Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-lj6df Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-18T10:28:33.621Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Kalmyk DPs and the Narration of Displacement in Post-World War II Europe

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 September 2021

Abstract

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.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Prior versions of this paper were presented at the conference “A Century of Movement: Russian Culture and Global Community Since 1917” at the University of North Carolina (2017), the Annual Meeting of the American Association of Geographers (2019), and the Mongolia and Inner Asia Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge (2019). The authors would like to acknowledge support and feedback from the following people during the course of this project: Elizabeth Anthony, Valeriy Badmaev, Melissa Chakars, David Cooper, Joshua and Diana Cutler, Mackenzie Holland, Caroline Humphrey, Bill Kostlevy, Sanj Altan and Erdne Kuldinow, Joseph Lenkart, Harriet Murav, Daniel Newman, Stephen Norris, Erdne Ombadykow, Georgina Ramsay, Elena Remilev, Svetlana Rukhelman, Daniel Scarborough, Jackie Shearman, Anatol Shmelev, Baasanjav Terbish, and three anonymous reviewers for Slavic Review. All remaining errors are the authors’.

References

1. On population movement in Russia and the Soviet Union in the late imperial period and onwards, see Gatrell, Peter, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington, 2005)Google Scholar; Siegelbaum, Lewis H. and Moch, Leslie Page, Broad Is My Native Land: Repertoires and Regimes of Migration in Russia’s Twentieth Century (Ithaca, 2015)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. Martin, Terry, “The Origins of Soviet Ethnic Cleansing,” Journal of Modern History 70, no. 4 (December 1998): 813–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3. Nekrich, Aleksandr M., The Punished Peoples: The Deportation and Fate of Soviet Minorities at the End of the Second World War (New York, 1978)Google Scholar.

4. Elliott, Mark, Pawns of Yalta: Soviet Refugees and America’s Role in Their Repatriation (Urbana, 1982), 96Google Scholar. See also Baron, Nick, “Remaking Soviet Society: The Filtration of Returnees from Nazi Germany, 1944–49,” in Gatrell, Peter and Baron, Nick, eds., Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands, 1945–50 (New York, 2009), 89116, 92CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5. On the origins of DPs and life in the camps, see Wyman, Mark, DPs: Europe’s Displaced Persons, 1945–1951 (Ithaca, 1998)Google Scholar.

6. The numbers cited here are given in Gerard Daniel Cohen, In War’s Wake: Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York, 2011), 107, 110. See also Wyman, DPs, 2, who gives the same number for the United States and a figure of 158,000 for the number of DPs resettled in Canada.

7. Case A-7841784, 5. The eligibility decision and legal arguments that preceded this decision are detailed at United States Department of Justice, Administrative Decisions Under Immigration & Nationality Laws, Volume 4, February 1950 to January 1953 (Washington D.C., 1954), 275–86, available online at: https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015047779650&view=1up&seq=5 (accessed May 2, 2020).

8. After the court decision reclassifying the Kalmyks, the Church World Service and the Tolstoy Foundation had joint responsibility for resettling the group on behalf of the International Refugee Organization (IRO); see Jessica Johnson, “The Labor of Refuge: Kalmyk Displaced Persons, the 1948 Displaced Persons Act, and the Origins of United States Refugee Resettlement,” (PhD diss., Brown University, 2013), 50–51. The CWS further delegated the resettlement of the Kalmyks in the US to the Brethren Service Commission, a social service of the Brethren Church; see J. Kenneth Kreider, A Cup of Cold Water: The Story of the Brethren Service (Elgin, IL, 2001), 104–06. The last three organizations listed here were involved in successfully lobbying the Kalmyk case to the IRO at the request of the Kalmyk DP community leadership.

9. “Kalmuk Arrivals,” Brethren Historical Library and Archive (hereafter, BHLA), “Kalmuck Refugees,” Series 4/1/6, Box 1, Folder 2: Arrivals.

10. Cohen, In War’s Wake; Holian, Anna, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism: Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany (Ann Arbor, 2009)Google Scholar; and Wyman, DPs. For a synthesis of the recent scholarship, see Ballinger, Pamela, “Impossible Returns, Enduring Legacies: Recent Historiography of Displacement and the Reconstruction of Europe after World War II,” Contemporary European History 22, no. 1 (February 2013): 127–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11. The digital copy of the ITS archive accessed for this research is held by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (hereafter, USHMM) and governed by US privacy laws, meaning names can be used with proper citation. In the interests of reproducibility and transparency, we have maintained all original names when citing the ITS archive in this paper.

