21 November 2024, 20:09

'They walked 50-60km a day.’ Archival footage of miners' strike in 1992

MINSK, 21 November (BelTA) - The film "Time Chose Us" on the Belarus 1 TV channel tells the story why Soligorsk miners marched to Minsk in protest in 1992, BelTA learned.

The pre-strike situation in the Soligorsk miners’ community arose already in January 1992. The miners demanded higher wages and decent working conditions. Two-stage negotiations between the management and the workers were futile. The authorities won only a couple of months, delaying a large-scale strike.

"We did not know how to trade, how to sell potash. We used to selworkl via the Soviet Union structures. When we embarked on the path of sovereign development, we were novices. They divided the quotas. A certain amount went to the Healthcare Ministry, the Defense Ministry... They went to the market as separate entities. This collapsed prices. Belarusian companies would compete against each other at tenders. It was a complete mess," Belarusian First Deputy Prime Minister of Belarus (1991-1994), Belarusian statesman Mikhail Myasnikovich recalled.

The miners first blocked the shipment of potash from the enterprise, and on 10 April they embarked on their march on Minsk. To make the protest more visible, they decided to walk. On the first day, 50 strikers covered about 40km. When they reached Slutsk, two miners dropped out. The following they traveled another 60km. No more than 20 miners remained in the ranks. The rest, with stretched tendons and bloody calluses, were taken to Minsk by cars.

“We traveled this distance in three days. We walked 50-60km a day. This proved we could do anything. They would not break our spirit,” one of the miners says in the archival footage.

“We call it a protest march, because the miners in the [Soligorsk] were out of work for a month already. And nobody in this house [the House of Government in Minsk] could care less,” another miner said.