Coal Miners End Walkout in 3 Regions

MOSCOW —  Tens of thousands of Soviet coal miners returned to work Thursday after a one-day strike to press demands for an end to Communist Party rule and for Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov to resign.

According to strike organizers, workers were back on the job in the Ukraine’s Don River coal basin, the Kuznets Basin of Western Siberia and Vorkuta in the far north.

Miners in three areas of the Ukraine--around Lvov, Kirovograd and the Volyn region--were the last to end their strikes.

“All of the miners are working,” said Nikolai Volynko, a strike organizer in Donetsk, the center of the Ukrainian mining region.

Wednesday’s walkout, called one year after strikes crippled the Soviet coal industry, was sparked by the Kremlin’s inability to deliver on its pledge to ease the miners’ dreary lives, improve their harsh working conditions and increase their wages.

The walkout came despite an appeal from Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

The official Soviet news agency Tass said the strike cut production in half in the Donetsk region. Figures for the total economic losses from the strike were not available.

Ryzhkov on Thursday told the 28th Communist Party Congress, meeting in Moscow, that 276 enterprises and 655 branches took part in the strike.

He said workers at 230 mines stayed off the job all day, and that elsewhere the walkout lasted from two to 12 hours.

“In light of what happened yesterday, we must quickly work out conclusions,” he said.

No figures were available on the number of miners who actually walked off their jobs. But judging from the number of mines on strike in the Donetsk region, it appeared that about 100,000 miners stayed away. Strike organizers claimed that about 300,000 miners took part in western Siberia.

Strikers demanded an end to central planning and control of the mines, the elimination of Communist Party cells in mines and other workplaces, nationalization of party property and the resignation of Ryzhkov and the rest of the government leadership.