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Traditional Kalmyk tent (Ger) encampment [Date unknown. Wikipedia: public domain]
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From the Archives:

Sketches of the Life of the Kalmyks of the Khoshutov Ulus

“The second annual holiday is "Zul" which is always celebrated on the 24th day of the month "Bar-sar" (month of the snow leopard) which comes near the end of our November1. This festival is celebrated by the Kalmyks to inaugurate the winter and the day of their New Year.

Zul is especially remarkable for us because it is on this day that all Kalmyks commemorate their birthdays. If a Kalmyk had a son born a week before Zul, then on the day of Zul he is considered to be in his second year from birth; at next Zul his second year will be counted as the third, etc.

On Zul, religious activities begin in the evening, in the open steppe; on which, near the khurul (temple), a large table is placed. Each Kalmyk arrives here from his ger (moveable felt and wood domicile), bringing with him a cup made out of dough filled with melted cow’s butter and a wick, and places it on the table.

In the meanwhile, in the khurul a worship service is in progress; when the gelugs (Kalmyk Buddhist priests) exit from it, and while carrying burkhans (holy images), begin to circumambulate the gers singing all the while, accompanied by with loud musi;, the people bow before the burkhans, each one light his cup, and begins to pray.

For this evening festive illumination is arranged; from top to the bottom, from the inside and out, all khuruls are blazing with light: poor Kalmyks pass long poles through the tsagryk (ger vent opening) and hang on these specially made dough cups in which melted cow butter is burning. Among the rich all gers are as if bathed in streams of light.

At the end of the worship service the people go to visit their acquaintances and everyone congratulates eachother with the New Year.

The Kalmyks hold an election on this day among the gelungs for a new gebke (abbot), an office respected by the people. After the election there follow special religious ceremonies and the festivities conclude with general merriment in which neither horse racing, nor wresting, are allowed by tradition”

Ocherki byta kalmykov khoshutovkago ulusa (Sketches of the Life of the Kalmyks of the Khoshutov Ulus)

Compiled by Paul Nebol’sin. St. Petersburg, 1852 pp. 121-122

A KALMYK FOLKTALE

The Happy Sparrow

From branch to branch, from roof-top to the earth—one jump. Chirp-chirp! Chirp-chirp! From morning till evening the little sparrow flits about; happy and irrepressible. Nothing bothers the little one. He pecks at a seed over there and here he finds a worm. And, so he lives.

A crow was sitting in the tree. Black, grave, grand. She looked with one eye at the sparrow and she became envious of the happy one. He sits down and flies-up, alights-flies-up. “Chirp-chirp! Chirp-chirp!”—The unbearable sparrow!

“Sparrow, sparrow,” the crow asks, “how’s life-how are you doing? How are you getting your food?”

The sparrow can’t stay in one place even for a minute.

The sparrow answers—in flight, “Well, I gnaw at the tips of the reeds.”

“And, if you choke, what then? You’ll have to die?”

“Why should I die, now? I’ll scratch and scratch and pull it out with my claws.”

“And if the blood starts flowing, what will you do?”

“I’ll drink some water; will rinse it off; I’ll stop the blood.”

“Well, and if you get your feet wet? You’ll freeze, you’ll get a cold; your feet will start hurting.”

“Chirp-chirp, Chirp-chirp! I’ll build a fire, I’ll warm my feet—I’ll get well, again.”

“And if the fire grows? What then?”

“I’ll beat my wings; I’ll put-out the fire.”

“And if you burn your wings, what then?”

“I’ll fly to the doctor, the doctor will cure me.” The crow would not quit:

“And if there isn’t a doctor? What will you do then?”

Chirp-chirp! Chirp-chirp! You look over there, a seed will turn-up; and, over there a worm will find its way into my mouth; and, over there will be a cozy place for a nest, the kind sun will warm me, the wind will caress me. And so, I’ll be cured without a doctor, I’ll remain alive.

The sparrow said that and flew up—and he was gone. The Old crow bristled, lowered its eyelids, and moved its beak from side to side gloomily.

Life is good, it’s a miracle! One should live without gloom. Be steadfast, be cheerful, be happy!

 

Steppe Notes 19-2010

Who Are the Kalmyks?

