RABOTYAGI. Perestroika and After Viewed from Below.
Interviews with Workers in the Former Soviet Union.

Introduction

This book offers a “view from below” on perestroika and its aftermath. It is a perspective from the ranks of the workers: those once heralded by the Soviet state as the heroic rabochii, more often referred to on the street by the informal rabotyagi, working stiffs. Idealized or disparaged, these are the people whose labor over the centuries has been used to create privileged lives for various ruling classes and elites, including the present “democrats.”

Their point of view is rarely reflected in the body of academic and popular literature that has arisen about the changes in the Soviet Union and its successor states. Yet, workers form the vast majority of the population of that region and their view of things often conflicts with the simplistic image of “democrats versus hard-line communists” purveyed by our media. Moreover, these workers have no obvious vested interest in embellishing or otherwise distorting their reality.

The scope of the interviews has limitations which should be noted. Most of the workers interviewed here are from Russia, with two from Ukraine and one from Belarus. Most are activists, a rather thin stratum in the working class today, though they are all closely linked to the rank and file. Many key economic sectors are not represented.

There was nothing very “scientific” and much that was accidental in the selection of people I interviewed. These were mainly workers whom I had met in the course of my research on the labor movement, people who, in my opinion, had something of interest to say and were willing to say it into a tape-recorder. In this choice, I make no claims to neutrality (which, in any case, would be false). However, in translating and editing the interviews, I have remained to the best of my ability faithful to the speakers’ words and intentions. I am convinced that, taken as a whole, this book offers a unique and in [8] many ways a more valid view of the period in question than can be obtained from most “scholarly” publications and certainly from our press.

Over the five years during which these interviews took place, 1988 to 1993, the social and political situations changed rapidly, to say the least. This is well-reflected in the interviews, which are presented here roughly in chronological order. I have also provided interjected notes to explain the more obscure references and terms.

The following brief overview of the evolution of the workers’ situation and of the labor movement may provide the reader with some further help in situating the interviews.

Until the political liberalization initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev in 1985 gradually expanded under popular pressure, there was no labor movement in the Soviet Union. As early as the 1920s, the state and party bureaucracies had replaced the workers as the social basis of the ruling Communist Party. Soon after, the trade unions were completely subordinated to the political and economic administrative apparatuses. Their main functions for over half a century were to keep workers in line and producing, and to “allocate” various goods and social benefits to them. (Workers are only now realizing just how significant these benefits were.) Collective actions, when they occurred (after Stalin’s death), were almost always spontaneous, of very limited scope and subject to various forms of repression. Only in very exceptional cases did even the lowest-level union shop committees lead or even support these actions.

In the final analysis that system rested upon repression and the threat of repression—this is clearly shown in the first interviewee’s description of the Novocherkassk massacre in 1962. At the same time, the system was grounded in the state-owned and managed economy, in the social rights and benefits it guaranteed, and in the ideology that accompanied it. Although deprived of political rights, workers did enjoy important social rights, some of which will always remain out of the reach of workers under capitalism. (This is not to deny that the quality of these rights was often wanting.) These included a guaranteed job, job security, a more-or-less guaranteed wage that rose significantly over the course of the post-Stalin period until the late 1970s, and an increasingly significant “social wage” that included free education, health care, virtually free housing, and [9] heavily subsidized communal services, transportation, child daycare, leisure and cultural activities, and basic food products.

The combination of antagonism and corporatism or paternalism that characterized state-worker relations had its parallel in relations between management and workers in the (state-owned and run) enterprises. Managers acted both as representatives of the central state in the enterprise—their job was to meet the plan targets set by the state—and as lobbyists for the enterprise before the central state.

Soviet managers did not have the same incentive as their capitalist counterparts to constantly reduce labor costs. Their main interest was to meet, at least formally, centrally established output targets. They had to do this under inherently unstable conditions, especially the unreliable material supply system. This required the maintenance of a relatively large and flexible work force. Faced with the chronic labor scarcity that such conditions fostered, managers tried to give workers relatively better wages and social benefits (many of which were linked to the enterprise) than were allowed by centrally set regulations.

