Subsequently a commission led by Vitaly Doguzhiyev was formed to develop plans to carry out the repatriation and assist Crimean Tatars in returning to Crimea.
What followed was the mass return of a large portion of the Crimean Tatar diaspora in Central Asia, with an estimated 166,000 making it to Crimea by the end of 1991.
However, while most deported peoples, including the Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, were all allowed to return to their homelands, had their titular national republics restored, and were recognized as distinct ethnic groups.
The "lottery for the homeland" died off, with the number of Crimean Tatar families permitted to return to Crimea each year turning into a trickle by the 70's.
Nevertheless, numerous Crimean Tatar families continued to seek repatriation to Crimea, only for most of them to be re-deported to Central Asia after being denied the required residence permit.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that while approximately three-fourths of Crimean Tatars wanted to return to Crimea before the pogroms, almost all Crimean Tatars wanted to leave the Uzbek SSR afterwards, as they felt that the writing was on the wall that they would be the next target and the authorities would not be able to protect them when targeted by Uzbek mobs, just like they were unable to protect the Meskhetian Turks.
[1][3][4][5] After the Gromyko commission and the Fergana pogroms, the government decided to officially reconsider the possibility of allowing Crimean Tatars to return to Crimea.
In addition, it pointed out and condemned the hypocrisy of the continued recruitment of people from other parts of the union to work and live in Crimea while denying Crimean Tatars the same opportunity to do so, and acknowledged that the Crimean Tatars were widely discriminated against when attempting to get residence permits in Crimea, and called for the abolition of decrees specifically intended to limit their ability to return.
It adopted measures which involved the "abolition of all previous RSFSR laws relating to illegally forced deportations" and called for the "restoration and return of the cultural and spiritual values and archives which represent the heritage of the repressed people.
[14] After the dissolution of the USSR, Crimea found itself a part of Ukraine, but Kyiv gave only limited support to Crimean Tatar settlers.
The exclusion of large swaths of the Crimean Tatar population from the economy of the South Coast further deepened the poverty of the returnees in the steppes, who often lacked basic utilities or even insulation in the hastily-constructed houses.
With unemployment among Crimean Tatars reaching 40% to 70% at some points, many who were well-educated ended up working in menial jobs well below their skill level; however, very few left Crimea for Central Asia, (less than 2%) and most who did leave did so only temporarily.
Over time migration within Crimea moved somewhat southward towards their ancestral villages and closer to urban areas where employment opportunities were better but the cost of living higher.