State, Labor, and Business in the Oilfields of Russia and Kazakhstan

• In Event: Evolving Patterns of State-Society Relations Across Post-Communist Eurasia

Abstract

In the aftermath of the Soviet collapse, Eurasia's two largest energy exporters - Russia and Kazakhstan - made the surprising decision to privatize much of their previously state-owned oil industries. As oil prices became subject to the notoriously volatile global commodity market, rising worker dissatisfaction put pressure on the relationships between the private stakeholders, local government bodies, and the relevant trade unions (Russia’s FNPR and Kazakhstan’s FTUK, both legacy unions descended from the communist era). Yet, oil workers in Russia’s so-called “oil capital,” Surgut, have been much less strike- and protest-prone than those in Zhanaozen, Kazakhstan, which famously experienced a prolonged strike wave that tragically culminated in a massacre of striking oil workers in December, 2011. What explains this divergence in state-society relations? This paper analyzes relations between workers and their unions, between the relations between the state and unions, and between state and oil companies to trace the causal pathways that culminated in industrial peace in Surgut and labor unrest in Zhanaozen. Neither case revealed much movement towards European patterns of tripartism or labor incoproration; at the same time, the top-down organization of state-society relations evident across Eurasia produced quite distinct patterns and outcomes.

Authors

• Allison D. Evans, University of Nevada, Reno

• Rudra Sil, University of Pennsylvania