Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

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

recently, Mikhail Sergeyevich. [passage omitted: covered in referent item]

People somehow need to be taught to work well, to earn well, and to live well. If we teach any person, not just the producer, but the worker, the designer, and the technologist, they all will do their work.

[Gorbachev] If we forget how to work, or to put it the other way round, do not learn how to work even better, nothing will happen. You might have the most brilliant rallies and even, let me tell you, the very best laws -- I do not think we already have ideal laws, but assume that we do -- but it will all be left hanging if it does not come through the person and his labor.

[Tokminov] [passage indistinct]

[Gorbachev] This is the first thing I support very much. I believe that all the good things that have been accumulated to stimulate human labor -- both moral and material stimuli -- must be used, while adding new ones to them -- I do not want to talk about this now -- through new provisions, so to speak, to enable the person to have a real influence on all matters. We have been throttled by egalitarianism [uravnikovka]. If we do not properly value the labor of the worker, the collective farm worker, the teacher, the doctor and the engineer, but keep on assessing it according to the scale and the rate, we will not move forward. I have been told of cases in which surgeons, for instance, cannot carry out an important operation without high-grade nurses, but a surgeon does not possess any rights to encourage a specialist who, in his opinion, is worthy of a professor's wage. So what happens? Such a nurse leaves the team and the whole cycle of complex operations falls apart. There is a similar picture everywhere.

In science, too, remuneration is according to rank and degree: seniors, juniors, and scientific assistants. However, the contribution to the common cause over a year, over the last five years, which a man has contributed, hardly bothers anyone. But if his work was noticed because, according to the contract, some amount was received thanks to this, then in any case it was divided equally.

We are faced with the problem of stimulating the labor of our top scientists. First, conditions must be created for them, so they all have the necessary apparatus and are armed, so to speak, with appliance to realise their potential. Second, in general, we must, accept the appropriate expenditure in this case. Once, in Stalin's time, a practice dragged on for a long time -- and we have not gotten away from it yet -- for developing, for solving the task of the atom bomb. The leading academicians were given property from the state forever, in order to solve that task, to say nothing of other matters. In other words, we must, in general...[changes thought] There is a task. The collective has made a decision; it must be stimulated. One hundred or 200 must be given over, and not counted. Really, R300 have been counted, and that is all. Or 200, and that gets you nowhere. What then? What will happen then, in general, to the smaller number and better quality? After all, who can do it better and produce more? It is the person who is capable of providing quality. That is talent, his own talent. I do not know; this has to be thought about without waiting for any reforms. I wanted to support you completely.

[Workshop chief Tobolov] [passage omitted: Calls for an end to the election of managers]