ABSTRACT
Analyses of El'tsin's presidency have been marked, above all, by speculations about the influence of powerful business elites on economic policy making.1 Though not all observers agree on the role these so-called oligarchs played between 1992 and 1999, the discussion has definitely' diverted attention away from the influence that other social groups might have had. One such group were workers, who are traditionally expected to engage in some kind of lobbying activity in an industrialised state with some political freedoms. Post-Soviet workers' protests in Russia were associated for a long time with the coal miners because they had protested against the government's economic policy earlier, stronger and more rigidly than any other social group. In addition, the coal industry was one of Russia's main industrial branches and could not be ignored by the government. Both observations allow for the hypothesis that coal miners were in a better position to influence economic policy making than were workers in other branches.
