Families and individuals were forcibly relocated in cattle wagons to special settlements for forced labor in Siberia.

The government's official reason for the deportation was an accusation of Axis collaboration during World War II based on the approximately 5,000 Kalmyks who fought in the Nazi-affiliated Kalmykian Cavalry Corps.

The government refused to acknowledge that more than 23,000 Kalmyks served in the Red Army and fought against Axis forces at the same time.

NKVD chief Lavrentiy Beria and his deputy commissar Ivan Serov implemented the forced relocation on direct orders from Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.

The specific targeting of Kalmyks was based on a number of factors, including the group's alleged anti-communist sentiment and Buddhist culture.

Ben Kiernan, an American academic and historian, described Stalin's era as "by far the bloodiest of Soviet, or even Russian history".

[12] In September and October 1937, around 172,000 Soviet Koreans were deported, making it the first instance of Stalin's policy of resettling an entire nationality.

On 26 August 1942, Nazi forces captured Elista in Kalmykia and soon after established the Kalmykian Cavalry Corps, consisting of approximately 5,000 men under the leadership of former intelligence officer Dr. Rudolf Otto Doll.

[14] At the same time, 23,540 Kalmyks served in the Red Army[15] and eight were ultimately awarded recognition as Heroes of the Soviet Union.

[17] The fighting resulted in the destruction of many buildings and widespread looting, with total damages in the region estimated to be as high as 1,070,324,789 Rbls.

[6] During World War II, eight ethnic groups were expelled from their native lands by the Soviet government: the Volga Germans, the Chechens, the Ingush, the Balkars, the Karachays, the Crimean Tatars, the Meskhetian Turks, and the Kalmyks.

[23] On 27 October 1943, NKVD deputy Ivan Serov arrived in Elista to begin preparations for the mass deportation.

Chernyshov held a meeting in Moscow with NKVD representatives from Altai, Krasnoyarsk, Omsk and Novosibirsk to discuss the resettlement of the Kalmyks to these areas.

An NKVD operative was assigned to each district and required to develop plans to carry out the deportations, including mapping railway routes and identifying the number of trucks and soldiers necessary.

Soviet soldiers searched the Kalmyk houses and confiscated firearms, anti-Soviet literature, and foreign currency.

[29] Every person of Kalmyk ethnicity, including women, children and the elderly, were loaded onto trucks and sent to nearby railway stations.

[23] Only non-Kalmyks and Kalmyk women married to men of ethnic groups, not subject to deportation, were allowed to stay.

[33] State Security Major General Markeyev, the Ivanovo Oblast NKVD Chief, oversaw the deportation.

[41] The final stage took place between 1944 and 1948, and involved not only Kalmyks, but also the Karaychs, Meskhetian Turks, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Ingush and Balkars serving in the Red Army — all were discharged and exiled to the special settlements.

[49] Upon arrival at the camps, male and female deportees were separated, washed, and forced to line up outside in the winter cold.

[51] Of the 93,139 deported Kalmyks, approximately 1,400 died in transit and a similar number became gravely ill.[52] Hunger, cold, work conditions, and infections resulted in many additional fatalities at the forced labor camps.

[53] Soviet sources indicate that 83,688 Kalmyks were registered in the special settlements as of early 1945, meaning that more than 13,000 people had died or disappeared in the first two years of the deportation.

[38] Of the ethnic groups subjected to forced deportation by Soviet authorities, the Kalmyks suffered the greatest relative losses.

[12] On 13 December 1953, a Kalmyk delegation headed by Djab Naminov-Burkhinov lodged a formal complaint with the UN Secretary-General Dag Hammarskjöld.

Thus, already at the end of 1943, when there occurred a permanent breakthrough at the fronts... a decision was taken and executed concerning the deportation of all the Karachay from the lands on which they lived.

[66] Russian historian Pavel Polian considered all the deportations of entire ethnic groups during Stalin's era, including those from the Caucasus, a crime against humanity.

[71] On 28 December 1996, sculptor Ernst Neizvestny unveiled his monument to the deported Kalmyks in Elista, titled Exile and Return, a bronze sculpture around 3 metres (120 in) high.