Documents / FOIA release
This is a Central Intelligence Agency record dated 26 April 1990. It carries a TASS International Service account, sent from Sverdlovsk in several parts, of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's visit to the Urals. The text covers his meeting with Uralmash workers and managers about economic reform, housing, market transition, unemployment and party unity. It also describes his visits to a supermarket, war veterans, a defense conversion exhibition and the Urals Scientific Center. It contains no UFO material.
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# UNCLASSIFIED CLAS UNCLASSIFIED CLAS UNCLASSIFIED AFSN LD2604205290C DDAT 900426 SLIN Moscow TASS International Service in Russian 1222 GMT 26 Apr 90 SUBJ TAKE ALL--Gorbachev Urals Visit Full Text Superzone of Message 1 [Excerpts] Sverdlovsk, 26 April (TASS special correspondent)-- We are transmitting the full text of an account of Mikhail Gorbachev's stay in the Urals. 2 What needs to be done to live better, to radically change the socioeconomic situation in the country? This question arose repeatedly during the meetings of M.S. Gorbachev, USSR president, general secretary of the CPSU Central Committee, in labor collectives in the Urals. Today is the second day of Mikhail Sergeyevich's stay in Sverdlovsk. 3 Yesterday evening at the works management of Uralmash he had a meeting, lasting hours, with workers, engineering and technical staff, representatives of the labor collective council, and with the party aktiv of the association. Since the auditorium could not accommodate everyone who wanted to take part in the frank, controversial conversation, its progress was relayed to the works square where many hundreds of Uralmash people had gathered. 4 I have a tremendous desire to have a talk with you in a calm, businesslike atmosphere, M.S. Gorbachev said, opening the meeting. What is worrying us? The fact that the Urals, which has done, is doing and will do so much for the country--this mighty region is now experiencing great distortions and strains in its development. Not only production and economic ones but also social ones. And this is already spilling out into certain moods. The situation is worrying us. 5 These last few hours of contacts and conversations with the Uralmash people shows that the correct information is reaching us. People are confirming what was already known to us, which gives rise to a certain disquiet. In any case, one can evidently speak of certain deformations having taken place in the development of the urals' production forces. the one hand, a mighty cadre and scientific potential has been created, still capable of performing further great tasks, and on the other hand there are problems of ecology and social tension. 6 M.S. Gorbachev asked the Uralmash people to express their ideas on this point. 7 Our meeting and my arrival in your oblast, he continued, precisely coincides with a very important stage in the development of the economic reform. 8 What we have gone through is like a preparatory stage of that reform, and we have come to understand the country in which we live. Perhaps in the main we have understood its illnesses which, along with achievements, undoubtedly exist. We have tried many approaches in the economic sphere, new methods of management. Some have succeeded, others not, and here and there we have simply miscalculated. 9 But at all events this was the period which, especially when we are talking about one of the greatest changes in the country's history, we have passed through, and now we have the foundations of a legal order, and
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 15 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.