Kalmyk-Mongolian Relations in 1925-1943

Abstract

After Kalmyk instructors who had worked in Mongolia were sent to their home country in 1925, relations between Kalmykia and Mongolia became stagnant. Still, it does not mean that there was no interaction at all. In 1927, the Congress of Mongolian and Kalmyk Youth was held in Astrakhan; Ts. D. Nominkhanov, V. A. Khomutkinov and M. T. Bimbaev worked in Mongolia in 1928, 1929, and 1936 respectively. Furthermore, in 1939, Kalmyks who were serving in the 7th Samara Cavalry Division of the Belorussian Military District were directed to Mongolia to work as instructors for the Mongolian Armed Forces in view of the escalating battles of Khalkhyn Gol. The Soviet Government was interested in sending to Mongolia specialists who could communicate with ethnic Mongols without an interpreter. For this purpose, Kalmyk Orientalists, such as D. A. Pavlov, A. I. Suseev, and others were recruited. A. I. Suseev’s cooperation with Mongols began in the 1930s. Since 1933, the student of Moscow Institute of Oriental Studies, A. I. Suseev, worked as an interpreter and then as a teacher for Mongolian students at the Stalin Communist University of the Toilers of the East (KUTV). Since 1935, A. I. Suseev for three years worked as a teacher of Russian and Mongolian at Tashkent University of Central Asia - at exactly the time when Tseren-Dorji Nominkhanov worked there. In spring of 1935, A. I. Suseev and Ts.-D. Nominkhanov together with Mongolian students organized the first celebrations of Tsagan Sar in Tashkent. In 1938, the former moved to Moscow where he taught students from Mongolia the History of the Bolshevik Party in Mongolian. In July 1941, according the decision of the People’s Commissariat of Foreign Affairs, A. I. Suseev was to be sent to the Soviet consular agency in Mongolia but due to the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War he was unable to leave. Kalmyk and Mongolian students who were studying in Moscow had warm relations. E. g., as was mentioned above, the famous Kalmyk writer A. I. Suseev, who worked as a journalist of The Red Star journal in Mongolia, had close relations with Mongolian students since he had taught and been in charge of them in the USSR, and also met with Marshal Kh. Choibalsan. Moreover, during the 1945 war of liberation, Red Army troops included a number of ethnic Kalmyk soldiers. Unfortunately, once the Great Patriotic War was over in Soviet Russia, representatives of the Caucasian peoples, including Kalmyks, were exiled. As a result, Kalmyk instructors who had been working in Mongolia were sent back and distributed throughout different regions of the USSR; thus, relations between Mongolia and the Kalmyks were terminated.