The question of who are the Kalmyks is one that is a constant in this year that the Folk Festival is working to honor the folk culture of this New Jersey (and Penna.) ethnic community. In earlier Steppe Notes we broached this question in concise form (see SN#2) , but the questions continue, and it occurred to me that it might be good to share an excerpt from a forthcoming book (White Road) which expands the earlier discussion and brings some interesting views to the understanding of Kalmyk history; specifically to the understanding of the significance of the Kalmyk Diaspora in the United States:

Coming to America

The existence, in the township of Howell and nearby areas, of the largest modern Kalmyk community outside of the Republic of Kalmykia, in the Russian Federation, is tied to the realities of post-WWII Europe and a moment in the history of the United States that in certain instances showed in its leadership, a humanity and largesse rarely witnessed before, or since (although that largesse and humanity was not applied to German and some other civilians or POWs). World War II, a war which some see as the second phase of an anti-imperial movement dramatically inaugurated by the slaughter called World War I, created over 40 million refugees. The majority of these were various peoples from Eastern Europe brought away from their ancestral abodes by war, whether by choice or force. Of that number somewhere between 14 and 16 million of these Displaced Persons were Germans expulsed from Central and Eastern Europe.

Among the overall number of 40 million refugees in Western Europe and Germany, there where approximately 5 million Russians and other Eastern Europeans and four thousand Kalmyks, who arrived either directly from Kalmykia, during or immediately following the War, or who transmigrated from countries such as Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, or France. The Kalmyks who transmigrated for other European countries belonged to the earlier (first) generation of refugees from Russia.

Of the total number of Kalmyks displaced in post-War Germany, 2,318 were repatriated by the Western Allies to the Soviet Union (along with millions of Russians and other East Europeans), where, at best, they were further relocated onto collective farms in Siberia and the Far East. Many of the repatriated, however, were tried and given ten to 25-year sentences in Soviet labor camps or summarily executed.

For a number of years the Kalmyks who were not repatriated resided in Displaced Persons (DP) camps. Nations that were willing to take other refugees refused admittance to the Kalmyks on racial grounds. This was true of Australia, Canada, Ethiopia, Paraguay and the United States, among others.

In the United States the law governing immigration at that time was the Immigration Act of 1924, a law deeply influenced by Madison Grant, who provided population statistics for it, and whose book The Passing of the Great Race (1916) not only influenced the Act but was one of the first books published in Germany by the Nazis and which Adolf Hitler considered his "Bible" and used parts of in Mein Kampf.

A section of the Immigration Act of 1924 was the Asian Exclusion Act which virtually eliminated legal Chinese, Japanese and other Asian immigration based on the Naturalization Act of 1790 which allowed citizenship only to "free white persons" of "good moral character." Since Asians were not "white" they could not become naturalized citizens, and therefore could not be allowed to immigrate to the U.S.

One Kalmyk couple took on this odious law. Dordzhi and Samsona Remelev petitioned the American government to be allowed to immigrate to the U.S. based on the claim that they were white and not Asian. Part of their petition read: “The petitioner Dordzhi Remelov, 58 years of age, born in Russia, currently stateless, was born in the Potapov stanica (village), approximately 200 kilometers to the East of Rostov-on-the-Don; the petitioner Samsona Remilev, 57 years of age, born in Russia, also stateless, was born in the Vlasovskaya stanica in the Rostov region."

Further the petition went on to recount the basic elements of a dramatic life-path: "The petitioners escaped Russia in 1920 after opposing the revolutionary Communist forces, the petitioner Dorzhi Remelev served in the Tsarist cavalry. His first wife and two of their children died of hunger in Russia in 1922, while the first husband of petitioner Samsona Remelev was shot by the revolutionaries in 1918. The petitioners were married in Sofia (Bulgaria, trans.) in 1922 according to the Buddhist ritual. Later they lived in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, where Dorzhi Remelev worked as a teacher and owned a store from 1936 to 1943. In April of 1943 they escaped to Germany and worked in a paper mill until May, 1945. From 1945 to 1948 Dorzhi Remelev taught in the Displaced Persons camp in Shlessheim, near Munich, later, and until now, he has been unemployed."

While the life of the Remelevs is dramatic, by any measure, it was not exceptional in terms of other similarly situated refugees, whether they be Polish, German, Jewish (of any European nationality), Kalmyk or Russian.