12. The ITS archive was established by the Allies after the end of the war in 1945. It was initially run by UNRRA and was taken over by IRO in 1948. From 1955, the archive was administered by the Red Cross and was only opened to researchers and the general public in 2007 after a campaign for access by the USHMM and others. Since 2012, the archive has been jointly owned by the governments of Germany and eleven other countries. The digitization of the archive’s thirty million original documents is still in progress. According to Dan Stone, 85% of the documents have been digitized (its collections are available online at: “Arolsen Archives,” https://collections.arolsen-archives.org/en/search/); see Dan Stone, “The Memory of the Archive: The International Tracing Service and the Construction of the Past as History,” Dapim: Studies on the Holocaust 31, no. 2 (May 2017): 69–88. For a detailed guide to the ITS archive with an emphasis on its use in Holocaust research, see Suzanne Brown-Fleming, Nazi Persecution and Postwar Repercussions: The International Tracing Service Archive and Holocaust Research (Lanham, MD, 2016).

13. Utash Ochirov, Kalmykia v period grazhdanskoi voiny (1917–1920 gg.) (Elista, Russia, 2006), 29; Elena Remilev, Oirat-Mongoly. Obzor istorii evropeyskikh kalmykov (Bingen-Büdesheim, Germany, 2010), 339–41.

14. Michael Khodarkovsky, Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads, 1600–1771 (Ithaca, 1992).

15. On the ethnic composition of the Don Kalmyks, see Praskovia Alekseeva and Arash Bormanshinov, Ob etnicheskom sostave donskikh kalmykov (Elista, 1999).

16. Kim Shovunov, Kalmyki v sostave rossiiskogo kazachestva (Elista, 1992), 100–8.

17. Toma Milenkovic, Kalmici u Srbiji, 1920–1944 (Belgrade, 1998).

18. Ivan Borisenko and Andrey Goryaev, Ocherki istorii kalmytskoi emigratsii (Elista, 1998), 46. The authors refer to an excerpt from an interview with I.B. Mikhalinov, which was initially published in the Far Eastern newspaper Slovo in its October issue, no. 2364 (the year is unknown, presumably 1935) and later reprinted in the Kalmyk émigré journal Kovylnye Volny. According to Mikhalinov, out of 3,000 Don Kalmyks who evacuated from Crimea to Constantinople, 2,000 returned to Russia. See “K Voprosu o Pereselenii v Mandzhuriiu,” Kovylnye Volny 12 (February 1936), 19–20. Georgij Sanji Zagadinow Collection of Kalmyk Materials (1834–1999), Ms. Coll. 1318, Box 5, Folder 12: Unidentified Russian Publications, circa 1930s, University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

19. Fred Adelman, “Kalmyk Cultural Renewal,” (PhD diss., University of Pennsylvania, 1960).

20. One such man is Andrei Burlakov who, according to his 1946 T/USA and 1948 IRO forms, emigrated with the White Army in 1920 and was among those who returned from Constantinople to Russia in 1922 where he worked on a kolkhoz in Chonos, in a coal mine in Karaganda, and later was a soldier until he was captured by the Germans in June 1943; T/USA form for Andrei Burlakov, July 25, 1946, 3.2.1.1/78978661#1–2/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM; IRO “Case of family data” for Andrei Burlakov, January 30, 1948, 3.2.1.1/78978663#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. His story is corroborated in the BHLA, which provides a detailed account of Andrei’s return to the Soviet Union; BHLA, “Donald F. Durnbaugh Papers (1927–2005),” Series 18/, Box 8, Folder 23: Kalmuck Narrative Reports.

21. Malcolm J. Proudfoot, European Refugees: 1939–1952. A Study in Forced Population Movement (Evanston, 1956), 38. Proudfoot cites Joseph Schechtman, European Population Transfers: 1939–1945 (New York, 1946), 206–25; Appendix 1.

