The English writer De Quincy once said in the 19th century: "Since the earliest records of history, no great undertaking has been as sensational and exciting as the migration of a major Tatar people across the vast steppes of Asia to the east in the second half of the last century." ”
De Quincy is talking about the prototype of "The Legend of the Hero of the East Return", which was on fire on the screen a few years ago. In the middle of the sixteenth century, in order to prevent annexation by the Dzungars, the Turks migrated westward to today's lower Volga.
Although the vast steppes here belonged to Russia in name, due to their sparse population, Russia's actual control was far from reaching here. So the Turks believed that "the land and water were given to them by the Buddha."
But Russia soon reached out. No nation was willing to be a slave, but in that era very few people really could stop Russia. The Tsar eventually received the right to appoint the "Khan King" of the Turks.
As Russia continued to expand abroad, more and more Turkic youth were forced to the battlefield, especially in the Russo-Turkish War of 1768, Turk had sacrificed 60,000 or 70,000 soldiers for the Tsar, but in order to reverse the defeat as soon as possible, the Tsar ordered "those over the age of sixteen to send troops.".
Unable to bear it, the turbat chiefwoman Wolbasi immediately decided to return to the east and return to the place where his ancestors lived. However, due to the betrayal of the traitors, the people living on the west bank of the Volga River were not able to return with them.
The departure of Wolbasi allowed the Russian Tsarina Catherine II to pour all her anger on the remaining people, and many Turk nobles were arrested and imprisoned. This led directly to the active participation of the Turks at the time of the Pugachev Uprising.
The uprising was soon quelled by Russia, and the Tsarina from the Germanic nation believed that it was not enough to enslave the Turks economically, so she spent a lot of money to win over the lamas and try to assimilate the Turks religiously.
In fact, Russia has long encouraged Orthodox missionaries to learn Mongolian, and even forced turks to accept Orthodox baptism. In order to resist the encroachment of Russian culture, the Turks specially enacted a law stipulating that the children of herders must learn the Mongolian script, otherwise the nobles would be punished with a three-year-old horse and the commoners with a three-year-old sheep.
Catherine summed up her past experience and no longer forced them to convert to Orthodox Christianity, so she turned to the lamas to influence the Turks who were unwilling to submit.
To this end, she openly concocted the fallacious heresy that "the Tsar is the reincarnation of the living Buddha" and declared herself the embodiment of the "great White Tara". In order to allow more Turks to join the Orthodox Church, Russia also used the reduction of taxes as bait.
Although a small number of people converted to Orthodox Christianity as a result, the vast majority of them adhered to the Mongol tradition and became the last pure Mongol nation on the European continent today. After the outbreak of the October Revolution, they decisively joined the camp of the Red Army and, after the victory, established the Republic of Kalmykia.