Coal-Faces

Dedicated to the hundreds of coal miners in Ukraine that died in accidents that could have been prevented if safeguards were used and the present privatization of all the mines means that it was profit before safety.

We are miners. Our faces reflect from the mirror of shining coal. They reflect brightly in our Black Sea, also in the Sea of Azov. They shine across all of the wheat fields of Ukraine, through the forests of the beautiful Donets hills, from the mountain peaks in the Carpathian mountains and they also shine from the Dnieper marshes.

You workers of Ukraine... see our reflections across all of the world joining those other miners!

A rescue worker emerges from the coal pit in Barakova mine.

Our strong hands did grasp the pick and shovel, adding strength to the soul of Ukraine. We are striving to bring back hope and sanity to the present terrible everyday conditions foisted upon us by the present bourgeois regime which is interested in profits only, at the expense of miners killed due to unsafe working conditions.

Remember us in all of the cities and also the towns of Ukraine... our struggles were not in vain. The sun shall shine again on Socialist Ukraine. We loved Ivan Franko and Shevchenko. We also loved to sing our songs as we descended into the black earth. We knew the rank and grade of the coal. We knew also the needs of our country and families.

We worked for our families, for our country, for socialism then. We all hoped that our children would be taught not to accept the greed of a system that they are growing in where the safety of the workers is not well protected or where a worker now has no rights.

We worked and mined to see our coal-faces shining in this struggle for a better life for us and all humanity. We longed for the days when there was a Socialist Ukraine, in a great family of nations that was the Soviet Union.

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