The complex nature of these relationships helps to explain why, despite eventual political liberalization (paradoxically, the high point of this “democratization” was probably reached before the demise of the USSR and the “democrats’” final victory), a strong, independent labor movement has proven so difficult to build.

A central problem, as will become clear especially from the later interviews, is the widespread lack of faith among workers in their capacity to defend their interests through their own independent organizations and collective actions. Most workers, especially those who have not had the personal experience of independent collective actions, have a hard time seeing themselves as autonomous social and political actors. The temptation is still strong to look to management or to the state authorities (the “good tsar” syndrome).

However, this cannot be explained solely by the legacy of the past. Probably a more important factor is the insecurity created by the profound economic crisis, as well as the workers’ difficulty in conceiving an alternative to the “transition to the market,” in view of the discrediting of the formerly dominant Communist ideology.

The nascent labor movement has gone through several stages since Gorbachev came to power. (For a detailed analysis, see my [10] Perestroika and the Soviet People [Montreal : Black Rose Press, 1991].) The initial reaction among workers to Gorbachev was positive, if restrained, reflecting workers’ sad experience with past reforms, generally carried out at their expense. But the improved economic results of 1986 did in part reflect the popular enthusiasm evoked by the prospect of renewed dynamism and change, officially presented by Gorbachev as a socialist renewal, a return to Leninist norms.

In 1987 Gorbachev announced his market reform, which included an overhauling of the wage system to enhance its incentive role and the introduction of a “cost-accounting” regime in the enterprises, which were to be given broad autonomy. The idea was to link workers’ income more closely with enterprise performance and to measure this performance primarily by profits. In the reformers’ conception, this would create a common motivation among managers and workers to uncover and release productive reserves, to increase individual and enterprise efficiency, and to produce quality goods that met consumer needs.

It was these reforms, coupled with the relaxing of repression, that gave rise to the first wave of collective protest. The wage reform that was supposed to be carried out in consultation with the workers was in fact marked by widespread managerial arbitrariness, resulting in the demotion of workers to lower skill-grades and even loss of wages. At the same time, the new “cost-accounting” regime, to the degree it was introduced, undermined the old paternalistic relations, which in turn made workers less tolerant of abuses they had accepted in the past: “black (working) Saturdays,” the irregular rhythm of production with its frequent stoppages, bad work conditions, managerial corruption.

These protests invariably bypassed the unions, which often took management’s side. They were led by informal leaders and sometimes gave rise to elected strike or workers’ committees. With the end of the conflict, these new organs generally disappeared.

To some degree, Gorbachev had foreseen the problems these reforms would provoke, and to soften them he put in place a State Enterprise Law that went into effect at the start of 1988, providing for the election of the enterprise directors by the entire work force. It also called for the election of work-collective councils, or STKs, that were given broad self-management rights, though the law was [11] vague and contradictory on these powers and their limits. More-over, even the elected directors had to be confirmed from above.

Gorbachev explained these steps toward producers’ democracy in the following terms: “The well-being of the worker will depend upon the abilities of the managers. The workers should, therefore, have real means of influencing the choice of director and controlling his activity.” (Pravda, 28 January 1987).

In the great majority of cases, however, the STKs were subservient to management, which, until a special party directive, were often headed by enterprise directors. This was partly due to managerial resistance, and in part to the workers’ inability or unwillingness to make use of this reform, which had been initiated from above. But this in turn was related to the widespread perception that the STKs had no control or that they were a trick to shift responsibility onto the workers for problems over which they had no real power. Moreover, until 1989, the ministerial apparatus was still largely intact, so that even in the rare cases where management was prepared to accept the independence of the STKs, the workers saw that real power lay outside the factory.

The general coal miners’ strike of July 1989 marked the apogee of the strike movement unleashed by perestroika. This was the first strike to involve more than one enterprise and the first to give rise to new and continuing organizations: the strike committees, which transformed themselves into workers’ committees and which were at the origins of the foundation of the Independent Miners’ Union (IMU) in the fall of 1990.

