Anatoliy talks about how he initiated the Day of Kalmyk Press:Anatoliy says that after learning the old Kalmyk script (Todo Bichig) he read a lot of pre-revolutionary Kalmyk literature. For his dissertation work on the history of the Kalmyk press, he read a Kalmyk newspaper ‘Oordin zyang’ (Oirat news), among other things. The first edition of this newspaper came out on 15 November 1917. After the collapse of the Soviet Union when it became possible to talk freely about pre-revolutionary times, he approached Oldayev, editor-in-chief of the newspaper he was working for. He asked Anatoliy just to wait. Afterwards, one day the newspaper was visited by Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, President of Kalmykia. At that time, Batyr Elistaev was the editor of the newspaper. During the meeting of the journalists with President, Anatoliy proposed to celebrate the Day of Kalmyk press and link it to the publication of the first national newspaper ‘Oordin zyang’. Ilyumzhinov liked the idea, and asked to prepare a draft for a decree. In less than a month’s time the decree was signed off and the celebration was approved.