Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989-1992

Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Daniel J. Walkowitz

SUNY Press, Jul 1, 1995 - Social Science - 226 pages

In July 1989 coal miners throughout the Soviet Union engaged in a massive strike that briefly captured world headlines and inaugurated a movement of strike committees that persisted across the Soviet/post-Soviet divide. In this collection of interviews and essays based on encounters over a three-year period, the voices of industrial workers and their families in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, the coal capital of the Donbass, are heard. The stories collected here allow Western readers to "hear" these people describe their struggles for survival and identity in conditions of economic, political, and social disintegration/transformation; and to analyze their testimonies and other kinds of texts in terms of changing meanings of work, gender, and national identity. Included are an examination of the "older generation" that came of age during the Stalin era; an analysis of the miner's movement and the trade union politics that emerged out of the strike of 1989; and a focus on the social crises and cultural disorientations accompanying Ukrainian independence.

Contents

• Narsis Melikian Retired Mining Engineer: 15
• Ivan and Gennady Kushch A Miners Dynasty: 23
• Marf a Ivanovna Limonets Retired Mineworker and Her Daughter Olga Nikolaevna Bondarenko: 31
• Viktor Mikhailovich Ignatov Retired Steelworker: 35
• Evgenia Feodorovna Zilova Retired Steelworks Employee: 41
• Vladimir Feodorovich Pogorelov Minerelectrician: 45
• Fedor Skripai Retired Miner: 49
• Labor Politics 19891992: 53
• Introduction to Part Two: 55
• The Miners of Donetsk in the PostSoviet Era: 61
• I August 1989: 97
• Kuibyshev Mine Trade Union Conference August 51989: 99
• II May 1991: 107
• Discussion City Strike Committee: 117
• III JuneJuly 1992: 123
• Evgenii Grigorevich Belous Chair Kuibyshev Mine Trade Union Committee: 131
• Giia Alizaev Director Kuibyshev Mine: 135
• Valery Samofalov Miner Kuibyshev Mine: 137
• Yuri Makarov CoChair City Strike Committee: 143
• Mikhail Krylov CoChair City Strike Committee: 147
• Survival and Identity 1992: 151
• Introduction to Part Three: 153
• The Crisis of Identity Among Donetsks Miners: 159
• The Kushch Family: 185
• The Samofalov Family: 193
• The Mezhinskii Family: 203
• The Zadorozhnyi Family: 207
• Vladislav Nikolskii A New Entrepreneur Director Intertour Travel Agency: 211
• The Varevoda Family Intellectual Workers: 217
• Index: 223

About the author

Lewis H. Sigelbaum is Professor of History at Michigan State University. He has written and co-edited six books on Russian and Soviet labor history.

Daniel J. Walkowitz is Professor of History at New York University. He is the author of Worker City, Company Town: Iron and Cotton Worker Protest in Troy and Cohoes, New York, 1855-1884, and The Mystification of the Middle Class: Gender and Social Identity among Social Workers, 1900-1980. He has also produced several video documentaries including "Perestroika from Below."

Bibliographic information

• Title: Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989-1992; SUNY series in Oral and Public History; SUNY series in Oral and Public History
• Authors: Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Daniel J. Walkowitz
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: SUNY Press, 1995
• ISBN: 0791424863, 9780791424865
• Length: 226 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / General; Social Science / General; Social Science / Minority Studies