The article considers the information on the social, religious and political life of the Mongols in Xinjiang presented in the intelligence service reports stored in three Russian archives. According to the reports, in the 1920s the Mongols of Xinjiang composed three groups: Mongols from the Ili Valley and Tarbagatai Mountains; nomads of Kabuk-Saur Ridge in the Altai Region and a part of the Tarbagatai nomads; Torguts and Khoshuts of the Karashar Region - the most numerous of all the groups. The statistical data in the reports included the groups which had in their ethno-genesis Tibetan and Turkic origin as well. Most of the Xinjiang Mongols are Buddhists, and almost in each family there was one member as a monk. Higher lamas were usually equitable and fair, so they were very influential. Two reincarnate lamas used to live there. The land of the Torguts was estimated as a self-dependent state having had its own ruler named Tsavandorj with the title Khan-Wang. As a young boy Tsavandorj had a regent who tried to improve economy, obtain weapons and provide military training for the Torguts. Some of the Russian White Guards, who had retreated to Xinjiang during the Russian Civil War, assisted the regent. The Chinese authorities of Xinjiang forced Tsavandorj to renounce his power, captured him and started to educate him in Chinese manner. The reports provide some details of this history as well as information on the religion and statistics of the Torguts. According to the reports, the Chinese authorities made many efforts to split Mongols. They practiced political spying and snitching as well as contributed to discords between Mongolian principalities and to assassination of Mongolian princes. The Xinjiang Mongols did not present a significant military power at that time, but the idea of national independence thrived among them. At that period, they sought maximum self-dependence or independence from China along with conservation of their old social and ruling system. The Buddhist theocracy in Xinjiang was an informal theocratic structure.

In 1820-1840, the Russian Central Government with the active support and commitment of the administration of the Don Region conducted the reform of the administrative structure of the Kalmyk nomadic territory and its governance within the Don Cossack’s Military Forces. As a result of the reform, the Kalmyk nomadic territory was transformed into the Kalmyk District which was governed by the board led by the superintendent who was appointed from the group of the senior officers by the Cossack Chieftain (Ataman). His status was the military commander of the district. Regarding the type of governing, the uluses and squadrons became equal to the Cossack villages and farmsteads. In accordance with the Provisions of 1835, Kalmyks-Cossacks were distinguished into a separate group having the same status as Cossacks had in the social structure of the Don Region population. Instead of military service they could go to work as horse herd wranglers for village or private herds. There were some changes in the social life of the Kalmyks as well. Along with clergymen, civil servants and military men, a new group of people belonging to the gentry appeared (they were offi cers and the members of their families). The reform influenced the educational system for Kalmyk children as well. They could either attend special schools for Kalmyk children or go to general educational institutions. As a result of the reform, land use was adjusted in the settlements. Kalmyks-Cossacks being mainly cattle-breeders started to use free land for agriculture. It also allowed the Kalmyk population to enter into the controlled and official system of the Don Region and contributed to its rapid transformation into the social structure of the Cossacks.

The present study considers the rapid industrial development in Kalmykia in the framework of the socioeconomic policy of the Soviet state aimed at leveling its regions economic expansion. Due to some historical, geographical, economic reasons the process of industrialization in Kalmykia and its working class formation during this period as well as their further development were characterized by some specific national traits and distinctive features which largely determined the success and failure in the implementation of major national objectives. The industrialization conducted primarily at the expense of agriculture and the forced collectivization of the peasantry demanded incredible efforts of all the population in the region causing a huge number of human casualties, breaking the centuries-old way of life, changing nomadic mentality in this ethnic outskirt of the Soviet Russia.

In 1925, the scientific expedition of the People’s Commissariat for Healthcare under the guidance of P.Y.Berlin worked on the territory of the Kalmyk Autonomous Region. The warnings on the population reduction of the Kalmyks were periodically made by the officers and those enthusiastic doctors who worked selfl essly in the Kalmyk steppe, but the issue was seriously considered only after the Russian revolution when the Kalmyks got the right to solve their problems. The preliminary commission was sent to the Kalmyk region in order to evaluate the situation with the ethnic group. The conclusion was made that the Kalmyk population was in danger, and it was necessity to send another scientific expedition to explore the issue in details. Under the leadership of the Professor A.V. Molkov - the Director of the State Institute for Social Hygiene - the monitoring program, the plans and forms for investigating family and individual issues as well as housing conditions were worked out. During several months, the expedition members gathered considerable amount of demographical, social, anthropological and other data that helped to analyze the reasons for the Kalmyk population reduction. The researchers identified the underdeveloped economy as the main influence on the lack of the natural population increase. In 1928, the outcomes of the Scientific Expedition were published in the Digest «The Kalmyks. The Research on the Health Situation and Stamina». The article considers the archival material on P.Y.Berlin’s expedition much of which has not been used in the scientific research yet. The basic problems concerned with the field study have been identified and considered. Special attention has been paid to the role of the expedition in attracting attention to some political issues in the USSR.

