Understand
The Western Mongol Kalmyks, also known as 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 were demolished under Stalin's massive campaign of cultural vandalism. In an act of genocide during WWII, Stalin deported the entire population of Kalmyks toKazakhstan and Siberia. The imported Russians then intensified the desertification caused by collectivisation and inappropriate agriculture. 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 garners some press attention for the excesses of its flamboyant and dictatorial president Ilyumzhinov. Ilyumzhinov, a former Kalmyk statesman in the USSR and president of the World Chess Federation, has led Kalmykia since the break up of the Soviet Union, but has so far 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 has, 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.
Now one of Europe's poorest and most underdeveloped regions with a crumbling infrastructure, Kalmykia was once a land of fertile if fragile steppe whose black soil was cherished by the herdsmen. Soviet times changed all that. The land was ploughed and intensive grazing became the norm. Much of the steppe has now turned to desert. Livestock raising remains the main economic activity and there is also some fishing and arable farming.
