Archival documents of the Kalmyk people’s governing bodies as sources for studying the process of integration of Kalmyk society into the All-Russian state system in the 19th century

The article examines the process of integration of Kalmyk society into the Russian state space through the study of the composition and content of archival documents created during the period of activity of the Kalmyk people’s governing bodies in the nineteenth century. The study shows that archival documents serve as written sources for insights into the most important but rather difficult period in the history of the Kalmyk people associated with: 1) the exodus of most Kalmyks from Russia and the annexation of the Kalmyk Khanate (1771) which put an end to any independent development of the Kalmyk Steppe, the shift from the protectorate system to that of citizenship; 2) changes in all spheres of the Kalmyk people’s life related to the implementation of administrative reforms in the Russian state management system, including those that affected the social status and rights of the Kalmyk nobility, their attitude towards the Russian nobility and the need to confirm the legal rights to own uluses, aimags; 3) the emergence of new strata in the structure of Kalmyk society: officials as translators and interpreters, hired workers; 4) implementation of state policy for the gradual transition of Kalmyks to a sedentary lifestyle through the construction of wooden houses for Kalmyks who chose to get settled and displaced peasants supposed to become a model of sedentary agriculture. Thus, the study attests to the Kalmyk society gradually merged into the all-Russian state system, and there was a process of interpenetration of cultural, economic and other aspects of life inherent to different ethnic communities connected by the common history of the Russian state.