Spud-picking protests

Press, 24 October 1989, Page 13

Spud-picking protests

IN MOSCOW

Patricia Legras

SOVIET STUDENTS are again being used to pick potatoes in spite of a new law making the work voluntary. This year, the practice has brought many protests — about wages, pesticides and radioactivity risks. The usual grumbling has become a wave of protest. Students in Minsk are on strike because they are refusing to be sent to the areas of Bielorussia which are now known to have been hit by radioactivity from the Chernobyl nuclear accident. Moscow University students are trying to get higher wages out of the local State farms.

Others, from the University of the Urals, say they have been poisoned by massive doses of pesticides smothering onions in the fields near Sverdlovsk.

After four days in the fields, they began to feel ill. A firstyear student from the philosophy faculty temporarily lost the use of her legs. Doctors at the Sverdlovsk hospital diagnosed poisoning by toxic chemicals.

In spite of this, more students are being sent out to the same State farm to replace the others.

Local officials say the toxicity of the products has now worn off, although a newspaper correspondent reporting the case noticed that these same officials refused offers of food while they were visiting the farm. Officially, this is the first year when such student labour is no longer compulsory. With support from the Minister of Education, two decrees were passed in August — by his Ministry and the Government — making agricultural work “strictly voluntary.” . However, it seems that many universities are sticking to old habits. There are complaints in the press that some are hiding the existence of new decrees from their students, or are threatening them with repercussions if they do not go out to the fields. Other institutes are trying persuasive tactics by offering tourist

trips, training schemes, explaining the necessity of the work and calling on a sense of civic responsibility. The loss of student labour would be a great blow to agricultural ministries. The region of Moscow alone needs 130,000 workers at the peak period to bring in vegetables. At the moment, it can only find a third of that number. Autumn set in early, and local authorities hoped in vain to start the potatopicking, with student help, in the last week of August. z They complain that Moscow University has provided only half the manpower expected and is using the new decree to bargain over the tariffs students should be paid. “They have already been doubled,” says Igor Skvortsov, vice-president of the regional Agroprom, in charge of agricultural production.

He is even proposing that those who go into the fields could be paid in kind and given transport to Moscow’s markets, where they could sell the vegetables for their own pocket money. Since the price of potatoes has risen sharply since last year, he feels he cannot offer more.

Mr Skvortsov is extremely worried about getting in the crop before it goes rotten and winter sets in. These days, Moscow will be expected to supply its own potatoes under new rules for regional self-sufficiency.

Since the factories have now moved over to cost accounting, he says they will no longer hand over their workers for the harvest since they need them themselves to balance their books. There is little mechanisation. “We cannot do without the help of the students,” he says. Since potatoes and onions are staple items in the Soviet diet, Moscow and other regions face a long and hungry winter if the crop is not harvested in time.