In August 2009, it was 400 years since a significant part of the Oirats, a Mongolian-speaking people living in Western Mongolia, together with their families, livestock and property, covered a distance of more than 6 thousand km, migrated to the vast steppes of the Lower Volga region and voluntarily accepted citizenship of the Russian state. This people became widely known as the Kalmyks, the only people in the European part of Russia and throughout Europe who profess Buddhism. In connection with this significant event in the history of the Kalmyk people and the entire multinational and multi-confessional Russia, the Republic of Kalmykia has developed and is implementing an extensive program of commemorative events. On September 13-18, 2009, Elista hosted the international scientific conference "United Kalmykia as part of United Russia: Through the Centuries to the Future", dedicated to the 400th anniversary of the voluntary entry of the Kalmyk people into the Russian state. The organizers and sponsors were the Government of the Republic, the Kalmyk Institute for Humanitarian Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (KIGI RAS), Kalmyk State University and other scientific and educational institutions of the Republic, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian National Science Foundation. The conference was attended by about 300 scientists from Kalmykia, 25 other regions of the Russian Federation, as well as from Mongolia, China, Japan, Germany, Kazakhstan, and Abkhazia*. The conference received numerous greetings, including from the head of the Republic of Kalmykia K. Ilyumzhinov and other leaders of the republic, the leadership of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, the Presidium, UNC and Institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences, scientific and educational institutions of a number of subjects of the Russian Federation, representatives of the Buddhist and Orthod ... Читать далее