Materials on the folklore of the Mongolian peoples from the Scientific Archive of the Kalmyk Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences, collected by orientalist Ts.-D. Nominkhanov. Part 1

Tseren-Dordzhi Nominkhanov is a famous orientalist, the first doctor of Philology in Kalmykia. Work experience in his youth as a military instructor in Mongolia (1921-1923) and activity as commandant of Urga (Ulaanbaatar) in 1921 during the creation of the Mongolian Scientific Committee (future Academy of Sciences) Mongolia determined his interest in Mongolian studies. The first scientific expeditions were conducted by Ts.-D. Nominkhanov in the direction and according to the tasks set by his teacher, Professor B.Ya. Vladimirtsov, in 1924-1926 and 1928-1929 in Mongolia. After graduating from the Leningrad Oriental Institute, the scientist worked in Kalmykia, Astrakhan, Moscow, Tashkent, Abakan, Alma-Ata. In Kalmykia, the scientist worked from September 1930 to July 1931 as a teacher at the Kalmyk Pedagogical College (located in Astrakhan), in 1943 (from June to December 28, when the entire Kalmyk people were deported to Siberia) as the scientific secretary of the Kalmyk Research Institute of Language, Literature and History; and after the restoration of Kalmykia’s autonomy in 1957 - as the head of the sector, deputy director, senior researcher at the Kalmyk Research Institute (1960-1967). In different periods of his scientific activity, the scientist was engaged in collecting ethnographic, folklore, linguistic materials that were deposited in different archives of Russia and Mongolia. The largest collection in terms of the number of storage units is located in the Scientific Archive of the Kalmyk Scientific Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The purpose of the article is to examine the composition of folklore materials on the Mongolian peoples in this fund and compare them with materials from other archives.