22. Vlasovites were members of the Russian Liberation Army (ROA, Russkaia osvoboditel΄naia armiia) led by the Soviet general Andrei Andreievich Vlasov, a Soviet general captured during the siege of Leningrad who subsequently defected to the German side. Catherine Andreyev, Vlasov and the Russian Liberation Movement: Soviet Reality and Émigré Theories (New York, 1989).

23. Alexander Statiev, for example, cites a Kalmyk Communist Party report that puts the number of Corps members at 1,500, including former Cossacks and members of several ethnic minorities. By the time the Corps left Kalmykia it “numbered about 3,000 men.” See Alexander Statiev, “The Nature of Anti-Soviet Armed Resistance, 1942–44: The North Caucasus, the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic, and Crimea,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 6, no. 2 (March 2005): 285–318, 304. Mark Elliott, Pawns of Yalta, 15, gives the 5,000 figure. Nekrich also discusses the size of the Kalmyk Cavalry Corps. Citing Hoffmann and Kichikov, he puts the number of Kalmyk Corps personnel at approximately 3,000 men after the German retreat from Kalmykia; in July 1944, there were 2,917 rank-and-file soldiers, 374 non-commissioned officers, and 147 officers of Kalmyk nationality in the Corps. See Nekrich, The Punished Peoples, 77; Joachim Hoffmann, Deutsche und Kalmyken: 1942 bis 1945 (Freiburg, Germany, 1974), 187–88; Mergen Kichikov, “Sovetskaia Kalmykia v Velikoi Otechestvennoi Voine 1941–1945 godov,” (PhD diss., Leningrad State University imeni A.A. Zhdanov, 1972), 241.

24. Elza-Bair Guchinova, Ulitsa “Kalmuk Road”: Istoriia, kul΄tura i identichnosti kalmytskoi obschiny SShA (St. Petersburg, 2004). According to Arbakov, former chief of staff of the Kalmyk Corps, only a few men managed to escape; see Arbakov’s story in Guchinova, Ulitsa “Kalmuk Road,” 76–83.

25. See Petr Bakaev, “O demographii tragedii,” in Konstantin Maksimov and Nina Ochirova, eds., Politicheskie repressii v Kalmykii v 20–40e gg. 20 veka (Elista, 2003), 108–9. On the deportation of the Kalmyks more generally, see Nekrich, The Punished Peoples; Pavel Polian, Against Their Will: The History and Geography of Forced Migrations in the USSR (Budapest, 2004); Vladimir Ubushaev, Kalmyki: Vyselenie i vozvrashchenie, 1943–1957 gg. (Elista, 1991); Petr Bakaev, Razmyshleniia o genotside (Elista, 1992). By a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet in January 1957, the Kalmyk autonomous oblast was reinstated and the mass return of the Kalmyks began.

26. Elza-Bair Guchinova, “Natsia i diskurs viny: Primirenie s proshlym v politike pamyati kalmykov,” Ab Imperio no. 4 (2004): 263–88.

27. Without question, many were Soviet citizens. However, this definition was highly contested, which in turn complicated the repatriation process; according to Marta Dyczok, the failure to establish the Soviet Union’s western border at Yalta “later led to disputes over who constituted a Soviet citizen and was therefore liable to forcible repatriation.” Marta Dyczok, The Grand Alliance and Ukrainian Refugees (New York, 2000), 40.

28. Proudfoot, European Refugees, 216.

29. Julius Epstein, Operation Keelhaul: The Story of Forced Repatriation from 1944 to the Present (Old Greenwich, CT, 1973), 23–26, 46–51.

30. Proudfoot, European Refugees, 215–17.

31. Proudfoot, European Refugees, 218.

32. Elliott, Pawns of Yalta, 96.

33. Mark Elliott, “The United States and Forced Repatriation of Soviet Citizens, 1944–47,” Political Science Quarterly 88, no. 2 (June 1973): 253–75.

