Passing through Philadelphia you might chance upon them--typical oriental faces, yellow skin, black hair, slanting eyes, high cheekbones. . . . Yet close up they don't really seem oriental with their tall build, free movements and warm, unguarded manner. Their language sounds like Korean mixed with a dash of Russian, Czech, German and French. . . . It's all rather confusing.
Are they maybe Koreans, Chinese, Japanese or Vietnamese? No one can guess, but they don't mind. At less than 2,000 these Mongols are truly a minority among America's racial minorities, yet they are contented with their existence because they have paid an unimaginable price for it.
Actually the term Mongols is not quite accurate since they don't belong to either Outer or Inner Mongolia. Their ancient homeland lies far out in the Russian steppes, not that they enjoyed it long. Following persecution under Tsarist and Soviet governments, with the Second World War many were eventually forced to abandon their families and take refuge abroad. Only in 1951, when with United Nations assistance they were accepted as stateless persons by the U.S. government, did they finally obtain a safe haven.
The story of their wanderings makes painful reading, but for the sake of understanding this legendary people let us tell it once again.
In 1771 one quarter of the Torghut nation were stranded in Tsarist Russia on the west bank of the Volga. These came to be known as the "Kalmucks," or the "remnant people." (See our article "The World's Most Pitiful Refugees.") But those who subsequently wandered through Russia and Europe to America have suffered even more than those of their brethren who are a already known as the world's most pitiful refugees.
Deserted by their fellow tribesmen when they returned eastwards to Dzungaria in 1771, this lonely Kalmuck remnant of some 70,000 found themselves oppressed by the Russian Empire and other central Asian peoples.
"The first things they faced were Russian policies of reprisal and immobilization," states Mongol historian Hai Chung-hsiung, a section chief at the Mongolian & Tibetan Affairs Commission and himself a Kalmuck.
In 1771 Catherine the Great stripped the Kalmucks of their independent Khanate and made them Russian subjects. They were subjected to Russification, divided among three separate administrative regions and placed under the control of Russian officials.
Despite their loss of military and political independence, the Russian policy of mollification allowed them to retain a fair degree of economic, cultural and religious autonomy. They had their own schools and temples, spoke their own language, married within their own tribe and kept countless oxen, goats and camels.
"Mostly that was a nice, peaceful time," remembers Sandscha Stepa, 91, who spent his childhood in Russia and now lives in Philadelphia.
But the good times did not last long. The Russian Revolution of 1917 plunged the whole country into war. The Kalmucks had never considered themselves as Russians and cared nothing for Russian power struggles, but were drawn into the fighting willy-nilly and were to pay the tragic price in a series of genocides.
As devout Buddhists the Kalmucks were suspicious of the Communists' atheism, while as unfettered herdsmen they found ideas such as common ownership and a collective economy repellent. In the October Revolution most of them took an unequivocal stand on the Tsarist side and against the Red Army.
For the next three years the Kalmucks joined the Whites and sacrificed their lives and property in the civil war. With the defeat of the Whites and the seizure of power by the Soviet government, another wave of migration began for the Kalmucks after 300 years in Russia.
"This migration was to avoid reprisals and purges by the Communist government," Hai Chung-hsiung points out.
Unfortunately the majority, including intellectuals, could not escape and were massacred or forced into freezing Siberian labor camps to live out their lives a prey to hunger and disease. After the double disasters of civil war and the purge, by 1925 only some 129,000 Kalmucks still survived out of the original population of 190,000.
Only 2,000 were lucky enough to escape from the Soviet Union. They travelled across the Black Sea to Turkey and thence to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and even to France.
This is how Giga Andreyev, currently living in New Jersey and chairman of the World Mongolian Taipei Club, came toe born in Yugoslavia and spent a gloomy childhood there. He recalls: "We were few in number, widely scattered and, as stateless persons, unable to take formal citizenship. But as long as a Kalmuck has freedom and work he can always survive."
Giga's father ran some small businesses and raised his five sons in great hardship. But he never forgot to take his children to the temple to hear the Sutras, and would make a lengthy journey to join in the celebrations of Mongolian New Year.
Those who stayed behind in the Soviet Union faced further misfortune. As one-time opponents of the Red Army and under successive waves of purges, the Kalmucks eventually bowed to the Communists to ensure their survival. In 1935 a Kalmuck Autonomous Republic was established and became part of the Soviet Union.
But this tragic people's catalogue of misfortunes was still not at an end.
After the outbreak of World War Ⅱ and the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 the Kalmucks found themselves once more faced with a choice between two evils.
The Kalmucks believed the Soviet propaganda that this was a patriotic war aimed at forestalling German world hegemony, and they willingly joined in the war effort against the Germans, suffering considerable casualties in the process.
