The Administrative Office of the Kalmyk People: Records Management Practices

The system for governing the Kalmyk people was structurally hierarchical and based on an administrative-territorial principle; it also comprised related self-government bodies. In terms of functions, all power structures were to duly execute service records. Within records management documents special attention should be paid to those that facilitated adoption and execution of managerial decisions. The article aims to identify the structure and goals, rules and practices inherent to the records management system adopted by the Administrative Office of the Kalmyk People and Ulus Departments of the Kalmyk Steppe of Astrakhan Governorate in the 19th-early 20th centuries as a state body to govern one of the multiple non-Russian populations of the Russian Empire. This became possible due to the use of both common scientific research methods and some special ones. The reconstructive method was applied to restore certain aspects of records management processes within administrative departments of the Kalmyk Steppe during the period under consideration, while the historical sources classification method divided the service documentation into several groups and, thus, determine common and specific features of the latter. Special attention is paid to the analysis of documentary materials from Kalmykia’s National Archive which concluded that the common feature of all documents dealing with records management practices was co-subordination, i. e. inferior agencies and officials submitted reports, dispatches, petitions and accounts to superior ones, while the latter issued decrees, instructions, circular letters, prescripts and notifications. Another specific feature was the collegiate order of official document creation: during decision making each successive paper repeated the text of a previous one. Moreover, another peculiarity of the records management process in the early-to-mid 19th century had been the use of the Kalmyk language, while since the 1850s there was a trend towards the reduction of documents written in Old Kalmyk (Todo Bichiq).
The article suggests that the use of the Kalmyk language for official records management in the early-to-mid 19th century had been determined by the lack of Russian officials with sufficient Kalmyk language skills, and the situation was evidently aggravated by the lack of Russian-speaking Kalmyks. The supposition is confirmed by the ‘imperial’ Statute of the College for Kalmyks dated 23 April 1847 which was supposed to ‘teach Kalmyks Russian and educate talented translators’.
Finally, the paper concludes that being integral to the government infrastructure, the records management system of the Administrative Office of the Kalmyk People and ulus departments also aimed to incorporate the Kalmyk Steppe into the common Russian political landscape, including by means of intense acculturation practices.

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