Kalmykia

Republic of Kalmykia
Republic
Республика Калмыкия
Other transcription(s)
• Kalmyk	Хальмг Таңһч
2021 Census)[9]
• Total	267,133 62.5% Kalmyk[13]

Kalmykia,^[a] officially the Republic of Kalmykia,^[b] is a republic of Russia, located in the North Caucasus region of Southern Russia. The republic is part of the Southern Federal District, and borders Dagestan to the south and Stavropol Krai to the southwest; Volgograd Oblast to the northwest and north and Astrakhan Oblast to the north and east; Rostov Oblast to the west and the Caspian Sea to the east. Through the Caspian Depression, the Kuma river forms Kalmykia'a natural border with Dagestan. Kalmykia is the only region in Europe where Buddhism is the predominant religion.^[15]

The Kalmykia republic covers an area of 76,100 square kilometres (29,400 square miles), with a small population of about 275,000 residents.^[16] The republic is home to the Kalmyks, a people of Mongol origin who are primarily of Buddhist faith. The capital of the republic is the city of Elista.

Geography

The republic is located in

Kalmykia's natural resources include coal, oil, and natural gas.

Climate

The average January temperature is −5 °C (23 °F) and the average July temperature is 24 °C (75 °F). Average annual precipitation ranges from 170 millimeters (6.7 in) in the east of the republic to 400 millimeters (16 in) in the west. The small town of Utta is the hottest place in Russia. On July 12, 2010, during a significant heatwave affecting all of Russia, an all-time record-high temperature was observed at 45.4 °C (113.7 °F).

Flora and fauna

The republic's wildlife includes the saiga antelope, whose habitat is protected in Chyornye Zemli Nature Reserve.

National Parks

• Bamb Tsetsg Tulip Island

History

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

According to the

).

Some of the first recorded peoples to move into this territory were the

.

Kalmyk autonomy

The ancestors of the

They reached the lower Volga region in or about 1630. That land, however, was not uncontested pastures, but rather the homeland of the Nogai Horde, a confederation of Turkic-speaking nomadic tribes. The Kalmyks expelled the Nogais, who fled to the Caucasian plains and to the Crimean Khanate, areas (at least theoretically) under the control of the Ottoman Empire. Some Nogai groups sought the protection of the Russian garrison at Astrakhan. The remaining nomadic Mongol Oirat tribes became vassals of the Kalmyk Khan.

The Kalmyks settled in the wide-open steppes – from

.

Within twenty-five years of settling in the Lower Volga region, the Kalmyks became subjects of the

, a Russian-dominated Turkic people, but this was not often the practice. In addition, Kalmyk allegiance was often nominal, as the Kalmyk Khans practised self-government, based on a set of laws they called the Great Code of the Nomads (Iki Tsaadzhin Bichig).

The Kalmyk Khanate reached its peak of military and political power under Ayuka Khan (ruled 1672–1724, khan 1690–1724). During his era, the Kalmyk Khanate fulfilled its responsibility to protect the southern borders of Russia and conducted many military expeditions against its Turkic-speaking neighbours. Successful military expeditions were also conducted in the Caucasus. The Khanate experienced economic prosperity from free trade with Russian border towns, with China, with Tibet and with Muslim neighbours. During this era, the Kalmyks also kept close contacts with their Oirat kinsmen in Dzungaria, as well as with the Dalai Lama in Tibet.

Russian Civil War

After the

towards the end of 1920, a large group of Kalmyks fled from Russia with the remnants of the defeated White Army to the Black Sea ports of Turkey.

The majority of the refugees chose to resettle in Belgrade, Serbia. Other, much smaller, groups chose Sofia (Bulgaria), Prague (Czechoslovakia) and Paris and Lyon (France). The Kalmyk refugees in Belgrade built a Buddhist temple there in 1929.

Soviet period

In July 1919, Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin issued an appeal^[19] to the Kalmyk people, calling for them to revolt and to aid the Red Army. Lenin promised to provide the Kalmyks, among other things, a sufficient quantity of land for their own use. The promise came to fruition on November 4, 1920, when a resolution was passed by the All-Russian Central Executive Committee proclaiming the formation of the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast. Fifteen years later, on October 22, 1935, the Oblast was elevated to republic status, Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic.

In line with the policy of

. According to Dorzha Arbakov, decentralized governing bodies were a tool the Bolsheviks used to control the Kalmyk people:

... the Soviet authorities were greatly interested in Sovietizing Kalmykia as quickly as possible and with the least amount of bloodshed. Although the Kalmyks alone were not a significant force, the Soviet authorities wished to win popularity in the Asian and Buddhist worlds by demonstrating their evident concern for the Buddhists in Russia.[20]

After establishing control, the Soviet authorities did not overtly enforce an anti-religion policy, other than through passive means, because it sought to bring Mongolia

. The passive measures that were taken by Soviet authorities to control the people included the imposition of a harsh tax to close places of worship and religious schools. The Cyrillic script replaced , the traditional Kalmyk vertical script.

On January 22, 1922, Mongolia proposed to migrate the Kalmyks during the famine in Kalmykia. Russia refused help; 71–72,000 Kalmyks died during the famine.^{[23][dubious – discuss]} Revolts erupted among the Kalmyks in 1926 and 1930 (on 1942–1943, see the next section). In March 1927, Soviet deported 20,000 Kalmyks to the tundras of Siberia and Karelia.^[23]

The Kalmyks of the

] In December 1927 the Fifteenth Party Congress of the Soviet Union passed a resolution calling for the "voluntary"

collectivization of agriculture

. The change in policy was accompanied by a new campaign of repression, directed initially against the small farming class. The objective of this campaign was to suppress the resistance of farming peasants to the full-scale collectivization of agriculture.

