Introduction. Nomads once maximally incorporated into nature and surrounding landscapes had tended to retain their identity through the pastoral way of life, way of thinking, and mentality. The gradual — though further accelerated — emergence of the new development logic set forth by the Russian Empire made the Kazakhs develop new adaptation mechanisms for survival and self-realization in the suggested circumstances. Goals. The article analyzes a variety of sources, works and studies characterizing existential specifics of nomadic economic patterns — to examine the shaping of new life strategies adopted by Kazakh nomads across the frontier zone in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials and methods. The analyzed materials include those contained in Collection 175 of the State Archive of Orenburg Oblast, Interim Provisions on Governance in Steppe Areas of Orenburg and West Siberian Governorates-General, and Materials on Kirghiz Land Use published between 1896 and 1915. Besides, a number of Kazakh literary works that serve as unique historical sources have been considered. Results. The critical approach to different historical sources makes it possible to compare factual materials and reconstruct the transformation and changes in self-identity and outlooks of ex-nomads. At the turn of the 20th century, Kazakh elites were trying to answer the traditional questions of the intelligentsia: Who is to blame and what is to be done? Then and there it was urgent to decide on further prospects of life — whether to preserve nomadism or to seek for other forms of semi-nomadic life, or gradually get sedentarized at all. Conclusions. The Russian Government did not interfere with the nomads’ land use practices, and tended to solve land matters of exclusively plowmen’s communities. In these conditions, the nomadic Kazakhs were left to themselves. As a result, they had to develop new daily practices. Having lost their traditional lifestyle, the Kazakhs still succeeded in preserving their national distinctness in terms of language, oral folklore, genealogies, rituals, etc. The specificity of the frontier zone manifested itself in that Kazakh nomads were actively involved in daily life transformations and developed a habit of turning to local authorities for support (rather than relying on their own resources only) to defend lands from competing peasant immigrants.

The article deals with the history of Kalmykia Komsomol Committee in 1921–1991. Goals. The paper aims to investigate personnel policies towards First Secretaries of Kalmykia Committee of the RKSM/VLKSM between 1921 and 1991. Materials and methods. The work analyzes archival and published materials from the National Archive of Kalmykia. The key principles employed are those of objectivity and historicism that prove instrumental in examining the issue in certain historical circumstances and contexts. Results. The study concludes somewhat specific factor that influenced activities by First Secretaries of Kalmykia’s Komsomol was that their terms of tenure were not that long. The insights into their personal characteristics show in 1921–1991 the bulk of them came from poor peasant families and had no university degrees, though were experienced enough in party activities and tended to combine both Komsomol and party duties. The postwar period witnessed an increase in educational levels of Kalmykia’s Komsomol executives, all of them had diplomas of higher education. A candidate pool system also took shape. Komsomol activists were recommended for postgraduate programs, and the organization served as cadre training unit not only to the Communist Party but rather to Soviet agencies at large.

Russian Orientalism is distinguished by its territorial proximity to Asian countries and the shaping of Russia-Asia frontier in bordering areas where peoples blended and cultures synthesized to form a multicultural environment. Goals. The study aims to identify the specifics of Orientalist motifs in works of the Soviet Russian poet Pavel Nikolaevich Vasiliev. Materials and methods. The paper analyzes works of P. Vasiliev with the aid of the historical/literary and comparative methods. The methodology is based on theses of Orientalism and transcultural literature. Results. The literary mainstream of that time was implementing the trend toward a class orientation with the dichotomy of US — the proletariat, the poor, and THEM — kulaks, merchants, aristocrats, beys, biys, begs, coupled with the proclaimed civilizing role of Russians in the life of indigenous peoples, which was dictated by the early Soviet ideology. Pavel Vasiliev also depicted the civilizing mission of Russian engineers, builders, railroad men; industrialization in Kazakh steppes; the images of ‘civilized’ Kazakh savages — fighters for Soviet power, builders of a new life. He draws typical negative images of mullahs, which was prompted by the Bolshevik struggle against religion and its influence on the masses. At the same time, he is aware of his spiritual kinship with the Kazakhs and does not portray the latter as THEM, for him they are US, relatives. In early Soviet literature, the image of ‘sleeping’ Asia was widespread enough, and the region was thus to be awakened with bayonets and machine guns — to turn into the ‘red’ East as part of an ideologically unified Soviet state. In this regard, Vasiliev was standing away from the mainstream, since he never viewed Asia as a backward or dormant territory. That was rather an ancient, millennia-old, mysterious country, his homeland. Orientalist poems by Pavel Vasiliev (Hunting with Golden Eagles, Jut, Melon Field near Semipalatinsk, Camel, etc.) also deviate from the mainstream, since they emphasize ethnic and cultural specificities of the Kazakhs — an indigenous people of the Asian frontier — and this somewhat contradicted the Soviet policy of depreciating indigenous cultures of Asia. Conclusions. The insight into Orientalist motifs of Vasiliev’s poetry attests to the latter were influenced by transcultural nature of the poet’s artistic worldview, since his creative mind was shaped within the Kazakh-Russian frontier.

