Kalmyk Americans[1] are Americans of Kalmyk descent. In 2000, their number in New Jersey numbered to about 3,000.[2]
Kalmyk communities were originally established during the 1950s in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Paterson and Howell (Freewood Acres), New Jersey, as well as in Windsor, Maryland and in the State of New Mexico. These people were originally refugees from Russia and were rapidly assimilated. There is a Kalmyk Brotherhood Society in Philadelphia with a Buddhist Temple in North Philadelphia.
In recent years, a significant number of Kalmyks, primarily the young and educated, have immigrated from Kalmykia. The move was caused by the desire to seek better educational and economic opportunities. Many of these immigrants live in New York City.
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In the United States, the predominant Kalmyk dialect is Buzava. The other dialects include Dörbet, Torghut and Khoshut. The Kalmyk dialects vary somewhat, but the differences are insignificant.
At the start of the Russian Civil War in 1918, the Don Cossacks rose up to support the White Movement in its attempt to defeat the Bolsheviks. The Buzava, who belonged to the Don Host, also supported and fought with the White Army against the Bolsheviks. However, the Bolsheviks eventually achieved victory. By the war's end in 1920, a small group of Buzava Kalmyks fled Russia with remnants of the White Army, fearing retribution, on British warships to Turkey. From Turkey, this group dispersed to Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and France.
During World War II, the Buzava refugees and their Central European-born offspring found themselves without work, food or, in some cases, shelter. Given the situation, their staunch anti-Communist sentiment and fear that the Soviet Union would persecute them, many moved to Austria and Germany to work in German industry. Later, they were joined by the remaining groups of Buzava, fleeing from Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Czechoslovakia as the Soviet Red Army expanded into southern Europe.
The German invasion of the Soviet Union gave the opportunity for even more Buzava to leave the Soviet Union. This contingent was joined by Torghuts, Dörbets and Khoshuts, fellow kinsmen who were not able to leave in 1920. Some of these refugees fled due to their collaboration with the German Army.
After World War II ended, the Kalmyks found themselves stateless, living for six years in Displaced Persons Camps, primarily in Ingolstadt and Schleissheim, West Germany. There they lived among other East European political refugees, fearing the authorities would forcibly repatriate them to the Soviet Union (See Operation Keelhaul), even those Kalmyks living and born outside the Soviet Union prior to the war.
The International Refugee Organization of the United Nations made numerous unsuccessful attempts to resettle the Kalmyks in any part of the world. Many countries refused to accept them as immigrants, believing that their Mongolian origins and Buddhist beliefs would make them difficult candidates for assimilation. Moreover, the Kalmyks as a whole preferred to be resettled as an undivided group. On August 28, 1951, however, the Acting Attorney General of the United States affirmed a Board of Immigration Appeals decision that had overturned an adverse decision of a special inquiry board holding a Kalmyk couple ineligible to immigrate because they were not members of the "white" race. Sustaining the appeal of the rejected couple, the BIA found, inter alia, that the Kalmyks' centuries-old history of occupying the European section of Russia militated a favorable decision regarding their contention that they were European and therefore not subject to the race-based bar to their entry into the United States and eventual naturalization as American citizens. Among many of the Kalmyk emigres an urban legend of sorts has developed that the US Congress passed special legislation on their behalf exempting them from the racially exclusionary provisions of Section 303 of the Nationality Act of 1940. The truth, less glamorous than an imaginary "act of Congress" affecting the fate of a handful of Kalmyk refugees, is that the hard work and novel legal arguments of lawyers working on behalf of the Kalmyk couple cleared the way for the rest of their otherwise eligible compatriates to successfully immigrate to America.
Between December 1951 and March 1952, 571 Kalmyks arrived in the United States, with additional families and individuals arriving later on. After a period of processing and orientation at one of the reception centers set up for them in Baltimore, Maryland and Vineland, New Jersey, they settled in two areas: a small crossroads community in the Freewood Acres neighborhood of Howell, New Jersey; and a section of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (An attempt to relocate some members of the group to New Mexico was unsuccessful.) Smaller groups of individuals also settled in New Brunswick and Patterson, New Jersey, and near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.
Geshe Wangyal, Kalmyk Lama, Teacher and Scholar was born in a Kalmykia, came to the United States from Tibet in 1955, taking over the spiritual leadership of the Kalmuk Buddhist Temple and community near Freehold Township, New Jersey
He later taught at Columbia University and during the 1960s and 1970s, he sponsored visits by several monks and lamas from the Tibetan emigre settlement in India and instructed them in English so they could serve the Buddhist community in the United States.
Dr. Wangyal translated two volumes of popular Tibetan and Sanskrit stories illustrative of Buddhist teachings, The Door of Liberation and The Prince Who Became a Cuckoo.