The paper examines the process of formation of governing bodies in the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast’ in the 1920–1930s. The influence of the nomenclature management principle on selection of personnel and especially of the leading officials has been studied. The formation of managerial human resources in the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast’ in the 1920–1930s was conducted within the framework of the Russian statehood and is characterized by the specific features and methods for introduction of modernization processes. One of the peculiarities of the management policy in the KAO was exact promptness of the local authorities and strict obedience to the directions of the central authorities which was determined by the Buddhist factor, traditional customary norms, deeply rooted communal traditions, priority of the communal over the individual. The scientific novelty of the research is that a number of archival sources related to the issue of studies of the state administration in the Kalmyk Autonomous Oblast’ in the 1920–30s have been used and, thus, introduced into scientific discourse. 

The article analyses the memorial books of the Great Patriotic War veterans conscripted in Rostov Oblast’ — as a source on the history of the participation of Kalmyks in the war of 1941–1945. By the beginning of the war, over 9 000 Kalmyks — most of them descendants of Kalmyk Cossacks who had long been part of the Don Host and viewed military service as an honorable duty — resided in the territory of Rostov Oblast’. Most of them resided in Kalmyk District.
Unfortunately, the work conducted by the compilers of the early books — “Memorial Books of the Fallen” (residents of Rostov Oblast’) — should be characterized as quite unsuccessful and when it comes to the Don Kalmyks — totally incomplete. Residents of Rostov Oblast’ are grouped by the districts (by their regional military commissariats, to be precise) they were conscripted from but there is no data about a draftee’s places of birth and residence. One can guess that some certain resident of Rostov Oblast’ was an ethnic Kalmyk only by his/her personal, patronymic or family name, often misspelled and thus distorted. Moreover, the mentioned memorial books list only a few hundred Don Kalmyks. 
The later attempts made by compilers of Rostov Oblast’ memorial books, including Volume 1 of the book series “Soldiers of Victory”, should be referred to as more successful. Besides, a new project is being successfully implemented in some districts of the region — compilation of district memorial books which are much more precise and informative, including the aspect of Kalmyk names. Still, the complete and print ready book of Zimovnikovsky District containing data about draftees of the former Kalmyk District — has not yet been published.
In view of the aforementioned, it can be concluded that the task of memorialization of the Kalmyks who resided in Rostov Oblast’ and took part in the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) has not been fully completed to date. 

The article considers the collar symbolism in traditional dress of Oirats based on literature and field sources. The significance of the collar is defined by symbolic link of the upper part of the costume with the concept of the top in the traditional picture of the world, as well as perceptions of the necessity to protect the part of human body, that seems vulnerable, and traditional views, according to which the collar can be symbolically the seat of the “soul” of a man. The symbolism of a stand-up collar, which is typical for a man’s costume of the Western-Mongolian peoples, is linked with these ideas. The symbolism of a large white collar in female costume, having a specific decor, is associated with the worship of Altai. The author presented other information about the symbolism of the collar in the culture of Oirats.

The article studies the specific features of working and household activities of the Kalmyks employed at fisheries. As an auxiliary sector of economy, fishing has always been present among the Kalmyks, but those were social and economic processes accompanied by impoverishment of some Kalmyk herdsmen that largely determined its development in the latter part of the 19th century. The seasonal engagement in fishing resulted in changes of the material culture of the Kalmyks. Their basic living conditions have also been analyzed. Of special interest are the issues related to formation of professional skills of ex-nomads at fisheries, the role of food in the adaptation of the Kalmyk seasonal workers. Thus, by the late 19th century a large part of the manpower at fisheries of Astrakhan Governorate were ethnic Kalmyks. Engaged in the most low-wage and unskilled work of seine fishing, the Kalmyks achieved the pinnacle in an irrelevant industry. In subsequent years, those were Kalmyks — due to their tirelessness and unpretentiousness — that would be given preference to by fish dealers when they employed workers. 

The article examines the sacral zones of the traditional and modern homes of the Kalmyks, their attributes and related beliefs. According to the mindset of the Kalmyks, the spaces inside and outside the home are separate worlds opposed to one another. The internal space was stabilized using articles of sacral significance. The central place within the Kalmyk traditional nomadic home was occupied by the altar, but next to it some sacred articles of pre-Buddhist practices would be placed. Nowadays the altar zone containing certain ritual articles as well reflects the blending of pre-Buddhist and Buddhist beliefs. For example, ritual activities using the oelgtse (also kept in the altar zone) — which is a set of polysemantic ritual articles of sacral significance — get most actual during wedding ceremonies.