The article is devoted to the military biography of Oka Ivanovich Gorodovikov (October 1, 1879 - February 26, 1960) - Don Kalmyk-Cossack who started his military service as an ordinary Cossack in the Russian Imperial Army in 1903 and finished it in the rank of the Colonel-General of the Soviet Army in 1947. Forty three years of service to the Motherland included his participation in the First World War, the Civil War and the Great Patriotic War. For his merits Oka Ivanovich Gorodovikov was awarded the title of the Hero of the Soviet Union, was decorated with ten orders, Cross of St. George, ten medals, one foreign country order. Actively involving the new materials (including archival ones), the author describes and elaborates the military biography of the famous military leader and refutes some ahistorical myths which have appeared recently. Oka Ivanovich Gorodovikov was born in 1879 in the homestead of Mokraya Elmuta of Platovskaya (Iki-Burul) stanitsa of Sal’ski district. He was first drafted to the Army in 1903, then he served in the 9th Don Cossack Regiment to the position of the Senior Sergeant. In 1915, he joined the First World War, was wounded and awarded with Cross of St. George and medals. At the beginning of the Civil War he organized the self-defense group in his native village. The article attentively analyses Gorodovikov’s service in the White Army. Since spring of 1918 he served in Platovski group, then in the 1st Peasantry punitive cavalry regiment, the 1st Don cavalry brigade, the 1 st Don (since March 1919 - the 4th) cavalry division. He subsequently took the positions of the platoon’s leader and the squadron’s commander, then he became the executive commander of the 2nd (later the 20th Sal’ski) cavalry regiment, the commander of the Joint brigade of the 4th Cavalry division, later of the 19th Manych cavalry regiment of the 4th cavalry division. In May 1919, he substituted S.M. Budennyi in the position of the commander of the celebrated 4th Cavalry division which fought in the battle fields starting with Tsaritsyn till Voronezh, then till Rostov and Novorossiisk, took part in suppressing F.K. Mironov’s revolt, in Voronezh-Kastornensk battles, in Donbass, Rostov-Novocherkassk, Don-Manych and other military operations. He was awarded the Order of the Red Banner, the first among the Kalmyks. In summer 1920, O.I. Gorodovikov formed the 2nd Cavalry Army made of the remainders of the Joint cavalry corps, together with which he participated in two raids to the enemy’s rear. Later he returned to the 1st Cavalry Army Between the wars, he went the way from the Cavalry division commander to the inspector (in fact, the commander) of the Red Army Cavalry. When the Great Patriotic War started, he worked actively on organizing new cavalry divisions and corps, visited the front many times as the delegate of the Headquarters of the State Committee of Defense. There is Oka Ivanovich Gorodovikov’s merit as well in the praiseworthy contribution of the Soviet cavalry made to the Victory over Fascism. In 1947, 67-year-old Colonel-General O.I. Gorodovikov retired.

In the 1920s, two disastrous droughts and rash happened in the Volga region which led to crop damage and famine. The Kalmyk people were in a difficult situation and had to ask the Mongolian people for help. The Government of Mongolia adopted some emergency measures to provide humanitarian assistance. Firstly, wages of some state employees were reduced; secondly, the Mongolian Government borrowed some funding from the state treasury; and thirdly, several thousand heads of cattle were sent to Kalmykia. Thus, the Kalmyk people got timely help from Mongolia and overcame all the difficulties. The Government of Mongolia decided on possible relocation of the Kalmyks to their historical homeland, but it was not in the plans of the Soviet Union.

The article considers some new statistical data and other sources to investigate the issue of maintaining and developing the Karachay-Balkar diasporas’ culture in the information society. The expanding cooperation between the foreign diasporas and the regions of the North Caucasus in the spheres of education, science, culture and economy proves the relevance of this issue. The research of the Karachay-Balkar diasporas’ intercultural cooperation is of great importance for scientific purposes as well as for practical aims such as developing political, diplomatic and cultural interrelations. The article investigates the Karachay-Balkar diasporas’ demographics and location. The process of the diasporas’ adaptation to the living conditions in the new areas, the issues of the cultural conservation and development as well as the role of social networks in intercultural communication are considered in the research. The diachronic and synchronic approaches as well as some empirical methods applied in the research allowed to show the history of the diasporas’ making up, their evolution and modern state. The article analyses the cultural and educational activities of the Karachay-Balkar diasporas’ public associations, their work on preserving the national and cultural identity, the ethnic immigrants’ way and quality of life in different cultural settings. The importance of using the global information network «Internet» for maintaining the ethnic identity of the diaspora is considered and its functions are discussed. The study allowed to work out the main direction in developing the Karachay-Balkar foreign diasporas’ intercultural interaction and to recommend the more effective means to be used for improving the communication process.

