Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

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

familiar with his program and his speeches. If you read his speeches in order, they are like an old and well-worn record, a collection of theses. The leadershiop is coming to the end of its time; it has worn itself out; it has become cut off from the people, etc.

Well, what can I say? If you take the critical part of it, there is some use in all this, but I cannot agree with the wholesale accusations which he makes against the leadership of the country, against the Party and the Central Committee. Everything that he touches on, all these subjects require serious political analysis, and this should be done only by devoting oneself in a principled, exacting, and critical way. But the dialogue must be conducted responsibly and seriously.

Comrade Yeltsin is speculating on the difficulties. on the dissatisfaction which really exists in our country, and indeed the socio-economic tension and other tensions are all something that exist. One can act by drawing lessons from this and turning the cause, the country, the Party toward solving the question. And one can act by simply speculating on it from demagogic positions. I think Boris Nikolayevich has become carried away; Yeltsin has got carried away and he just cannot get down and away from this destructive position, you understand.

Perhaps as I am in Sverdlovsk, since you ask me, I have said it more or less extensively, so to speak. I have never generally been drawn into these discussions. I consider them on the whole unnecessary. We need to do the job and not to become engaged in populist slogans and promises. You know, from what is being said by comrade Yeltsin and others, I could in every case show how much of it is unfounded and contrived.

Well, perhaps I should answer the Sverdlovsk people since much has been said no doubt to you also by comrade Yeltsin about privileges. No doubt this question is of interest to those in the hall and those outside the hall who are listening to our conversation, and Sverdlovsk people overall want to receive my answer on this account.

I have already said in my conversation with the Uralmash people: This is my point of view. We nmust get within sight of there being no unlawfully [Gorbachev corrects himself] no privileges, of there being one privilege: That a person's toil, talent, position, and merit should be valued, but on a legal (?basis) so to speak. In this connection we have already solved much. I think it has reached your region too and is being dealt with. In the country, overall, much has been tackled so that all kinds of mansions, special this, that, and the other -- all this is being transferred the whole time. In many oblasts and republics this process has indeed been completed. In Moscow the practice that took shape is that the country's supreme leadership was ensured state dachas. This practice exists from the times of Lenin -- even then.

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[Excerpts] [Gorbachev continues] But later on, in the 1930's, this whole practice was given legal status, so to speak, by corresponding decisions. I will tell you about it. This was done to set leadership salaries at a certain level, to make sure that they would not differ sharply, so to speak, from the salaries of workers, officials, and the intelligentsia. The salary of a member of the Politburo was set at R800 [rubles]. A secretary -- no, all of them, both members and secretaries of the Politburo -- received R800. But it was possible to order provisions worth R400. And there was a perk. You could live in an apartment and pay for it at a fixed rate. And there were a number of other concessions.