The Dungan in the former Soviet republics are Hui who fled China in the aftermath of the Hui Minorities' War (also known as the Dungan Rebellion) in the 19th century. According to Rimsky-Korsakoff (1992), three separate groups of the Hui people fled to the Russian Empire across the Tian Shan Mountains during the exceptionally severe winter of 1877/78 after the end of the Hui Minorities' War: