Notes from Underground

DONETSK—If Dante were alive today he would set the scenes of hell in Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine, center of the Donbass coal field. Fat, prematurely aged women in peasant scarves push and shove in the melees which, in the Soviet Union, pass for bread lines. A survey of the faces of men on a bus shows half of them in various stages of degeneration, madness, or drunkenness. Wild, wide-eyed faces stare at a stranger with a mixture of incomprehension and hostility. A huge Lenin in the central square points his granite arm at the cloud of pollution overhead. Even the bright red of Communist slogans is hardly visible underneath a thick film of dust that covers everything. Wooden huts that remember czarist times huddle around the perimeter of a vast steelworks, its chimneys spewing clouds of orange poison. Among Donetsk’s few claims to fame are the highest suicide rate and the highest infant-mortality rate in the Soviet Union.

At the Zaperevalna mine, the tracks coming out of the yard are red with rust. Like 11 other of Donetsk’s 29 mines, Zaperevalna is on strike. Young miners kill time in a smoky room, watching television and playing cards. Kolya, a young activist who explains to me the nuts and bolts of the situation, is a blond, powerfully built man with the sickly Donetsk complexion. The miners have been out for three weeks, after a vote in which 73 per cent of them backed the strike. They demand pay raises and the elimination of “dead souls”—bureaucrats, footballers, and suchlike, who draw the salaries of pit-head workers though they’ve never been down a shaft. At the head of their list of demands, however, is that President Gorbachev resign, the Supreme Soviet be dissolved, and Ukraine’s sovereignty be respected. “In 1989 we made economic demands and they have cheated us. Now we know we can only achieve our aims if we bring down the Communist system and the Soviet empire,” says Kolya. “If Ukraine is independent we will make a deal with Kiev. Moscow will always cheat us.”

RS

About the Author

Radek Sikorski

Featured Tags

DONETSK—If Dante were alive today he would set the scenes of hell in Donetsk, Eastern Ukraine, center of the Donbass coal field. Fat, prematurely aged women in peasant scarves push and shove in the melees which, in the Soviet Union, pass for bread lines. A survey of the faces of men on a bus shows half of them in various stages of degeneration, madness, or drunkenness. Wild, wide-eyed faces stare at a stranger with a mixture of incomprehension and hostility. A huge Lenin in the central square points his granite arm at the cloud of pollution overhead. Even the bright red of Communist slogans is hardly visible underneath a thick film of dust that covers everything. Wooden huts that remember czarist times huddle around the perimeter of a vast steelworks, its chimneys spewing clouds of orange poison. Among Donetsk’s few claims to fame are the highest suicide rate and the highest infant-mortality rate in the Soviet Union.

At the Zaperevalna mine, the tracks coming out of the yard are red with rust. Like 11 other of Donetsk’s 29 mines, Zaperevalna is on strike. Young miners kill time in a smoky room, watching television and playing cards. Kolya, a young activist who explains to me the nuts and bolts of the situation, is a blond, powerfully built man with the sickly Donetsk complexion. The miners have been out for three weeks, after a vote in which 73 per cent of them backed the strike. They demand pay raises and the elimination of “dead souls”—bureaucrats, footballers, and suchlike, who draw the salaries of pit-head workers though they’ve never been down a shaft. At the head of their list of demands, however, is that President Gorbachev resign, the Supreme Soviet be dissolved, and Ukraine’s sovereignty be respected. “In 1989 we made economic demands and they have cheated us. Now we know we can only achieve our aims if we bring down the Communist system and the Soviet empire,” says Kolya. “If Ukraine is independent we will make a deal with Kiev. Moscow will always cheat us.”