The main point of this recounting is to illustrate that the short biography of the Remelev’s was not significant for its drama (other life stories were equally, if not more dramatic), but was an attempt to establish certain facts that would go to the "good moral character" required by the Naturalization Act of 1790. Specifically, that the petitioners were legally married in a religious ceremony; that their second marriage was not due to divorce (a negative in those days) but the untimely demise of their spouses; that they were long-standing and proven anti-communists; that Mr. Remilev was a former military man; that Mr. Remilev was a businessman and a teacher; and that both, were gainfully employed for as long as it was possible to be employed.

Establishing that the Remelevs were of "good moral character," however, while necessary, was not sufficient to enable them to receive the right to immigrate; to do that, they needed to prove that they where "white" and not Asian. The petitioners tried to accomplish that end by a two-pronged argument. On one hand, they argued that they were at least, 50% Russian and not Kalmyk; on the other, the argument went that regardless of their bloodlines that they were "European" and therefore "white."

As Elsa Bair-Guchinova points out, in her wonderful The Street—Kalmuk Road, to prove themselves as Russians both spouses invented "Russian" grandmothers, and Dordzhi Remelev also added a fictional "Armenian" etymology of his last name. As a consequence of this gambit Dordzhi was found to be 50% Russian and only 25% Kalmyk, while Samsona was determined to be 50% Russian and 50% Kalmyk.

It is, however, the argument that the Remelevs where "white," based on cultural factors that was the heart of their argument, and proved successful after a number of administrative hearings; this determination opened the door to immigration to the United States for the bulk of the Kalmyks remaining in DP camps in Germany. The news of this event was published by the New York Times on August 3, 1951 under the title "Kalmucks Assured of a Home in the U.S.": “?Fresh Hope?a home in the United States?for 728 Kalmuks, most of them refugees from Bolshevism for thirty years, has been aroused by news that a test case before the highest inquiry board of the United States Immigration Service has been settled in their favor.” In the period between October 1951 and July 1952 nearly 600 Kalmyks came to America.

It is fascinating to note that after playing a pivotal role in the fate of the Kalmyk Diaspora, the Remelevs quietly disappeared from history’s stage. The people who are normally given credit for being the first Kalmyk family members in America are Djab, Namjal and Amur-Sanan Burchinow, who arrived on October 29th, 1951. I felt a certain closing of a historical door while attending the buyen (memorial service) in the summer of 2010, for Djab Burchinow, the head of that pioneering family. The Remelevs, who initiated the case that enabled the Kalmyks to come to the US, arrived on December 26, 1951 on the S.S. General Hershey, and faded into the Philadelphia Kalmyk community.

Another fascinating element of this tale is that among Kalmyks in Howell the story of how the Kalmyks came to America most often goes along the following lines;

You probably know that they would not take us in America. America did not take us, Canada did not take us. We even wrote to Paraguay. Fortunately, even Paraguay refused us. We had this teacher, Remelev, he had an acquaintance in the USA, and he wrote him a letter; or Shamba Balinov wrote it. He wrote an article that in this world, under the sun’s rays there lives a people— Kalmyks, and they have nowhere to live. The Russian who got the letter printed it in the Novoe russkoe slovo (New Russian Word—a Russian émigré daily newspaper published in New York since 1910. trans.) Then the Russians began to say: How is that? The Kalmyks—those are our people. They lived in Russia for so many years; they are like Russians. The Tolstoy Foundation and all Russians began signature drives and sending letters to Congress. In August of 1951 Congress voted for a special law, that the Kalmyks could come not as a yellow race, but as a white one. And one of the organizations set aside 275 thousand dollars for our expenses. They paid for out tickets on the ships, and supported us in the beginning, while we were in the camp. (The narrator makes a reference to resettlement camps in New Jersey and Maryland. trans.)

The role of the Remelevs case is not commonly told, instead an emphasis is made on the belief that the United States Congress passed a statute to allow the Kalmyks to emigrate—an interesting twist on exceptionalist ideas that often occur in ethnic and national communities. This version of tale has been reinforced by its publication in 1997 by the Russian Academy of Sciences in a short book by Djab Burchinov.

"White" Mongols

So who are the mysterious "white" Mongols whom responsible governmental officials saw as Europeans, and of whom the universal majority of Americans never heard of?

