By Renfrey Clarke
MOSCOW — During 1996, Russia's Ministry of Defence Industry reported in January, output in the country's defence factories fell by a further 27.1% to a mere 12.8% of its 1991 level.
That's not so bad, you might say — every bomber or tank that isn't produced is a plus for world peace. The trouble is that Russia's "military-industrial complex" produces a great deal besides armaments, including much of the country's consumer durables output.
This civilian production by defence plants declined more steeply last year than the output of weaponry.
And when defence production in Russia comes to a halt, whole cities are liable to lose their source of income. This is the land of the "city-forming enterprise", of the giant industrial complex on which almost everyone in a large provincial centre depends, directly or indirectly, for their livelihood.
Better-situated Russians had the plight of orphaned defence industry towns impressed on them during the first half of February, when workers in Severodvinsk, on the White Sea roughly 1000 kilometres north of Moscow, staged a determined strike. The workers were demanding that the government hand over funds for payment of wages that were as much as eight months overdue.
Severodvinsk is — or used to be — Russia's largest producer of nuclear-powered submarines. New construction in naval shipyards has almost ceased, and the state often fails to pay even for repair and maintenance work.
According to the Moscow daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta on February 8, enterprises in Severodvinsk are still owned money by the government for work they performed in 1995.
With payments by the shipyard companies into the civic coffers down to a trickle, the Severodvinsk city budget last year received less than half its necessary revenues. Money is short for keeping apartment blocks at livable temperatures during the sub-arctic winter, and in the hospitals, planned operations are being cancelled. Power cuts are commonplace.
Workers have survived largely because the enterprises hand out tokens that can be exchanged for bread. But many people at the shipyards are chronically hungry.
"Such a state of affairs is impermissible at firms serving an atomic centre where potentially dangerous work with radioactive materials is being conducted", local union leader Aleksandr Usov told the news agency ITAR-TASS on February 11.
Meanwhile, as of early February, 63,000 Severodvinsk pensioners still had not received their benefits for December. Child allowances had not been paid since July, and the city's 10,000 registered unemployed had not received their pitiful entitlements for more than a year.
Early in February, patience ran out. From February 7, Nezavisimaya Gazeta reported, virtually all the enterprises in the city were on strike. The action enjoyed firm support from the city administration, with Mayor Aleksandr Belyaev telling journalists that the situation in Severodvinsk was "close to disastrous".
At a meeting on February 7, the strike committee at Sevmash, the region's largest enterprise, adopted a resolution condemning the "empty promises of the authorities and of bankrupt politicians".
The resolution demanded that President Boris Yeltsin resign for health reasons, and that the government quit.
With the Finance Ministry and the Ministry of Defence Industry pledging to send a total of 60 billion roubles (about US$10.6 million) as a down payment on the wage bills in Severodvinsk, the strikers agreed to return to work from February 13. But if the workers' demands were not met within two weeks, union spokespeople affirmed, the strike would resume.
Defence sector workers have also launched militant struggles in the city of Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea. On January 27, workers in the Yantar shipyard began an indefinite strike demanding wages owed from as much as six months back. The shipyard is owed some 10 billion roubles for repairs to naval vessels.
Other struggles by unpaid workers continue in many parts of Russia. Communications workers planned a nationwide protest on February 17, pledging to shut down relay broadcasts of Moscow-based radio and television stations.
Coal miners, who last staged an all-Russia stoppage in December, continue to fight for their wages on a pit-by-pit basis.
Some 2600 miners at the Vorgashurskaya mine in the far north have been on strike since January 16, demanding wage arrears that go back as far as July. The Vorgashurskaya mine is one of Russia's largest and, potentially at least, is regarded as highly profitable.
Miners in the Maritime District of the far east halted coal shipments to power stations on February 1, declaring that supplies would not resume until at least two months of their back wages was handed over.
At the world's largest nickel-producing complex at Norilsk, on the tundra of northern Siberia, wage arrears early in February were reported by union sources to average three and a half months.
During the first week of February, workers at Norilsk Nickel passed a vote of no confidence in the enterprise's new management. The powerful Moscow financial institution Uneximbank took over the Norilsk complex last June after gaining 51% of the voting stock in a disputed privatisation auction.
If the new directors do not meet the workers' demands by February 20, a spokesperson for the Norilsk Independent Miners Union has been quoted as saying, the workers will call on the government to take back control of the enterprise.
While government statisticians claim that production in the Russian economy began to stabilise during January, the wage debt has continued to soar. On February 13 Mikhail Shmakov, chair of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia (FNPR), told ITAR-TASS that total overdue wages now come to almost 50 trillion roubles (about US$9 billion). A further 15 trillion roubles was owed to pensioners.
At a meeting on February 27, leaders of the FNPR are due to discuss a nationwide protest action scheduled for March 27. According to the newspaper Segodnya on January 14, the FNPR leadership has already decided that the March 27 protest will take the form of a general strike.