Chechens
Chechens (; '; Old Chechen: Нахчой "Naxçoy") are a Northeast Caucasian ethnic group of the Nakh peoples originating in the North Caucasus region of Eastern Europe. They refer to themselves as Vainakhs (which means "our people" in Chechen) or Nokhchiy (pronounced ; singular Nokhchi, Nakhchuo or Nakhtche). Chechen and Ingush peoples are collectively known as the Vainakh. The majority of Chechens today live in the Chechen Republic, a subdivision of the Russian Federation.
Deportation of the Chechens and Ingush
A local report from 1961 indicated that out of 524,000 Vainakhs, 432,000 had resettled to the Chechen-Ingush ASSR, 28,000 to Dagestan and 8,000 to North Ossetiya. However, ethnic clashes continued even in the 1960s: in 1965 alone, 16 such clashes were recorded, resulting in 185 injuries and 19 fatalities. Chechens were greatly disadvantaged after being allowed to return. There were no Chechen-language schools, leading to a lack of education of the populace (which did not universally understand Russian). According to sociologist Georgi Derluguyan, the Checheno-Ingush Republic's economy was divided into two spheres, in which the Russian sphere had all the jobs with higher salaries in the urban areas: no Chechen cadre was promoted to a top position all until 1989. In the 1960s, in order to finance their families, some forty thousand men temporarily migrated from Chechen-Ingushetia each year to find part-time jobs in Kazakhstan and Siberia, thanks to their contacts from the time of their exile. On paper, the Chechen-Ingush Republic enjoyed the same privileges as other Soviet ASSRs, but in reality it had very little actual Chechens or Ingush representing its government, which was run directly by the Russians. Despite being rich with oil, the Chechen-Ingush ASSR remained the second poorest region of the entire USSR. Yusup Soslambekov, a chairman of the Chechen parliament after 1991, lamented that his people returned from exile to their homes "not as masters of that land but as mere inhabitants, tenants. Other people took our jobs in our factories".