in the campaign “Operation "Chechevitsa": the Total Deportation of the Chechen People and the Special Settlement Regime (1943-1949)”
The USSR built its accusations of Chechen "banditry" on falsified statistics: an inspection by the central apparatus of the Soviet NKVD (predecessor of today's FSB) in the summer of 1943 showed that of 213 "bandits" reported killed, only 22 people had ever been on file; at the end of August 1943 the files listed 359 members of "bandit groups" for the entire Checheno-Ingushetia[1]. On 9 November 1943 Deputy People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs Kobulov submitted to People's Commissar (Minister) of Internal Affairs Beria a report "On the Situation in the Districts of the Checheno-Ingush ASSR" "with deliberately false figures alleging a mass presence of active bandits and deserters. 'Kobulov! A very good memorandum,' Beria noted on the report, and set in motion the preparation of Operation 'Chechevitsa'"[1]. Beria lied in his final report as well - he informed the leadership of the USSR that the deportation had passed "without serious instances of resistance or incidents"; historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "In his report to the country's leadership the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs lied outright: the deportation of the Chechens was accompanied by numerous incidents and mass killings of peaceful residents"[1]. The Chechen historian A. G. Avtorkhanov, writing about this in emigration in 1952, took the official version apart point by point. The motive announced by the decree of 25 June 1946 he quotes verbatim - "Many Chechens and Ingush, incited by German agents, voluntarily joined formations organized by the Germans and, together with the German armed forces, took up arms against the Red Army... Therefore the Checheno-Ingush Republic is to be liquidated and its population deported" - and calls it calculated "for the ignorance of the Soviet people and the unawareness of the West"[2]. Against this version he sets two facts: "during the Second World War not once did a German soldier set foot on the territory of the Checheno-Ingush Republic, save for the brief occupation of the border settlement of Malgobek, populated by Russians," and "the Chechens and Ingush were physically unable to join German formations, since there was no compulsory conscription in Checheno-Ingushetia"[2].