During the Great Patriotic War, while the fierce military operations were expanding at the Soviet-German front, the Soviet authorities were carefully preparing the deportation of the Soviet Germans, Karachays, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingushes, Balkars and Crimean Tatars. On February 23, 1943, the Chechens and Ingushes were deported. In the Soviet historical science the issue of deportation of the Chechens has not practically been studies for a variety of reasons. First of all, those were ideological ones. That is why the elimination of «the white spots» in Vainakh History Studies is a relevant topic of the contemporary historiography. Not only historians, but also sociologists, political scientists, writers, journalists as well as politicians have been investigating the subject of the Chechen people’s deportation lately. It proves once again a special relevance of the issue irrespective of the chronological remoteness of those years. In particular, for the first time the archival materials on the Chechen people’s deportation have been introduced into the scientific use in the works considering various aspects of such a complex problem. It is obvious that the published memoirs are of great value. A noticeable contribution to the research of the deportation issues was also made by a number of the scientific conferences held in the Chechen Republic as well as in Kalmykia, Karachay-Cherkessia and Kabardino-Balkaria in the last decade of the 21st century. Thus, in recent years some local researchers have done considerable work on studying the deportation, the life in special settlements and the Chechen people’s rehabilitation. Many aspects of this complex problem such as the life in the republic on the eve of the deportation, the deportation process, especially from the mountain areas, the issues of the republic’s autonomy restoration, etc. are in the center of attention of the local scholars. The data collection and study base creation process has been expanding. It will allow the researchers to create substantial integrated works on the deportation of the Chechen people in 1944.

In the article the attempt is undertaken to review the main works on the history of Buddhism in the present-day Kalmykia. It is noticed that the research of the Buddhist issues as a whole and those in Kalmykia in particular started in the Republic only in 1970s as it was preconditioned by the fact that there were no offi cially registered religious organizations and associations in Kalmykia after its autonomy was re-established (1957) before the beginning of Perestroika in the USSR as well as by the atheistic policy pursued in the country. The extensive historiography of Buddhism research in Kalmykia formed by the present time reveals the comprehensiveness of the subject areas and the depth of the issues being investigated. It also allows to highlight the main problems the scholars in the field of the Kalmyk Studies have to face: further introduction of the new historical sources into the scientific research; study of the early period of Buddhism spread among the Kalmyks and their ancestors - the Oirats; comparative analysis of the traditions of the Kalmyks and Oirats; interdisciplinary approach to investigation of the specifics of the Kalmyk Buddhist culture, identifi cation of possibilities for establishing a centralized Buddhist organization as well as research of unknown tragic pages of the past including the repressions against the Buddhist clergy and church.

Purpose: At all times, the intellectual capacity and cultural level of any nation has been determined by existence of scripts and books. More than 7 centuries ago, the Oirats started using Mongol writing system, and later developed their own written language called ‘clear script’. Booklore had a decisive impact on the genesis of the Mongol peoples, the development of education, science and culture. Methods: The author examines the evolution of the Oirat books commencing with stone sutras and metal boards which were the first examples of fixing a written word, moving further to transition to a qualitatively new stage in book culture development - the emergence of a real handwritten books. The stone sutras as well as the first handwritten books are a significant part of the Oirat’s (Kalmyk’s) cultural heritage and the evidence of the historical development of their writing system. Results: The author of the article reveals some specific features of book design. The main attention is given to the process of book creation as the originality of the Oirat book and its aesthetic uniqueness were largely determined by the materials (paper, paint, writing tools) it was made of. The researcher provides a detailed description of the book forms which were absolutely different from European ones. Equally important were the conditions in which the books were stored as well as the attitude to them as to sacred objects. This article discusses some aspects of the book culture оf the Mongols and Oirats (Kalmyks). The handwritten book played an important role in disseminating knowledge and religion in the complex process of Molgolian ethnic groups formation and their culture development. Discussion The handwritten book is an integral part of the Kalmyk people’s cultural heritage, their spiritual history and material culture. It is a unique phenomenon which incorporated many fields of life such as the art and skills of craftsmen and calligraphers as well as those of paper, ink and paint manufacturers.

