The Kalmyk ASSR was abolished on December 28, 1943, shortly after the complete liberation of the Caucasus and the Lower Volga region. The resettlement of Kalmyks from there and from neighboring territories to Altai, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and the Krasnoyarsk Territory was carried out on the basis of the corresponding decree of the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR dated December 29, 1943. It was Operation Ulus, developed jointly by the NKVD and the NKGB in November-December 1943.
According to various estimates, from 92 to 94 thousand Kalmyks were evicted; between 2,000 and 3,300 Kalmyks perished and disappeared in the course of deportation (from the point of deportation to the point of settlement, inclusive). According to the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, “in 1947, 91,919 resettled Kalmyks were registered; the number of deaths and deaths (including those who died from old age and other natural causes) in the period from the beginning of deportation amounted to 16,017 people. The 1943 government decision was canceled only on March 19, 1956.
Many experts believe that the main reason for the national deportations (essentially ethnic cleansing) from the North Caucasus and the Lower Volga region during that period was not only and not so much the "universal" collaboration of a number of local peoples. It seems that the internationalists in the Kremlin sought to Russify or, as they themselves believed, more reliably Sovietize those vast regions. This version is confirmed not only by the settling of the “liberated” areas by Russian and Russian-speaking contingents, but also by the inclusion of most of them in the adjacent Russian territories and regions.
Thus, up to 70% of the territory of the former Kalmyk ASSR, including its capital Elista, was annexed to the Astrakhan region of the RSFSR; Moreover, Elista for some time was given back its Russian (up to 1921 incl.) name - the town of Stepnoy, as this settlement was called until 1921. The rest was distributed over the Stavropol, Stalingrad, Grozny and Rostov regions. Incidentally, the same is evidenced by the creation in 1944 of the Grozny region of the RSFSR, formed from most of the former Chechen-Ingush ASSR, which received a wide access to the Caspian Sea.
The official reason for the Kalmyk deportation is still the same: the collaboration of the Kalmyks with the Nazi invaders and aiding them in the period from September 1942 to March 1943 inclusive. That is, until the liberation of almost 75% of the territory of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic by Soviet troops, captured by the German-Romanian troops in the fall of 1942. But, after all, the fact that after the liberation of the region, "collaboration" in Kalmykia, even if not universal, did not disappear. Indeed, by the end of 1943, the NKVD, together with the front-line counterintelligence, managed to neutralize up to 20 rebel detachments and conspiratorial nationalist groups. Those first collaborated with the invaders, and then were left by them as mothballed anti-Soviet cells.
The origins of anti-Russian sentiments and tough opposition to monarchist and Soviet statehood have a long history in Kalmykia. Even before the incorporation of the Astrakhan Tatar-Nogai Khanate into Russia (1556), Kalmyks were aggressively trying to baptize, convert to Islam, or simply write them down as "Tatars." The nature of ethno-confessional assimilation was then very peculiar. Therefore, the Kalmyks, for the most part, welcomed the abolition of this strange state.
Then, for more than a century, in the period from 1664 to 1771, in the lower reaches of the Volga there existed the Kalmyk Khanate, autonomous from Russia, whose territory basically coincided with the territory of the former Kalmykia as part of the Astrakhan region in 1944-56. But its elimination for the first time marked, let's say, a centrifugal underground in this region. By the way, the Kalmyks were among the main continent of the rebel troops, which were created and led by Emelyan Pugachev during the notorious peasant war.
It was only in 1800 that Emperor Paul I decided to restore the Kalmyk Khanate, but in 1803 it was abolished again by Alexander I. So the discontent of the Kalmyks “smoldered” for many decades. And it is not surprising that most of them supported the establishment of Soviet power in the region, which immediately declared the autonomy of the Kalmyks. Moreover, almost 100% - within the boundaries of the ancient autonomous Kalmyk Khanate.
By the summer of 1920, the Bolshevik troops occupied almost the entire territory of the then proclaimed “Steppe region of the Kalmyk people”. And on November 4, 1920, the first national autonomy in Soviet Russia was proclaimed: the Kalmyk Autonomous Region. With the center in Elista, part of the Lower Volga region. In 1934, this region was included in the Stalingrad Territory, and at the end of 1935 the Kalmyk ASSR was proclaimed.
On the one hand, such decisions strengthened the position of the Soviet government in Kalmykia. But on the other … As noted in the materials of the Munich Institute for the Study of the USSR (1969) and the bulletins of the emigrant Union of the Kalmyk People (Warsaw, 1934-35), “held in the region by the Soviet government, especially since the early 30s, violent settling, collectivization, russification of leading cadres and anti-religious activities caused growing discontent among Kalmyks.
Many preferred to ignore the aforementioned decisions, disobey them, go to the remote steppes, etc. The elimination of illiteracy was accompanied by the fact that the Kalmyk alphabet was directively translated from Latin into Cyrillic. But the anti-religious policy quickly supplemented the daily atheistic propaganda with repressions against believers and especially against the clergy, destruction of churches, confiscation of items of national worship, compulsion to receipts for renunciation of the faith, etc."
