Gorbachev Plans to Speed Economic Reform

Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev told workers in the industrial city of Sverdlovsk that falling production had convinced him that economic reforms must be speeded up, the official Tass news agency reported Friday.

His remarks were reported the same day statistics were released saying Soviet industrial production amounted to $381 billion in the first quarter of 1990, down 1.2% from a year ago.

“We were planning to move more slowly, but then we saw the process of industry of the last three or four months,” Gorbachev said in a speech Thursday during a visit to Sverdlovsk in the Ural Mountains.

“We noted that negative tendencies are not disappearing. On the contrary, they are increasing,” he said.

“One should not wait any more. Everything that was scheduled for 1992 and 1993 we should begin carrying out now. This year something should be done and the main work on transferring to the market (economy) should start next year.”

An economic plan proposed by Prime Minister Nikolai I. Ryzhkov and adopted by Parliament in December called for price reform starting in 1991, but postponed until 1993 other moves toward a market-based system and did not provide for monetary reform.

After two days of addressing residents’ worries about the sagging economy in the Ural Mountains city, Gorbachev traveled to nearby Nizhny Tagil and confronted a new issue: pollution.

Gorbachev was besieged with complaints Friday about foul water and air in a city of 403,000 so polluted that children have drawn pictures of smog and written: “I don’t want to die!”

“Metal is metal, but people, Mikhail Sergeyevich, are not iron,” a metalworker told the president as they met on the shop floor of the Nizhny Tagil Metallurgical Complex. The comment was reported by the Tass news agency.

Huge demonstrations have been reported in Nizhny Tagil and other Soviet cities as residents demand a cleanup of air and water.

Gorbachev took a walking tour of the sprawling metallurgical complex, stopping occasionally to field workers’ questions.

“I know about the situation with your water and air,” Gorbachev responded. He said the solution lies in a government plan for modernizing local factories’ equipment.