Gorbachev Addresses Uralmash Workers

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

## UNCLASSIFIED

bodies to be attached to every soviet without fail. The most prominent and vigorous workers, workers who are committed to our cause of renewal, should join these in order to ensure that the elected soviet and the commissions under then are in permanent contact with the working class. That is the first thing. The second point is that they should report back to the workforces and labor collective on what they have done.

to the workforces and labor collective on what they have I shall tell you frankly that without this link between the newly created bodies, the soviets will not function properly. The workers will not be happy. They must know everything that is going on, and what decisions are made. We need to introduce this correction factor. That is my first point.

The second thing is that we must think things through. Comrades have asked the question: What sort of election campaign was it that introduced great chaos and which resulted in many people simply refusing to go and take part in the election campaign. Some of them -- workers -- pulled out. Even once they had been nominated, they refused to participate in the contest because it was proceeding in a form, in a manner that unsettled them. Well, I must say that we cannot simply disregard this. We must think about the entire response we have elicited with an eye to the future in order to introduce correctives. Lessons must be learned from this election campaign. Lessons must be learned. We cannot allow the soviets -- which to some extent have, I would say, been deprived of the genuine representation of the working call and the peasantry -- to become cut off from real life and the real concerns of people. We must ensure that they are in constant touch with the working people via the electoral constituencies and consultative machinery. This must be done, and we must act in this fashion.

And so, in answering the question of how I regard the role of the working class at the present time -- an important time, I repeat -- my main thesis is that of the working class stands aloof from these processes, or at any rate does not take a particularly vigorous stance, then I shall tell you here and now that perestroyka will lose out. Lose out. We will be left marking time. I want us to understand this. There are still great opportunities to take part in tackling all these issues. The Party, the trade unions, the councils of labor collectives, all these mechanisms must be utilized in such a way that the working class exerts its influence on all that is going on just now.

Now I want to answer a number of questions, because they may just cover much of what I was going to talk about later. Two years ago in the country, a resolution of the Council of Ministers and the Central Committee was adopted on the development of private housing construction. At the present moment we have people willing to build housing for themselves under any conditions, but for the past year and a half the initiative group has been coming up against the problems of land allocation. You cannot build on farmland in accordance with a resolution of the Council of Ministers, you cannot build on forest land, because the State Committee for Nature Protection does not permit it. Where can housing be built? Now we must think it over; we need a different housing policy.

First, different cities. So the old ones must also be used and rationally reconstructed. But now it is necessary above all to build. Second, we must lift the restrictions on cooperative and private housing construction, and we must open up every opportunity, provide opportunities