positions of responsibility of "non-reformable bureaucrats, career-minded people, hooded ONR followers, anti-semites, nationalists and morally deprived people". The "completely inert" Sejm should be competitively elected from separate lists of the participating parties and activists not affiliated with any party (members in the Front of National Unity), which would be applauded by the electorate and "our brothers, the Western communists". The peculiarities of Ochab's proposed solutions included advocating the original "Leninist" ways, such as an establishment of Worker Delegate Councils in enterprises, and his belief that old comrades from the prewar Communist Party of Poland ought to be returned to power. Stripped of its Leninist phraseology, the idea of powerful Worker Councils could be interpreted as a call for a massive labor union movement (delegates elected in all institutions employing one hundred or more people would collectively constitute a second chamber of parliament), something attempted several years later by Solidarity. Such postulates (or their dissemination abroad) could not have been well received by the PZPR's new leadership and Ochab and his views were severely rebuked. During a dispute in his local party organization, Ochab warned that the current investment policy was still wrong, "the economy will collapse, which will create a new December". From 13 November 1971 to 19 January 1972 Ochab and his wife took a Western Europe coast and Mediterranean Sea cruise on board a Polish merchant ship. During the journey they were closely followed by the Polish secret services, but the government picked up its entire cost. In October 1977, Ochab was one of the signatories of the letter addressed to First Secretary Gierek and the Politburo. It was signed by a group of intellectuals and former party activists and was highly critical of Gierek team's political and economic record. The letter referred to the protests of the previous year and called for fundamental political and democratizing reforms. Repressions and restrictions would only aggravate the crisis, the authors wrote, and open societal dialog was necessary. Free elections to the Sejm and local councils and especially close partnership with labor unions were urged as prerequisites to any real improvement in the country's precarious internal situation. In November 1979, as the PZPR's Eighth Congress was approaching, Ochab wrote a ten-page letter To Comrades Communists, which Jerzy Eisler characterizes as highly ideological, detached from practical usefulness. Most of the current party leadership, wrote Ochab referring to the events of prewar Poland,