The Kalmyks are descendents of tribes that arose in the western part of today’s Mongolia and the north-western part of China (Dzungaria). In early historical sources such as the Secret History of the Mongols (circa 13th century) they were known as Oirats. Originally the Oirats were a composite social grouping that was constituted of four main tribes: the Choros or Ölöt, Torghut, Dörbet, and Khoshut. In addition, at various historical times, some minor tribes became part of this grouping, including: the Khoid, Bayid, Mangit, Zakhachin, Baatud, Barga and Darkhad.

The meaning of the name "Kalmyk" (Khal’mg) as an appellation for the Oirats is not a settled issue in scholarly literature, but the following facts are accepted by the vast majority:

1) The term "Kalmyk" is of Turkic origin.
2) The term has been in use, at least, since the 15th century.
3) The term was not used by the people to describe themselves until recently
4) The term has been primarily used as an appellation of the descendents of Oirats who settled in the 17th century in the pre-Caspian steppes (prairies), between the Volga and Ural rivers.

Most contentious has been the specific meaning of the term, and while there is no consensus around that issue, the most logical interpretation seems to be the one found in the anonymous 14th century work Shajrat Ul Atrak (The Genealogical Tree of the Turks and Tatars) that delineates the spread of Islam in the Golden Horde. In this telling those people who refused to accept Islam, and therefore Paradise, were said to be "fated to remain" i.e,, bereft of Paradise. In this version, those who accepted Islam became known as Uzbeks (in honor of their khan) and those who remained with their old faith as "Kalmyks."

In Howell, however, one hears of another etymological possibility—that the term "Kalmyk" was the name of those who did not undertake the star-crossed trek to Dzungaria in 1771 and therefore became known as "the remnants." While this version is factually not supported, it is nevertheless significant as an expression of a kind of historical romantic regret that is a passive claim to ethnic exeptionalism. In the end, the specific meaning of the term is not as significant as the fact that the term was used traditionally by outsiders and, in vast majority of cases, only in reference to the people that migrated eventually to the Caspian steppes (there is a small group of Oirats in today’s China that are also known as Kalmyks, but those are the remnants of the group that re-migrated to Dzungaria in 1771).

While in recent decades the Kalmyks began to use "Kalmyk" as a term of self-ascription, historically they either identified themselves by their tribal affiliation (Koshut, Dörbet, etc.) or as "Red-tassel Kalmyks" (ulan zalata khalm’gud). Since the 18th century they were known among Mongol-speaking people as "Volga Kalmyks" (ll’zhin khalm’gud) or "Russian Kalmyks" (Arasjan khalm’gud).

The traditional date used to commemorate the arrival of the Kalmyks in the Muscovite Russian realm is 1608, although it is probably more accurate to consider their settlement there around 1630. The period between that date and 1724, when Ayuka Khan (1669–1724) died, is considered to be the Kalmyk "Golden Age." In that span, the Russians considered the Kalmyks their subject vassals, but they largely left them alone, and recognized the Kalmyk Khanate as a distinct state. The Kalmyks on the other hand, saw themselves as completely sovereign and equal to the Russians although committing themselves to fighting Russia’s enemies on its border and committing to follow Russian foreign policy in contiguous areas.

Fred Adelman captures the times succinctly: "There were few sustained interrelations between Kalmyks and Russians in the frontier period. Routine contacts probably consisted in the main of seasonal commodity exchanges of Kalmyk livestock and the products thereof for such nomad necessities as brick tea, grain, textiles and metal articles, at Astrakhan, Tsaritsyn and Saratov. This was the kind of exchange relationship between nomads and urban craftsmen and traders in which the Kalmyks traditionally engaged. Political contacts consisted of a series of treaty arrangements for the nominal allegiance of the Kalmyk Khans to Russia, and the cessation of mutual raiding by Kalmyks on the one hand and Cossacks and Bashkirs on the other. A few Kalmyk nobles became russified and nominally Christian who went to Moscow in hope of securing Russian help for their political ambitions on the Kalmyk steppe. Russian subsidies to Kalmyk nobles, however, became an effective means of political control only later. Yet gradually the Kalmyk princes came to require Russian support and to abide in Russian policy."

