Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

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

ideals. He stands firmly on positions of the working class and has sufficient strength of character to speak the truth to everyone -- which is very important -- and to convey the workers' mood to the Presidential Council. He has broad contacts so he was included in it. As for the others like Nikolay Ivanovich, that is obvious; the minister of foreign affairs and of defense, I think that is understandable, there is no need to justify that. Our science is represented and natural sciences are also represented, as is economic science. Russia's representative is Comrade Rasputin from the creative intelligentsia, and Comrade Aytmatov is representative to our multi-ethnic country. I must say that the last few sessions which have been held attained huge satisfaction from the participation of these people. There is very much that they can say that is useful. So, I, comrades, believe from the first sessions that the collegium can justify the hopes of the president, and I have had no disappointments so far. We shall not hasten, life will show. But much will depend on the president, too, on where he turns.

The government's economic measures which are to be taken in the immediate future contradict the assurances of the chairman of the Council of Ministers at the second congress. Why is this? Yes, this is the second question. Well, I have already touched on this with you, I think. I have tried in the conversations during my visits to the workshops to tell the comrades and answer this question, and here we have already touched on the subject. Comrades, we are really approaching a very important stage in the development of economic reform. As proposed by the government in its program in the fall, you will remember it contains a pre-market stage, so to speak, on the creation and improvement of the market, the improvement of the financial system, and the implementation of measures in monetary circulation. All this has to be implemented. Well, we can see that the four months since have shown that the measures which we wanted for 1992 and 1998 have to be brought forward. The economy, perhaps, cannot hold out until then. It will collapse. So I would say this is not a denial and we are not repudiating the program. We see that adjustments have to be made to the program and the schedules have to be tightened. We have to make the transition more quickly. We have given up the command-administrative methods but we have not replaced them with the economic methods yet and we have to put this whole system of measures into action as soon as possible, which means we must get moving.

That means we must move in a responsible way toward a market economy, toward the mechanism of a market economy, toward new approaches to price formation, toward the whole package connected with a market economy. We must work through many issues and decide our next moves for both the remaining months of this year and for 1991 onward. These will be very important moves. We shall certainly publish them and have a nationwide discussion on them, and after obtaining general agreement, so to say -- at least that of the majority of our people -- we shall launch them. They will be measures providing for both radicalization and intensification, but at the same time safety mechanisms will be included: fixed prices for a number of the most important goods, so that, in particular, things affecting people's lives should not collapse, and so that the market should not worsen things yet further for us. There will be measures for protection, for compensation, and so on and so forth. In other words, people must know this for certain: As we said, we shall discuss these questions when we approach that stage, and when we have to engage in price