On the issue of Kazakh-Oirat (Volga Kalmyks) relations in the XVII century - the first half of the 18th century

The paper discusses the content and nature of contacts between the Kazakhs of the Junior Zhuz and the Oirats-Kalmyks, who began from the end of the XVIth century to move towards the Southern Urals on the territory of the traditional nomadic Kazakhs and Nogays. This part of the Dzungarian tribes later received the generalized name "Volga Kalmyks". The history of their contacts with the nomadic peoples of the Lower Volga region and present-day Western Kazakhstan is in the nature of military-political conflicts, but at the same time, it sees the establishment of diplomatic, economic, trade and cultural ties with those tribes for whom this territory was their homeland. Relations between the Kazakhs of the Junior Zhuz and the Volga Kalmyks experienced both relatively calm, good-neighborly periods, and open clashes with the preponderance of the forces of one or the other. Especially dramatic for both peoples were the events in the period of the thirtieths of the XVIIth century to 1723, when the combined forces of the Kazakhs and Karakalpaks, led by the Khan of the Junior Zhuz Abulkhair, dealt, if not the final, then a serious blow to the Volga Kalmyks. The objectives of the study are reduced to assessing the nature and results of Kazakh-Oirat contacts within the territories in which they lived in a given period of time. Diversity of contacts between these peoples was established. They were not limited to military-political confrontation, but it was one of the reasons that led to changes in the historical fate of both peoples. The study used general scientific and historical methods: systemic, narrative, diachronic, chronological.