in the campaign “Muhajirism: the expulsion of Chechens to the Ottoman Empire, the ban on return, and population replacement (1858-1872)”
The Viceroy of the Caucasus and commander-in-chief of the Caucasus Army Baryatinsky - on the Chechens who wished to leave: "...it is perhaps no bad thing that all this rabble, which is only a burden to us, will leave. Do not stop them, let them go to Mecca or wherever they wish. And I will take care to present this matter to the Sovereign in the proper light..." - to the emperor the matter was presented as "a voluntary movement of the Chechens themselves"[1]. The head of the Kuban oblast, General Yevdokimov, who carried out the expulsion of the highlanders of the Western Caucasus, formulated the principle: "Philanthropy first of all to our own; as for the highlanders, I consider myself entitled to grant them only what remains for their share after the last of Russian interests has been satisfied"[1]. The optic in which such decisions were taken was also articulated by imperial scholarship: Berzhe, who headed the Caucasus Archaeographic Commission for 22 years and compiled the first ten volumes of the "Acts"[2], grounded distrust of the highlanders in their nature: "The eight-hundred-thousand-strong highland population of the Terek and Dagestan oblasts forms here an almost solid mass... Permeated by Muslim fanaticism, inflamed by the long war, it continues to hate us as still-recent sworn enemies, as infidels, and will preserve this feeling as long as we remain giaours in its eyes"[3]. This is not an order but the voice of the epoch - the language in which the expulsion looked natural.