Kalmykia history · History of Kalmykia
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History of Kalmykia
History of Kalmykia
In the ancient times the region was home to nomadic tribes - Khazars and later on it was the north-western corner of the mighty Mongol Empire - the Golden Horde. Being Historical Crossroads on the steppe route, known as Great Silky Way to Asia, the region had its section east to the Caspian coast.
The Western Mongol Kalmyk tribes, also called Oirats, migrated across Central Asia from an ancestral home around Xinjiang, China and southeastern Kazakhstan and eventually arrived in Southern Russia, displacing the Tatars of the Astrakhan Khanate. Originally an independent khanate, Kalmykia's independence was slowly chipped away and it was eventually assimilated into the Russian Empire.
As more than half of Kalmyks are followers of Tibetan Buddhism, the country is often referred to as the only Buddhist country in Europe. Sadly, nearly all of Kalmykia's beautiful khuruls (Kalmyk Buddhist temples) as well as all Christian churches were demolished under Stalin's massive campaign of cultural vandalism. Under German occupation all Jews of Elista were exterminated. Later in 1943 Stalin deported the entire population of Kalmyks to the Kazakhstan and Siberia. The inappropriate agriculture along with previous collectivisation caused the erosion and desertification. Those Kalmyks who survived the brutal deportation and exile were finally allowed to return home in 1957, under Khruschev. But despite these hardships, Kalmykia's khuruls are being rebuilt, and the people remain, and merit a visit.
Present day Kalmykia garnered some press attention for the excesses of its former flamboyant and dictatorial president Ilyumzhinov. Ilyumzhinov, a former Kalmyk statesman in the USSR and president of the World Chess Federation, led Kalmykia since the break up of the Soviet Union, but failed to deliver on rather grandiose promises to turn Kalmykia into a "Caspian Kuwait" in which there would be "a cell phone for every shepherd." He, however, turned Elista into the claimed chess capital of the world by building a small district of Elista known as "City Chess" and by hosting successive chess championships in the capital.
Being one of Europe's poorest and most underdeveloped regions, Kalmykia now has one of the highest birthrates in Russia and growing private food production sector. Livestock raising and processing remains the main economic activity and there is also some fishing and arable farming. Oil-production brought significally to the economic revival. The official GDP growth in the republic was 2% in 2010.
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Kalmykia Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.