About 650 thousand people were expelled, some high-mountain villages were destroyed together with their inhabitants – on February 23, 1944, the Soviet authorities deported the Chechens and Ingush from the territory of the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, as well as from other places of residence. Accusing them of collaboration with the occupiers, anti-Soviet activities, and banditry, they were forcibly resettled to the Kazakh, Kirghiz, and partly to the Uzbek and Tajik SSR. During the eviction and in the first years of exile, according to various data, about 150 thousand people died.
