Leaving Uzbekistan hastily in the wake of the events in Fergana, the Turks–Meskhetians were not, as a rule, informed of the Union Government’s decisions pertaining to them; moreover, the nature of these decisions remain unexplored to this day. The evacuation of the Meskhetians from Fergana Region in June 1989 was carried out in compliance with classified and unpublished instructions of the high-level leadership of the USSR. Decrees no.503 of the USSR Council of Ministers and no.220 of the RSFSR Council of Ministers were circumscribed merely by the matters pertaining to rendering material, organisational and technical aid to those evacuated from Fergana Region to Central Russia and did not contain any instructions concerning mandatory accommodation arrangements for the Meskhetians who were forced to leave Uzbekistan.³ Moreover, those evacuated constituted only a small portion of the Turks–Meskhetians leaving Uzbekistan while the majority of them departed from other areas rather than from Fergana, besides they did it on their own. The Turks–Meskhetians who were not from Fergana and who were aware about those decrees were sure that they had nothing to do with them. The Meskhetians from Fergana thought that they were temporarily evacuated to central zone regions since they had been told so by representatives of authorities. Many of those who had been brought to the Non-Chernozem Zone found the conditions of life there ill-suited for them; they had a difficult time adapting themselves to the uncustomary cold climate; the material help promised by the authorities appeared to be insufficient for normal arrangements, and besides the evacuated Turks–Meskhetians were settled in small groups far apart from each other.

Thus, both those evacuated and those who had departed from Uzbekistan on their own were left to their own devices. The majority searched individually for places to stay. Their choice of place was determined by several factors: information on the opportunities for purchasing accommodations; the presence of relatives or fellow countrymen in the area, the location, the climate. The southern parts of Russia, especially Krasnodar Territory, appeared to be the most preferable ones. First of all, there were Meskhetians who already lived in the Territory. Secondly, the countryside had a lot of unoccupied houses: in 1988 a great number of the Crimean Tartars and Greeks started to leave there in great numbers and abandoned their houses. Thirdly, the Territory borders Georgia, and in 1989–1990 the Meskhetians lived with expectations to return home soon.

According to many Turks–Meskhetians, approximately till late June 1989 the attitude of the local authorities towards to the refugees was in general positive. Rustam Eyyubov who has been living in the Territory from 1984 ascertained that on June 10, that is, during the events in Fergana, Party activists had a meeting in the settlement of Vperyod of Apsheronsk Region where First Secretary of the Regional Committee Yu.A.Zagorulko announced the forthcoming arrival of the Meskhetian forced migrants from Uzbekistan to the Territory and said that the senior leaders had been told to render them all assistance possible. However three days later the Regional Party Committee sent a notice saying that migration of the Turks–Meskhetians to the Territory was cancelled. The same is confirmed by some officials.⁴ The Turks who had come to the Territory shortly after the events did succeed in obtaining permits for permanent residency. According to the information of the Territory Internal Affairs Department 176 Turks–Meskhetians from Uzbekistan were registered as permanent residents as of October 3, 1989. However, shortly after the arrival of the first Meskhetian groups, the Territory authorities received the order from Moscow not to issue residence permits to the refugees but to send them to the central areas of Russia. Similar orders were issued to the regional authorities and organs of internal affairs.⁵ The information from other southern regions, in particular from Kabardin-Balkaria, also confirms that in the summer of 1989, the Union authorities administratively tried to make the Meskhetians who had fled from Uzbekistan settle just in the central zone of the European part of the RSFSR. The Krasnodar authorities stopped to register refugees for they had already got the formal reason for that — Decree of the USSR Council of Ministers no.1476 of 24.12.87 «On the Limited Registration of Citizens in Some Communities of the Crimean Region and Krasnodar Territory». Later on, in August 1989, the 10th Session of the KKSND of the 20th convocation adopted a decree that severely tightened the registration regime.

In the summer of 1989 the Turks–Meskhetians were arriving to Krasnodar Territory mainly from Samarkand, Andizhan and Namangan Regions of Uzbekistan; some time later, in August and September, they were moving in from the Syr Daria Region; in the spring of 1990 — from Tashkent Oblast. During 1990 individual groups of the Meskhetians evacuated to Central Russia from Fergana Region kept on coming to the Territory, that is, those people who had found it impossible for themselves to live under the conditions of outlying countryside provinces of the Non-Chernozem Zone. After 1990, only some families basically from other Russian areas arrived to the Territory. According to the leaders of the Turks–Meskhetians’ public associations, the end of 1991 saw the beginning of their outflow from Krasnodar Territory.⁶