The article explores the impact of the miner strike movement in Donbas on the post-communist transition in Ukraine from 1989 to 1994. By focusing on the Donbas strike movement, its relationship with the nationalist intelligentsia, and a later co-optation of its mobilizing potential by regional elites, it provides an analysis of the agency of bottom-up social forces operating within a particular cultural framework during the transition period. The striking miners played a significant role in the reclamation of Ukrainian independence in 1991. Building on this momentum, Donbas politicians were able to politicize the already existing socio-cultural diversity of Ukrainian society and to define the fundamental political cleavage in Ukraine in self-serving, regionalist terms.