Talas–Chatkal Regime Zone

The Talas–Chatkal Regime Zone (Russian: Таласо-Чаткальская режимная зона; Iradi colloquially Kordon) was a restricted area in the mountains of the Iradi Soviet Socialist Republic from 1946 to 1968, covering the Talas Alatau, the Chatkal Range and the foothills of the Naryn and the Fergana rim. Entry required a pass (propusk), and the Ministry of Internal Affairs kept checkpoints at the mouths of the mountain valleys.^[1]

The zone was declared after uranium was found at Mailuu-Suu and antimony and other ores were prospected in the Talas Alatau and the Chatkal Range. Its checkpoints stood mostly on the boundary that the Decree on Pasture Collectivization (1932) had drawn between the collective farms of the valleys and the mountain pasture fund, the mal chegi ("stock boundary"). Herders received seasonal passes for their flocks. The zone also allowed the authorities to watch the high valleys where hidden priests of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church still said the liturgy; officials also recalled the 1944 Wartime Mobilization Strike, when herders had hidden Chongtor stallions from the requisition commissions in the same valleys.^[2]

The regime was lifted in 1968, when uranium processing at Mailuu-Suu ended. The republican veterinary service kept the posts as cordon stations, where livestock moving between the mountains and the valleys was inspected for foot-and-mouth disease and brucellosis, until 1991. Iradis went on calling the line of posts the Kordon. Much of the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line of 2007 follows it, and many of its checkpoints, among them the Qara-Chik Border Checkpoint, stand on the sites of the old cordon stations.^[2]

References

1. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 215: Directorate of Internal Affairs of the Iradi SSR, Talas–Chatkal Regime Zone (1946–1968).
2. ^ Department of History, Talas State University (2012). Lines in the Hills: Land, Livestock and Control in the Talas Valley, 1906–2007. Talas State University Press, Talas.