19910400_USSR_148
Leaders of the coal miner strike committee discuss how to pay for the minimum energy costs necessary to maintain the mines during the general strike in the industrial Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. In early 1991 following decades of Cold War sanctions and isolation, the Soviet Union's economy was in ruins, prices were rising and living conditions for average people untenable. Despite Mikhail Gorbachev's Perestroika and Glasnost reforms, Ukrainian coal miners went on strike for political change at the Kremlin and had wide popular support. Later that year Ukraine voted for independence by a margin of 90%, effectively bringing an end to the Soviet Union.
Donetsk, Donbas, Ukraine, USSR. 17/04/1991.
