The practice of democracy does not necessarily occur within the institutions that comprise a democratic state. In light of this, it is important to examine some of the less obvious moments in the history of democracy-building, particularly in countries like Ukraine, where the forgotten miner strikes of the 1980s and 1990s paved the way for democratization. In her contribution to the “Deep Democracy” series, Emily Channell-Justice reconstructs their political potential.
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Russia has been waging war on Ukraine since 2014, when Russia’s troops first entered Crimea, followed by Donetsk and Luhansk regions, to support separatists and ultimately occupy those territories. Kremlin narratives claimed that these regions – Crimea and the eastern regions collectively known as Donbas – have always been part of Russia, illustrated by the fact that many ethnic Russians and Russian speakers live there. Those familiar with Ukraine have always known that neither linguistic choice nor ethnic background were requirements for citizenship there. In 1991, after a national referendum in which all Ukraine’s regions, including Donetsk, Luhansk, and Crimea, supported independence, everyone living in Ukraine’s territory became a citizen of the new Ukraine.
Despite this, the narrative of a ‘Russian Donbas’ still managed to become prevalent, and it helped Vladimir Putin justify the 2014 invasion of these regions, as well as the 2022 full-scale invasion, which was followed by the official, but internationally unrecognized, annexation of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. This dominance of the Kremlin narrative about Donbas has contributed to the erasure of key stories from this region’s history.
One such story is that of the strikes by Donbas coal miners in 1989, 1990, and 1991. Donbas was known for its contributions to Ukraine’s post-war industrial development, particularly its coal industry. The coal production in this region became central to Soviet infrastructure and development. Indeed, miners interviewed in 1989 who lived during the Stalin era recalled improved living conditions, including lowered costs of food, clothes, and other necessities that disappeared upon Joseph Stalin’s death in 1953. Despite these privileges, in the years before state socialism’s collapse, miners’ strikes in Donbas mobilized this group’s political power to make demands on the Soviet leadership, ultimately making a significant contribution to Ukraine’s sovereignty movement from 1989-1991. Importantly, these miners were not working through the officially sanctioned trade unions but rather building their own democratic committees through which to make their demands.
The strike committees and the independent trade union that grew out of them are a sort of “deep democracy” that existed in Ukraine’s early years of independence. These groups illustrate a level of political engagement that shines a new light on the Donbas region, which is often depicted as disengaged from Ukraine’s national politics, especially due to Russia’s perceived influence in the region. When Kremlin narratives attempt to position Donbas as always having been ‘Russian,’ they erase not only the identities of those living in Donbas, but also the history of deep democracy among labor activists in Ukraine.
Coal miners’ strikes in late socialist Ukraine
In the summer of 1989, coal miners in the Kuzbass region of the Russian republic began to strike, organizing namely around economic demands, such as wages, access to consumer goods, and workplace conditions. Miners in both western (Lviv-Volhyn) and eastern (Donbas) Ukraine quickly took up the strike. In the city of Donetsk, miners at over 20 mines went on strike, taking advantage of their economic – and by extension political – power to gain the attention of republic and union-level governing bodies. The miners in Donetsk were not complaining about their wages, which were higher than most in the USSR. This was an acceptable trade-off for the dangerous work of mining coal underground. Rather, complaints were about the lack of access of basic consumer goods to buy with those wages, such as soap, as well as large economic assets, such as housing.
In the 1980s, coal miners were represented by powerful trade unions. However, labor historians Lewis Siegelbaum and Daniel Walkowitz explain that these trade unions were integrated into the Soviet governing apparatus, so miners were more likely to see them as arms of the state itself rather than a channel for political claims for laborers. In other words, trade unions did not exist to facilitate a strike that was inherently critical of the Soviet state.
The 1980s were also a time of glasnost, or ‘openness,’ implemented by Mikhail Gorbachev as part of his attempts to reform and, in so doing, preserve the Soviet Union. These new openings included expanded political rights, including the possibility for miners to organize outside of the existing, politically sanctioned trade unions. Yet when these new opportunities did not translate into improved living and working conditions for miners, they took a more radical turn and began organizing strike committees, which functioned as an alternative to the official trade unions, and ultimately built the Independent Trade Union of Miners of Ukraine.
At the intersection of workers’ rights and national autonomy
In 1989 and the early 1990s, as part of a documentary film about Donetsk miners on strike, Siegelbaum and Walkowitz interviewed miners who were central to the strikes. Building on strike commissions, miners were able to challenge the apparatchiks who ran the miners’ trade unions and, in some cases, remove them from power. In July 1990, miners began to demand the resignation of the Soviet government in Ukraine, and in April 1991, they marched from Donbas to Kyiv to make demands for Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Sovereignty became a key aspect of the miners’ demands. With Ukraine’s sovereignty, they expected more autonomy for their region and, by extension, greater control over the coal production in their mines. Many miners believed that greater control would allow them to increase their region’s income from mining, rather than feeding the centralized Soviet system. For many of them, the sovereignty movement was not so much about national identity, but rather about political and regional autonomy that would improve their working and living conditions.
A journalist writing at the time of the 1991 strike described the miners’ strike committees as the “main bearers of the idea of our independence.” From March to April, 1991, strikes united coal miners across Ukraine. In Donbas, miners from 49 mines went on strike and marched to the capital, joined by miners from 22 mines in the Lviv-Volhyn region in far western Ukraine. Their demands included the resignation of Gorbachev, the dissolution of the Congress of People’s Deputies of the USSR, constitutional reform, including the declaration of state sovereignty of Ukraine, and additional economic and labor-related demands to protect the striking miners and ensure their continued wages.
The country declared independence on August 24, 1991, and this was confirmed by a national referendum on December 1 of that year. Despite this success, miners continued to strike throughout the 1990s, demanding back pay and better work conditions. However, as Ukraine’s independent leadership coalesced, strike leaders were largely left out of newly built political institutions.
Pushing miners’ stories to the margins
Miners’ early articulations of demand for the autonomy of Ukraine did not ultimately translate into positions of power for most strike leaders after Ukraine became independent in 1991. Perhaps it was precisely their own autonomy from state sanctioned trade unions: while many former apparatchiks gained power as part of post-independence compromises, strike commission leaders’ distance from these official institutions might have pushed them to the margins after 1991. Further, the weakening of trade unions as a major political force, coupled with the consolidation of coal mining and metallurgical industries in the hands of oligarchs led to men like Viktor Yanukovych and Rinat Akhmetov acquiring outsize economic and political power throughout the 1990s.
The official story of Ukraine’s democracy often starts somewhere in the middle – almost always after 1991. And while many recognize that democratic practices and traditions existed in what now constitutes the modern state of Ukraine throughout history, there still remains a rather narrow lens on what makes Ukraine a democracy today. Thanks to the presence of independent media that documented the miners’ protests, as well as researchers and journalists who interviewed miners during and long after the strikes ended, there is extensive documentation of the miners’ strikes as a form of lived democracy.
New public history projects are prioritizing the 1980s and 1990s. The recovery of the history of the miners’ strikes is an important aspect of the political activity of those decades. Despite Russia’s ongoing attempts to erase Ukraine and its history, this evidence helps us better understand the democratic history not only of the Donbas region, but of Ukraine as a whole.
The actual practice of democracy does not necessarily happen in the institutions that are declared to be part of a democratic state – a lesson we are learning far too well in the 21st century. It is prudent to look to some of these unexpected moments in the history of democracy-building, especially in countries such as Ukraine, where the merits of democracy as a political practice are being defended with the lives of those who understand what it truly means.