American Kalmyks initially established communities in the United States following a mass immigration after World War II. The largest groups of Kalmyks originally settled primarily in the states of Pennsylvania and New Jersey.[1] The majority of today's Kalmyk American population are descended from those Kalmyks who had fled Russia in late 1920 to places such as France, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and, later, Germany.
As a consequence of their decades-long migration through Europe, many original immigrant Kalmyk Americans could speak German, French, and Serbo-Croatian, in addition to Russian and their native Kalmyk language.
Many Kalmyks were stranded in German displaced persons camps for a number of years following the end of World War II. They were originally classified as Asian under U.S. immigration law, and therefore denied entry, but in 1951 they were reclassified as Caucasian.[2] In 1955 many immigrated to the United States after the Tolstoy Foundation sponsored their passage.
