Priyutnoye

The open country around Priyutnoye lies between the Ergeni hills and the Manych depression. Before the village was founded, Kalmyk herders moved through these grasslands, stopping in sheltered hollows where water could be found. Their pastoral routes linked the steppe of the lower Volga with the Manych country. In the seventeenth century the Torghut rulers established the Kalmyk Khanate; after many of their people migrated east in 1771, Russian authorities abolished the khanate, though communities remained on the western steppe.