Introduction. The article analyzes essentials of oral narratives recorded from respondents across Kalmykia in 2012–2017, focusing on how the former tend to articulate and characterize past events, activities of certain individuals and folklore characters who had left noticeable marks on the history of the ethnos, in the memory of individuals and society at large. Materials and methods. The study investigates authentic materials — narratives recorded from bearers of the Kalmyk oral tradition expressing their attitudes, assessments, and interpretations of events of the past. When it comes to define the scope of the research object, special attention is paid to theoretical and methodological generalizations developed by V. Shklovsky, W. Labov and J. Waletzky in their works examining oral narratives. Results. The study attests to oral narratives recorded at the beginning of the 21st century in Kalmykia cluster together to shape a specific form employed to register events, preserve and transmit data on the life of certain individuals and ethnos in all its diversity. The paper shows that Kalmyks have preserved the memory of epic heroes, legendary personalities of past eras, about events of later times, and they do find different ways to verbally transmit this knowledge of theirs to the new generation.

Introduction. The paper deals with the linguistic data documented in Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s Chuvash wordlist, which is known to be the earliest lexicographic source on the Chuvash language. The wordlist was published in Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s 1730 book but had been, most likely, collected much earlier, in 1711. Goals. The study aims to provide a philological interpretation of Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s wordlist and evaluate its significance for the history of Chuvash. This source has been widely considered to be of little linguistic value and, generally, hardly interpretable because of numerous errors and inconsistencies as well as the brevity of the wordlist. The starting point of this article is the idea that Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s wordlist can still be analyzed if it is taken not as an isolated piece of documentation of Chuvash, but within the broader context of, firstly, Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s materials on other languages of Northern Eurasia and, secondly, other sources on the 18th-century Chuvash language. Materials and methods. It is shown that Ph. J. Strahlenberg has documented 30 Chuvash words in total, including 28 words in the Chuvash wordlist proper, 1 word in the main text of his book, and 1 word mistakenly placed in the wordlist of the neighboring Mari language. These materials have been investigated through standard methods of philological analysis, with a main focus on the orthographic peculiarities of the wordlist (considered against the background of other old written Chuvash sources) and on proposing plausible conjectures. Results. The paper provides a comprehensive philological account of each item on Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s Chuvash wordlist. It is established that almost all difficulties of interpretation that are traditionally associated with this source are rooted in the use of limitedly known orthographic patterns and, additionally, in the distortion of the recorded forms during the period after the original documentation and before the publication of Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s book. After introducing conjectures into the wordlist, it becomes possible to reconstruct phonetic prototypes of the documented forms. This, in turn, sets the stage for placing Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s materials on the dialectological map of Chuvash. While not particularly specific in terms of historical dialectology, the features characteristic of this variety can be broadly described as Viryal Chuvash. Given the extra-linguistic evidence available, it can be assumed that Ph. J. Strahlenberg’s Chuvash wordlist was recorded in the vicinity of Šupaškar (Cheboksary). Therefore, the attested dialect should probably be classified among the northern varieties of Viryal Chuvash.

