Dedicated to the 80th Anniversary of the Deportation of the Kalmyk People…

Today the presentation of the book “Kalmyk Songs About Siberia” took place in the conference hall of the Central Khurul. This event brought together people of different ages, each of whom was immersed in those distant, terrible years of the deportation of our people…

“Each song is like a chronicle of the deportation; it recorded the images, feelings, and emotions of our ancestors. Each song  is a living word of the people, a word about the most difficult years and days of our parents, grandmothers, and grandfathers, their stories about important things. We must not forget this,” noted the authors of the book — Doctor of Historical Sciences Elza-Bair Guchinova and Candidate of Philological Sciences Tsagan Seleeva. They especially noted the contribution of the patron Oleg Bartunov, thanks to whom the collection was published.

The collection contains 87 texts of songs from the Siberian years in the Kalmyk language. A Russian translation has been made for each of them. Many of them were gathered bit by bit during scholarly “field” work, while some had already been published earlier. 

The head of the administration of “The Golden Abode of Buddha Shakyamuni,” Geshe Yonten, on behalf of the Shajin Lama of Kalmykia and the monastic Sangha, thanked all those who took part in this important and necessary project, noting the great contribution to the development of Kalmyk culture and folklore. “Let us have one day in the year for mourning and sorrow — that is December 28 — and on the remaining 364 days we, the grateful descendants, will labor, develop our people and our Republic, we will preserve our culture and traditions; we will preserve, multiply, and pass on everything to the coming generations. And this is exactly what our ancestors wanted, those who accomplished an incredible feat thanks to which we exist, have our own land, and have the opportunity to live and look to the future with confidence and optimism,” Geshe Yonten said in his address.

Today the entire hall stood and chanted the prayer "Sukhavatin yöräl" together with Geshe Yonten, in memory of all our ancestors🙏