Kalmyks

KALMYKS

The Kalmyks, who call themselves the Khalmg, are descendants of the Oyrats people originating from western Mongolia (Jungaria). These were nomadic tribes, kindred to the Mongols in material culture, language, and religion. Today, most Kalmyks live in Kalmykia (the Republic of Kalmykia), which is one of the twenty-one nationality based republics of the Russian Federation recognized in the 1993 Russian Constitution. Kalmykia (about 29,400 square miles) is located in southeastern Russia on the northwestern shore of the Caspian Sea. Its capital, Elista, has more than 90,000 residents. Salt lakes abound in the region, but Kalmykia lacks permanent waterways. Lying in the vast depression of the north Caspian lowland, the territory consists largely of steppe and desert areas.

In 2000 roughly 314,300 people lived in Kalmykia. Its population was 45 percent Kalmyk, 38 percent Russian, 6 percent Dagestani, 3 percent Chechen, 2 percent Kazak, and 2 percent German. Representatives of the Torgut, Dorbet, and Buzawa tribes also inhabit the republic. In contrast to some of the other non-Russian languages spoken in the Russian Federation, the Kalmyk language (Kalmukian) has been classified as an "endangered language" by UNESCO due to the declining number of active speakers. Very few children learn the language, and those who do are not likely to become active users.

Another characteristic that distinguishes the Kalmyks from many non-Russian nationalities is their long and tortuous past. Due to the deficit of pasture lands and to feudal internecine dissension, the Oyrat tribes migrated westward from Chinese Turkistan to the steppes west of the mouth of the Volga River in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. Between 1608 and 1609, the Oyrats pledged their allegiance to the Russian tsar. As allies, they guarded the Russian Empire's eastern frontier during the reign of Peter I (the Great), from 1682 to 1725. Under Catherine II, however, the Kalmyks' fortune changed, and they became vassals. Unhappy with this situation, about 300,000 Kalmyks living east of the Volga began to return to China, but were attacked en route by Russian, Kazakh, and Kyrgyz warriors. Another group residing west of the Volga had remained in Russia, adopting a seminomadic lifestyle and practicing Lamaist Buddhism. They became known as the Kalmyk, which in Turkish means "remnant," referring to those who stayed behind.

In 1920 the Kalmyk autonomous oblast (province) was established, which became the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (ASSR) in 1934. However, the Kalmyks' status shifted radically again when, in 1943, Josef Stalin dissolved the republic and deported some 170,000 Kalmyks to Siberia. He sought to punish the Kalmyk units who had fought the Russians in collaboration with the Germans. Stalin forcibly resettled a total of more than 1.5 million people, including the Volga Germans and six other nationalities of the Crimea and northern Caucasus: the Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Karachai, and Meskhetians. Other minorities evicted from the Black Sea coastal region included Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians.

Things improved for the Kalmyks when in 1956 Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev, denounced the earlier deportation as criminal and permitted about 6,000 Kalmyks to return the following year. The Kalmyk ASSR was officially reestablished in 1958. Thirty-five years later, the Russian Constitution of 1993 officially recognized the Republic of Kalmykia (Khalmg Tangch). That year, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov won the first presidential elections in the new republic. His program focused on socioeconomic improvements and the revival of Kalmyk language.

See also: constitution of 1993; nationalities policies, soviet; nationalities policies, tsarist

bibliography

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Johanna Granville