in the campaign “Muhajirism: the expulsion of Chechens to the Ottoman Empire, the ban on return, and population replacement (1858-1872)”
Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The principal means of driving out the highlanders became depriving them of their main source of existence – the land. The transfer of vast lands on the plains to Cossack stanitsas left thousands of highlanders without means of subsistence"[1]. Imperial statistics recorded the result: "each family in the auls has 0.5 – 10 desiatinas... With such crowding not only the development of farms, but even the existence of the people cannot be considered secured" (a desiatina is slightly more than a hectare)[2]. Meanwhile the operation's own executors were reporting the opposite. The head of the Argun okrug, Major A. Ippolitov, wrote to the head of the Terek oblast, General Loris-Melikov: "I can positively tell Your Excellency that the people are not even thinking of voluntary resettlement to Turkey; at a general assembly they declared to me that they would go only when the whole of Chechnya leaves to the last man, or when they are ordered to go"[3]. Colonel Bellik on 25 March 1865 reported to the same Loris-Melikov the words of a Chechen: "we will not go to Turkey and will not let those go who are preparing to; in Turkey death awaits us, and it awaits us here too, but here it is more pleasant, because here is our homeland and here lie our fathers, slain by the Russians"[3].