1990 During the perestroika, Cossacks once again took steps to re-create their nationality . Many Cossack organisations were formed throughout the former Host. However, in doing so, many wished to review the existing administrative borders in the Northern Caucasus, and return the Cossack regions, that belonged to the once Terek Oblast from the national autonomies. In Kabardino-Balkaria and North Ossetia and Dagestan this was resolved by granting the Cossacks full minority rights, that raised on par with titular nations, and today Cossacks play an important role in local administration, culture and development. In Chechnya and Ingushetia however, the situation was different. There was a long-running ethnic conflict between the Chechen returnees and the Russian settlers of the region. Before 1989, the Russians had dominated all parts of government as well as the workforce, but then this reversed with the "Chechen revolution" in 1990, where the Chechen and Ingush majority took control of the ruling of their homeland. Russians were left jobless as able Vainakh took their places. The Russian language remained in many schools and the Russians of the republic were not immediately made victims. Cossacks and Russians, unsurprisingly, were staunch foes of Chechen independence from Russia. Chechens feared that Cossacks were variously plotting to undermine the independence which they saw as a desperate necessity and to detach a large part of their state. The chronic economic hardship of Chechnya during and after the Soviet period and the large income gap between Russians and Chechens before 1990 also worsened tensions. For these reasons and for the centuries of fighting between Cossacks and Chechens, ethnic relations were highly hostile. President Dzhokhar Dudayev, himself married to a Russian, tried to suppress ethnic tensions, which he viewed as a destabilizing element to an already impoverished and internationally isolated republic. However, the statements of the President about "hospitality" were not convincing enough, and Dudayev had other priorities, such as handling the economic conditions inherited from the Soviet age and international isolation, another major problem. An exodus of ethnic Russians occurred, although its causes and intensity are disputed. Some sources say that virtually the whole Russian population that left (300,000 people) before the First Chechen War, which others dispute, saying that while tens of thousands (as opposed to 300,000) left, most left due to the First Chechen War during it; Russian sources claim it was due to anti-Russian discrimination and violence, whereas others (such as