34. Elliott, Pawns of Yalta, 92–3.

35. Wyman, DPs, 62.

36. Viktor Zemskov, “K voprosu o repatriatsii sovetskikh grazhdan 1944–1951,” Istoriia SSSR, no. 4 (1990): 26–41, 35. Zemskov vaguely cites figures from the Collection of Documents of TsGAOR SSSR (Central State Archive of the October Revolution of the Soviet Union). In a later paper Zemskov provides the same figures and cites Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Rossiiskoi Federatsii (GARF); State Archive of the Russian Federation, fond 9526, opis 4a, delo 1, listy 226–29 (see Viktor Zemskov, “Repatriatsiia sovetskikh grazhdan i ikh dal΄neishaia sud΄ba,” Sotsiologicheskiie Issledovaniia, no. 5[1995]: 3–13, 12).

37. Konstantin Maksimov, “Sud΄by voennoplennykh kalmykov v 1940–1950 Gody,” Voprosy Istorii, no. 5 (2018): 43–56.

38. “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States” report, September 24, 1951, BHLA, “Kalmuck Refugees,” Series 4/1/6, Box 1, Folder 31: Kalmuks 1959.

39. Polian gives a figure of 2,796 such individuals; Polian, Zhertvy dvukh diktatur: Zhizn′, trud, unizhenie i smertsovetskikh voennoplennykh i ostarbaiterov na chuzhbine i na rodine (Moscow, 2002), 537–38. See also Praskovia Alekseeva, “Deportatsiia kalmytskogo naroda i sud΄ba frontovikov kalmytskoi natsional΄nosti,” in Konstantin Maksimov and Nina Ochirova, eds., Politicheskie repressii v Kalmykii, 197. On the fate of repatriated Kalmyk POWs, see Maksimov, “Sud΄by voennoplennykh kalmykov.”

40. Maksimov, “Sud΄by voennoplennykh kalmykov,” 54.

41. Baron, “Remaking Soviet Society,” 91.

42. Fitzpatrick argues the filtering process was set up not only to punish and socialize the displaced, but also “had the important practical function of sorting out repatriants in terms of their future labor use.” Sheila Fitzpatrick, “The Motherland Calls: ‘Soft’ Repatriation of Soviet Citizens from Europe, 1945–1953,” The Journal of Modern History 90, no. 2 (June 2018): 323–50, 344.

43. Ballinger, “Impossible Returns, Enduring Legacies,” notes the top-down approach of Cohen, In War’s Wake and Ben Shephard, The Long Road Home: The Aftermath of the Second World War (New York, 2010). Taylor argues that much of the early work (Proudfoot, European Refugees and Eugene M. Kulischer, Europe on the Move: War and Population Changes, 1917–47 [New York, 1948]) privileged DPs and their stories; see Lynne Taylor, In the Children’s Best Interests: Unaccompanied Children in American-Occupied Germany (Toronto, 2017), 8.

44. Liisa Malkki, “Refugees and Exile: From “Refugee Studies” to the National Order of Things,” Annual Review of Anthropology 24 (1995): 495–523, 498.

45. Cohen, In War’s Wake, 66.

46. US DP Commission, Displaced Persons and the International Refugee Organization (Washington D.C., 1949), 3.

47. Andrew Janco, “‘Unwilling’: The One-Word Revolution in Refugee Status, 1940–51,” Contemporary European History 23, no. 3 (June 2014): 429–46, 445.

48. Cohen, In War’s Wake, 83.

49. Janco, “Unwilling,” 441.

50. Ruth Balint, “The Use and Abuse of History: Displaced Persons in the ITS Archive,” in Rebecca Boehling, Susanne Urban, Elizabeth Anthony, and Suzanne Brown-Fleming, eds., Spiegelungen der NS-Verfolgung und ihrer Konsequenzen, (Göttingen, Germany, 2015), 173–88, 176.

51. Elena Remilev, email correspondence with Elvira Churyumova, February 24, 2019. Remilev was part of the first group that traveled from Berlin in February 1945; see also Elena Remilev, Propavshie karavany kalmytskoi stepi. Obzor istorii kalmytskoi emigratsii. 1923–1952 (Moscow, 2020), 184.

52. Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System. Schedule B, Vol. 10, Case 76 (interviewer A.D.). Widener Library, Harvard University at https://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:FHCL:965396 (accessed April 26, 2020), 10. On Ostministerium’s national committees, see Alexander Dallin, “German Policy and the Occupation of the Soviet Union, 1941–1944,” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1956), 1149–55. In his PhD dissertation Dallin provides the names of some refugee informants whom he interviewed as part of the Harvard Project, including the name of Shamba Balinov, 1326. On the Kalmyk National Committee see also Guchinova, Ulitsa “Kalmuk Road.” On the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, see Sam Prendergast, “Revisiting the Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System,” Oral History Review 44, no. 1 (Winter/Spring 2017): 19–38.