The decision to create a new miners’ union followed failed attempts to reform the old one. But those failures were due not only to the resistance of the old union bureaucracy. Even more, they reflected the lower level of mobilization and solidarity among the majority of workers in the “old” Union of Workers of the Coal Industry. The founders of the IMU hoped that their union would soon displace the old one and that their example would spread to other sectors of the economy. But that has not come about; even among underground coal workers themselves, IMU members are still only a minority, though the union’s influence is much broader than its membership. So far, significant new unions have arisen only [12] among small, strategically located groups of workers: pilots, locomotive engineers, longshoremen, air-traffic controllers.

Today, the great majority of workers remain within the old unions. The miners’ strike and the collapse of the power of the party apparatus initiated a process of reform in these unions, but it has been painfully slow and remains, with a few significant exceptions, very far from complete. Paradoxically, while the new unions, at least in Russia, have asserted their independence from enterprise management, they tend to be very loyal to the government, to the extent that some have dubbed them the new state unions.

On the other hand, the old unions have adopted more independent, oppositional stands toward the government and its neoliberal policies but tend to remain subservient to management. This is not simply a matter of corruption. The cozy relationship with management has a certain objective basis in the fact that capitalist relations have only very partially been restored in the enterprises. For example, mass layoffs have not yet occurred, even though most plants, thanks to state economic policy, are working at a fraction of their capacity. More-over, managers are often limited in their capacity to respond to workers’ demands, since the government, through its tax policy, strictly controls wages and remains the only available source of funds for investment. In a collapsing economy, many unions — and workers—look to an alliance with management to lobby government and thus save their factories and jobs.

Around the same time as the IMU was founded, the self-management movement finally seemed to be taking off after years of false starts. Ironically, it arose at a time when Gorbachev was turning away from the original official conception of market reform as a renewal of socialism (in practice, it had always been far short of this), toward promoting the market reform as the restoration of capitalism. This meant privatization of the state enterprises and the abandonment of the self-management idea. This shift was reflected in a government directive to end election of management by workers and in the new 1990 Law on Enterprises, which essentially abolished the STKs.

Not unrelated to this attack on the STKs was a marked rise in the number of conflicts between workers and management in the enterprises over the issue of power. These centered around accusations [13] of mismanagement on the part of the administration and of misappropriation of enterprise funds and resources through the creation of small private enterprises or “cooperatives” attached to the (state) enterprise.

It was in this context that the first All-Union Conference of Work-Collective Councils and Workers’ Committees met at the end of August 1990. It condemned the new Enterprise Law and demanded the right of the work collectives to choose by themselves the form of property for the enterprise: collective workers’ property or state pro-perty. In either case, the work collectives, through their elected STKs, would exercise broad self-management rights. In December 1990, a Congress of Work-Collective Councils formed the Union of Work Collectives.

But despite initial high hopes, the movement has failed to even approach its aims. In Russia, this was in no small part due to the liberal government’s hostility to self-management and collective ownership and to the co-optation of the movement’s top leadership. However, there is a more basic cause, one that also helps to explain the slowness of union reform: the deepening economic crisis and its demoralizing effect on workers. The high point in worker mobilization occurred in 1990, just before the economy went into its current nosedive. There were already marked shortages, but living standards and acquired social rights had not yet collapsed and very few yet felt the threat of unemployment.

Even a casual observer can see that today the labor movement in the former Soviet Union is very weak. The “democratic revolution,” long awaited by many on the left in the capitalist world, has not taken the hoped-for form of a transition to a democratic socialism but rather of a transition to capitalism.

What is less obvious, however, is that the kind of people whose words fill this book can be found, even if in small numbers, in virtually every large and medium enterprise. And so where others have become despondent at the rightward turn of events—and I too experienced the disappointment of hopes for a swift return to socialist development in the Soviet Union—this knowledge has sustained my optimism.

I hope this book will have a similar effect on readers who remain committed to the cause of a more just and democratic world. If any [14] conclusion emerges from this book, it is that the working class of the former Soviet Union has not yet spoken its last word, not by a long shot.

David Mandel Montreal,

September 28, 1993