World War II

On June 22, 1941, the German army invaded the Soviet Union. By August 12, 1942, the German

The campaign was focused primarily on recruiting and organizing Kalmyk men into anti-Soviet militia units.

• Kalmüken Verband Dr. Doll (Kalmukian Volunteers)
• Abwehrtrupp 103 (Kalmukian Volunteers)
• Kalmücken-Legion or
  Kalmücken-Kavallerie-Korps
  (Kalmukian Volunteers)

The Kalmyk units were extremely successful in flushing out and killing Soviet partisans. But by December 1942, the Soviet Red Army retook the Kalmyk ASSR, forcing the Kalmyks assigned to those units to flee, in some cases with their wives and children in hand.

The Kalmyk units retreated westward into unfamiliar territory with the retreating German army and were reorganized into the Kalmuck Legion, although the Kalmyks themselves preferred the name Kalmuck Cavalry Corps. The casualty rate also increased substantially during the retreat, especially among the Kalmyk officers. To replace those killed, the German army imposed forced conscription, taking in teenagers and middle-aged men. As a result, the overall effectiveness of the Kalmyk units declined.

By the end of the war, the remnants of the Kalmuck Cavalry Corps had made their way to Austria where the Kalmyk soldiers and their family members became post-war refugees.

Those who did not want to leave formed militia units that chose to stay behind and harass the oncoming Soviet Red Army.

Although a number of Kalmyks chose to fight against the Soviet Union, the majority by and large did not, fighting the German army in regular Soviet Red army units and in partisan resistance units behind the battlelines throughout the Soviet Union. Before their removal from the Soviet Red Army and from partisan resistance units after December 1943, approximately 8,000 Kalmyks were awarded various orders and medals, including 21 Kalmyk men who were recognized as a Hero of the Soviet Union.^[26]

On December 27, 1943, Soviet authorities declared that "many Kalmyks" were guilty of cooperation with the German Army

Post-war Kalmykia

Due to their widespread dispersal in Siberia, their language and culture suffered a possibly irreversible decline.

.

In the following years, bad planning of agricultural and irrigation projects resulted in widespread desertification. On orders from Moscow, sheep production increased beyond levels that the fragile steppe could sustain, resulting in 1.4 million acres (5666 km²) of the artificial desert.^[29] To ramp up output, economically nonviable industrial plants were constructed.

After the dissolution of the USSR, Kalmykia kept the status of an autonomous republic within the newly formed

(effective March 31, 1992).

Politics

The head of the government in Kalmykia is called "The Head of the Republic". After a reform in 2006 that made the governors of the federal subjects appointable by the President, the President of Russia selected a candidate for the Head of the Republic position and presented it to the Parliament of Kalmyk Republic, the People's Khural, for approval. If a candidate was not approved, the President of the Russian Federation could dissolve the Parliament and set up new elections. Since the reform was revoked in 2011, the Head of the Republic has been elected by a direct vote, the first such election happening in 2014.

From 1993 to 2010, the Head of the Republic was Kirsan Nikolayevich Ilyumzhinov. He also was the president of the world chess organization FIDE until 2018. He has spent much of his fortune on promoting chess in Kalmykia—where chess is compulsory in all primary schools—and also overseas, with Elista, the capital of Kalmykia, hosting many international tournaments.

In the late 1990s, the Ilyumzhinov government was alleged to be spending too much government money on chess-related projects. The allegations were published in Sovietskaya Kalmykia, the opposition newspaper in Elista. Larisa Yudina, the journalist who investigated these accusations, was kidnapped and murdered in 1998. Two men, Sergei Vaskin and Tyurbi Boskomdzhiv, who worked in the local civil service, were charged with her murder, one of them having been a former presidential bodyguard. After prolonged investigations by the Russian authorities, both men were found guilty and jailed, but no evidence was discovered that Ilyumzhinov himself was in any way responsible.^[30][31][32]

On October 24, 2010, Ilyumzhinov was replaced by Alexey Orlov as the new Head of Kalmykia. Since September 2019 the acting President of Kalmykia is Batu Khasikov.^[33]

Since 2008, Anatoly Kozachko has been President of the Parliament, the People's Khural. The current^[when?] Prime Minister of Kalmykia is Lyudmila Ivanovna. All the three top politicians belong to the Kremlin's "United Russia" Party.^[34]

The Kalmyk Nationalist Oirat-Kalmyk People's Congress has been convening since 2015 and supporting certain people in the People's Khural of Kalmykia elections, as well as pushing for political change inside Kalmykia.^[35][36] It is now part of the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum, an organisation which advocates the dissolution of the Russian Federation.^[37]

Administrative divisions

Demographics

Population: 267,133 (2021 Census);^[38] 289,481 (2010 Russian census);^[16] 292,410 (2002 Census);^[39] 322,589 (1989 Soviet census).^[40]

Life expectancy:^[41][42]

	2019	2021
Average:	74.8 years	71.4 years
Male:	69.3 years	67.3 years
Female:	80.3 years	75.4 years

Vital statistics

Historical population

Year	Pop.	±%
1926	161,176	—
1959	184,857	+14.7%
1970	267,993	+45.0%
1979	293,528	+9.5%
1989	322,589	+9.9%
2002	292,410	−9.4%
2010	289,481	−1.0%
2021	267,133	−7.7%
Source: Census data

Ethnic groups

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kalmykia&oldid=1219613912"