53. Cohen, In War’s Wake, 35.

54. There are 287 unique record folders for Kalmyks identified in the ITS archive. We classified any individual record as “undetermined” if it does not contain either a T/USA form or one of the IRO forms, which prevents us from determining the consistency of the narrative over time.

55. Leonard Borman, “Kalmuk Resettlement in America,” in George Weber and Lucy Cohen, eds., Beliefs and Self-help: Cross-Cultural Perspectives and Approaches (New York, 1982), 31–74, 40.

56. Tara Zahra, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe’s Families after World War II (Cambridge, Mass., 2011), 23.

57. Cohen, In War’s Wake, 39.

58. Zahra, The Lost Children, 22.

59. A Nansen passport gave its holder the right to travel in Europe to find work and to be readmitted to the country of issuance. It was devised for the legal protection of refugees by Fridtjof Nansen, the League of Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, in June 1921. Subject to renewal and valid for up to one year, Nansen passports were issued until 1942.

60. The fact that Kalmyks changed their age and birth date was also mentioned by Sanj Altan Kuldinow during an interview with one of the authors in March 2019 (Baasanjav Terbish and Edward Holland, “Erdene and Sanj Altan Kuldinow, interview,” Kalmyk Cultural Heritage Documentation Project [Video file]. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.56118); see also T/USA for Marchada Hordjanikow, dated December 20, 1946, which shows a birthdate of 1886 (see 3.2.1.1/79189644#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM), whereas his IRO Resettlement Registration form, dated August 15, 1951, shows it as 1903 (see 3.2.1.1/79189648#1). Marchada’s place of birth was also changed from Khal-khil-khol [Khalkhin-Gol], Mongolia, to Ketchenery, Russia.

61. The following Kalmyk DPs worked as interviewers and registrars for IRO: Saran Badminov, Peter Yamanov, Pata Pereborov, and Lelya Dalantinova. They each signed CM/1 forms that they completed for others. Among them, Saran Badminov signed the largest number of forms for Kalmyk DPs—thirteen—including the CM/1 form for David Doldunov, dated February 20, 1948 (see 3.2.1.1/78988079#4/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM). Part of the first wave, Badminov worked as an architect in Belgrade until 1942. The majority of Kalmyk DPs’ IRO forms, however, were signed by interviewers who were presumably Russian speakers, with surnames such as Sudakov, Grudzinsky, Russakov, and Neumann.

62. CM/1 form for Andrei Burlakov, 3.2.1.1/78978662#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM; see also note 20 above.

63. Jayne Persian, “Displaced Persons and the Politics of International Categorisation(s),” Australian Journal of Politics & History 58, no. 4 (December 2012): 481–96, 486. See also Cohen, In War’s Wake, 39.

64. “O Voprose Nasil’stvennoi Repatriatsii,” Mana Zyang [Kalm. Our News] 19, no. 2 (February 20, 1947), 5. Georgij Sanji Zagadinow Collection of Kalmyk Materials (1834–1999), Ms. Coll. 1318, Box 6, Folder 5: Mana Zange—Refugee Publication, 1946–47.

65. International Refugee Organization, Manual for Eligibility Officers, No. 185, at https://digital-library.arolsen-archives.org/content/titleinfo/7259570?query=manual (accessed May 1, 2020) (Geneva, 194-), 8.

66. Elliott, Pawns of Yalta, 173.

67. That many DPs avoided humanitarian agencies until they registered for resettlement is noted by Anna Holian, “A Missing Narrative: Displaced Persons in the History of Postwar West Germany” in Cornelia Wilhelm, ed., Migration, Memory, and Diversity: Germany from 1945 to the Present (New York, 2017), 32–55, 35.

68. Cohen, In War’s Wake, 71.

69. Franck Gosselin, “Les Kalmouks de France. Itinéraires d’une immigration méconnue,” Revue Européenne des Migrations Internationales 17, no. 3 (2001): 211–34, 220–21. On the Kalmyk colony in France, see also Françoise Aubin, “Une société d’émigrés: la Colonie des kalmouks de France,” Année Sociologique 17 (1966): 133–212.