From 1724 until 1771, when the Kalmyk Khanate was dissolved by Catherine the Great, the Kalmyks underwent a period of internal discord, the weakening of their self-rule, increase in the missionary activities of the Russian Orthodox Church, ever increasing loss of pasture land, and ever greater dependence on Russia subsidies for the Kalmyk nobility and clergy. The growing dissatisfaction with life in Russia (and in some views, because of active diplomatic work by the Chinese), led Khan Ubushi to begin (with the blessing of the Dalai Lama) an ill-starred re-migration of 75% of all Kalmyks to Dzungaria. Not only was that trek a disaster for the migrants (well over 2/3 of them, perished, as did most of their livestock before reaching their destination) but it became the first general social trauma for the Kalmyks as a group—most of their aristocracy and educated elite left, and the vast majority of manuscripts and religious object went with the migrant; eventually to be destroyed in China during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.

An interesting view of the subsequent life of these migrants is given in Russian Central Asia (1885) by Henry Lansdell:
"… the Torgout (the vast majority of the Kalmyks who returned to Dzungaria were Toghuts-ed.), which emigrated two centuries ago to the Volga, but was invited back by the Chinese to fill empty land when the latter annihilated the flourishing nation called Sangarian (Iran-ed.). They are very lazy, but generous and good tempered: far from good-looking, for "their lips are colorless, set in a strange, almost idiotic and at the same time inexpressibly sad smile." The women stain their teeth black. The hair is coarse, straight, and invariably black; the beard scanty and bristle-like, and the skin rough and sunburned. Below the middle height, with broad shoulders, long arms, and bowed legs, the voice is harsh, sharp and strongly aspirate. The men shave all the head except a cue (long strand, braid, or twist -ed.). Credulous, and lovers of anecdotes and stories, their gayety is artificial and succeeded by deep melancholy. Timid, they become very angry if irritated. Not remarkable for severe morals, still "they excel the morally corrupt Chinese," They use no flour food except it be gruel, and boil their tea, which comes to them in the shape of bricks, with milk, fat, salt, flour, and millet. The Kalmuks constitute the Chinese irregular cavalry and are divided into squadrons of 200 tens, ruled by a Shamano-Buddhist priest called a gelun and a Capatain called a zang. Under the gelun are minor priests, celibates, called lamas, who live with him. One of every three brothers among the Kalmuks becomes a lama. They worship idols and wear amulets.”

After the dissolution of the Kalmyk khanate in 1771, the remaining Kalmyks, who at that time were divided into four tribes of Torghut, Dörbet, Khoshut and the Don Kalmyks (Buzava) came under the jurisdiction of the Astrakhan and Stavropol governments. There were additional Kalmyk population concentrations along the rivers Kuban, Terek and Kuma, and near the city of Orenburg in Siberia, A special commission that handled Kalmyk affairs was headquartered in Astrakhan. This arrangement largely lasted until the Russian Revolution.

At first, the Russian Revolution of 1917 did not bring changes to the Kalmyk steppe. First there was the Provisional Government following the Tsarist regime, then the Bolshevik took over, and for a while the area was controlled by the White anti-revolutionary forces. A good portion of the Don Cossack Host joined the White movement and the Buzava Kalmyks, most of whom were Cossacks, became part of that (the estimate was approximately 4,000 Kalmyks).

Shortly after the failed 1919 offensive by General Denikin the White movement began a steady process of retreat from the Red Army and its allies. By 1920 General Wrangel (who replaced Denikin) retreated all the way to the Crimea Peninsula and, from there, the White Army evacuated, first, to Turkey and then to other countries in Europe.

In 1920 the Bolsheviks established permanent power over the Kalmyk steppe and almost immediately created the Autonomous Region of the Kalmyk People. In 1935 the Region was declared to be the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic and it continued in that status until 1943 when it was dissolved and the whole Kalmyk population was deported to collective farms in Siberia and the Far East. In 1957 Kalmykia was restored, at first as an Autonomous Region (part of the Stavropol area) and in then in 1959 as an autonomous republic—Kalmyk ASSR. In 1991 the Soviet Union dissolved and Kalmykia established itself as a republic within the new Russian Federation in 1992.

If the out-migration of most Toguts out of Kalmykia in 1771 was the first trauma for the Kalmyk community, the Russian Civil War can rightly be seen as the second national trauma. Lenin, the head of the Bolshevik government understood the importance of having a "Red" Kalmykia for the viability of the new state; this is why he appealed in the summer of 1919 for Kalmyks to support the new government and in order to get this acquiescence offered sufficient land for Kalmyk needs, among other incentives. It appears that the vast majority of Kalmyks remained as much as possible off to-the-side during the conflict except for the Buzava, who as Cossacks and members of the Don Host joined the White, anti-Bolshevik, resistance. While the resistance and subsequent migration of the Buzava never exceeded two percent of the total population the involvement in anti-Bolshevik activities led to wide-scale retribution in the area of the Don Host. There were widespread executions, destructions of khuruls (temples) and destructions of stanicas (villages).

