On February 11, 1943, the Politburo, the Communist Party’s ruling executive committee (Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union), discussed the idea of “liquidating” the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Republic and expelling the entire Chechen-Ingush nation based on the accusation of “collaboration with the Germans”. Lavrenty Beria, Stalin’s chief of secret police and the “engineer” of the deportation, and Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s successor, supported deportation rather than expulsion and the Soviets started planning to deport 425,000 Chechens and 93,000 Ingush in one night, an operation that cost nearly 150 million Rubles (3,9 million Euro).