70. CM/1 form for Wasilije Zandanow [Vasilii Zandanov], July 20, 1951, 3.2.1.1/79946324#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

71. ‘Life history’ of Iwan Saspinow [Ivan Saspinov], May 25, 1951, 3.2.1.1/78864487#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

72. On economic motives of resettlement schemes see Wyman, DPs, 188–92; On specific countries’ recruitment efforts in DP Camps, for example on Australia, see Ruth Balint, “Industry and Sunshine: Australia as Home in the Displaced Persons’ Camps of Postwar Europe,” History Australia 11, no. 1 (January 2014): 102–27.

73. In our database, out of a total number of 47 foreign wives 27 married second-wave Kalmyk men.

74. “Kalmuk Resettlement in the United States” report, September 24, 1951, BHLA, “Kalmuck Refugees,” Series 4/1/6, Box 1, Folder 31: Kalmuks 1959.

75. CM/1 form for Walburga Chapurtinov (nee Steinsberger), November 14, 1949, 3.2.1.1/78991042#2/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

76. Social History of Nikolai Goripov, October 12, 1951, 6.3.2.1/84246769#1–2/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

77. Ibid. Other orphaned siblings who faced difficulties in resettlement because of their race were Vera and Stojan Scharapow. For more information, see Brown-Fleming, Nazi Persecution, 208–11.

78. Koldong Sodnom mentions four priests of the first wave who lived in DP camps, namely Sandzha Umaldinov, Sanzha Ignatov, Sanzha Menkov, and Zamba Pereborov. We did not find any information on Zamba Pereborov in the ITS archive. According to Sodnom, Pereborov came from France to Germany where he mixed with Kalmyk refugees. The other three priests were all of the first wave. Ignatov, Menkov, and Pereborov all immigrated to the US in 1951–52. Umaldinov died in 1946 in DP Camp Krumbach. See Kol΄dong Sodnom, Sud΄ba donskikh kalmykov, ikh very i dukhovenstva (USA, 1984), 150–51.

79. We have been able to verify the ITS files of some of the persecuted priests mentioned in Galina Dordzhieva’s book. See Galina Dordzhieva, Repressirovannoe buddiiskoe dukhovenstvo Kalmykii (Elista, 2014).

80. “Kalmuks Balked in Search for Home,” The Christian Science Monitor, July 1, 1950, Kalmyk Resettlement Committee Records, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York University, TAM 029, Box 1, Folder 1: Correspondence.

81. David Martin [Director, International Rescue Committee] to Members of the Consultative Committee on Kalmuk Refugees, “Kalmuks,” May 17, 1951, Kalmyk Resettlement Committee Records, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archive, New York University, TAM 029, Box 1, Folder 2: Correspondence.

82. The Nationality Act of 1940, October 14, 1940, H.R. 9980, Section 303, https://www.loc.gov/law/help/statutes-at-large/76th-congress/session-3/c76s3ch876.pdf (accessed May 1, 2020), 1140.

83. “In Re: Darsha Remilev and wife, Samsona. Before the Attorney General in Exclusion Proceedings,” July 28, 1951, BHLA, “Kalmuck Refugees,” Series 4/1/6, Box 1, Folder 26: Kalmuk Cases.

84. Excerpt from Alexi Narmajew’s [Alexei Narmaev] ‘Statement in lieu of an oath,’ August 29, 1951, 3.2.1.1/79517848#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM. For other Kalmyk DPs, the document entitled “Declaration in lieu of an oath” served the same function. See note 71 above.

85. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven, 1998).

86. IRO CM/1 for Moti Erendzhenov, May 14, 1948, 3.2.1.1/79069054#1/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

87. IRO CM/1 for Nikolai Surmanov, March 20, 1951, 3.2.1.1/79824511#2/ITS Digital Archive, USHMM.

88. Castles, Stephen, de Haas, Hein, and Miller, Mark J., The Age of Migration: International Population Movements in the Modern World, 5th ed., (New York, 2014)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Europe during the age of migration, see Peter Gatrell, The Unsettling of Europe: How Migration Reshaped a Continent (New York, 2019).