Buzava

The Buzava or Buzava Kalmyks are the ethnic Kalmyk people centered in the western Republic of Kalmykia, in the present day Southern Federal District of Russia.

In 1699, a group of the Dörbets of Oirat, a Choros clan within the Oirat tribe, migrated from the Buddhist Kalmyk people in the Volga River area to join the Don Cossacks people.^[1] They eventually came to be called the Buzava Kalmyks, which some scholars posit comes from a combination of the Kalmyk words bu (rifle) and zava (showed), to mean roughly 'those who showed rifles.'^[2]

They resettled with the Don Cossacks along the middle and lower Don River in Kalmykia.

Sources

^ Wixman, Ronald (1984). The peoples of the USSR: an ethnographic handbook. Armonk (N.Y.): M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-87332-506-6.
^ "Kalmyk | Cultural Heritage Documentation Project". www.kalmykheritage.socanth.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2026-01-02.

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[1] Wixman, Ronald (1984). The peoples of the USSR: an ethnographic handbook. Armonk (N.Y.): M. E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0-87332-506-6.

[2] "Kalmyk | Cultural Heritage Documentation Project". www.kalmykheritage.socanth.cam.ac.uk. Retrieved 2026-01-02.

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