It Has Now Been 73 Years Since the Deportation of the Kalmyks

On 27 December 1943 the NKVD began the round up and deportation of the Kalmyks from their homeland on the Caspian Sea to Siberia. The Stalin regime falsely accused the entire population of treason despite the fact that far more Kalmyks fought in the Soviet Red Army against the Nazis than served in German organized units. The patch to the right is a Red Army patch for Kalmyks from the 1920s. The swastika is a traditional symbol of many Buddhist peoples such as the Kalmyks. Rather than write a new post on the deportations I am instead linking to an encyclopedia article I wrote on the Kalmyks in 2010. It was published in Jeffrey Cole, ed., Ethnic Groups of Europe: An Encyclopedia (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2011), pp. 215-218. Please feel free to leave any comments on the article here.