Азиаты России: Калмыкия, "не русский" и "дочь врага народа"

I’m a Kalmyk, but today we’re all Russian, but I like how it shocks people, he walks like this, well, from afar, he’s glowing, he’s thinking, he’s met a fellow countryman, you’re burning, and he’s like that, and he’s a Kalmyk and [music] that’s how you encounter in Russia this xenophobia, chauvinism, apartment only for Slavs, only Russian to the family, Stalin stumbled, yes, and she has a constant complex that she is the daughter of the people's hurray, that she is an enemy of the people, let's

say a club or any activist who does something in the Kalman language at any moment he can be accused of nationalism, separatism, extremism, and criminal cases can be brought against him or squeeze out of the country a narrative that is intoxicating, this is the Russian Empire, he has now brought it to war in [music] Ukraine [music] Union Eskimo for 3 kopecks Friendship of peoples communism tired of the romanticization of the Scoop, we will dispel these other myths in our podcast olon Good aftern

oon With us today is a meeting with Saldar Ridnom from this representative of the new generation of Kalmykia and for us this is still an opportunity to find out how they live today, how they breathe and how they think The new generation good afternoon Good afternoon it’s very nice to talk with you on these topics because I thank the Rogozov once again the fact that you are creating such a platform in order to talk to us and get to know us, your experience is very important for us because you are

30 years ahead of us and well, in terms of your social development and colonial development and well, at least even thinking and we want to, well, adopt your experience because for us Kyrgyzstan Mongolia are examples of how similar peoples of Central Asia can build democracy and civil society Uh-huh thank you You probably mean our independence Yes exactly yes Uh-huh thank you we don’t think much about this advantage but we probably considered even less Russia as And also representatives of Asia

n peoples, and today we are opening this page and it is not so simple and the Kalmyks are a separate sheet. And I was lucky at one time to start working in general on memory and decolonization with a meeting with one Kalmyk woman, Elsa China, and she was just... it opened for me this page of the deportation of Kalmyks and we will talk about it later and alr and in general today's Kalmykia what is it, what is today's Kalmykia in general - it is a national republic in the European part of the Russ

ian Federation on the border with the North Caucasus, we have 270,000 people living in Kalmykia, of which 60% are ethnic Kalmyks themselves, there are also many other nationalities, we have more than 100 nationalities living there, we are Mongolian people with a Buddhist religion, but in terms of our mental firmware, we are very similar to the Kyrgyz or Kazakhs. That is, we have the same post-Soviet society, that’s all the same thing, a very large outflow of the population, migration to Moscow t

o Europe, there to America, people go to work in the same way, yeah, and the economic system is about the same, that is, cattle breeding, agricultural things, well, not much, industrialism in Russia, yes, yes, it’s just a vertical of power, well we are reaching the point of absurdity. This story, let’s say in the nineteenth year, we organized rallies because we were given Trapeznikov’s lists as the mayor of our capital, he is the former head of the DPR, this separatist, I don’t know what to call

it, a terrorist organization, and he was given to us as a mayor without any elections, and at the same time that he was not even a citizen of the Russian Federation, that is, well, that’s about the kind of political situation we have and he had something to do with the Kalmyks No, he came to the Kalmyks for the first time and this is so Yes, they just let them down and said that here you are too people were naturally indignant there were thousands of people there, 5-6 people went to rallies, it

was a series of rallies there. As a result, they made such a castling, they made him a city manager and they installed a Kalmyk as mayor. Well, in principle, it wasn’t important to us that nationality was important. The main thing was that there was a person from Kalmyks Because when you become the mayor Well, not knowing the capital at all Well, nothing about the capital How its infrastructure works What kind of residents are there Well, this is generally nonsense This is something like what h

appens It’s interesting and the originality of the language Well, we have a problem with the language during the Soviet Russian rule of the Russian In our empire, people have lost their language, and that is, 30 percent only speak the Kalmyk language and this is all connected with our great tragedies, that is, civil military collectivization and the worst tragedy - the deportation of the people when everyone was deported to Siberia they divided everyone into a separate settlement so that they co

