Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

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

CLAS UNCLASSIFIED

CLAS UNCLASSIFIED

AFSN LD3004111190C

DDAT 900426

SLIN Moscow Television Service in Russian 1500 GMT 26 Apr 90

AUTH Gorbachev and other officials to workers at the Uralmash production association in Sverdlovsk on 25 April, and including Gorbachev answering workers' questions -- recorded

SUBS [Addresses by Gorbachev and other officials to workers at the Uralmash production association in Sverdlovsk on 25 April, and including Gorbachev answering workers' questions -- recorded

SUBJ TAKE ALL-- Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

Full Text Superzone of Message

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2 [Excerpts] [Gorbachev] I believe that what the Urals are doing and the responsibility resting on the shoulders of the working people of the Urals demand that everything that happens on this soil should always and constantly be within the field of vision of the center, the government, the party Central Committee, the leadership of the country.

3 What is worrying us? It is the fact that the Urals, which has done, is doing, and will do so much for the country, that this mighty region now is experiencing great distortions and strains in its development. Not only production and economic distortions, but social ones, as well. This already is spilling out into certain moods. The situation is worrying us.

4 These last few hours of contacts and conversations with the Uralmash people show that the correct information is reaching us. People are confirming what was already known to us, which gives rise to a certain disquiet. All the same, we evidently are getting into a situation in which this region, which has done so much and always has tackled -- on the move, as they say -- enormous state tasks, tasks concerning the whole state: in defense, in the whole economy, in the country's power, has ended up in a position in which many issues concerning people's lives here have been moved aside, as it were. In any case, one evidently can speak of certain deformations having taken place in the development of production forces in the Urals. On the one hand, a mighty cadre and scientific potential has been created, which yet is capable of performing great tasks. On the other hand, there are problems of ecology and social tension because there are great distortions and lags, primarily in the development of the social sphere. What does the center need to do? What do you need to do here? What must be done together? I would like to ask you to talk about this, especially as our meeting and my arrival in your oblast coincide precisely with a very important stage in the development of our economic reform. We have gone through a sort of preparatory stage in that reform and have come to understand the country in which we live. Perhaps we have mainly understood its illnesses, which along with its achievements, undoubtedly exist. We have tried many approaches in the economic sphere, many new methods of management. Some have succeeded, others not. Here and there we have simply miscalculated. Now we have the starting foundations of a legal order and economic experience. We have acquired experience, and have started thinking and talking to each other differently. An environment has come about in which one can get economic reform underway solidly and radically.

Approved for Release

2/2010