This article reviews the history of the study of the ethnic group of the Issyk-Kul Kalmyks, considers some scientists’ opinions on the ethno-genesis of the Sart Kalmaks and assesses the material collected during the 2013 expedition. The Sart Kalmaks are a small group of Oirat origin living in Ak-Suu district of Issyk-Kul province in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan now. At present it is impossible to accurately determine their number as according to the 2009 Census data 3,800 people registered as Kalmyks, but ¾ of the Kalmyks were recorded as Kyrgyz for social reasons. The population of the four villages Chelpek, Burma-Suu, Tash-Kyya and Beryu-Bash, where 90% of the residents are Sart Kalmyks, is about 12,000 people. One of the markers of their Western Mongolian origin is the language which is very close to Kalmyk. At the moment, there are only a few speakers of this language remained, and they are basically elderly people. Their traditional ethno-cultural characteristics have gradually given way to the Kyrgyz and common Muslim traditions. The language, ethnography, history of the Karakol Kalmyks were studied by such scientists as A. V. Burdukov (1935), Sh. Dondukov (1973), E. R. Tenishev (1976), N. L. Zhukovskaya (1980), D. A. Pavlov (1984), A. N. Bitkeyeva (2006), B. Nanzatov and M. Sodnompilova (2012). The Sart Kalmyks rarely became the object of anthropological research, but were described in the works of D. O. Ashilova (1976) who made a number of conclusions based on the somatological data. Though the ethnic group of Sart Kalmaks which became an integral part of the Kyrgyz nation in the past has close relations with other Western Mongolian groups through their common ancestry, language and culture, now they differ from the nations belonging to the Central Asian anthropological type (Kalmyks, Mongols and Buryats) in their physical type and reveal big anthropological affinity with the Kyrgyz. During the 2013 expedition, we conducted an integrated study of the Sart Kalmaks. Within this research the native speakers of the language were interviewed in the Linguistic Program of 100 Word List. The household registers of the four villages in which Sart Kalmaks reside were used to work out the nominalia. The ethnonyms, toponyms and their semantics have been collected in the interviews with the informants. The Anthropometric * Исследование проведено при финансовой поддержке РГНФ в рамках проекта № 12-01-00063а. Program involved body measurements of 84 women and 119 men. Some 830 photographs have been taken in order to create generalized portraits and fill out forms related to the Racial Program. We also gathered some genetic material: out of 197 blood samples collected for genetic analysis 101 were taken from women and 96 from men. With respect to the ethnic component, the following distribution is observed: 111 people stated that their both parents were Sart Kalmaks, about half of them know the tribal affiliation of the parents (51 persons). 40 people are mestizos with Sart Kalmak and Kyrgyz blood lines, both parents of 29 informants are of Kyrgyz origin, 8 people are mestizos with Kazakh, Uyghur, Tatar, Bashkir blood lines. The material collected in this field work will be implemented to trace the history of the Issyk Kul Kalmyks’ development and to compare it with that of the Kalmaks living in Russia and China as well as to forecast the further evolution, to investigate the demographic and genetic structure of Karakol Kalmyks, to calculate the genetic distances and the degree of relationship with Russian Kalmyks. The photographs taken will allow to create generalized portraits of Sart Kalmak men and women. Therefore, this research will highlight the most recent trends in the development of this ethnic group.

Thanks to permafrost the equine headdress masks made of organic materials have been well preserved in the burial mounds of the Pazyryk culture in Gornyi Altai dating back to the end of the 6th-3rd centuries B.C. The author has investigated the 17 equine headdress masks. They were divided into two types. Type 1: the equine headgear masks with full size horns of wild animals such as a mountain sheep argali or a deer. Type 2: the equine headgear masks with small finials in the form of heads of wild or imaginary animals and birds (head of a deer, a horned tiger or various birds). In the first Pazyryk barrow there was a burial of two humans accompanied by ten horses which were arranged in two rows of four animals. Two of the horses had headgear masks, one was decorated with life size deer antlers (Type 1) and the second had a finial looking like a head of a horned tiger with wings (Type 2).The horse wearing a headdress mask made of felt and deer antlers was the best on the exterior and was put in the first row. Its horns were made of leather; its tail and mane were in cases. The second Bashadarsky kurgan contained the remains of a 60-65-year-old male and a 40-year-old female accompanied by a burial of fourteen horses. One of the horses had the luxurious harness, it was also provided with a leather headdress which had horns of a mountain sheep argali. The horns, which were 46 sm long, were made of several pieces of wood glued together; their inside was covered with solid plates of silver and their outside with semicircular projections simulating annual bumps was covered with several sheets of gold. The horns had two holes at their base to use for attaching them to the horse headgear. The horse headdress masks were made of various materials and were richly decorated. Due to their superior artistic quality and craftsmanship, they serve as excellent samples of the Scythian-Siberian animal style.

The article analyzes paremic statements in terms of their grammatical structure. In this research we consider the main and secondary parts of the sentence characterized by a variety of means of expression and structural variability. The attention is drawn to the classification of sentence-utterances. In the study of the syntax, there are a significant number of updated approaches to interpreting a sentence and its components. In particular, attention is paid to the structural, logical, semantic and communicative aspects of syntactic units. For instance, these approaches are applied in the study of the syntax of the Turkic languages. The research employs various classifications of sentences for the analysis of paremic statements. The basic classification divides sentences into narrative, imperative and interrogative ones. So, narrative paroimia aims at providing certain information which is relevant for community. According to the classification proposed by scholars researching the syntax, we can consider complex and compound sentences. Thus, complex paremic statements can highlight some complicated ideas. The paroimia reviewed in the research allows for talking about the variety of means of expression as well as the structural variation of the major and minor components of the considered paremic statements. All of them can structurally be divided into simple, complex and detailed.

