Kalmuk Steppe, or Kalmyk Steppe is a

steppe In physical geography, a steppe () is an ecoregion characterized by grassland plains without closed forests except near rivers and lakes. Steppe biomes may include: * the montane grasslands and shrublands biome * the tropical and subtropica ...

with a land area of approximately 100,000 km², bordering the northwest

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

, bounded by the

Volga The Volga (, ) is the longest river in Europe and the longest endorheic basin river in the world. Situated in Russia, it flows through Central Russia to Southern Russia and into the Caspian Sea. The Volga has a length of , and a catchment ...

on the northeast, the Manych on the southwest, and the territory of the

Don Cossacks Don Cossacks (, ) or Donians (, ), are Cossacks who settled along the middle and lower Don River (Russia), Don. Historically, they lived within the former Don Cossack Host (, ), which was either an independent or an autonomous democratic rep ...

on the northwest. The historic home to the Kalmuck or

Kalmyks Kalmyks (), archaically anglicised as Calmucks (), are the only Mongolic ethnic group living in Europe, residing in the easternmost part of the European Plain. This dry steppe area, west of the lower Volga River, known among the nomads as ...

, it is in the

Federal subject The federal subjects of Russia, also referred to as the subjects of the Russian Federation () or simply as the subjects of the federation (), are the administrative division, constituent entities of Russia, its top-level political division ...

Astrakhan Oblast Astrakhan Oblast (; ) is a federal subject of Russia (an oblast) located in southern Russia. Its administrative center is the city of Astrakhan. As of the 2010 Census, its population was 1,010,073. Geography Astrakhan's southern border is the ...

in Russia. Before the appearance of the Kalmyks to this region, the area was long known as the Povoletsk steppe by the Russians. The western Kalmuck Steppe occupied by the

Yergeni Yergeni (; ) is a hilly area in Russia. It is located in the southern corner of the East European Plain, mostly in Kalmykia, with parts in Volgograd Oblast and Rostov Oblast. The highest point of Kalmykia, high Shared (hill), Shared, is located i ...

hills, is deeply trenched by ravines and rises 300 and occasionally 630 ft. above the sea. It is built up of Tertiary deposits, belonging to the

Sarmatian The Sarmatians (; ; Latin: ) were a large confederation of Ancient Iranian peoples, ancient Iranian Eurasian nomads, equestrian nomadic peoples who dominated the Pontic–Caspian steppe, Pontic steppe from about the 5th century BCE to the 4t ...

division of the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

period and covered with bess and black earth, and its escarpments represent the old shore-line of the

Caspian Caspian can refer to: *The Caspian Sea *The Caspian Depression, surrounding the northern part of the Caspian Sea *The Caspians, the ancient people living near the Caspian Sea *The Caspian languages spoken in northern Iran and southeastern Azerbaij ...

. No Caspian deposits are found on or within the Yergeni. These hills exhibit the usual black earth flora, and they have a settled population. The eastern part of the steppe is a plain, lying for the most part 30 to 40 ft. below the level of the sea and sloping gently towards the Volga. Post-Pliocene Aral-Caspian deposits, containing the usual fossils (''Hydrobia'', ''Neritina'', eight species of ''Cardium'', two of ''Dreissena'', three of ''Adacna'' and ''Lithoglyphus caspius''), attain thicknesses varying from 105 ft. to 7 or 10 feet, and disappear in places. Lacustrine and fluviatile mineral deposits occur intermingled with the above. Large areas of moving sands exist near Enotayevsk, where high dunes or barkhans have been formed. A narrow tract of land along the coast of the Caspian, known as the "hillocks of Baer," is covered with hillocks elongated from west to east, perpendicularly to the coast-line, the spaces between them being filled with water or overgrown with thickets of reed, ''Salix'', ''Ulmus campestris'', almond trees, &c. An archipelago of little islands is thus formed close to the shore by these mounds, which are backed on the N. and N.W. by strings of salt lakes, partly desiccated. Small streams originate in the Yergeni, but are lost as soon as they reach the lowlands, where water can only be obtained from wells. The scanty vegetation is a mixture of the flora of south-east Russia and that of the deserts of central Asia. As of 1911, the steppe had an estimated population of 130,000 persons, living in over 27,700 kibitkas, or felt tents. There were many

Buddhist Buddhism, also known as Buddhadharma and Dharmavinaya, is an Indian religion and List of philosophies, philosophical tradition based on Pre-sectarian Buddhism, teachings attributed to the Buddha, a wandering teacher who lived in the 6th or ...

monastery, monasteries. Part of the Kalmucks were settled (chiefly in the hilly parts), the remainder being nomads. Antony Beevor, in his 1998 book ''Stalingrad (Beevor book), Stalingrad'', said that "Russians from the north thought of [Kalmyk Steppe] as 'the end of the world'". In 1943 the people were forcibly deported (see Kalmykia).

References

*Ivan Mushketov, I. V. Mushketov, ''Geol. Researches in the Kalmyk Steppe in 1884–1885'' (St Petersburg, 1894, in Russian); Kostenkov’s works (1868–1870); and other works quoted in Semenov’s ''Geogr. Dict.'' and ''Russ. Encycl. Dict.'' {{coord, 46, N, 46, E, display=title Geography of Kalmykia Eurasian Steppe Grasslands of Russia Temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands

See also

References