Yuriy says that in the past Kalmyk elites spoke a special language unintelligible to ordinary people. Kalmyk elites knew foreign languages and sent their children to study in major Russian cities, including Astrakhan, Saratov and Tsaritsyn. It was hoped that once their children had higher education they would use it to protect ordinary Kalmyks from the tsarist administration. Anxious to keep their bloodline ‘pure’, Kalmyk male elites did not take wives from other ethnic groups. There were exceptions though. For example, one of Yuriy’s ancestors named Grigoriy Dzhogaevich Erdniev married a Kazakh woman who was a daughter of a Communist Party secretary in Kazakh Socialist Republic.