E-catalog        

Библиогр.: 30 назв.

Kalmyk history has contradictory character caused by many social commotions. The ethnic, ethno-cultural and trade-economic relations complete the Kalmyks’ transition from the patriarchal tribal relations to feudal gradual settling on the ground. The historic conditionality of the union with agricultural peoples served as an economic basis of the Oirat annexation to Russia. It also led to cultural interaction with the Turkic Tatars, Bashkirs and the other peoples from the Volga region and from the North Caucasus. The contacts that Kalmyks had with neighboring peoples differ in time and in difficulty of the ethno-cultural interrelation, and were later revealed in various material and artistic spheres. During the transformation of the Mongol cultural substrate of the Oirats, Kalmyk art forms and develops in changing living conditions in Russia in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Kalmyc folk art was conditioned by the cultural influence of the Eurasian people, who lived within the changing territory of the folk’s inhabitance. The unique originality of the folk, historical fortune determined the ethnic peculiarities of its culture. The conglomerate of Kalmyk fine arts was conditioned by many cultural layers of the complicated ethnic history. For example, in the ornament of wooden vessels there was much in common with Altai people, in clothes and headwear – with Teleuts, in metal pendants of belts – with Tuvinians, in the ornaments of both women’s and men’s leather belts and in the wood carving there was much in common with Tunguses. The community of ancient Turkic-Mongolian roots conditioned one social and economical basis of nomadic life for a number of nationalities such as Buryats, Kalmyks, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Kirgizes, Karacalpacs, Altais, Tuvinians, Yakuts. Consequently there is so much in common in their dwellings, harness, arms and jewelry. Contacts with Russians were many-sided. This has led to the alliance of the Kalmyk nomadic farming with the settled farming economy with the Russian and Ukrainian immigrants. They became more intensive during the period of wide settlement of Kalmyk population in the 2nd half of the XIX century. Architecture, wood carving, embroidery, dress, representing spheres of folk arts and crafts, were under great influence of the settled peoples. Then radical changes in the way of life (e.g. the substitution of the nomadic cattle-breeding by settled farming) caused natural process of adaptation, transformation and assimilation of Kalmyk culture in new conditions of inhabitance.