At the same time, many Kalmucks also took this opportunity to go over to the German side and fight against communism under the banner of the German-organized New Russian Army.
"We were caught between the hammer and the anvil, and where were we to turn?" Philadelphia resident Dordge Arbakov, 76, held high office under the German banner and fought against the Soviets.
Most tragically of all, whichever side won the isolated and powerless Kalmucks were bound to be the losers.
In 1942 after their defeat at Stalingrad the German army began withdrawing from Russia and some 5,000 Kalmucks withdrew with them. Some served in the German army, others feared Russian reprisals and yet others were forced into farm or factory labor.
Those Kalmucks who had fled to Eastern Europe after the Russian Revolution were gathered together at labor camps in southern Germany.
But in such chaotic times and without their own country's protection these helpless refugees were entirely in the hands of fate.
When Stepa, holder of a Czech law doctorate and an established lawyer, was transported to Germany, a German officer suddenly announced: "The train is too full, let the rest stay behind in Czechoslovakia!" And that was how he was separated from his wife and two young children.
In wartime hardship and misfortune were the common fate of all peoples. But what still causes the Kalmucks to gnash their teeth is the memory of Stalin's vengeful genocide against their old home in the Soviet Union, the Kalmuck Autonomous Republic.
Soon after the German withdrawal Stalin seized much evidence of Kalmuck collaboration and treachery to add to the Kalmuck's previous bad record. In 1943. together with five other smaller nations, the Kalmuck Republic was punished by collective banishment.
In December 1943 the Soviet government announced the dissolution of the Kalmuck Republic. The population were forthwith rounded up by the secret police and transported in cattle trucks to Siberian labor camps.
"My mother and sister lived there for 13 years," says Dordge sadly. In that time the Kalmuck name was almost forgotten, no one supported them and no one dared enquire about them. In 1957 when Khrushchev permitted them to return only some 60,000 came back alive, barely half those who had left.
At the end of the war in 1945, the 850 or so Kalmucks in German labor camps tasted the bitter gall of genocide and homelessness. The UN International Refugee Organization made efforts to find them a safe haven--America, Canada, Australia, Paraguay, Ceylon and even Ethiopia. . . . But these countries either did not welcome non-whites, or felt suspicious of people from the Soviet Union, or only took in younger people and refused the old. . . .
Eventually in 1951 the U.S. Attorney General admitted them to America on the grounds that as inhabitants of southern European Russia, despite being Asiatics, the Kalmucks belonged to white Caucasian culture.
This was nevertheless a happy ending for the Kalmuck diaspora. The choice of America was welcomed not only because it was a land of wealth and liberty, a racial melting-pot where they need not worry about racial discrimination, but "even more importantly, post-war America was a firm anti-communist bastion. Here we could express our loathing of communism in meetings and demonstrations and swear to resist it to the death," says Dr. Stepa, an anti-communist warrior of international repute.
In 1951 and 1952, almost 600 Kalmucks arrived in America to "set up new homes and a new life in the "New World." Now 40 years have passed almost in the twinkling of an eye.
Here their story seems to have finally ended. Their ancestors came from China and then returned to it, but left the Kalmucks to trek a long and arduous road to freedom on their own. Happily those days of terror and despair are over. "Our home is here and we never want to wander in exile again," concludes Giga.
[Picture Caption]
A Mongol father and son on the streets of Belgrade, the capital of Yugoslavia, in 1941. (Photo courtesy of Giga Andreyev)
Putting on formal dress for a souvenir of refugee camp life. (photo courtesy of Giga Andreyev)
As a result of four migrations during the past three hundred years the main population of the Torghuts settled in Sinkiang, while some of their descendants remained abroad and were scattered across Europe and the U.S.A.
No matter how tough life is, little children should be allowed to grow up in peace and happiness.
A memory of idle refugee camp days.
Holding a baby while turning the prayer wheel, hoping that the traditions of Lamaism will never fade.
Traditional religious life is preserved even in adverse circumstances.
Dr. Stepa criticizes communism on German radio. At left is a former Russian premier from the Tsarist period.
Having bid farewell to their unsettled refugee life, the Kalmucks have now found a home of their own in the New World.
A visit to their refugee camp by the Paraguayan foreign minister lends heart to these arrivals from a foreign land.
Putting on formal dress for a souvenir of refugee camp life. （photo courtesy of Giga Andreyev）
As a result of four migrations during the past three hundred years the main population of the Torghuts settled in Sinkiang, while some of their descendants remained abroad and were scattered across Europe and the U.S.A.
No matter how tough life is, little children should be allowed to grow up in peace and happiness.
A memory of idle refugee camp days.
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