The articles deals with a historical overview of Kalmykia’s visual arts in the 1980–1990s. The object of the research is the ethnic identity of a Kalmyk painter and sociocultural environment for creativity, the subject of the research is the issue of “cultural nomadism” in the visual arts of the republic. Creative reconsideration of the national traditional culture results in the establishment of a new artistic trend of the 20th  century. The world view of a contemporary individual is reflected in the paintings and sculptures.

With evidence from the Kalmyk National Corpus, the article explores the syntagmatics of the adjectives ӧnder ‘tall’ and  gün ‘deep’. The adjectives ӧnder and gün are semantically close but measurements of an object are performed differently. Ӧnder collocates with words denoting vertical stems (pillars), stretched objects, stilts and, unlike gün, cannot collocate with nouns characterizing substances (snow, water), permanent containers: one can say gün tӓrlk ‘deep plate’ but one cannot say ӧnder tӓrlk ‘high plate’; gün tsasn ‘deep snow’ but not ӧnder tsasn ‘high snow’.

The article examines the names of celestial bodies in the Kalmyk heroic epic of Jangar. Those have been explored in a number of mainly ethnographic works. Within the texts of the epic, the definitions are often used in comparisons, some of them in proper names, which signifies its importance for Kalmyk national culture. The conducted research allows to conclude that the names of celestial bodies constitute a lexical layer which is not that rich but plays an important role in the language of the epic text and reflects the ethnic world perception, traditional mindset, everyday life, household and economic activities.

The article considers the realities of the Kalmyk language in terms of cultural linguistics, provides an original thematic classification and means of translation into German with evidence from fairy tales recorded by G.J. Ramstedt. The means of translation applied by G.J. Ramstedt are as follows: transcription, transliteration, calque and half-calque, explanatory and descriptive translation. The lexemes absent in German linguistic culture are expressed by means of transcription, transliteration and half-calque. The texts of the fairy tales contain certain realia-words revealing the ethnic originality and reflecting the actual linguistic and cultural communion of the ethnos. A comparative analysis of Kalmyk and German realia-words allows to consider the mutual diffusion of cultural and linguistic peculiarities of the two peoples. 

The article deals with written and oral versions of the famous Buddhist composition “The History of Uneker Torelkitu Khan”. The Buddha himself often told various stories to his disciples; those were both didactic in content and fascinating in form. The Buddhist tradition views such compositions as one of the ways to preach the teaching. Those gained wide popularity and existed both in written and oral forms. 

Prayers of repentance are special Buddhist practices. In fact, they are similar to the adoption of the vow of renunciation from committing any harmful acts which allows an individual to get rid of negative consequences in future. Such texts contain a large layer of obsolete concepts and terms not to be met in modern Kalmyk. The content of the prayers of repentance express the fundamentals of Buddhist philosophy and ethics. Such texts provide ample materials for further interdisciplinary research.

The paper examines the language of folklore records from the perspective of a certain Kalmyk dialect speaker. Thematically, the dialectal lexical layer in the word-stock of the taleteller T.S. Tyaginova is not that diverse which testifies that the informant’s language is not actually too dialectal by nature but still such lexis does influence the formation of the linguistic world-image of the ethnos. Further analyses with evidence from vast folklore materials recorded among the various Kalmyk sub-ethnic groups shall reveal new aspects in the studies of clusters of local lexis as a source of data about fragments of the regional linguistic view of the world. 

The article considers translations of epithets of Shakyamuni Buddha with evidence from the sutra “The King of Auspicious Wishes” – in Chinese, Mongolian and Oirat Buddhist traditions. All the mentioned epithets etymologically stem from Sanskrit, i.e. the language used to record the original text of the Avatamsaka Sutra, “The King of Auspicious Wishes” being a part of the latter. In Chinese tradition, there are two forms of epithets of the Buddha – a Sanskrit calque and Chinese translation; while the Mongolian epithets are word-for-word translations. 
A comparative analysis of the translations reveals that despite the fact the two forms of Buddhism developed in different times and conditions, it introduced no significant influence on the canonical literature, including the translation of the cue names and basic concepts.