uld not speak the Kalman language. Well, with others, and so people lived in Siberia for 13 years. Well, half died and it was a strong blow, and in Soviet times, until a certain point, we were simply forbidden to speak, that is, in public in the organization Well, in general, I didn’t teach anywhere at school, and now in the nineties there was some kind of Renaissance. There was a breath of freedom there, take as much sovereignty as you want, as Yeltsin said, and then it turned out that the vert

ical of power is strengthening again and literally 2-3 years ago, the Kalman language was simply canceled at school. How it was cancelled, they simply canceled it, well, they made it, well, the elective faculty of a maximum of 2 hours a week, that is, a maximum and Well, naturally, when teachers do not receive a salary for an elective, that is, teachers philologists of the Kalman language Well, that is, it’s generally just destruction national education as such in the language This is approximat

ely the situation we have with the language, but we now have a lot of activist kids, there are clubs for independent study, but this is a very fine line in this regard, because any club or any activist who does something is acceptable in the Kalman language, at any moment he can be accused there of nationalism, separatism, extremism and, well, they can pin criminal cases on him or force him out of the country. This is roughly how it happens. Kyrgyzstan is a post-Soviet country. We also know what

the center is. What is Moscow. What is cream and what this is the Great Civilizer mission of Moscow, as it were, of the Russian language of the Russian people Yes, today we speak Russian, you are the author of this merch [music] such an impressive merch Yes, not Russian and I have already observed What impression it makes, how this merch appeared, what prompted you We are My wife and I have been making clothes since about 2013. But the fact is that after university I came from Moscow to Kalmyki

a and I realized that there is no visual code in the Republic of Uh-huh. And we I was in graduate school, I was a student and I decided to take up this hobby clothes to make prints there, designs related specifically to the Kalmyk airai culture with the Buddhist culture Well, on T-shirts, sweatshirts there, then more we have a brand of our own production there, a sewing shop there, a printing shop there, and in the twenty-second year, when the war began in March, here at the Semi Pagoda days Thi

s is the central square, a sacred place, there is a sacred prayer wheel and a giant billboard appears And I am a Kalmyk but today we are all Russians but today We are Russians for the truth for victory for the Russian world Well, this is with a call for Kalmyks to sign up for the war for the Russian world and I feel so strongly about it Well, not only me, in general, everyone was triggered and I just remembered my youth in Moscow, these fights with skinheads with right-wing fans who walked there

in these T-shirts. I’m Russian and I decided to do it. Well, it’s like such a baiting Because you constantly come across in Russia with this xenophobia, chauvinism, I remember in the year nineteen, we arrived trying to rent an apartment. I thought all this was a thing of the past somewhere in the year 2007, the eleventh. This is when you have an apartment only for the Slavs, only for the Russian family, it turns out that in the nineteenth year I come trying to rent an apartment from de calls se

ven just say Well, like, we’re not Russian, I don’t know, and then out of three they ask What’s your name My name is Aldar And you’re probably a Muslim and hangs up, that is, it’s as well as pouring cold water on you That is, you understand that there’s nothing of this gone, I thought it had become a civilized European city, but no. And in the end, we rented there, just some territory at a factory, made a Loft studio out of it and lived normally. But this is the story that you constantly encount

er this in your adult life as a student that they treat you like a non-Russian, but when necessary When it’s really very necessary, we suddenly all become our own Russians Well, you’re ours and That’s why they harshly trigged me and for this I made this drop with this non-Russian non-Russian And after that a wave of just hate began, we received thunderstorms there at night, they called and wrote, then some kind person wrote a statement to the FSB, humiliating the dignity of something, and we had

