Kalmyks

From the XV century in the Russian state, an award for certain military merits is known in the form of rewarding those who distinguished themselves, or those who participated in a particular military campaign, with gilded silver or gold coins. The Moscow Kremlin Museums keep a gold award with an owner’s inscription stating that it was granted in 1639/40 to the stolnik Vasily Grigorievich Fefilatiev. This is the oldest personalized Russian award to date. It was possible to establish that the gold was awarded for the Saratov service in 1636.

The article presents for the first time the biography of the Saratov voivode Ivan Ivanovich Kosagov, the father of the famous General Grigory Kosagov. I. I. Kosagov began his service at the court of Tsar Mikhail Romanov in 1620 at the age of 17, and before that he served with the patriarch for several years, like many of his ancestors. Becoming a Moscow nobleman in 1631, he received his first appointmenttothe voivodeship in Yuriev-Polsky,thenmainly served onthe southern borders. It is said about his regimental service in Mtsensk, Lomov, Tula.

It is now believed that the name «Kalmyks» was concerned with Oyrats who came to the territory of Kazakhstan in the early 17th century. Russian and Western European documents write about Kalmaks since the fifteenth century. New data show that in Russia they knew about Kalmaks from personal contacts with them. The name “Kalmak” existed and was often used in Russia in the XVI century. West European travellers and geographers Jenkinson (1558), A.Vid (1537), S. Gerbersteen (1526), M. Mekhovskiy (1521), Fra-Mauro (1459), A. Contarini (1475) etc.