in the campaign “"Only Pardoned": Alien Rule and the Suppression of Chechen and Ingush National Life (1965-1989)”
After the return of the Chechens and the Ingush from exile the USSR did not let the indigenous inhabitants hold key leading posts in government and industry, reserving them for Russian settlers. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write: "The leading posts (first secretary of the obkom of the CPSU [head of the region's occupation administration], minister of the MVD, republican prosecutor, head of the KGB [predecessor of today's FSB], minister of finance, secretary of the Grozny gorkom of the CPSU [head of the city] and chairman of the Grozny gorispolkom [head of the city administration], head of Grozneft, military commissar of the republic and some others) are reserved for Russian officials"; for the Chechens and the Ingush, 70 % of the population, "roughly 30% of posts were reserved"[1]. According to the letter of 26 communists of 1972, which the historians quote, "in the early 1970s, of the 60 ministries and agencies of the Council of Ministers of the ChIASSR [the Chechen-Ingush republic] only 17 were headed by Chechens or Ingush. In most rural districts the first secretaries of the raikoms [heads of districts] were Russians"[1]. The historians write: "That is precisely why the CC of the CPSU [the central authority in Moscow] keeps sending new first secretaries of the obkom [heads of the region] to Chechen-Ingushetia" - in 1966-1989 these were Apryatkin, Vlasov and Foteev, sent in from other regions[1]. When the Ingush at the rally of January 1973 demanded that locals be appointed to leading posts, Bokov, a leader in the region's occupation administration, replied at a meeting of party functionaries on 21 January: "In their speeches they went so far as to say that a measure should be carried out here to take account of leading cadres from among the Chechens and the Ingush, that is, to carry out indigenisation"[2]. Historian A. B. Kuznetsova writes, citing the witness B. Kh. Toriev: "Chechens and Ingush were subjected to harsh discrimination in admission to the CPSU - they were admitted only from among the workers, so that those who held engineering positions were forced to go and work at a factory as labourers in order to be able to join the party"[3]. Historians Ya. Z. Akhmadov and E. Kh. Khasmagomadov write that only by the mid-1980s did Chechens and Ingush head 155 of the 194 village soviets and 11 of the 19 city and district soviets, while "the most significant posts at the middle and republican level, as well as the leadership of Grozny and of the regional committee of the CPSU, remained with the Russian nomenklatura"[1]. The historians write that on 1 July 1989 the region's occupation administration at its meeting "for the first time in the entire history of the Chechen-Ingush party organisation rejected the candidate proposed by the CC of the CPSU (N. I. Semenov) and elected Doku Zavgaev first secretary"[1].