 In 1936, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin established the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.In 1944, on the orders of NKVD chief Lavrenti Beria, more than a half million Chechens, the Ingush and several other North Caucasian people were ethnically cleansed, and deported to Siberia and to Central Asia.The official pretext was punishment for collaboration with the invading German forces during the 1940–1944 insurgency in Chechnya, despite tens of thousands of Chechens and Ingush being aligned to the Soviet Union and fighting against the Nazis, and despite 50 Chechens receiving the highest military award in the Soviet Union (e.g.