Russia Braced for Protests, Gov't Urges Calm
MOSCOW -- (Reuters) The Russian government appealed for calm on Tuesday on the eve of nationwide protests and strikes that
trade unions and Communists predicted would be the biggest since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Union leaders said tens of millions would down tools and take to the streets on Wednesday. Yet with many Russian workers feeling
powerless to improve their meager lot, the actual turnout could fall far short -- as it has in the past.
"I would like to appeal to the citizens who will take part in the meetings and demonstrations to be calm and tolerant of views that do
not coincide with theirs. I also urge them not to fall for provocations," Justice Minister Pavel Krasheninnikov told a news conference.
Aleksei Surikov, deputy chairman of the Federation of Independent Trade Unions, told Reuters: "According to our most modest
estimates, 28 million will take part in some kind of protest action."
"It will be the largest protest in recent years," he said. "It's because it is becoming harder and harder to live."
Surikov said 9 million workers at 37,000 enterprises would stage protest strikes from an hour to a day or more. Others would show
their solidarity at marches and rallies.
In Snezhinsk, workers at the Federal Nuclear Center which reprocesses nuclear waste plan a two-hour strike. Unions say workers
at a ship building plant in St Petersburg and the Chkalov aircraft plant in Novosibirsk, Siberia, are among others planning strikes.
Russians have seen the value of their earnings fall sharply since the August devaluation of the ruble. Millions have not seen
paychecks for months as bankrupt firms refuse to die.
Winning payment of these back wages -- now 74 billion rubles ($4.7 billion) according to the unions -- is a central union demand.
Demonstrators will also seek the resignation of President Boris Yeltsin, who has appeared weak and indecisive for much of 1998
amid the worsening economic situation.
"All demonstrations will adopt resolutions with proposals to deputies and other officials to vote soon for Yeltsin's dismissal,"
Communist leader Gennady Zyuganov told reporters.
He said he expected up to 40 million to register their disapproval, including 10 million on the streets.
The largest protests are likely in Moscow, where 150,000 demonstrators have been authorized to meet next to the Kremlin walls
outside Red Square. About 11,000 police will work to prevent disorder, a spokesman said.
In St Petersburg, unions hope to gather as many as 150,000 in front of the Winter Palace, home of the Hermitage Museum and
focus of the 1917 Bolshevik October revolution.
The national union leadership, which has an uneasy relationship with the Communists, agreed on Tuesday to unify two separate
Moscow marches, but were still undecided on whether to allow Zyuganov to speak there, officials said.
In an earlier move that disappointed the Communists, the union said they would demand early elections to the
Communist-dominated Duma, the lower house of parliament, which they say shares responsibility for Russia's crisis.
Despite a decade-long depression, Russian unions have largely proved unable to stage sustained nationwide strikes. Late in the
summer, unions scrapped earlier plans to make Oct. 7 the start of an open-ended national strike.
Coal miners did bring unusually strong pressure by blocking the Trans-Siberian railroad earlier this year.
But protests in recent days, including a student demonstration and a gathering marking Yeltsin's violent 1993 dissolution of the
Soviet-era parliament, fell far short of expectations.
"Everything will depend on the weather, and tomorrow's weather report is bad," said Yury Shulyak, union leader in the Urals city of
Chelyabinsk. "It would not be right for the union to call on people to come out in snow and wind."
Many local officials say they expected far fewer protesters than unions predict, although even police might take part in some
actions. In Yeltsin's home city of Yekaterinburg, off-duty officers were due to join the marchers to demand overdue wages. ( (c) 1998
Reuters) |
