Residents of Kalmykia in Late Soviet and Post-Soviet Armed Conflicts: Statistical and Military-Anthropological Aspects

Abstract

Introduction. The article is the first scholarly attempt to comprehensively summarize the experiences of Kalmykia’s residents in armed conflicts of the mid-twentieth to early twenty first centuries. In the study, special attention is given to the military-anthropological aspect, as well as to the analysis of statistics on the participation of the region’s residents in hostilities. Materials and methods. The work examines official data from the Military Commissariat of the Republic of Kalmykia, field data (interviews with participants of combat operations in Afghanistan and the North Caucasus), a few media publications, and collected memories by Kalmykia’s residents about fallen combatants. The study focuses on some systematic and comprehensive approaches, employs various research methods, including the comparative historical, statistical ones, and that of oral history. Results. The paper shows residents of Kalmykia have taken part in many wars and armed conflicts of the country, both in the late Soviet and post-Soviet periods. The vast majority of combatants participated in military operations in Afghanistan (1979–1989) and the North Caucasus (1994–2000s). As for the combatants proper, the majority of them were obligatory conscripts. The study also discusses some military-anthropological aspects, such as peculiarities of adaptation of Kalmykia’s natives to military service during hostilities, circumstances of their transformation into combatants, articulated memories and eyewitness accounts of experienced conditions and military service proper, relations with locals, specifics of returning to civilian life, and rethinking of one’s participation in war.

Keywords

• soviet-afghan war
• armed conflicts of the late soviet era
• post-soviet armed conflicts
• residents of kalmykia — combat veterans
• combatants
• everyday military life