This research is dedicated to the translation peculiarities of the Buddhist manuscript “The King of Aspiration Prayers”(sanscrit. ārya bhadra cārya pranidhāna rāja; tibetan. ’phags-pa bzang-po spyod-pa’i smon-lam-gyi rgyal-po; oirad. хutugtu sayin yabudaliyin irö:liyin xa:n) from Tibetan to the Oirat language. The class of this religious works in Sanscrit is called “pranidhana” (sanscrit. pranidhāna), in Tibetan - “mon-lam” (tib. smonlam) and “jor’ool” in Mongolian (mong. irügel). There is no Russian equivalent for this class of works, that is why the author uses a literary translation ‘Tsar blagikh pozhelanii’ for it. The Tibetan sutra’s text is one of the earliest translations from Sanscrit and the major sample of the later Mahayana Buddhism literature. It is also the 40th path in the Mahayana sutra of “Avatamsaka” which belongs to the theoretical class of sutras and was finally formed in Sogdian and Khotan in the second part of the 4th century. Pandita Jinamitra and Tibetan lotsava Yeshe-De (tib. ye-shes sde) are mentioned as the translators from Sanscrit to Tibetan. One of the first Tibetan Buddhist monks Vairochana Rakshita was named as the editor of this translation. This text plays a specific role in the commentary tradition of the well-known Indian masters and the prominent Buddhist preachers of Tibet as well. Because of “The King of Aspiration Prayers” sutra popularity, the text was included in the collection of Buddhist sutras named “Gandjur” (tib. dka-’gyur), and it was also translated into Mongolian and became a part of Mongolian Gandjur. The author of the Oirat translation was Zaya Pandita Namkai Jamtso. The peculiarity of the Oirat text is word-for-word translation from Tibetan which strongly follows the original both in vocabulary, when a definite Tibetan word is used instead of its synonym, and in syntax, when the word order in the Oirat sentences can hardly be understood without considering the Tibetan original. However, at that time there were no strong rules for translation from Tibetan to Mongolian and Oirat. The Oirat translation tradition reached its high point later in the 8th century when translation of Mongolian Danjur was made. At the same time, we should notice that the Oirat translation tradition distinguishes in its accuracy which allows for preserving all the syntactical elements of the original Tibetan texts. Consequently, it can be regarded as predecessor of the Mongolian translation tradition according to which the work on translation of Mongolian Danjur was finished.

The article examines the vocabulary naming objects made of animal leather, the vocabulary which has evolved for thousands of years and is reflected in the heroic epic Dzhangar as well as in Kalmyk proverbs, sayings, riddles and idioms. It is actively used in the everyday Kalmyk language and includes the names of domestic animals (horses, camels, sheep, pigs) and wild beasts. The key word ‘arsn’ (skin) has several synonyms very close in meaning. The examples of the vocabulary usage show that leather goods have always been highly valued among Mongolian peoples. In many respects, the fields where leather was used depended on quality of its processing. More important items necessary for household purposes were made of cattle skin. A soft fine skin was used for manufacturing expensive items, in particular souvenirs and gifts. The research has proved that the skin has always been in demand. However, a significant part of the vocabulary has become passive owing to change in production of leather goods and in technology of leather processing. The study allowed for determining which part of the thematic vocabulary has been irretrievably lost and which is still used in the modern Kalmyk language.

The article considered the issue of the ethnic and cultural specifics of the Kalmyk and English proverbs and idioms containing ‘an animal component’. The main assumption is that each nation and each linguistic community perceives and reflects the world under the influence of its cultural and national customs, traditions and history, and creates its own worldview. The ethno-cultural character of any community’s worldview is clearly fixed in the language. Moreover, the language preserves the culture of the people and transfers it further to the next generations. The aim of the article is to describe and compare the semantic aspect of the Kalmyk and English proverbs and phraseological units. For this purpose, the ethnic peculiarity of each nation is examined and compared with that of the other one. As a result, this comparative analysis allows for identifying some similarities and differences as well as some features of metaphorical use of animals’ names for characterizing human beings. That is why the essence of the proverbs can be understood by relating them to certain qualities of human nature. According to their connotations, the proverbs and idioms are divided into two groups: positive and negative. The proverbs characterizing a man positively praise such qualities as diligence, courage and caution. Those with negative connotation make fun of such human character traits as cunning, stupidity, cowardice and greed. The research proves that there are more idioms and proverbs with negative connotation than positive. As the main economic activity of the Kalmyk people was cattle-breeding, in Kalmyk proverbs you can mostly come across the names of domestic animals, while in English ones the images of both domestic and wild animals are equally used.

