The Culmination of the Miners' Protest Movement in Russia During the Transition to Market Relations

The topic of the research is the culmination of the miners' protest movement in Russia, which falls on May 1998. The central place in this phenomenon belonged to the all-Russian "rail wars" when the most important railways were blocked. Their main motive was multi-month delays in wage payments. The authors draw attention to the fact that the all-Russian protest swept all coal industrial areas of the country. However, the main events took place in the leading coal basins: the Pechora coal basin (where they blocked the Northern Railway), Kuzbass (where they blocked the Trans-Siberian Railway), the Russian Donbass (where they blocked the North Caucasus Railway). The protesters' main demands focused around political slogans, among which stood out the resignation of Russian President Boris Yeltsin and the nationalisation of the coal industry. The analysis of the sources and literature leads to the following important conclusions. Transport blockades over several days (from May 13 to May 21) became very popular among Russians. The peak point was 22-23 May, when the All-Russian "rail wars" directly threatened the country's national security. Therefore, the President and the Government of Russia established a dialogue with the protesters. People in the coal industrial areas of the country began to receive money to pay off wage arrears. This made it possible to reduce tensions in the coal mining regions and to divert miners from political slogans. Ambiguous was the attitude of Russians to the radical forms of struggle. In the conditions of a large, unevenly developed economy and transport system, "raising the people" to protest using "rail wars" turned out to be an overwhelming task for the miners. Coal industry enterprises suffered large losses from transport blockades. This led to a rapid decline in the miners' protest movement in Russia. The authors come to the conclusion that the results of the culmination of the miners' protest movement in Russia during the transition to market relations were mixed. The authorities and administrations made concessions, but to a greater extent they were of a socio-economic nature. The low effectiveness of the confrontation, the high economic costs and the ambiguity of public opinion forced the coal industry workers to abandon such a radical form of upholding labour rights and interests as the "rail war". This is evidenced by the unsuccessful attempt of the Kuzbass miners to reanimate this form of protest at an all-Russian scale undertaken in July 1998.

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