in the campaign “Muhajirism: the expulsion of Chechens to the Ottoman Empire, the ban on return, and population replacement (1858-1872)”
The head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov, set out the plan: "...the Chechen population had to be herded into one place... This population, cut off on one side from the mountains by the new stanitsas... would no longer dare to threaten us with an uprising and would not escape the most vigilant surveillance"[1]. The land of those who left was taken by the treasury: "many auls emptied completely; the untended lands became overgrown with weeds. These lands were confiscated for the benefit of the treasury"[2], and it was allotted "to Russian officers, the local nobility and, chiefly, to the Cossack hosts"[2]. The replacement proceeded stanitsa by stanitsa: in 1861-1865 alone, 81 Cossack stanitsas were founded on the emptied lands of the North Caucasus[3]. In Chechnya this can be seen step by step: in 1868 the resettlement of the Chechens was directly subordinated to the stationing of the Sunzha Cossack regiments - there was an option of leaving the inhabitants on the right bank of the Sunzha, "but the Cossack host laid claim to these lands, so the Chechens were moved to the left bank of the Terek and the Sunzha, and their lands were taken by the 1st and 2nd Sunzha regiments"[2]. From 1863 to 1885, 112 settlements were founded in the Terek oblast, mostly of Russian settlers, while the Terek Cossack Host occupied a third of the oblast's area while making up a fifth of its inhabitants[2]. The difference shows in the allotments: a Cossack family received on average from 57 to 90 desiatinas (a desiatina is slightly more than a hectare)[4], whereas in the Chechen auls a family had "0.5 – 10 desiatinas... that is, no more than 2 desiatinas per head"[3].