in the campaign “"Exiled Forever": Life in Special Settlement and Return to an Occupied Homeland (1949-1965)”
The colonizer exploited the labor of the deported Chechens under threat of prison. By its resolution of 21 February 1948 the government of the USSR ordered the organization of the "correct and obligatory labor utilization of the special settlers"[1]. According to the reports of the special settlements department of the secret police, the Chechens and Ingush worked at the disposal of all the ministries (the "narkomats") except the military one: as of 1 January 1949, 125,753 people were employed in agriculture, 6,175 in the coal industry, 9,737 in metallurgy, 12,011 in local industry[2]. Those whom the agency listed among the "malicious evaders of work on the collective farms" were, by joint order of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the USSR and the Prosecutor General, to be tried under Article 82 - "deprivation of freedom for 8 years" - but the secret police admitted that on the ground people were sent into a new 8-year exile without any trial at all, by decisions of collective-farm meetings[1]. Even the relaxation the colonizer tied to labor: by the resolution of 5 July 1954 "On Lifting Certain Restrictions in the Legal Status of the Special Settlers" the government of the USSR allowed people to live not within the bounds of the commandant's office but within their oblast - yet only those engaged in socially useful labor[1][3].