to urgently leave because Well, at the place of registration, someone else came to the police and we left. such a story with a non-Russian And clearly then I understand that this is when such a resonance is read about ethnicity, what is this about, and now I understand that this is kind of a political position, and even it seems to me that Anti-Militarist is a position, yes, that is, you had an agenda for elections in the year 22, you are like new Kalmyks, all Russians and you are mobilizing, g

oing to war, yes exactly and under this umbrella Yes, well, it’s just that many people, out of context, see in this some kind of I don’t know xenophobia or something else, but no. This answer is like an anti-war statement. Anti-chauvinist, but because somehow at the beginning it’s somehow a little shocking Yes indeed And this also has a very interesting story Yes but I like how it shocks people, especially the Russians, for them it’s like a slap like they say shalakh Yes shalakh tazh and they ar

e already in society they understand that it exists like this and then many begin to be interested in the context and then understand why it’s all And I think that we need This is exactly the Russian society Well, I don’t know how to give Lakhs like that, well, the shocks are such that it settles and doesn’t I know I sobered up because this is this narrative that is intoxicating, this is the Russian Empire, it has now led to a war in Ukraine when just a lot of people, their own Russians who live

in Eastern Ukraine, are dying. And from the point of view of Kalmykia, you feel it like today’s Russia as an Empire how how how what well we have such a concept of awakened and not awakened well, that is, those people who awakened who realized themselves there Airata there Kalmyks realized that something bad was happening And there are people who, under the pressure of this propaganda there, they are trying to close themselves and leave into internal emigration Well, among those who have awaken

ed, naturally everyone understands what is why. Well, the reasons for this whole story are that it is just the Empire, how it influences us, everything that does to us is simply an imperial attitude. But those who have not awakened, maybe it is Fear maybe it’s the instinct of self-preservation the Kalmyks survived such a deportation, a terrible deportation. Judging by the work of the same Elsa, her book is called Yes, you’re blind And I’m missing a leg, in my opinion, something like this is an a

bsolute documentary description of personal stories of the history of deportation and you understand that this fear this is not not the Awakening And this is this fear, it sits in many post-Soviet people because there were a lot of traumas there. Yes, but it is also present or is it, well, there is fear and I have fear among the awakened ones and we have even more fear simply Yes, this collective trauma is monstrous, it shaped the previous two generations, ours, that is, my grandmother’s generat

ion, my father’s generation, and this is what they say here, that is, hush up, don’t say anything, hush up, don’t let on, but I have an even greater fear in this regard, what if we won’t reflect on us, maybe the same story will repeat itself and that’s why I want to be honest Fear Fear of discord Yes Fear Fear of discord I want to scream even more because of this Because people begin to forget about it or Propaganda begins to drown out all this and even when you are talking with the most cottony

ones there and Well, let’s say Kalmyks We have some kind of people and you talk and talk Well, he seems to be there for Russia and for Putin, that’s where everything is going And then when you talk about deportation Well, everyone survived the deportation, all the Kalmyks no one family that was not affected by this genocide and the person immediately remembers this fear, he absorbed it with his mother’s milk and he doesn’t know what to say and then says It was a mistake, we are zeros Stalin stu

mbled Yes yes yes, that is, he is torturing, begins to make excuses or begins to invent things there the fact that, well, somehow engage in it yourself, as it’s called victim blaming, the fact that we ourselves were to blame, and the fact that you say there, we can be exiled again, that is, well, this is a constant complex of guilt, yes, a constant complex, a constant complex of what you need to prove to the Russians that you are better than everyone else, let’s say Take the example of my grandm

other, she was born before exile and was, as it were, formed in exile. Well, as a person, as an adult, and she has a constant complex that she is the daughter of an enemy of the people, that she is an enemy of the people and that she needs constantly to prove to the Russians that she knows Russian better than them, well, she can do it like this, like this, like this, and it constantly sits in your head and that’s why we have every Kalmyk there, there’s a higher education, there’s two higher educ

