Based on interview files and archival materials, this paper reconstructs the experiences of Kalmyk displaced persons (DPs) against the backdrop of the shifting international refugee regime in post-World War II Europe. Kalmyks came to western Europe in two waves: at the conclusion of the Russian Civil War in 1920 and during the German retreat from the Soviet Union in 1943–44. After the war, the majority of Kalmyks were repatriated; those who remained in Europe primarily ended up in DP camps in the American zone of western Germany. This paper details the strategies used by Kalmyk DPs to avoid repatriation to the Soviet Union and eventually secure resettlement in the United States in 1951. Individual histories offer insight into how the Kalmyks as a group made themselves legible to the international community in light of a changing geopolitical environment and evolving racial regimes.

This paper is a brief political and ethnographic commentary on the ‘issues of weakness’ in the current political leadership of Kalmykia. In the Republic of Kalmykia, southwest Russia, ideas about national leaders have been subject to change, depending on the political regime in Russia. Whereas in the Soviet period good leaders, both historical and contemporary, were thought to be skilful managers who did not necessarily have the power to change the course of history, in the post-Soviet period proper national leaders are considered to be those who are endowed with the power to influence history. According to the author, this change in the concept of leadership became possible owing to certain political developments in post-Soviet Kalmykia that allowed alternative ideas to contest some tenets of the Soviet historiography, such ideas remaining largely intact. The tension in Kalmyk historiography between old Soviet and new ideas is unresolved, a situation which is symptomatic of wider tensions and transformations occurring in Kalmyk society itself.

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