Soviet Leader Urges Poles to Back Reforms

WARSAW — Members of Poland’s outlawed Solidarity trade union clearly were not among the invited guests Wednesday as Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev addressed shipyard workers in the Baltic seaport city of Szczecin.

Although the Warski shipyard in Szczecin was one of the centers of labor unrest when the Solidarity movement was born in 1980, the audience seemed carefully chosen by Polish authorities who are taking pains to insulate Gorbachev from Poland’s dissidents.

Gorbachev, who is in Poland on a six-day visit, called on the shipyard workers to support perestroika, his campaign of political and economic restructuring. Many of the workers listened without expression.

He said the Soviet Union and Poland should cooperate in their reform efforts “in order not to commit costly errors, above all political errors,” which he said could be paid for “by the entire nation.”

The Polish authorities, who have frequently employed the word solidarity to their own ends, decorated the sheet-metal shop where Gorbachev spoke with a banner that proclaimed, “We are in solidarity with the Soviet leader.”

“I read that you are in full solidarity with us in the work of perestroika,” Gorbachev said, apparently referring to the banner. “If the Soviet and Polish leadership did not feel the support of the working class, it would not be able to undertake the act of perestroika and renewal. . . . Without the support of the working class, these policies would not be worth anything.”

Meanwhile, Solidarity activists reported that about 2,000 workers had struck three departments of a steel mill at Stalowa Wola, about 120 miles southeast of Warsaw.