The article is devoted to description of the rules for text material analysis for creating the Frequency Dictionary of the Kalmyk language on the basis of the National Corpus of the Kalmyk Language (www.kalmcorpora.ru) which includes the texts of the literary works published in the second half of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st centuries as well as newspaper articles and transcripts of spoken language. The volume of the fi ction (prose and poetry) exceeds 10 mln. words. The texts in the Corpus as well as certain elements of the texts (word-forms, punctuations signs, paragraphs, etc.) have special annotations. The Frequency Dictionary created on the basis of the Corpus is a pilot model as it is the first attempt to develop a dictionary of this type. In our opinion, the size of the created Corpus of the Kalmyk Language allows to describe the language from the point of view of usage frequency of language units and meanings: word-forms, words, constructions (2 and 3-gramms), grammatical meanings, letters, etc. In 2013, the experimental version of the National Corpus of the Kalmyk Language was launched, but it did not have any morphological and semantic annotations though the closed data had already possessed these types of annotations. The material containing the annotations will be open after the analyzer’s program code will be adjusted, and its efficiency will reach 90%. At the present moment, the model of the algorithm of work of the morphological parser for the Kalmyk language successfully analyzes 70% of any text providing only unambiguous parsing at the same time. About 20% of the texts have multitude possible variants of automated analyses, though 10% of the texts have no parsing as there are no stems for them in the dictionary (they are mostly Russian loanwords which were not included into the Dictionary edited by B.D. Muniev [1977] and some proper names). The main idea of developing the Frequency Dictionary is that the most frequently used language units are the most significant ones in any language but at the same time non-frequent elements are of the same significance but from the other point of view. They can carry some traces of historical development and can belong to various terminological systems which evidences that a lexical unit is out of use in speech. The issue of the language units and meanings frequency is not developed in the Kalmyk linguistics that is why for researching the frequency characteristics of the Kalmyk speech one should first of all identify and justify the parameters for distinguishing frequency and describing frequency characteristics of the Kalmyk speech. Thus the aim of this article is to describe the rules for analyzing lexical units in order to develop the Frequency Dictionary of the Kalmyk language where the observation unit is a lemma - that is an initial form of the language without its lexical and grammatical annotations. However, it does not mean that the dictionary development will not take into account the Kalmyk grammar: processing of word-forms and working out lemma vocabulary are regulated by the rules of the formalized description of the Kalmyk language grammar, besides for each part of speech there is a separate description. The main and basic issue is to define the boundaries for the notions of a word and a lemma (an initial form of a word). The article provides the rules for textual material analysis in order to create the Frequency Dictionary of the Kalmyk language. These rules are built on the principles for developing “The Frequency Dictionary of the Russian Language” [Frequency Dictionary … 1977] and “The Grammar Dictionary of the Russian Language” [Zalizniak 1987] which were revised for the purposes of the Kalmyk language, while for the units which do not exist in the literary written language the rules have been developed anew. Each part of speech has its own set of rules which regulates the work of the morphological parser to process lineal letter sequence of the vocabulary element for the Frequency Dictionary.

This article examines Bashkir superstitious beliefs as well as epics and legends in order to discover the mythological basis of the folklore. The study reveals that in the Bashkir superstitious beliefs there are topics similar to those in the rest of the world, but at the same time some mythological concepts are influenced by the specific geographical conditions and local environment. The Bashkirs believed that every object of nature had its own master. This belief encouraged the Bashkirs to honour various mountains, caves, forests as sacred places, and they tried not to anger their hosts, they brought precious things such as coins and silver jewelry as offerings. They endowed lakes, mountains, roads, fi elds and forests with human qualities. In the list of mythological characters considered in the article there is Shurale, devil, water, deuce, host of wind, house spirit - all of them have their habits, their functions. They are different, and at the same time they are similar and represent the human world. In the main Bashkir epic «Ural-Batyr» the beginning of a new human life after people suffered two world floods is described through the mythological prism. The epic tells about the new resettlement of people, explains the essence of turning from hunting to cattle-breeding, considers the conquest of the living space and describes the fight against the dark forces. In some legends (for example, Akkoshatkantau - the literally version “Mountain Where the Swan was Shot” - and Crane’s Song) we reveal the Bashkir omen associated with totemic birds which must not be shot. The role of the superstitions in the life of modern Bashkirs is briefly discussed as well.

The article is devoted to the wedding poetry of the Russian-speaking population of Dagestan. This folk art which had existed for centuries as well as other folklore genres used to be impacted by various domestic phenomena. The traditional Russian wedding ceremony in Dagestan began to change noticeably at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century and was characterized by extinction of many rituals. With the loss of some ritual scenes, their simplification and reduction, the songs connected with wedding events began to change. Thus, under the influence of new social and living conditions the oral folk poetry including wedding lamentations started to disappear and remained only in the memory of the elderly. In the last decades in connection with changing attitude to ancient superstitions, the songs associated with the magical rituals have vanished. The Russian wedding ritual items connected with belief in witches, amulets, etc. have disappeared along with the associated folklore. Such traditional rituals as hiding bride’s comb, blessing at the hearth and the middle pillar, a number of sayings and songs of erotic character connected with spells stimulating fertility turned into playful games during the wedding party. They used to be an integral part of Russian traditional weddings, but can no longer be seen. With loss of the wedding ritual items the songs related to this event have also disappeared.