The answer was numerous excesses with political overtones, which took place as early as 1926-27, and then in the early 30s. It is quite characteristic that such actions are also mentioned in the Soviet profile publication, which is by no means the perestroika period: I. I. Orekhov, "50 Years of Soviet Power in Kalmykia", Scientific Notes of the Kalmyk Research Institute of Language, Literature and History, Vol. 8. "Series of History", Elista, 1969
By the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the real political climate in Kalmykia was, one might say, predisposed to anti-Soviet activities. However, even on the eve of the harsh German-Romanian occupation of the region, over 60% of the Kalmyks living in the republic initiated there the collection of money, food, woolen, leather goods, and traditional medicine for the Fund for Assistance to Soviet Soldiers.
Many dozens of Kalmyk soldiers and officers were awarded orders and medals for military merit; 9 became heroes of the Soviet Union: for example, Oka Gorodovikov, colonel general, first the commander of the Cavalry Mechanized Corps, and then the representative of the Headquarters in cavalry. True, he received the title of Hero only in 1958, but he was awarded many orders and medals during the war. In 1971, a city in the north-west of Kalmykia was named after him.
One cannot but recall one of the leaders of the partisan movement in the Bryansk region, Mikhail Selgikov, as well as Lieutenant General Basan Gorodovikov, and finally, Major Erdni Delikov, the first Kalmyk to be awarded this title in 1942.
At the same time, according to both Soviet and German sources, there were numerous cases of Kalmyks evading conscription into the army in 1941-43. Alas, the voluntary surrender of Kalmyk soldiers as prisoners was not, alas, a rarity. Already in the summer of 1942, the Wehrmacht created the Kalmyk Cavalry Corps, which took part in military operations on the enemy's sides until the late autumn of 1944.
In the spring of 1942, the Kalmyk National Committee (Kalmükischen Nationalkomitee) and its local executive body, the Kalmyk Khurul, were established in Berlin. Dozens of Kalmyks also served in the First Cossack Division, the Turkestan Legion of the Wehrmacht, as well as in SS police units in Kalmykia, Rostov Region, and Stavropol Territory.
In occupied Elista, two newspapers, one weekly, funded and controlled by the occupiers, operated. In July 1943, the Kalmyk edition of Radio Berlin was created, the programs were daily for several hours: the first program was broadcast on August 3, 1943. At the same time, this edition made an appeal to the Kalmyks of the USSR, urging them to join the ranks of the German and Romanian troops. "Whose victories will accelerate the independence of the Kalmyk and other peoples, trampled by the Bolshevik dictatorship."
It was these facts and factors that predetermined the "Note-recommendation of the NKVD Collegium of the USSR to the State Defense Committee of the USSR (August 16, 1943, No. 685 / B)" On the expediency of evicting German accomplices, bandits and anti-Soviet people from the territory of the North Caucasus and Kalmyk ASSR " … Military, police and civilian service on the side of Germany was carried out from 6 to 7 thousand Kalmyks directly in Kalmykia. Apart from politicians of different status in the pro-Nazi Kalmyk emigration.
It was also noted that the German authorities are using the so-called "revival" of religion and the Latin alphabet among the Kalmyks to propagate these "examples" among Soviet prisoners of war of non-Russian ethnic groups and in the captured regions of the Rostov region and the North Caucasus. Some sources also reported that, allegedly, due to the passivity of some military units formed from Kalmyks, the German-Romanian troops in September 1942 were only 50 km from the Caspian Sea (the area of the village of Utta), and there was no defensive lines. But the aggressors, they say, did not expect such a "gift".
It is possible that these messages were not a reflection of reality, but part of the preparation of a large-scale plan for the deportation of Kalmyks. Although on military maps of 1942-1943. the positions of the Soviet troops in that area are not marked. Apparently, the deportation of the Kalmyks was a foregone conclusion.
And only on March 19, 1956, we repeat, this decision was canceled, and almost 10 months later the Kalmyk Autonomous Region was proclaimed within the Stavropol Territory. Its then territory was no more than 70% of the pre-war and modern. The repatriation of the Kalmyks was accompanied by mass letters to Moscow about the restoration of the national ASSR within its former borders.
There is seemingly unconfirmed information that members of the Roerich family also expressed their word in defense of the deported people. But there is quite accurate evidence that the demands in favor of repatriation were supported by none other than the Tibetan Dalai Lama XIV (Ngagwang Lovzang Tentszin Gyamtskho) - the religious and spiritual head of the Kalmyk Buddhists, then still very young. Moreover, from the second half of the 1950s, as you know, he was in confrontation with the authorities of the PRC, and until May 2011 he headed the "government of Tibet in exile."
However, it is obvious that the bond of Kalmyk activists, in addition to ethnic emigration, also with Tibetan separatists, hardly suited Moscow. Therefore, on July 26, 1958, the Kalmyk ASSR was proclaimed within its former - pre-war borders.
There are practically no nationalistic manifestations in modern Kalmykia. But a fertile ground for their "ripening" or reanimation somewhere is the socio-economic situation. And according to RIA “Rating” (2018), Kalmykia has been among the worst subjects of the Federation in terms of quality of life for many years now. When compiling a rating, experts are guided by 72 key indicators. Among the main ones are the level of economic development, the volume of income of the population, the provision of various types of services, the level of development of small business, the socio-economic development of the territory, the development of transport infrastructure, the state of the environment.
By the way, numerous environmental problems are still relevant here, which in particular concerns salinization and transformation into deserts of already limited agricultural land, shortage and low quality of water supply, complete absence of forests on the territory of the republic and other chronic consequences of traditionally extensive agriculture and animal husbandry.
