Searching for Safe Haven: Donbas Discourses of the 1989–91 Miners' Strikes

Abstract

The 1989–91 transition period in the USSR was marked by a series of major miners' strikes in Ukraine. The miners' movement was driven by growing popular dissatisfaction with and distrust of the Soviet government in Moscow. In the key Ukrainian coal mining region of Donbas, which was hard hit by economic decline in the USSR, the first strike in 1989 transformed local miners into the dominant political force at the regional and in some respects national levels. As this article demonstrates, the miners' economic situation and political moods played an important role in Ukrainian politics, as various antagonistic political elites tried to win their backing and mobilize their anger against competitors. By analyzing publications in two major regional daily newspapers, the article provides a close examination of changes in attitudes and loyalties of the protesters, as well as their influence on the general public in the region, whose reactions, detailed in the newspapers, shifted from sympathy to frustration with the industrial action at this time.