Introduction. The article deals with the Russian colonization of Uryankhay Krai (present-day Tyva Republic) prior to the establishment of Russian protectorate. Goals. The paper aims at analyzing migration flows to have accompanied the peopling of Uryankhay Krai. Materials and methods. The source base for the study was a wide range of materials, among which a significant proportion is occupied by pre-revolutionary publications, including periodicals (Siberia, Minusinsk Territory, Minusinsk Leaf, Yenisei Thought, Krasnoyarsk Voice, etc.), containing information on the topic under study. The methodological basis of the article was the general scientific principle and methods of scientific knowledge. Data on the demographic composition of migrants are limited. Results. A total of three Russian population inflows — gold mining, agricultural, and commercial ones — can be traced. Earliest messages about gold mining in Uryankhay date back to 1837 when Russians started exploiting gold mines in upper reaches of the Sistikema River. Tuvans worked in the mines, panned for gold. By the 1910s, there were 15 operating mines in Uryankhay. Gold mining was hindered not only by roadless terrain but also by the 1903 decree obliging Russian gold miners to leave their mines upon receipt of any restrictive resolution from the Chinese Government. Those were Old Believers who had arrived in Uryankhay earliest (around the 1860s) in search of Belevodye kingdom. Those were first Russians to have started cultivating land in the region. Periodicals were depicting Tuvan-inhabited lands as fertile, and after the expulsion of the Chinese a campaign popularizing ‘rich soils’ was organized among Minusinsk peasants and across territories adjacent to the Siberian railway. By 1914, over 3,000 dessiatins were occupied by Russian crops. Earliest merchants to have arrived in region were delivering ‘goods in their bosom’ exchanging knives, matches, tobacco and other commodities for livestock and furs. The bulk of Russians moved to Uryankhay from nearest provinces and the migration could be characterized as replacement one: bordering peasants suffering from lack of plough-land and aware of Uryankhay’s resources chose to move therein to be replaced by migrant Minusinsk peasants. Ethnic and social structure of immigrants from Russia was not that homogeneous. So, representatives of different ethnic groups — Russians, Tatars, Khakas, Latvians, Poles — came from different social classes, e.g., merchants, Cossacks, peasants. This attests to a high migration mobility in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As of the establishment of Russian protectorate in 1914, over 5,5 thousand Russians were living in the region. Conclusions. Russian colonization — from the arrival of Old Believers and to the official protectorate of Russia — was complete in less than 60 years. The rapid and successful process was facilitated by a number of factors, namely: geographical location, lack of an exact borderline between the two countries, China’s political situation, and economic opportunities for Russian population in the region.

Introduction. The article describes two equestrian expeditions undertaken in May and July 2022 to celebrate the 80th anniversary of earliest battles for the Don attended by the 100th Kalmyk Cavalry Division. The expeditions are viewed as commemorative practices to have facilitated further memorialization of the ethnic military unit’s heroic deeds. Materials and methods. The study employs a variety of general scientific and special research techniques, including the genetic method in history, participant observations, and interviews. The work analyzes monographs and articles dealing with the 110th Cavalry Division, interviews with expedition attendees, and published media materials. Results. The paper begins with a historical review of the 110th Kalmyk Cavalry Division and describes the struggle for its historical memory. This is followed by insights into the two equestrian expeditions to have commemorated the 80th anniversary of the unit’s earliest hostilities attended. The first expedition was held on Malye Derbety – Elista route (over 200 km long), lasted for seven days, and was culminated by a ceremonial march along Elista streets on 9 May. This involved a total of approximately thirty individuals, including one young woman and five children, and was largely a preparatory arrangement to identify and settle some potential logistic and technical problems. The second expedition was organized on route Malye Derbety – Razdorskaya (over 500 km long) in July 2022 and lasted for fourteen days. The group included seventeen male individuals dressed in 1942 uniforms of Red Army cavalrymen and equipped with blank WWII firearms. The expedition was to primarily pass through Rostov Oblast and ended in Razdorskaya on 23 July during an interregional Cossack song contest. Horse riders to have attended both the expeditions would participate in public meetings and concerts to narrate about heroic deeds performed by soldiers of the 110th Kalmyk Cavalry Division. So, the early 3rd millennium equestrian tours have proved an ingenious form of patriotic propaganda and shall be long remembered — like the delivered history of the ethnic military unit proper — by participants of corresponding events. Conclusions. The arranged equestrian expeditions have served an efficient tool to memorialize heroic past of the 110th Kalmyk Cavalry Division both across Kalmykia and Rostov Oblast.

