‘I Was Deported Forever...’: Commemorating the 80th Anniversary of Kalmyk Deportation (Investigating Kazakhstan-Based Archives)

Introduction. Ethnic deportations were a form of political repression in the USSR. Official Soviet directives clearly proclaimed mass relocations with exact indications of ethnic identities the would-be deportees should belong to. Goals. The study attempts a historical reconstruction of how Kalmyks from the abolished Kalmyk ASSR survived the exile, reviews their legal status, and outlines a social portrait. Materials and methods. The work employs a variety of research methods, such as the source study, information, mathematic/statistical, factual/historic ones and that of computer content analyses for sufficient insights into earlier classified and thus unclaimed sources. The study is the first to examine personal files declassified since November 2021 by the Government Commission for Complete Rehabilitation of Victims of Political Repressions (est. by the order of President K.-Zh. Tokayev), as well as some related documents from departmental archives of Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Committee of National Security transmitted in 2021–2023 to the Archive of the President of Kazakhstan. Files dealing with special settlers are also housed at the Archive of the Committee for Legal Statistics and Special Records (Prosecutor General’s Office of the Republic of Kazakhstan) and its departments in Turkistan, Kyzylorda, Akmola, Karaganda and Zhetysu regions, at the State Archive of Kyzylorda Region (its branch — Archive of Sociopolitical History). Results. The Kalmyk deportees started arriving in the Kazakh SSR since January 1944. Despite the Republic was not designated as a region to host the repressed people, the war decided differently. The ethnic Kalmyks — though a minority in the host society to face hard life conditions — never assimilated culturally and showed sustainable social, professional and psycho-physical adaptation skills to the changed circumstances and environments.