Lewis Siegelbaum: Workers of the Donbass speak

Люїс Зіґельбаум - професор університету штату Мічіґан (Michigan State University, 304 Morrill Hall, е-mail: siegelba@msu.edu), досліджує становище робітничого класу в радянський і пострадянський період. Між 1989 і 1992 роками проводив інтерв'ю і спостереження з шахтарями Донбасу. Архівні матеріали з цього проекту зберігаються в архіві Lawrence F. Evans Collection (AIS.1988.17) у м.Пітсбурзі. У 1990р. за матеріалами його дослідження зроблено документальний фільм Perestroika from below, a y 1995р. у співавторстві з Деніелом Валковіцем за результатами дослідження в Донбасі видано книгу Workers of the Donbass Speak: Survival and Identity in the New Ukraine, 1989-1992, SUNY Press (книга у нашій бібліотеці). Статті Люїса Зіґельбаума про робітників Донбасу:

"The Donbass Miners' Movement in the Very Late Soviet Era: An Historical Perspective," in Tanya Penter,ed Mitteilungsblatt des Instituts fur soziale Bewegungen, vol. 37 (Sowjetische Bergleute und Industriearbeiter - Neue Forschungen), 133-47

"The Soviet Miners' Strike, July 1989: Perestroika from Below," (with Theodore H. Friedgut), Carl Beck Paper in Russian and East European Studies, no. 804 (44 pp.)

About "Workers of the Donbass Speak" (book available at our library)

This is an oral and local history of the coal mining town of Donetsk in the Ukraine. The workers describe their changing political and economic goals and their reaction to Western culture, the rising tides of nationalism and religion. 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 miners' 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.