Soviets Imposing Travel Controls to Curb Unrest in Georgian Region

Special passes to control people’s movements in ethnically troubled Abkhazia, in Soviet Georgia, will be imposed beginning Thursday, Tass reported Tuesday.

The official news agency said the system requiring residents to have a special card before they can leave town is intended to combat unrest in the region, where 19 people have died since mid-July in clashes between Abkhazians and Georgians.

Citizens would be issued one pass for movements inside their own city. A second pass would allow a person to travel throughout Abkhazia, an autonomous republic within Georgia, but Tass did not say who would be issued a second pass.

All Soviet citizens already carry an internal passport, but it was the first time in recent memory that a system of special passes had been imposed to halt ethnic unrest, which has plagued several areas of the Soviet Union in the past year.

Tensions have been running high for several months in Abkhazia, triggered by demands from Abkhazians for the area to secede from Georgia and be upgraded to a full Soviet republic.

At the same time, strikes in Abkhazia shut down most businesses, including factories, mines and collective farms, according to Krasnaya Zvezda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Red Army. The strikes were in response to a Soviet crackdown in the region, including a dusk-to-dawn curfew.