ations this is definitely what you need to get in life to prove there that you are not not good and that I am good exactly Hmm how to call us correctly Kalmyks correctly Kalmykov correctly call us Arami decrees your memory of the Kalmyks your idea of ​​the Kalmyks that’s why you and I are on We have already laughed about this topic. But it was an amazing, huge people, moving, exciting, militant, in its time, it was one of the largest wealthy peoples on the territory of Eurasia. I think that many

people on the territory of Eurasia remember the echoes of that period. And this, on the other hand, is a drama like such a huge people suddenly turned through such traumas into such a small number today, including, as it were, dependent, but what should we call you today? It’s correct to call us Airata, this is our self-name, we ourselves have a discussion about what to call us correctly because many are already accustomed to the name Kalmyk Kalmyk - this is a Turkic name - that’s what you call

ed us, the Kazakhs and other Kumyks and Turks there who considered us cut off, those who remained, did not accept, well, that is, did not accept Islam, but those who remained there were faithful to the old order and therefore we are Khal Kalmak - that’s all with this intonation, well, we call ourselves arats and khalmg, I don’t know. Call it what you want. It’s convenient for you. Well, actually, it’s not important, we know what we call ourselves because [music] uh, another story is that due to

the fact that we are divided into many countries, we formed a society that was formed separately from each other and indeed Let's say Kalmykia can be called Kalmyks, you can call them Kalmyks, but let's say the Senna Kolmyks Well, they won't be called Kalmyks, they will be called Airata Well, Airat Mongol let's say Mongolian Kalmyks, too, they are Airat Mongol, well, we are Airat Kalmyks, it turns out so uh-huh interesting Well, it seems to me very important, you know what you call the ship, we

can call it as we called you before and what we whisper or not whisper Yes Kalmak Tar We Ryzes have this memory and it’s not easy I would say, but it’s very important to me how you position yourself, yes For example, we still have this kind of not even a discussion, we’re correcting but they’re not getting better even there liberal jellyfish they all call us graters Zami Yes and they say We’ll reprimand there we can’t do something like this, but such stupid coquetry, but in fact, we Kyzy are ver

y important for us because beat the rats and Uh-huh So And this, of course, needs to be positioned and this is happening new for the new generation, otherwise it can’t be chuchu Kyrgyz Yes, and if you think that you are Oirats, then we will call you Airata, and what will we say among ourselves? By the way, the Kazakhs just call it aira. Yeah, that’s why, by the way, such funny cases often happen. Well, somewhere in Moscow or Russia, you go, let’s say a Kyrgyz sees you. MBA is coming up to you an

d you say DKK Kalmyk and he’s like this, he’s coming like this, from afar he’s glowing, he’s thinking he’s met Govo Kolk And he’s like this and Kolk, in fact, I want to say that our peoples are relatives, that is, on the maternal side, as we call it in yours or as relatives On the maternal side, Tai Tai among the Kazakhs Well, it’s just with us Yes, it’s very confusing Well, as if before there was no concept of a national state and there wasn’t just such a clear identity of ethnicity, that is, w

ell, in principle, until Well, I don’t know about the end of the 15th century Well it all happened in the steppe, so there one clan chained us to a lot of Kyrgyz clans as part of the Kalmyk ethnic structure, let’s say there are many Kazakh clans Well, our clans Well, even the same sar Kalma, these are myth-making, which some comrades, historians there, Kazakhs sometimes engage in or in Kyrgyz it’s that well, the image of this enemy is sculpted from us, well, it’s all a construct of the colony. T

he state is a construct of the 10th century. No, yes, about the warriors, about before, well, there were militant times When the Wars took place, when that is, when we talk about the state, we can look at this from the point of view of constructivism And if we are talking about wars and conquests Well, this happened on the territory of Eurasia Well, different peoples trampled each other, Well, as if history does not cancel anything in the past, but we are talking about the future only Before we