The work considers the problems of chunking of a nominative group in the context of development of a sub-corpus of the Kalmyk National Corpus. At present the Corpus is provided with morphological and syntactical tracking mechanisms, other types of data annotation — including a syntactical sub-corpus — have not been elaborated so far. The article describes nominative groups, component elements of a nominative group as well as the analysis algorithm, criteria and borders. 

The paper examines the structure and content of the science and data portal “Materials and Studies on the Mongolic Languages”. The information resource allows to accumulate corresponding studies and materials, including lexicographic sources. The structure of the portal can be nominally divided as follows: materials, including manuscripts and digital resources; dictionaries and phrase books; the research studies proper. In a separate part are the biographies of Mongolic linguists alongside with the scholars’ main works.

The article is devoted to description of the Oirat block prints that are stored in private collections in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China in Oirat families. The author describes the five woodcuts, which are the cultural heritage of Oirats. Woodcut from Oirats are rare, since their production was not common in Oirats.

The article examines the problematic aspects in the history of creation of Buddhist compositions among the Oirats that received their script system due to the activities of Zaya paṇḍita nam-mkha’ rgya-mtsho. The article provides data on Zaya paṇḍita’s Oirat compositions as well as those written by his followers up to the early 20th century (D. Setenov). The presented work also contains a short historiographic review in the field of studies of original Oirat and translated texts. 

The article studies the thematic group “food” (including beverages) where meat and milk products prevail, the latter being an important component of material culture of the Kalmyks and, thus, performing various social and ritual functions. Lexemes of the thematic group are not that diverse within the Epic which is due to the peculiarities of the Kalmyks’ nomadic way of life; texts of the Epic contain uncommon or obsolete lexemes. The Definition Dictionary of the Kalmyk Heroic Epic of Jangar being developed now shall allow to comprehensively study and reveal the word-building and semantic relations between linguistic units of the mentioned thematic group. 

The article considers the syntagmatics of adjectives denoting geometrical shapes of objects with evidence from Kalmyk National Corpus; the adjectives are the ones that denote planar figures, physical bodies, properties and characteristics of the figures and bodies. The adjectives are largely loan words and have not been introduced into Kalmyk bilingual dictionaries which signifies that those are not that significant for language speakers in their daily communications. Most of the adjectives denoting geometrical shapes of objects combine with words that denote parts of the body. Some of the adjectives (khurts ‘sharp’, gho ‘straight’, mat’khr ‘curved mind’, dörvljn ‘square’) can be used to characterize attitudinal cognitive processes. 

The article considers the peculiarities of comparisons in the Kalmyk heroic tales, the expression of ethno-linguistic and cultural view of the world. The study and analysis the formal typological features and functional properties inherent in the organizational structure of comparative constructions in the fantastic text. Besides, national-cultural signs, genre and lexical features of comparisons in stylistics of the Kalmyk heroic tales are marked. 

The article is devoted to one of actual problems of the Kalmyk folklore — the creation of an electronic database of authentic texts, which will include samples of multi-genre of Kalmyk folklore, in particular, the texts of the Kalmyk heroic epic “Dzhangar”. The material for the creation of authentic texts of the database will be written and oral source material. Writing primary sources will be presented handwriting Kalmyk heroic epic “Dzhangar” in the records of XIX–XX centuries. Oral source material will consist of recordings of songs Kalmyk epic storytellers recorded in the 1960s–1980s by scientists of KNIIYALI (now KSC RAS). Implementation of the project to create an electronic database of authentic texts will be important to preserve the folklore heritage of the Kalmyks and further comprehensive study of this unique monument as a heroic epic epic “Dzhangar”.

The article provides a historical and literary comment on the formula “and the Kalmyk, friend of the steppes” from the final version of A. Pushkin’s poem “I Have Erected a Monument to Myself…” (August 21, 1836). Pushkin’s suggestive formula is considered it terms of the eighteenth-century odic tradition and its connections to V. Zhukovsky’s poetry – as a component of the poetic device “ethnographic catalogue”. In the final version, the formula “the Kalmyk, son of the steppes” transforms into “the Kalmyk, friend of the steppes” thus becoming more precise, both historically and poetically.