The article is devoted to researching the peculiarities of comparative and typological variability of the structural and semantic components of the Kalmyk folk riddles, i.e. to study of their flexibility and transformation directly connected with reduction and expansion of their components. The primary importance for the theory of variability has the dichotomy ‘invariant - variant’. The up-to-date research proves the thesis that all possible types of variable transformations of riddles can be divided into two parts: with distraction of the invariable structure and with its preservation. At the same time both the “answer” which is mostly an object and the “question” which has a predicative character are investigated. The author comes to the conclusion that the variants of the Kalmyk riddles preserve their stable form on their logical-semantic level and are characterized by the text stability subjected to meaningful correlation at the various levels of abstraction. The variable differences are determined by the logical associations in the main and secondary criteria of objects and notions asked about. Therefore, it is obvious that the riddles in the Kalmyk tradition undergoing changes on the lexical, morphological and syntactic levels preserve associational and meaningful relations with their initial usual form. They also preserve relatively sustained form on their logical-semantic levels and are characterized by meaningful stability of texts. Modified riddles with transformed invariable structure are not numerous. Thus, transformations maintaining the invariable structure of a riddle and its parts are implemented according to the following algorithms: reduction - that is when the beginning or the end of a riddle are reproduced in speech; actualization - when certain words are substituted, added or omitted; addition - when some parallel elements of judgment are added to the most sustained variant and the secondary cliché is created on the basis of a traditional riddle.

The article investigates the arsenal of artistic devices used by the well-known Balkar playwright and comedy dramatist J. Tokumaev. The principal means of comic recreations are exaggeration and grotesque as well as unmasking (self-unmasking, unmasking of each other) as a way of comedy character creating. Various items and devices reinforcing the effect of “seriousness”, facilitating the disclosure of the nature of the comedy actor are used as an additional working means for satirical (humorous) processing of life material. The role of linguistic resources (comic allegory, “poetics of names and surnames», interpretations of Russian expressions, stylistic conflict of different registers of the Balkar language, “play on words” with various (opposite) semantic meanings, etc.) in expressing the ethnic characteristics of humor and its national fl avour is defined. In conclusion, the playwright’s skill to use the traditional artistic means along with the national language forms for the comic display of reality is indicated.

The article discusses some textual aspects of two reconstructions of the early (draft) editions of A.S. Pushkin’s address to the Literature and Theater Society “Green Lamp” (dated back to the beginning of 1821 and no later than spring of 1822). The reconstructions have been subsequently undertaken by two Pushkin scholars - textual critics, by the editors of the Big and Small academic editions of the poet’s heritage - S.M. Bondi (1931, 1935 - published in 1949) and B.V. Tomashevski (1949 - publication in 4 editions till the end of 1970s). The comparative and contrastive research of the reconstructed texts allows us to reveal certain peculiarities in their compositional structure. The aim of the article is to identify in those structures the position of the formula “Wish me health, Kalmyk!” which is common and prevailing not only for the under consideration draft versions and the reconstructed on their basis texts, but also for the whole complex of texts dating back to the beginning of 1820s. The analysis permits to conclude that the given poetic formula is not one-verse but double-verse with the address ‘Pour me the wine of comet’ (the author of the article supports B.V. Tomashevski’s interpretation of this line) and the well-known facetious imperative ‘Wish me health, Kalmyk!’ (written with the capital letter as stated by S.M. Bondi it is found twice in the draft versions of the early edition of the address). The conclusion drawn can be directly implemented in editing practice. The given paper presents some historical and literary commentaries to the rhyme ‘language - Kalmyk’ inherited from the poet of the older generation I.I. Dmitriev (in the ode ‘Patriot’s Voice at Seizure of Warsaw’ - 1794) which was reconsidered by Pushkin repeatedly. So, the article considers some issues of Pushkin’s texts and provides some commentaries to the reconstructed Pushkin’s texts of the early edition of the address to ‘Green Lamp’.

The article deals with a present-day topical issue of corruption which is considered to be a negative social, political and economic phenomenon. It came into being simultaneously with appearance of a state and has come a long way in its development. The article analyzes in detail the reasons for corruption, its essence and various types of anti-corruption policy as well as some integrated measures for fi ghting corruption. In the article corruption is characterized as a universal international phenomenon which requires efficient international anti-corruption policy, and to combat it effective measures and regulatory framework should be developed. Appropriate principles implemented in practical activities of organizations should be in the basis of this work. Corruption has become widespread recently and affects all areas of human activity. It is so deeply ingrained in the life worldwide that it has become a systemic problem that is why this problem must be solved within a systematic approach. The level of corruption in the world remains extremely high. Among global problems the solution of which depends on further development of the world community in the new century, one of the most acute is the problem of corruption. In its transnational form - a new quality acquired in the context of globalization - corruption is a serious contradiction to globalization, one of the challenges to the world development and to the rule of law, but it is only the tip of the iceberg. The article presents the overview of the principles implemented by the international organizations, defines their role in the field of prevention and suppression of corruption. For example, the documents of the UN and those of other organizations consider the key problems that arise in the process of implementation of anti-corruption policy. When developing and adjusting preventive anti-corruption measures, it is necessary to take into account the results of regular monitoring and scientific analysis of the corruption situation both in a specific country and in the world as a whole. The degree of corruption “contamination” in the society and the distribution range of this phenomenon in various spheres of social life should also be considered. In order to enhance the effectiveness of international anti-corruption activities the international organizations should apply not only economic and legal levers, but also measures of scientific, educational, moral, cultural and educational character.

