“Almost the entire Kalmyk people want him to be the Khan.” Circumstances of the murder of the owner Galdan-Danzhin on June 27, 1741

In the history of the Kalmyk Khanate there are many cases of premature death of the main contenders for the Khan's throne, which to some extent had a certain influence on the subsequent history of the Kalmyks. One of the examples in this series is the son of Khan Ayuki, the owner Galdan-Danjin. Within the framework of this article, for the first time in Russian historiography, the circumstances that most influenced his murder on June 27, 1741 are considered. The source base of the study is various office documents (letters, orders, reports, decrees, etc.) stored in the I-36 collection of the National Archives of the Republic of Kalmykia. It is concluded that four circumstances were mainly responsible for the murder of Galdan-Danjin. The first of them is the high degree of interest in him on the part of the Dzhan group. The second circumstance is the initial underestimation of the threat to Galdan-Danjin's life in March and April, which was characteristic of both local officials and the Collegium of Foreign Affairs. The third circumstance was related to time. We have calculated that reports from Astrakhan to St. Petersburg and decrees sent in the opposite direction were delivered on average in 20 days, which indicates that the Collegium of Foreign Affairs would not have been physically able to take measures to protect Galdan-Danzhin. The fourth circumstance is the extreme passivity of Colonel L. V. Boborykin during the battle of June 27, 1741.