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Word: kuzbass (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
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...worker better than the propaganda hero Alexei Stakhanov, the coal miner who reputedly produced 14 times the daily norm. But there were no Stakhanovites in the Soviet Union's biggest coalfields last week. Wildcat strikes by more than 300,000 workers paralyzed some 250 mines and factories in the Kuzbass and Donbass basins, resulting in a 6 million-ton loss of production. The walkout spread as far as the coalpits in Vorkuta in the far north and Karaganda in the Kazakhstan Republic in Central Asia. And there were rumblings that railroad workers might join in on Aug. 1, an action...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Soviet Union Revolution Down Below | 7/31/1989 | See Source »

...headquarters in the Ukrainian city of Makeyevka, 5,000 miners in battered helmets, their faces and overalls black with coal dust, staged a sit-in to demand better working and living conditions; their ranks eventually swelled to almost 150,000 from 94 mines. Far to the east, in the Kuzbass in Siberia, the numbers were even greater. About 180,000 miners abandoned their pits to occupy central squares in nine cities, plastering reviewing stands with homemade signs proclaiming DOWN WITH BUREAUCRATS and KUZBASS: CLEAN AIR, MEAT FOR EVERYONE, WE DEMAND SOCIAL JUSTICE...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Soviet Union Revolution Down Below | 7/31/1989 | See Source »

...strike spread with electrifying speed. The first 77 Kuzbass coal miners walked off the job in Mezhdurechensk on July 10. The following day 12,000 workers from five mines in the area joined them. They drew up a list of demands, including better pay, more vacation, higher pensions. Their overriding complaint: despite Gorbachev's calls for greater local autonomy in managing the economy, bureaucrats in Moscow continued to wield arbitrary control over the mines and were holding back the bulk of their profits. Many local officials openly sympathized with the strikers. "Why not? They breathe the same...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Soviet Union Revolution Down Below | 7/31/1989 | See Source »

...strike soon spread to nine other cities in the Kuzbass. Grimy miners complained that when they came up after six hours underground, they could not find a bar of soap to wash with; the ration is one bar every two months. "Who can tell us what to feed our husbands?" shouted a woman protesting empty shelves in the stores. Many called for complete independence from central planning, insisting the miners could run things themselves...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Soviet Union Revolution Down Below | 7/31/1989 | See Source »

Sensing victory, the Mezhdurechensk miners went back to work, but the strikes were just beginning elsewhere in the Kuzbass and the Ukraine as workers pressed for assurance they would share in the government concessions. At week's end the strike in Kazakhstan was winding down, but workers in the Donbass still held out over pension questions, prompting a government pledge that all the issues would be considered without delay...

Author: /time Magazine | Title: Soviet Union Revolution Down Below | 7/31/1989 | See Source »

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