Based on this excerpt, explain how the audience affects what Mikhail Gorbachev includes in his speech. [1]

Explanation:

"Dear compatriots! Fellow citizens! Due to the situation that has taken shape as a result of the

formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States, I am ceasing my activity in the post of

President of the USSR. I am making this decision out of considerations of principle.

I have fi rmly advocated the independence of peoples and the sovereignty of [Soviet] republics. But

at the same time I have favored the preservation of the Union state and the integrity of the country.

Events have taken a different path. A policy line aimed at dismembering the country and disuniting

the state has prevailed, something that I cannot agree with . . .

Speaking to you for the last time as President of the USSR, I consider it necessary to express my

assessment of the path traversed [traveled] since 1985. Especially since there are a good many

contradictory, superfi cial and unobjective opinions on this score [state of affairs].

Fate ordained that when I became head of state it was already clear that things were not going

well in the country. We have a great deal of everything — land, petroleum, gas and other natural

resources — and God has endowed us with intelligence and talent, too, but we live much worse

than people in the developed countries do, and we are lagging further and further behind them. . . .

I realized that to begin reforms on such a scale and in such a society as ours was an extremely

diffi cult and even riskier endeavor. But even today I am convinced of the historical correctness of

the democratic reforms that were begun in the spring of 1985 . . .

The totalitarian system, which for a long time deprived the country of the opportunity to become

prosperous and fl ourishing, has been eliminated.

–A breakthrough has been achieved in the area of democratic transformations. Free elections,

freedom of the press, religious freedoms, representative bodies of power and a multiparty system

have become a reality. Human rights have been recognized as the highest principle.

–Movement toward a mixed economy has begun, and the equality of all forms of ownership is

being established. Within the framework of a land reform, the peasantry has begun to revive,

private farming has appeared, and millions of hectares of land are being given to rural and urban

people. The economic freedom of the producer has been legalized, and entrepreneurship, the

formation of joint-stock companies and privatization have begun to gather momentum".