Take All--Gorbachev Urals Visit

Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.

## UNCLASSIFIED

participate in the pre-election struggle, and ask ourselves whether it was because it was taking place in such a form that this was discouraging from them. One must learn from this. One mustn't allow the soviets, which to some extent, I would say, no longer fully represent the working class and peasantry, to find themselves cut off from life and from people's real concerns.

## LD2704090790TAKE6

[Excerpts] My main point in my answer on the role of the working class in the current crucial time is this: If the working class remains apart from the political processes, or at least does not take up an active role, perestroyka will lose, we will be marking time. I want us to understand this. More opportunities for the working class to take a more active role have come into being today. Both the trade unions, the labor collectives councils and other social and economic mechanisms need to be used so that the working class may influence everything which now occurs.

Answering a question about individual housing construction, he stressed the necessity to meet people's initiatives halfway in all ways possible and to give them the maximum help including the use of enterprises' resources. A real opportunity now exists to accelerate housing construction and I have several proposals on this count. I would ask local bodies to concern themselves with the allocation of land for individual housing construction. It is also necessary to give land for gardens and vegetable gardens so that those who wish to, may grow all that they need for themselves. This has both a social and educative significance, and a significance in relation to foodstuffs. A man on the earth, communing with the earth, is a quite different man.

M.S. Gorbachev read out the following question: "In my view, the open letter of the CPSU Central Committee on consolidation based on principle, contradicts the principle expounded in your Lenin speech. This principle is closer to me as an ordinary party member. I know your style fairly well thanks to the mass media and it seemed to me that you personally did not participate in the composition of the open letter. Is this so?" I will speak bluntly--I did participate, was the answer. I think, comrades, we should take into account the concern, to which Communists' letters to the Central Committee serve as testimony. There are messages from your works among them as well. Gatherings and conferences express anxiety about the party's fate and about preparing properly for the congress so that it can cope with the tasks being placed before it, both from the point of view of the aims of perestroyka and from the point of view of strengthening and enhancing the vanguard role of the CPSU. We have taken this in and have tried, as far as possible to express it in the platform and the draft rules. Perhaps a little more work was needed but the documents were published so that communists could discuss them, express critical remarks and go to the congress with good ideas and proposals which would strengthen the party and give it a new, attractive look. And as well, so that communists might feel themselves to be really in charge in the party.

It may be that as yet not everything is working out, but the direction, the line we have taken is the correct one. We have invited Communists to come forward with alternative platforms. We are for freedom of thought, for the juxtaposition of points of view. We have published the "Democratic Platform," then the "Platform For a Marxist Party"--go ahead,