in the campaign “Muhajirism: the expulsion of Chechens to the Ottoman Empire, the ban on return, and population replacement (1858-1872)”
The empire's answer to the pleas of those who returned was fixed in a formula "at the very highest level": "Of any return migration of the highlanders there can be no talk"[1]. Under the rules approved in June 1861 by the chief of the Main Staff of the Caucasus Army, General Kartsov, highlanders who had entered Turkish subjecthood or overstayed their passports were "resolutely forbidden" to return[2]. By November 1865, 2,600 people had gathered at the border, ready to accept Orthodoxy for the sake of returning - "However, the Russian leadership even on such terms was in no hurry to let them through the border... they no longer had anywhere to return to; their ancestral lands had been either confiscated or sold"[2]. Those who tried to return secretly were caught for years: in 1867, 162 people were detained; in 1868 - 663; in 1869 - 369; in 1870 - 1,263; "Over ten years, from 1862 to 1872, 5,964 highlanders (mostly Chechens) managed to return to the Terek oblast, of whom 2,315 the authorities forcibly expelled to Turkey once again"[1]. Even those permitted were not allowed home: the returning Karabulaks (a Vainakh society kindred to the Chechens) "were not admitted to their native lands, but settled as a single aul, Sagopshi, on the lands of the Chechen village of Psedakh"[1].