The Kalmyk Migrations

        The Kalmyk people have migrated on many different occasions.  From their origination of their culture during the migration of the Oirot Mongols from the Altai Mountains in 1636 to 1957 when the Kalmyk people traveled back to their homeland after the deportation, one can see that the Kalmyks have often traveled from one place to another.  In fact, members of the Kalmyk culture have migrated as recently as 1991 when a large population of the culture moved back to their homeland in Kalmykia from parts of the Soviet Union (Minahan 358).  In accordance with their migratory history, much of the Kalmyk culture remains nomadic even today.  This migratory, or nomadic life-style, allows the Kalmyks to exist as a mostly agricultural society.

Reference: http://russiasperiphery.blogs.wm.edu/transcaucasia/kalmykia/

        The origination of the Kalmyk culture began with the destabilization of the Mongol Empire (Minahan 358).  During this time, a branch of the Oirot Mongols left the Mongol Empire in 1636 as China began to take over.  After thirty-two years of migrating, they finally settled near the Volga River Basin.  However, in the later half of the eighteenth century, members of the Kalmyk culture who had settled east of the the Volga River returned to their homeland, which had since been dominated by China, in an attempt to stop the persecution of their Oirot relatives.  This migration consisted of a 2,000 mile journey in which only one third of the migratory population survived.  Many were killed due to harsh weather conditions, hunger, and attacks carried out by Russia (Minahan 359).  
        Another tragic form of diaspora of the Kalmyk people occured in the 1940s.  This took place when Joseph Stalin convicted the entire Kalmyk population of treason for their alliance with Germany, and he issued a culture-wide deportation of the Kalmyk people.  During this extremely horrific exile, the Kalmyk people were sent east in cramped cattle cars.  According to James Minahan, "Only three Kalmyk families escaped the brutal deportation" (360).  The deportation lasted around twenty-two days during which thousands of Kalmyks died of either malnutrition or disease.  This tragic ordeal destroyed half of the Kalmyk's pre-war population (Minahan 360).
        In 1957, many survivors of the tragic deportation made their way back to the area of Kalmykia.  This numbered to be about 6,000 people.  In 1958, the Kalmyks had reclaimed this area.  However, it remained under strict Russian surveillance.  By the 1970s, more Kalmyks had arrived, and this grew the population to about 174,000 by 1989.  So clearly, the members of the Kalmyk culture have been migrating up until fairly recently (Minahan 360-1).
        Other segments of the Kalmyk's diaspora exist in both the United States and in other parts of Europe.  This includes the Kalmyk "exile community."  The Kalmyk exile community amounts to about 1,500 members of the culture.  In 1987, reforms issued by Mikhail Gorbachev renewed ties between the Kalmyks in Kalmykia and the scattered exile communities.  This renewed relationship has aided the Kalmyks in their cultural and religious revival throughout the last two decades (Minahan 361).

Works Cited:
Minahan, James. One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Print.

The Neighboring Cultures of the Kalmyks

        The majority of the Kalmyk culture's population resides in the Republic of Kalmykia located in the southeast corner of Russia near the Volga River.  Kalmykia is surrounded by Russia and Kazakhstan, and it lines the coast of the Caspian Sea.  Although the Kalmyks are a peaceful and rural people, there is some tension between them and their neighboring cultures.  This is particularly true of the culture's relationship with Eastern Europeans of the North Caucasus (Walker 1).

Reference: http://www.maps.com/ref_map.aspx?pid=12322

        In an article from The Buddhist Channel, "Peace and Harmony in Kalmykia," written by Shaun Walker in 2007, there is mention of the problems that the Kalmyk people have encountered with the the North Caucasus, particularly with Chechnya.  In the article, the Kalmyk Center for Human Rights director, Semyon Ateyev, indicates that there was a cultural problem between Kalmyks and the Chechens, Avars, and Dargins in Kalmykia in the 1990s.  Ateyev names an incident when a fight broke out between the two cultures because a group of Chechens danced the Lezginka on the grave of a Kalmyk soldier who died in Chechnya.  The article indicates that a larger fight between the Kalmyks and the Chechens occurred in the Astrakhan Region in 2005.  However, the article also points out that most of the time, these cultural disputes are settled peacefully.  According to Valery Badmayev, the editor of an opposition paper called the Sovietskaya Kalmykia, this tension between some of the countries of the North Caucasus and Kalmykia strengthens the Kalmyks relationship with their other neighbor, Russia.  (Walker 1).

Reference: http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/europe/lgcolor/chechnya.htm

        The Kalmyk's Russian neighbors have influenced their way of life for hundreds of years.  For much of this time, the Kalmyks had pledged an allegiance to Russia in exchange for Russia's protection (Minahan 359).  However, during the 1920s into World War II, this relationship suffered greatly resulting in a significant amount of death and destruction for the Kalmyk people.   The Soviet Union nationalized the Kalmyk's herds, destroyed their Buddhist temples, and forbid Kalmyks to have any contacts with other Mongol peoples.  Eventually, due to the alliance between the Kalmyks and Germany, Joseph Stalin ordered a deportation of the whole Kalmyk population.  Many Kalmyk's died due to hunger, disease, and malnutrition (Minahan 360).

Works Cited:
Minahan, James. One Europe, Many Nations: A Historical Dictionary of European National Groups. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. Print.

"Peace and Harmony in Kalmykia." Europe. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 May 2014.