State, Society and Protest under Post-Communism: Ukrainian Miners and Their Defeat

While much attention has been devoted to the alleged failure of post-communist transformation to generate popular protests in Eastern Europe, less attention has been paid to the exploration of existing examples of disruptive social contention in the region. This paper examines one of the most militant and prolonged cases of protest in Eastern Europe - the Donbas miners’ movement in Ukraine. The miners have succeeded in influencing the state and governing authorities by the means of contentious collective action. The miners’ movement has, nevertheless, failed to achieve its aims. This paper argues that it is the specific dynamics of contentious politics under post-communism rather than the lack of violent protest that explains the failure of the miners’ social movement.

The Donbas Miners' Movement in the Very Late Soviet Era: An Historical Perspective"

Whether it makes more sense to conceive of the miners of the Donbas and their collective representation as confronted by forces analogous to fourteenth-century western Europe or sixteenth-century eastern Europe, clearly theirs has not been an easy lot since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Of course, much the same can be said for the overwhelming majority of other workers. What distinguished the miners, however, was not extraordinary privation but rather their sustaining of an "independent" movement determined to create a "normal life" for themselves and their families. Now increasingly demoralized and numbering no more than 400,000, they probably no longer have what it takes to continue to do so.