The squeezing of the Chechens out of the mountains was built on depriving them of the means of life - and the empire wrote about this openly. Vorontsov, viceroy and commander-in-chief in the Caucasus, reported to Minister of War Chernyshev in an official letter (otnosheniye) of 25 October 1847: "constrained in their means of life, seeing their constant failures, the Chechens waver, and a large number of families are already resettling into our bounds"[1]. General Sleptsov, in a report of 4 October 1850, built on this a calculation for the future: the mountain communities, "constrained by our future settlements in the valley, ... will inevitably follow the example of their compatriots" - that is, they too would come down to the fortifications[2].