Description
Book SynopsisDuring the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the expanding Russian empire was embroiled in a dramatic confrontation with the nomadic people known as the Kalmyks who had moved westward from Inner Asia onto the vast Caspian and Volga steppes. Drawing...
Trade ReviewKhodarkovsky offers a short survey of Kalmyk society and a larger narrative on relations between Russia and the Kalmyks until they returned to Mongolia in 1771.... The story reminds readers of a pervasive theme of Russian history, the dangerous frontier, on which the Kalmyks were a formidable player in action that included the Crimean and Nogay Tatars, the Yaik and Don Cossacks, and Ottoman Turkey and Poland.
* Choice *
Khodarkovsky's book is a detailed account of relations between Kalmyks and Russians prior to 1771. To provide greater balance than was previously available, he matches Russian sources with material gleaned from the Ottoman archives, and he provides an initial chapter on the structure of Kalmyk nomadic society.
-- James Critchlow * Russian Review *
One welcomes this book by a scholar who is prepared to tackle the slippery subject of the clash of the nomadic and the sedentary worlds from the vantage point of both.... Michael Khodarkovsky offers a meticulously documented and admirably clear chronological account of Russo-Kalmyk relations within the wider context of Kalmyk society, international relations, and regional politics.
-- Lindsey Hughes * The Slavonic Review *
This book is a piece of solid scholarship which contributes substantially to our understanding of the history of the inner Asian nomadic world and Russia's relations with it.
-- Yuri Bregel * Slavic Review *
This book should not elude any serious student of Eurasia, for it makes a welcome contribution to our understanding of the empire-borderland equation.
-- Azade-Ayse Rorlich * American Historical Review *