Introduction. The article analyzes problem-solving mechanisms occurring in Buryat-Russian bilingual oral speech, the former being universal communicative strategies that enable bilinguals to construct and maintain Buryat language communication in the absence of some language resources and skills. Goals. The study attempts an analysis of extensive speech materials that include certain problem-solving mechanisms and aims at describing features of bilingual speech and essentials of social bilingualism from across the territories of ethnic Buryatia, as well as at showing analyses of such mechanisms be rewarding for explorations of Buryat-Russian bilingualism. Material and methods. The work examines recordings (speech narratives) of Tükherig TV Quiz Show (2019–2020) to have been attended by 285 bilinguals from different areas of ethnic Buryatia and with differing Buryat language proficiency levels. Speech portraits of the bilinguals contain details of their speech behavior individually indicating a certain problem faced and a mechanism employed to solve the latter. Reference editions prove instrumental in assessing efficiency of each specific mechanism activated and calculating correlations between age characteristics of the informants and task fulfillment rates, including actual communication language choices. Results. The paper reveals quite a number of various problem-solving mechanisms, identifies their activation reasons and logic. The narratives — though specific enough — make it possible to delineate features of social bilingualism in the region. Conclusions. The observations vividly confirm and illustrate findings of other researchers as to that the region’s communication paradigm is distinctly two-coded, with large layers of Buryat vocabulary remaining passive for Buryat-Russian bilinguals. This results in that though actively used basic words enable bilinguals to generate utterances in Buryat, the latter largely prove inaccurate and demonstrate no semantic diversity.

Introduction. The article evaluates the language situation and its dynamics in Tatarstan and other ethnic republics of the Volga Region in the context of new approaches to learning of languages of Russia’s peoples. In 2017, native languages were classified as a compulsory academic discipline at school, though with a legally stipulated right to choose such native language proper. Goals. The study aims at outlining the actual vectors of language processes and effects of the language policy nationwide through examples of the Tatar language in Tatarstan and languages of the Volga Region at large. Materials and methods. The work analyzes data from two research projects, namely: a mass survey of Tatarstan’s residents numbering 2,000 on their language use practices in public and private discourses conducted in July 2018 (the article focuses on language practices of ethnic Tatars); and a series of semi-formal interviews with representatives of the ethnic intelligentsia, public organizations, and the mass media in Tatarstan and in the five republics of the Volga Region (Bashkortostan, Mari El, Mordovia, Udmurtia, Chuvashia) on topical issues of language development held from June to November 2021 (a total of 48 interviews). Results. The sociological data make it possible to reveal key trends of linguistic development and the ratio of use between state languages (Russian and titular ones) in consumption of mass media and Internet products, in public discourses (office, stores, public institutions) and individual language practices. The data attest to a predominant use of Russian by ethnic Tatars in the context of expanding Russian-Tatar bilingualism, i.e. a steady continuation of the language shift inherited from the late Soviet era. Conclusions. The newly adopted agenda of teaching native languages has resulted in further expanded use of the Russian language, since — regardless of actual ethnic identities — some parents tend to choose Russian as a native language for their children, which leads to reduced numbers of students learning other native languages, a decrease in the demand for textbooks and teachers of the Volga peoples’ languages. This causes anxiety among the national intelligentsia and the public as to the future of linguistic and cultural diversity in Russia.

Introduction. The article provides statistical interpretations of data contained in volume 4 of The Memory. Sanl that publishes an annotated list of ca. 9,500 Red Army soldiers and officers largely conscripted in the Kalmyk ASSR — and subsequently classified as KIAs and MIAs between 1941 and 1945. Goals. The work examines the mentioned edition and attempts a respective database (supplemented with statistical analysis) of Soviet Kalmykia’s natives drafted into the Red Army in 1941–1945. Materials and methods. The paper focuses on the annotated list of casualties among Soviet troops introduced in volume 4 of The Memory. Sanl. The wide range of research methods employed includes both specifically historical and general scientific ones. The need for statistical analysis leads to an active use of the statistical method and that of extrapolation. Results. The analysis reveals an essential number of repetitions (personalities) characterized by mistakes, inaccuracies, and discrepancies. So, the edition mentions both outdated and contemporary geographic names. Despite all this, the compiled and corrected database involves extensive statistical data that may yield an efficient prosopographic analysis of Red Army personnel conscripted in Kalmykia during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.