“I think that all the miners will suspend the strike,” said Anatoly Malykhin, one of the heads of the militant labor movement in Siberia. “This is not our first strike, and we know from experience that the opinion of the strike committees is very influential on the miners.”

During his trip, Yeltsin said the Russian Federation government was bent on taking control of the mines, and he offered the workers complete independence to choose their own form of management and ownership. On Monday, Yeltsin and the national government finalized the transfer of the coal mines to the federation, the Soviet Union’s largest republic.

Malykhin and other strike leaders said the protest would probably still be going strong if Yeltsin had not brought such a serious proposal to the miners.

“To Yeltsin’s credit, he did not come to us with empty hands,” said Alexander Y. Kolesnikov, a member of the strike committee in Novokuznetsk, the largest city in the Kuznetsk basin. “If the agreement had not been made, we would probably still be on strike.”

By negotiating the pact that ended the work stoppage, which cost the crumbling Soviet economy hundreds of millions of rubles in lost production, Yeltsin achieved what Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev failed to do. He also won a round in the continuing bout between the two leaders over control of the country’s resources.

Yeltsin’s high-profile trip to the Siberian mining region, which came just after he was nominated to become Russia’s first popularly elected president, gave the miners a chance to end the strike with pride. Taking the mines out of the hands of the central Soviet government turned out to be the most significant achievement of the strike, according to Malykhin.

“Our strike was very successful,” Malykhin said. “This is much more than what has been won in other strikes, because the things we achieved will lead to major changes.”

Another important step, Malykhin said, was the formation of a group of lawmakers from legislatures of the various Soviet republics who vow to support miners’ demands, which include Gorbachev’s resignation and the abolition of the national legislature.

“It’s not so important that we did not achieve Gorbachev’s resignation, because we should have known one strike wouldn’t be enough to get him out of office,” said Yuri R. Zhuk, a member of the strike committee in Novokuznetsk. “What’s important is that the strike helped us become more organized.”

At its peak, as many as 400,000 miners from the Pacific Ocean to the western Ukraine participated in the protest, according to estimates by organizers.

More than a month ago, Prime Minister Valentin S. Pavlov agreed to double miners’ pay over the next year and improve working and living conditions, but that did not persuade them to return to the pits.

Miners in the Ukraine’s Donetsk Basin, among the first to go out on strike March 1, went back to work over the weekend. In Vorkuta, above the Arctic Circle, strike committees voted to end the protest as of Saturday, but all but two of the mines were already back at work Wednesday.

In Siberia and the Arctic Circle region, where the absenteeism had been strongest, a handful of mines refused to go along with the decision to end the labor action. In Vorkuta, the reasons were related to local disputes between miners and management, but in Siberia, coal workers were demanding proof that Yeltsin’s agreement with the Kremlin would go into effect.

Strike leaders in both areas said they expect the holdout mines also to return to work soon.

While agreeing to end the strike, leaders of the miners in the Kuznetsk basin said they would consider striking again in two months if there has not been movement toward transferring the mines to Russian authority and giving workers at each enterprise the opportunity to choose their own type of management.

At many Siberian mines, workers have already begun discussing what type of ownership appeals to them most. Some mines will be owned by the labor force, others will be sold in part to foreign firms and others will remain government-owned, Malykhin said.

“We don’t have any experience with deciding how to manage our mines,” Kolesnikov said. “We should find lawyers and economists to help us out. Most of the next couple months will be spent on this--and on campaigning for Yeltsin, of course.”