The ancestors of the Kalmyks, the Oirats, migrated from the steppes of southern Siberia on the banks of the Irtysh River to the Lower Volga region.
The Kalmyks settled in the wide open steppes from Saratov in the north to Astrakhan on the Volga delta in the south and to the Terek River in the southwest.
In December 1943, the Kalmyk SSR was abolished and its territory was divided and transferred to the adjacent regions, viz., the Astrakhan and Stalingrad Oblasts and Stavropol Krai.
The deportations had a profound effect on the non-Russian peoples of the Soviet Union and they are still a major political issue - the memory of the deportations played a major part in the separatist movements in Tatarstan, Chechnya and the Baltic republics.
December 1943: Deportation of Kalmyks from Kalmyk ASSR to Altai and Krasnoyarsk Krais and Omsk and Novosibirsk oblasts
November 1944: Deportation of 92,000 Meskhs, Kurds, and Khemshins from Southern Georgia, and 1,000 Lazs from Adjar ASSR to Uzbek SSR, Kazakh SSR, Kirgiz SSR.
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