Ts.-D. Nominkhanov and I. K. Ilishkin in Khakassia during the years Deportation

Abstract

The goal of this study is to highlight the little known facts about scientific life of Kalmyk scholars — philologists Ts. D. Nominkhanov and I. K. Ilishkin, restoration of some significant episodes of their work conducted in 1944–1949 during the deportation of the Kalmyk people that fell on the last years of the Great Patriotic War and postwar period when the scholars were in exile in Khakass autonomous region. The study is based on the materials of the National Archive of the Republic of Khakassia funds, the manuscript fund of the Khakass Research Institute of Language, Literature and History, the periodical press of that time, specifically the newspaper “Sovetskaya Khakassia”, the main print newspaper in the region. In the bibliographic database of the N. G. Domozhakov National Library all the newspapers for the given time period were analyzed by the method of continuous sampling and the articles written by Ts. D. Nominkhanov and also materials containing critical remarks against the scholars in the times of their persecution were selected. Photos from the personal archive of the regional ethnographer L. I. Belousova were also used for the article. The author emphasized the introduction of a lot of photos, decrees and extracts from Ts. D. Nominkhanov’s personal file. They are published for the first time. The given materials despite their limited quantity enable us to provide more information on the scientific life of Ts. D. Nominkhanov and I. K. Ilishkin during deportation, evaluate the scientific heritage that they left for further generations of students and scholars of Khakassia.