On March 27, 1920, Cossacks from the Ak-Yurt, Tarskaya, and Sunzhenskaya stanitsas were expelled from their homes by armed Bolshevik detachments and lined up in columns. 72,000 members of Cossack families were forced to leave their homes and head beyond the Terek. Only 35,000 people reached their destinations. They were not allowed to take any belongings, except for the families of Cossack Red Army soldiers, who were permitted to take items, but no more than one cart. The columns of foot Cossacks, under armed escort, marched several dozen kilometers to the Dalakovo railway junction, which is now known as the city of Beslan.

This path became a true 'death march.' The escorts killed anyone who tried to escape or could not continue, including children and the elderly. Along the road stood Chechens and Ingush, who were referred to in documents of those years as 'groups of agitated mountaineers.' They did not touch the escorts but killed Cossacks in the columns. According to contemporary accounts, the road to Beslan was littered with the bodies of the slain. However, the suffering of the evicted did not end at the Dalakovo station. Due to a lack of carriages, several hundred, possibly thousands, of Cossacks were machine-gunned and hacked to pieces with sabers in a meadow a few kilometers from the station. The bodies of the slain were buried in pre-dug massive pits.

The extermination of the Terek Cossacks continued throughout the spring of 1920. Subsequently, several more stanitsas, such as Yermolovskaya, Zakan-Yurtovskaya (Romanovskaya), Samashkinskaya, and Mikhailovskaya, were completely evicted. Many stanitsas were partially evacuated. The exact number of those killed during the March-April massacre of 1920 is unknown, but modern researchers estimate it to be between 4,000 and 35-38,000 people.

This day is still considered the Day of Remembrance for the Cossacks repressed by the Bolshevik state.