The author considers the statistical data concerned with the dynamics of marriages and divorces in Kalmykia at the beginning of the 21st century. These figures are compared with the socio-demographic phenomena in the second half of the 20th century. This period called a ‘double’ transition contributed a lot to changes and transformations of social and moral values. The main factors which caused them were the diffi cult socioeconomic situation in the country, problems which most people and households faced while adapting to the changing conditions of life. The 1st demographic transition is associated with the decrease in birthrate level in Russia where this decline began at a higher level and took place later than in the majority of developed countries. Most scholars attribute the beginning of the first demographic transition to the 60s of the 20thcentury in western countries and to the second half of the 80s and 90s in Russia. The author concludes that the second demographic transition which is going on in Russia at the present moment affects the state of marriages and the quantity of divorces in all its regions, for instance in Kalmykia. He emphasizes that the demographic processes occurring in the country reveal both the unfavourable socio-economic conditions in which young families live and the complex processes of transformation of the Russian family institution. Some attention is also paid to unregistered marriages data and birth statistics of children born out of wedlock.

The article is devoted to the topical educational issue concerned with nurturing conscience in the present-day society where significant changes are taking place. It also defines the scientific basis for study of conscience fostering. The author discusses the necessity to consider the conscience development as an object of interdisciplinary research and addresses some philosophical, psychological, social, cultural, ethnic aspects of the research. The scholar highlights the relevance of conscience upbringing in the conditions of the spiritual and moral crisis in the society. In any educational institution where the didactic model aims at raising conscience, the strategic objective should be to form child’s conscientious attitude to himself and others as well as to nature, family, culture and society. The central part of the proposed model is to implement cross-cultural issues of spiritual and moral relations. Further, the author identifies priorities for research in this area: integration of science and practice, investigation of the notion of conscience in different social groups, application of the interdisciplinary approach to its study, etc. The article emphasizes the necessity to analyze the connotation of this phenomenon, to understand the context in which the ethnic constants have been formed, namely such structural elements which make the central cultural issue of an ethnos.

Purpose: The principle of the social state being one of bases of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation finds its reflection in the texts of the basic laws of the territorial subjects of the Russian Federation (Constitutions of the republics and Charters of other territorial subjects of the Russian Federation). In this regard, the issue of interrelation of this principle with other provisions of basic laws of the territorial subjects of the Russian Federation, in particular, with those regulating the social rights and freedoms of an individual and a citizen is of theoretical and practical value. In the Republic of Kalmykia, this specifi c principle fixed in the Constitution of the Republic has its distinctive features which are explained by the peculiarities of the constitutional regulation of the basic law of Kalmykia. Methods: The methods used in the research are historical, comparative and legal ones. Results: The author comes up to the following outcomes: - the principle of the social state as a basis of the constitutional system of the Russian Federation is enshrined in the Steppe Code (Constitution) of the Republic of Kalmykia, and at the same time it is a basis of the constitutional system of the Republic that proves the subsequent constitutional guarantees for realization of this principle (direct implementation of the constitutional norms consolidating the social human rights of an individual and a citizen, their priority along with other rights in the legal system of the state (statehood), activities of the public authorities and local governments, judicial protection, etc.); - the term ‘citizen’ in the text of the Steppe Code (Constitution) of RK in its interrelation with the established rights and freedoms is synonymous to the concept of ‘the rights and freedoms of an individual and a citizen’, i.e. is not attached strictly to the citizenship status; - the social basis of regional statehood finds its embodiment in the Steppe Code (Constitution) of RK and includes the existing norms directed at maintaining the social stability in the society, interethnic peace and harmony. Discussion: According to the author, as in the case with some other territorial subjects of the Russian Federation, the Steppe Code (Constitution) of RK could be supplemented with the regulations on some additional constitutional guarantees providing realization and protection of the social human rights of an individual and a citizen, for instance with those on the bases of the state social standards in the Republic of Kalmykia, the strategic guidelines for social and economic development, the state guarantees for welfare systems, etc.

It is characteristic for saigas of the Northwestern Pre-Caspian Region that the breeding season rut is strictly fixed and takes place in December, and the young appear in May. At the same time, O. E. Tsapliuk (1968) identified two periods of increased sexual activity of siagas: the first is in November-January and the second is in May-June. The authors state that for the Northwestern Pre-Caspian Region the spring-summer period of sexual activity can be regarded as a fading breeding biorhythm while for saigas’ ancestors it was normal to have two breeding seasons. In the last few years, there is a tendency when many female species, especially young ones, remain dry due to the fact that there are not enough mature males, which finally leads to loss of natural production control. The influence of external factors (poaching as well as natural ones) on the reproductive function may decay the reproduction biorhythm, which is not typical of the population in the current climatic conditions. This is one of the trends indicating the potential for natural regulation, for preserving diverse groups of animals and conservation of species in the modern world.

Монография посвящена изучению письменного наследия бурятского народа. В книге на разных уровнях исследуется язык бурятских летописных текстов, содержащих богатый и во многом уникальный материал.