Communist Leader Calls for Yeltsin’s Impeachment

The woes of Russia’s miners--hungry, angry and blockading railways in protest against a state that seems unable to pay them--won the public sympathy of the country’s Communist boss Tuesday. Gennady A. Zyuganov promised to start impeachment proceedings against President Boris N. Yeltsin within a day.

“We have heard what is going on in all mining regions, petitions from miners . . . who consider Mr. Yeltsin responsible for the collapse of the country and the coal-mining industry,” Zyuganov told reporters after a meeting of his 200-plus supporters in the 450-member Duma, the lower house of parliament. He said a text had been prepared and that “our faction and our allies will formally sign the impeachment request tomorrow.”

Whether the Communist leader’s threat amounted to more than empty rhetoric remains to be seen. He would need a two-thirds majority--more votes than he commands--to get any impeachment request moving to Russia’s Constitutional Court, Supreme Court and upper house of parliament.

Yeltsin’s spokesman, Sergei V. Yastrzhembsky, was openly contemptuous, describing the challenge as “some deputies who can’t find a better use for themselves trying to fish in muddy waters.”

But Tuesday’s events did signal the start of a new battle of words between president and parliament, only a month after Yeltsin scared the hostile but weak deputies into surrender in a row over his choice of a new government.

More conflict with parliament is the last thing Yeltsin needs. Russian financial markets are being dragged down sharply by the ongoing Asian economic crisis.

More significant for millions of Russian voters, miners in all three of the country’s big coal districts were out in force Tuesday on the railroads, stopping freight trains in an attempt to force the government to pay them back wages. The miners’ latest protest, which got underway Friday, is estimated to have cost the government $2 million.

Among the grim television pictures flickering in kitchens and dens--of shabby workers, set faces, train tracks and raised fists--was one striker who stared straight at the camera as she shouted:

“Yeltsin, can you hear me? . . . I want him to hear me! I want to see him personally and be able to tell him what he has brought this country to! . . . Yeltsin, can you hear me? I’m dying!”

Yeltsin’s government and commercial clients owe millions of dollars to the mines, which in turn have no cash to pay the desperate miners. The government insists that its share of the debt is minimal and blames middlemen and commercial contractors. But the miners, as aware as anyone of reported official inefficiency and corruption, blame government ministers.

New Prime Minister Sergei V. Kiriyenko last week refused to take money from other sectors of the economy to pacify the protesters. But he did persuade lawmakers to back a bill that would slash red tape in government and parliament, freeing up more than $80 million to help pay off the arrears. That bill is scheduled to get a final reading in the lower house of parliament today.

Miners were once Yeltsin’s staunchest supporters. In 1989 and 1991, in the dying days of the Soviet Union, they brought the Soviet economy to its knees with huge strikes in support of Yeltsin’s new Russia. But, even more than the many millions of other Russians who have lost out as capitalism brings wealth to just a few, they feel embittered by the failure of their former hero to pay them for doing their jobs. Calling for Yeltsin’s impeachment--the first time they have moved from an economic to a political demand--is the most extreme form their disillusionment has yet taken.

“A week ago, they would have been content with much milder concessions. But now, they want all or nothing from the authorities. And the longer they stay on the tracks, the harder it will become to negotiate with them. The spirit of protest is dizzying,” Russian television commented.

“Everything owed to the miners should be paid to them,” said Aman Tuleyev, governor of the Kemerovo region in Siberia. “The situation is already coming to resemble the one back in 1989, but at a new stage.”