RUSSIAN MINERS END STRIKE\Government money produces agreement.

Byline: Michael R. Gordon The New York Times

Securing a respite from election year labor unrest, the Russian government tapped its severely strained budget Saturday to persuade striking miners to go back to work.

After rushing money to the miners and assuring them that a hefty $2.2 billion would be allocated to the coal industry this year, Russian officials persuaded the Russian Coal Workers Union to end a two-day strike by about a half-million miners.

Still, the vote by the union's board was 6-5. And mine leaders warned that they would resume the strike March 1 if the government failed to keep up the payments of back wages.

The government's speedy response to the economically depressed but still politically potent miners was the first demonstration of President Boris N. Yeltsin's election-year promise to be more responsive to the demands of industry and workers, even at the cost of the strict budget discipline demanded by the West.

The change in economic emphasis has been signaled by a blizzard of potentially budget-busting decrees signed by Yeltsin, as well as by his appointment of the Soviet-style industrialist Vladimir V. Kadannikov as the government's top economic official.

It is still unclear how much additional, and potentially inflationary, spending Yeltsin is willing to disburse to try to quell unrest at home and raise his low ratings in the opinion polls. But the government's approach to the mine strike shows that its promises on spending are not simply talk.

Under the accord hammered out with mine officials, the government will pay $133 million in back wages. That is less than the $200 million the miners demanded. But most of the money due the miners is not owed by the government, but by power stations and other coal consumers.

The government committed itself to other spending as well. All told, $2.2 billion is to be spent on the coal industry in 1996, according to a financial package signed by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin.

That sum includes investment, subsidies and back pay, and is a $600 million increase over what the government previously planned to spend there this year. And it goes to just one of many ailing industries.