Gorbachev backs Yeltsin's program
This news story first came out 30 years ago to the day, and we are publishing it today as part of Interfax's project, "Timeline of the Last Days of USSR. This Day 30 Years Ago." The project's goal is to reconstruct as fully as possible the timeline of the last few months of 1991 and to give everyone interested in understanding the historical processes of that period the opportunity to study and analyze the events that led to and accompanied the collapse of the Soviet Union and the emergence of the new Russian state. The complete timeline can be found in Russian.
MOSCOW. Nov 4 (Interfax) – Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev gave his backing to the program of radical economic reforms proposed by Russian leader Boris Yeltsin last week and said he hoped the Soviet State Council would support it.
"A most difficult situation" has arisen in the country, Gorbachev said at a meeting of the State Council in Moscow on Monday.
"We disposed irresponsibly of the capital we got after the putsch," the president said. "People trusted us, but we don't justify their hopes," he said.
Gorbachev stressed the need to prevent the dissolution of the state.
Citing his conversation with Yeltsin, Gorbachev said that Russia would act within the framework of the Treaty on Economic Community and play a constructive role there, counting on the assistance of the republics at the same time. "You cannot create barriers between the republics for the market to completely dissolve," the president said.
Unprecedented consumer market frenzy was brought about by "another of the government’s blunders,” he said. “We cannot liberalize prices without resolving the issues of encouraging manufacturing and de-monopolization, taking measures to reduce budget costs, motivating entrepreneurs or determining ways to regulate prices for some necessities,” Gorbachev said.
He also said he wanted to see swift progress with signing a political treaty on the Union of Sovereign States. Citing the outcome of negotiations in Madrid and Paris, Gorbachev said that the West feared the dissolution of the Union. The Union is a foundation of strategic balance, he said.
Speaking about the food problem, Gorbachev said that the country had enough wheat, but there was a problem with fodder grain.
The main thing now is to organize a logistics system to distribute agricultural produce and food, including that received a Western aid, he said. Gorbachev also proposed forming a task force of representatives of the republics, transport companies, financiers and others on whom the solution of this problem depends.