1920 and the emigration of the Buzava Kalmyks from Russia marks a bifurcation in the history of the Kalmyk community. The history of the émigrés and the history of the Kalmyks who remained, go along totally different paths, but both stories are about being thrust, suddenly and sometimes brutally, into modernity. The story of the émigrés would, in all probability, be little more than a footnote in Kalmyk history were it not for subsequent events. The dissolution of the Kalmyk nation and the forcible deportation and dispersal of Kalmyks in 1943 created a reality in which the small diasporic community of Kalmyks in Europe, and later in the United States, became the only organized community of Kalmyks west of the Ural Mountains.

Between the years of 1943 and 1957 there was no Kalmyk republic, no Kalmyk nation, and no Kalmyk ethnic community, except for that small band of refugees that were gathered in post WWII Germany and later in the United States. And, while after 1957 there was a painful attempt to revive the Kalmykia on ancestral lands, that effort met only limited success; the Kalmyk language, for example, is today considered endangered by UNESCO. The formation of a new Republic in a post-Communist Russian Federation in 1992 allowed for a possibility of establishing a modern Kalmyk ethnos. The ability of the Kalmyks to freely interact with the Diaspora, in which Kalmyks also underwent a sudden plunge into modernity, but in different ways, could help in developing a richer and stronger culture. In a way, this is a story of a birth, painful and bloody at times, but always with a potential for a better future.

Bibliography

"In Re: Matter of R" Administrative Decisions Under Immigration & Nationality Laws. United States Department of Justice. Vol.IV. February 1950 to January 1953.

"Kalmucks Assured of a Home in the U.S.," NY Times, August 3, 1951.

Fred Adelman, Kalmyk Cultural Renewal, PhD Dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1960.

Arash Bormanshinov. The Kalmyks: Their Ethnic, Historical, Religious, and Cultural Background, Kalmyk American Cultural Association, Occasional Papers Number One, 1990.

Djab Naminov Burchinov. Bor'ba za grazhdanskie prava Kalmytskogo naroda (The Struggle for Civil Rights of the Kalmyk People), Russian Academy of Sciences: Society of Russian Mongolists and Kalmyk State University: Moscow and Elitsa, 1997.

U. E. Erdniev. Kalmyki: Istoriko-etnograficheskie ocherki (The Kalmyks: Historico-Ethnographic Sketches).3-e izd., pererab. I dop. (3rd Edition, Rev. and Enlarged), Kalm. Kn. Izd. (Kalmyk Book Publishing): Elista, Russia, 1985.

Julius Epstein. Operation Keelhaul. Devin-Adair: Old Greenwich, CT, 1973.

Elza-Bair Guchinova. Ulitsa "Kalmuk Road." Istoriya, kultura, i identichnosti kalmytskoy obschiny SSHA. (The Street :Kalmuk Road." History, Culture and Identities of the Kalmyk Community in the U.S.A.) St. Petersburg, 2004.

________________. "Deportation of the Kalmyks (1943–1956): Stigmatized Ethnicity," in Uyama Tomohiko, ed. Empire, Islam, and Politics in Central Eurasia. 21st Century COE Program Slavic Eurasian Studies, No. 14, Slavic Research Center: Hokaido University, Japan. 2007, pp. 187-220.

Michael Khodarkovsky. Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads 1600-1771, Cornell University Press: Ithaca, NY, 1992

Henry Lansdell Russian Central Asia. Houghton, Mifflin & Co.: Boston, 1885.

Colonel William Miles. (Translator & editor) The Sharjat Ul Atrak of Genealogical Tree of the Turks and Tartars. W. H. Allen & Co.: London 1838.

Paula G. Rubel. The Kalmyk Mongols: A Study in Continuity and Change. Indiana University Press: Bloomington, 1967.

Nikolai Tolstoy . The Secret Betrayal, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1977.

 

1 This statement is true for the lunar calendar only; it is not applicable to the Western sun-centered calendar.
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