move on to the future you go horse meat yes yes Well, I’m the one who’s dumb I’m the year of the Horse, I can’t be born When did you realize this that I was born in the year of the horse and you can’t have horse meat, they told me since childhood you were born in the year of the horse. You can’t eat it. Well, everyone else, let’s say copper. But I can’t, yes. And with us, everything goes. Well, except, although we have a film after which many people stopped eating horse meat now. about the futur

e, well, in general, I have to say about these about these Asians, post-Soviet postcom, there really is a lot in common: 70 years in general education with a common policy with a common national policy, in fact, with common traumas somewhere different, yes Just like with deportation We don’t have there were all kinds of deportations [music] paying the price of the indigenous peoples of the north we know very little about the Kalmyks in general And now it seems to me that it’s time to talk, get t

o know each other a lot of issues related to identity, self-sufficiency and in general I think this is very important But at the very beginning they said that we are 30 years ahead of you and we may have little understanding and appreciation of this possibility of an independent state, we constantly correlate this, for example, with the Uyghurs. Yes, they are a huge people who currently do not have a state and this is a big drama. Yes, and we see how they worry this drama , but somehow we least

of all thought about the other Asian peoples of Russia and what is their perspective today, how can they see themselves? Well, the fear is understandable, well, the politics of Russia today is understandable, but from the point of view. And self-sufficiency from the point of view, in general, it’s like a month one people in this world is leaving, dissolving from this point of view, there are some policies there, proposals for unification, if I’m not mistaken in Bashkortostan or a few years ago a

language teacher burned himself Yes, it was such an event massages in Udmurtia in Udmurtia Yes, the teacher it was For us it was such a shock because we, like, it’s so dramatic, yes, but now I don’t know what the prospects are because right now it’s very difficult to guess what’s going on now. Well, crazy, we’re working to make people wake up, people people understood, at least they got together and talked about their prospects because, judging by Kalmykia, we have only one prospect: to pack ou

r things and, well, to leave across the Mexican border to America, that is, many thousands of people here have moved to America over the last 2-3 years and are trying save yourself there because there, well, nothing puts pressure on you, yeah. There you won’t be repressed for speaking your own language and I don’t know what the prospects are. Well, someone talks about independence, someone talks about there even more integration there merging with Russia there is some kind of some kind of tni [

__ ] I am now engaged in building some kind of diaspora outside Kalmykia because all the guys there are interesting who are involved in Media there with all sorts of such stories already outside the borders of Russia and therefore it is necessary with to work on this and in general we kind of think and work on I tell you Well, how about such an idea of ​​​​the Meta Republic because And now in the new millennium, being tied to the earth Well, it’s not so important Especially to the land where you

yourself cannot be Well, the real owner and everyone is constantly moving there you live first in Berlin, moved to Paris, then ended up in Mongolia and, well, such a direct connection is not so important, but it is important to preserve your identity Uh-huh and it is important to preserve the community or create a community and And we are now working on this so that you have your republic in your pocket It doesn’t matter where you are and that you get some preferences from it in your pocket Thi

s is in the sense of a gadget phone and how it will work, well, this is a cool idea. It seems to me that now there is a lot of virtuality. As you can see, let’s say I’m in favor of decentralization. and horizontality we are thinking about the system in Well, in the style of the Tao, the Tao is a decentralized autonomous organization. That is, it is an organization where there is no general director, no president, no prime minister, where everything is a direct referendum. That is, each participa

nt is one vote. Well, electronic, you can nominate there. a referendum, that is, some kind of problem, a proposal for a referendum, people vote and each community, let’s say Kalmyks in Brooklyn, Kalmyks in Mongolia, Kalmyks There they can, well, create such a structure. Well, they already have this structure, but just put it in exactly this form to avoid Vla this is the story and we want to make such a khural of these Tao Well representatives these Tao were solved by common Kalmyk common araki g

lobal issues Well, something like this, well, it’s cool, it’s quite possible we see a bunch of different corporations and that are going like this Why those who hear us and for tea we will have salt and sugar on the table and we will agree and come to some interesting interesting palette of flavors thank you very much big Rakhmat Rakhma