On May 9, in the village of Shin-Mer in Kalmykia, a memorial was opened to the indigenous residents of the Bagshin-Shebener clan, who became victims of the mass deportation of Kalmyks in 1943.
The words are carved on the memorial stone: “To the Bagshin-Shebenerites who went through the horror of Stalin’s repressions on Siberian soil in 1943-1957. And it’s scary to remember, and it’s impossible to forget...”
The initiator of the installation of the monument was local businessman Vladimir Povaev. The author of the monument is the architect Sergei Shalaev, the artist is Alexander Povaev.
Representatives of the district and local administration, labor veterans, and activists of the military-patriotic movement “Youth Army” took part in the opening ceremony.
According to researcher Pavel Polyan, under Stalin, ten peoples were subjected to total deportation - the eviction of an entire ethnic group: Koreans, Germans, Ingrian Finns, Karachais, Kalmyks, Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, Crimean Tatars and Meskhetian Turks.
The deportation of Kalmyks in NKVD documents was designated as a special operation “Ulus” (ulus is an administrative-territorial unit among Kalmyks and other Turkic peoples). On December 27, 1943, the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR “On the liquidation of the Kalmyk ASSR and the formation of the Astrakhan region as part of the RSFSR” was issued. The Kalmyk lands were divided between the Astrakhan and Stalingrad regions, the former names of the uluses and their centers were replaced with Russian names.
On December 28, 1943, a decree “On the eviction of Kalmyks living in the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic” was issued. On the same day, NKD troops began to herd people to the railway. In two days, 46 trains were formed, on which more than 93 thousand people were transported. Kalmyks were sent to Omsk, Novosibirsk and Tyumen regions, Krasnoyarsk and Altai territories. Many died on the road from cold and typhus. According to various sources, during the years of deportation the total losses of the Kalmyk people amounted to from a third to half of their number.
Only in 1956, after Stalin’s death, were the Kalmyks rehabilitated and allowed to return to their homeland. In 1958, the status of the Kalmyk Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was restored.
According to the “Caucasian Knot”, the Bagshin-Shebener clan is one of the nine Shebener clans of the Maloderbetovsky ulus. The last abbot of the Bagshin-Shebener khurul (Buddhist temple among the Kalmyks) was Khara Baldanov. In 1933, the khurul was closed, Baldanov was removed from the monastic rank, and in 1943 he, along with his relatives, friends and neighbors, was exiled to the Altai Territory. Baldanov ensured that they were all settled in one place - in the Slavgorod region of the region. Baldanov and his family returned to Shin-Mer in 1957.