26 Steel Furnaces Shut; Miners Ignore Russian Plant’s Plea

The threat of a Soviet economic collapse grew Saturday as a six-week miners’ strike brought parts of the steel industry to a halt and separatists from the Georgian republic stopped fuel shipments from reaching Russia from Black Sea ports.

The director of the Makeyevka steel plant in the Ukraine told the independent Postfactum news agency that 26 blast furnaces had been shut down across the country.

Normally, plants try to keep furnaces running at all costs because it may take up to a year to start them up again.

In addition, coal miners in the Ural Mountains city of Vorkuta rejected an appeal to resume shipments to the fuel-starved Cherepovetsk metal plant north of Moscow. Municipal leaders said they received a telegram Friday from the Russian Federation government asking them to make sure coal is delivered.

Adding to President Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s problems, the republic of Georgia cut off oil and coal deliveries from the Black Sea ports of Batumi and Poti to support its declaration of independence made last week.

The miners’ strike sent shock waves through other sectors of the ailing economy.

Local authorities in Kemerovo, center of the Siberian Kuzbass coal field, said they would soon be unable to pay teachers, doctors and other employees.

Television news said a shortage of soda due to stoppages at chemical plants had hit production of glass for medical uses.