New York, New York - it's a wonderful town - excerpts from a speech by Boris Yeltsin at Columbia University

National Review, Oct 13, 1989

New York, New York -- It's a Wonderful Town

I WAS TOLD that capitalism is in the process of rotting away. New York was described as a pile of gravestones piled one on the other. That's not true at all. Some of what are, in the United States, called "slums" would pass for pretty decent housing in the Soviet Union. I've been here two days and the first thing I've seen is that capitalism is flourishing.

I support Gorbachev, his trategy for perestroika and the renovation of Soviet society. But if you tell the Soviet people that they will have sausage by the year 2010, that is hardly going to satisfy them. My proposal was first to start with political reform. Then concentrate on three areas: foods, consumer goods, and housing, neglecting other areas for the time being--the defense budget, for instance. We should also refrain from implementing several space programs that have no particular technical purpose. They are really being done just to show the world we are just as good as the Americans, who, of course, are better.

We've now had four years of perestroika. One thing that's happened is that in many parts of the country the specialized hospitals that were built only for the privileged class have been renounced by them and turned into children's hospitals. I signed up with the local (unprivileged) polyclinic, and when I went to see the local doctor there for the first time, she kept telling me the pipes are broken, the windows aren't fixed, the floors have to be repaired. I'm not even mentioning that they have to use one hypodermic needle for the whole hospital. [Our italics.]

Today we have an economic crisis, a financial crisis, a nationalities crisis, a standard-of-living crisis. Forty-eight million people live below the poverty line. The Party is in a crisis. Society is in a crisis. If there are not some substantial improvements within the next year, we will see the beginning of a revolution from below. We have to prevent bloodletting.

We shouldn't even set ourselves the goal of catching up and overtaking the United States, in order not to pull the wool over the eyes of our people . . . We should throw off our false pride and, in general, take a greal deal from American experience in all areas.

Extracts from a speech by Mr. Boris Yeltsin, Supreme Soviet member, at Columbia University during his recent visit to the United States.